El relevo léxico de tornar y volver: a propósito de su valor de regresión

Abstract

It has been noted that starting in the 15th century, the verb tornar began to be replaced by volver. One of the discursive functions previously associated with tornar is that of regression—that is, this verb appears in constructions that serve to mark the point at which the central topic of the discourse is resumed after a digression. However, the replacement of tornar by volver for this specific discursive function has yet to be studied. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate, using historically themed texts from the 15th and 16th centuries collected in the CDH, how this substitution takes place, in order to provide new data on this lexical replacement.