Semantics and Pragmatics of Spanish Verb-Particle Constructions formed with para atrás 'back(wards)'

Although verb-particle constructions have been extensively studied from various theoretical perspectives, previous research has strongly focused on the particle (and possibly verb) semantics, whereas the interaction with the co(n)text has been of little interest. By contrast, this paper adopts a more dynamic frame-semantic approach and shows in a case study based on corpus examples that Spanish verb-particle constructions formed with para atr & aacute;s lit. `back(wards)' are prone to variable spatio-aspectual meaning construals. The paper further discusses how these findings can be interpreted in the light of the growing interest in Construction Grammar(s) in the semantic and pragmatic impact of co(n)textual features as well as in the representation of the meaning of constructions.