1. General characterization of the construction family

1In German, Italian and Spanish, the construction family of negative polarity is employed to express ‘Absolute Lack of Interest’ on the part of the speaker. From a semantic and pragmatic point of view, these constructions are characterized by a high degree of subjectivity and expressiveness, and, depending on the concrete nominal and verbal slot fillers, by an informal or vulgar register. Lexically, the construction is renewed by concrete instantiations of the verbal and nominal fillers. This gives rise to a variety of constructions that are formally and functionally similar, thus making up a family in the general constructionist sense (cf. examples 1–3).

2Verbal slot fillers in German are mainly interessieren (‘to interest’), angehen (‘to concern’) and, to a lesser extent, kümmern (‘to take care’), jucken (‘to itch’), kratzen (‘to scratch’), scheren (‘to shear’), in Italian interessare (‘to be of interest’), importare/importarsene (‘to care about’), fregare/fregarsene (‘not to give a shit’ / ‘to not care about sth.’), and fottere/fottersene (‘not to give a shit’), and in Spanish interesar (‘to interest’) and importar (‘to care’). The specific slot-filling for nouns is outlined for each language in sections 2–4.

3The constructions denoting ‘Lack of Interest’ express an emphatic negation, to which the nominal phrases, as quantifiers, strongly contribute. Nominal phrases, used as quantifying adverbs, are common phenomena in the European languages. Breibarth, Lucas & Willis (2020: 77) cite as examples: English (En.) one bit; German (Ger.) kein Stück; French (Fr.) point; Catalan (Cat.) cap; Russian (Russ.) ni kapel’ki (‘not at all [not a drop]’), nifiga (‘not at all [not a fig]’); Bulgarian (Bulg.) xiç (‘at all, nothing’), gram (‘at all’); Polish (Pol.) ani trochę (‘not at all [not even a crumb]’). All these phrases provide a negative meaning to the sentence, so that they are to be understood to be negative polarity elements (NPE).

4In this context, the nominal slot fillers are markers used to deny the meaning of the construction, and so do NPE; however, except for ne... pas in French, no grammaticalization process occurs with nominal slot fillers, such as the Germ. Kackhaufen, Kehrricht, Scheißdreck, as these NPE only have a negation value in specific contexts or syntagmatic profiles.

5Unlike idioms with NPE that function as quantifiers (e.g., Germ. keinen Pieps/kein Wort sagen, keinen Finger rühren, keine Menschenseele; It. non dire una parola, non muovere un dito, non un’anima, Sp. no decir ni mu, no mover (ni) un dedo, ni un alma: (‘don’t say a pip/a word’, ‘don’t lift a finger, ‘not a soul’), explicit negation is not obligatory in the attested constructs with the verbs from the ‘Interest’ cluster and, in some languages such as Spanish, it is hardly relevant as for the percentage of their usage. For other verbs and predicates (such as Germ. wert sein, It. valere, Sp. valer: ‘to be worth’) in similar constructions, negation is required. The tendency towards negation elision could be interpreted from a constructivist perspective as an approach to the lexical pole and an increase in the degree of idiomatization.

6The family of ‘Absolute Lack of Interest’ construction conveying the meaning ‘sth. does not interest sb. at all’ (‘not to give a damm/shit/fuck about sth.’) licenses constructions with the verbs Interesar (Sp.), interessare/fregare/fottere (It.), and interessieren (Germ.) in their respective languages, which we classify as constructional idioms. According to the definition of constructional idioms provided by Dobrovol’skij (2011) or Taylor (2016: 464)1, they are worthy of our attention given the ensuing features:

• the meaning is not compositional but pragmatically relevant;

• some constituents are fixed, while others are free;

• the nominal slots are subject to certain morphological and semantic constraints. They denote objects of low value, such as worthless coins, vegetables, fruits, or small units of measurement. This feature is mainly used in Italian and Spanish, since German (as with swear words) predominantly prefers dysphemistic expressions taken from the scatological field;

• the instantiations of the construction are on a lexico-grammar continuum and show different degrees of schematization. Those placed on the lexical pole turn out to be idioms and are lexicalised, such as Sp. importar a alg. un comino, importar a alg. un pepino, It. importare a qlcu. un fico secco/una mazza, and Germ. jmdn. einen Scheißdreck interessieren, jmdn. einen feuchten Kehricht angehen.

7In our research, a corpus-based approach was adopted to study the entrenchment and productivity of the constructional idioms of negative polarity containing the above-mentioned verbs in Spanish, Italian, and German. A variety of parameters were analyzed. First, the entrenchment of the construction was checked by calculating the proportional relationship between the total number of occurrences of the queries and the number of occurrences licensed by the construction; the higher the percentage of construction-compatible occurrences, the more entrenched is the construction.

8For this corpus-based study, we drew on the corpora available in Sketch Engine, namely German Web 2013 (deTenTen13), Italian Web 2016 (itTenTen16), and Spanish Web 2018 (esTenTen18). However, the differences in corpus size mean that any exact comparison in terms of absolute frequency of nominal fillers remains limited.2 From a contrastive perspective, the normalized (relative) frequency of fillers in each of the three languages is, therefore, given only where appropriate.

9The corpora esTenTen13 and itTenTen16 were searched for the patterns <verb3 + indefinite article + noun> in which the verb is in the third person singular or plural in the present and past tenses, and the noun and its preceding indefinite article can be either masculine or feminine. In German, the neuter gender was also taken into account in the noun slot searches (see section 4) while the verb under consideration was interessieren. We also queried whether the construction occurs with or without negation.

2. The Spanish constructional idiom [NP_subject (no) NP _{ind_object} IMPORTAR un NP_{{minor/taboo}}]

10The search query without negation yielded an average of 88% construction-compatible occurrences (total 22,382). Among the corpus examples with negation, 84% were compatible with the construction (total 1,642 occurrences). These findings were considered strong evidence for the entrenchment of the construction with singular masculine nouns. From the corpus analysis, it can be concluded that those constructs that are not compatible with the construction have nominal slot fillers as the subject of the sentence (compare example 4).

11A slightly higher percentage of construction-compatible tokens (approx. 4%) occurred in the entrenchment of the Spanish construction variant without negation. This was also confirmed by a higher token frequency4 of occurrences without negation (27,376 occurrences without negation vs. 2,365 occurrences with negation). The search queries showed a clear preference for the construction in the third person singular and the present tense without negation, which could be interpreted as the prototypical realization of the constructional idiom.

12The collocational/distributional analysis using Sketch Engine provided a precise quantitative and qualitative evaluation of the nominal slot fillers. The search query <importa un + N> thus yielded 239 different slot fillers compatible with the pattern.5 In Construction Grammar, the wide range of slot fillers is considered to be a parameter useful to assess the degree of productivity and schematization of the construction. Productivity “is measured in the context of a construction to determine how many different items occur in the various schematic slots of a construction” (Boas 2013: 247), and is closely related to conventionalization (Bybee 2013: 61).

13Despite the great variety of slot fillers, certain regularity can be identified in their lexical meaning, which could be the outcome the analogical extensions from the prototypical fillers (e.g. comino ‘cumin, pepino ‘cucumber’, pito ‘whistle, etc.). Masculine nouns of the construction denote:

141. from the speakers’ point of view, worthless or inferior objects:

1. small or, from the speaker’s point of view, inferior fruits, plants, grains, spices, and cereals: bledo (‘amaranth’), comino (‘cumin’), clavo (‘clove’), pepino (‘cucumber’), pimiento (‘pepper’), rábano (‘radish’), higo (‘fig’) (see example 5);

2. bold low-value Spanish coins (ardite, chavo, maravedí, pepión) (example 6).

152. taboo objects in the sexual or scatological sphere that represent a dysphemism (example 7): cojón (‘egg’), carajo (‘pock’), joraca (‘dick’), huevo (‘ball’), testículo (‘testicle’). From a diaphasic perspective, the register can vary from vulgar, as in (2.), to colloquial, as in (1.).

16From the speaker’s point of view, the metaphorical-symbolic use of worthless objects was already attested in Latin by Catullus (see Velando Casanova 2003), although the target domain was not ‘Lack of Interest’, but ‘Material Worthlessness’. In this context, Rueda Rueda (1997: 265–266, 294) referred to its usage in some Romance languages, such as Old Spanish. Thus, by the end of the 12^th century, Gonzalo de Berceo used expressions such as tiesto (‘flower pot’) and migaja (‘bread cumin’).

17The searches in the esTenTen18 corpus showed that the prototypical nominal slot fillers of the Spanish constructional idiom with importar were as follows: bledo (‘amaranth’; 5,456 occurrences), carajo (‘dick’; 4,212), comino (‘cumin’; 2,961), pimiento (‘pepper’; 2,661), pito (‘whistle’; 1,939), pepino (‘cucumber’; 1,544), rábano (‘radish’; 1,349), huevo (‘egg’; 727), cuerno (‘horn’; 287), and cacahuete (‘peanut’; 124). Other masculine slot fillers with lower frequency are: higo (‘fig’; 80), cojón (‘ball’; 80), pijo (‘dick’; 74), culo6 (‘ass’; 69), ardite (‘old low-value Spanish coin’; 60), corno (‘oboe’; 49), joraca7 (‘pock’; 48), coño (‘cunt’; 39), pedo (‘fart’; 37), pico8 (‘pock’; 35), pomo (‘bellows fruit’; 35), ápice (‘iota’; 34), demonio (‘devil’; 28), choto9 (‘dick’; 27), mojón (‘turd’; 25), nabo (‘white turmp’/’dick’; 21), cuesco (‘fart’; 21). Most of the slot fillers10 with a frequency over 60 are recorded, in the phraseological dictionaries consulted, as lexicalised idioms with the meaning ‘nothing’ in co-occurrence with the verb importar.11

18The analysis of the masculine and feminine slot fillers led to very different results, which affected both the productivity and the entrenchment of the construction. Three main conclusions can be drawn from the analysis of the masculine slot fillers.

191. The variety of masculine slot fillers with a frequency of over 100 was relatively restricted (only 10 nouns). The first 10 prototypical slot fillers comprised 88% of the total instantiations of the construction (21,260 of the 24,024 occurrences).

202. There was a continuum between lexicalised constructions or constructions recorded in lexicographic resources (e.g., importar un bledo a alg., importar un comino a alg., importar un rábano a alg.), and instantiations with low frequency slot fillers, such as ápice (‘iota’; 34 occurrences), chorizo (‘spicy pork sausage’; 12), ajo (‘garlic’; 3).12

213. Some of the prototypical slot fillers achieved a certain productivity and variation in their instantiations. For example, pepino (‘cucumber’) showed diminutive forms (pepinillo) or extensions, such as pepino en vinagre (‘pickled cucumber’), pepino en escabeche (‘marinated cucumber’), etc. In this context, the micro-construction importar un pepino a alg. (‘sth. does not interest sb. at all’) shows how a lexically filled construction has become a productive type-construction.13

22The diatopic peculiarities regarding the specific American flora and fauna, as well as taboo words from the sexual sphere, were mirrored in the slot fillers with the lowest token frequency: e.g., pico (‘dick’; 35 occurrences) from Peru, Bolivia, and Chile. In contrast, terms from the standard language, which are peculiar to both European and Hispanic American varieties, appeared in the slot fillers mentioned above. Certain taboo words only emerged in specific diatopic varieties, such as joraca (48) in Argentina (compare footnote 8). Interestingly, these are loan words: words that are common in some varieties through contact with other languages and come out only peripherally among slot fillers, such as egg (9) from English, catzo (5)/cazzo ‘dick’ (5) from Italian, and wurst ‘sausage’ (1) from German, the first two being from the Argentinian variety of Spanish.

234. The phenomenon of low-frequent slot fillers is the result of analogical extensions based on productive clusters, such as ‘sexual organs’ or ‘small or worthless fruits’. The search query <importa un + S> yielded 66 hapaxes (including 41 lemmas) which denote:

1. small or worthless fruits: grano (‘grain’), dátil (‘date’), calabacín (‘courgette’), poroto14 (‘bean’);

2. sexual organs and scatological items: rabo (‘dick’), zurullo (‘turd’), etc.

24According to Ziem & Lasch (2013: 106), the number of hapaxes represents a productivity index and an entrenchment parameter. According to this criterion, the Spanish construction with masculine nouns can be considered highly productive. Playful creativity was mainly found in the slot fillers with low frequency and one-off instances. This phenomenon considerably increased the degree of expressivity of the instantiations, as in the slot filler cojón de ratón (‘mouse’s testicle or ball’) (example 7).

25The Spanish constructional idiom also licenses feminine nouns in the nominal slot filler. Hence, there are only 5,717 construction-compatible instantiations with feminine nouns, but 24,024 with masculine nouns. This can be interpreted as a morphological preference of the Spanish constructional idiom for masculine nouns. The most relevant filler (with several euphemistic or intensifying spelling variants) was the dysphemism mierda (‘shit’) (example 8).

26The instantiations with feminine nouns are subject to the same semantic restrictions as those with masculine nouns. Some derive from the sexual sphere: verga (‘dick’), gónada (‘testicle’), concha (‘pussy’), cagada (‘pile of dirt’); others are terms for small or, from the speaker’s point of view, inferior fruits, animals, or objects: mandarina (‘mandarine’), castaña (‘chestnut’), vaina (‘sheath’), mandioca (‘mandioca’), berenjena (‘aubergine’), alga (‘seaweed’), patata (‘potato’), ensalada (‘salad’), guinda (‘cherry’), lenteja (‘lentil’), paja (‘straw’), anchoa (‘anchovy’), iguana (‘iguana’), ameba (‘amoeba’), sandalia (‘sandal’), alpargata (‘slipper’), flauta (‘flute’).

27To sum up, the comparison of the constructions with masculine and feminine nouns using the slot filler analysis showed the ensuing features:

281. The constructional idiom with masculine nouns was more entrenched than those with feminine nouns:

1. the number of instances containing masculine nouns was significantly higher than those with feminine nouns: 24,024 vs. 5,717;

2. the percentage of constructional-compatible occurrences found in the corpus is much higher than that with feminine: 87% (total 22,382 occurrences) vs. 58% without negation (total 4,994), and 84% (total 1,642) vs. 64% with negation (total 723). The bond between form and constructional meaning was thus weaker with feminine nouns.

292. Productivity was much lower with feminine nouns:

1. Only very limited type variability was seen with feminine nouns; 88% of the instantiations with a feminine noun were renewed with the lexeme mierda (‘shit’). Furthermore, the instantiations with only 7 slot fillers accounted for over 96% of the total occurrences of the construction. Apart from mierda, there were other types of lexemes, such as higa and raja (‘vagina’), leche (‘milk’), polla (‘penis’) and hueá (‘smut’). Given the low variation in the slot fillers, there was a very low productivity, and hence low type frequency, of the constructional idiom with feminine nouns;

2. There were considerable differences in the variety of lexical items filling the noun filler: 48 different feminine nouns vs. 239 masculine nouns;

3. the number of hapaxes was also low in feminine nouns (38 vs. 66), for example, silla (‘chair’), alpargata (‘slipper’), paja (‘straw’), barretina (‘Catalan cap’), pizca (‘pinch’).

3. The Italian constructional idiom [NP_subject (non) NP_{ind_object} VERB_{{ interest}} un NP_{{minor/taboo}}]

30In contrast to Spanish and German, Italian shows two related constructions of ‘Absolute Lack of Interest’, in which the NP_{{minor/taboo}} can function as an adverbial complement:

1. [NP_Subject (non) NP_{ind_object} VERB_{interest} NP_{{minor/taboo}}]15

2. [NP_{ind_object} (non) VERB_{{ interest }} NP_{{minor/taboo}} di NP]

31The constructional idiom in (a) has formal and functional similarities with the German and Spanish constructions. However, the subjectless construction under (b) is clearly preferred by speakers to express ‘Absolute Lack of Interest’. The indirect object can be either a noun or a pronoun:

32While in (a) the topic of ‘Lack of Interest’ is realized by the syntactic position of the subject, in (b) this function is expressed by the prepositional phrase introduced by di. Syntactically, this represents a prepositional attribute of the NP_{{minor/taboo}}, which can be placed before or after the noun or, if understood in context by the listener, omitted:

33Both structures represent two independent constructions in the constructicon, but they share formal and functional similarities. According to Goldberg’s (1995: 67) Principle of No Synonymy, however, these constructional idioms, which diverge in form, differ both semantically and pragmatically. As is shown in Mellado Blanco, Mollica & Schafroth (2022), the main differences are in the information structure.

34Irrespective of the construction type, however, the slot of the NP_{{minor/taboo}} in the construction family of ‘Absolute Lack of Interest’ was examined here in greater detail in terms of its lexical fillers of the slot N, whereby no further distinction will be made according to their type due to the functional similarity of both constructional idioms.

35Italian, in contrast to Spanish and German, employes four main verbs that occurred in the constructions of ‘Absolute Lack of Interest’, namely interessare, importare (also in the form importarsene), fregare (predominantly as fregarsene), and fottere (predominantly as fottersene). Verbs and slot fillers were determined their style register. The most neutral or least marked was interessare, followed by importare; the verb fregarsene is considered colloquial (see Zingarelli 2021), while fottere/fottersene is considered rather vulgar due to its literal meaning (‘to fuck’).

36It should be noted, however, that the register of the constructional idiom of ‘Absolute Lack of Interest’ remained informal-to-vulgar regardless of the verb. It was obvious that constructions with taboo lexemes and/or the verb fottere/fottersene were the most vulgar and also those most marked, while those with interessare and, for example, fico secco (‘dried fig’) seemed less marked:

37In this article, the constructions of ‘Absolute Lack of Interest’ [NP_Subject (non) NP_{ind_Object} VERB_{interest} NP_{{minor/taboo}}] and [NP_{ind_object} (non) VERB_{interest} NP_{{minor/taboo}} di NP] were examined in more detail, especially with regard to the NP_{{minor/taboo}} filler. Closer analysis of the fillers occuring in connection with these four verbs identified analogies, because the same lexemes occurred but with different distribution. Here, we focus only on those instantiations with the verb fregare, as both type and token frequency of this construction are the most relevant compared to the other constructions; however, a brief comparison with the importare-constructions is also mentioned.16

38Interestingly, regarding the instantiations with the verb fregare, the search query in the itTenTen16 corpus for the constructional idiom [NP_subject (non) NP_{ind_objekt} FREGARE NP_{{minor/taboo}}] and [NP_{ind_objekt} (non) FREGARE NP_{{minor/taboo}}] ‘sth. does not interest sb. at all’ yielded 2,982 occurrences (2,347 masculine and 635 feminine nouns), with 48% construction-compatible occurrences.17 The number of construction-compatible occurrences, even without negation, was relatively high for both masculine and feminine nouns, especially in the third person (singular and plural): instantiations with and without negation were 74% and 64% with masculine nouns, and 51% and 37% for feminine nouns, respectively.

39The masculine nouns found in the fregare-construction are:

401. worthless or inferior objects from the speaker’s point of view:

1. small or, from the speaker’s point of view, inferior fruits, and plants: fico (‘fig’), fico secco (‘dried fig’), cavolo (‘cabbage’);

2. simple objects: piffero (‘pipe’), tubo (‘tube/tube’).

412. taboo objects of the sexual sphere such as cazzo (‘dick’), or the regional use of mazzo (‘bunch’) meaning ‘ass’, which were often, as in Spanish, abbreviated or shortened.

423. lexemes such as bel niente/bel nulla (literally ‘a beautiful nothing’), where there was a lexicalized word combination of adjective and adverb.

43A higher degree of entrenchment was observed for masculine nouns; the high number of instantiations without non should also be considered (64% for masculine nouns).

44The productivity of the constructional idiom with fregare was higher than with importare, interessare and fottere, given that 32 masculine nouns (including 14 hapaxes) and 22 feminine nouns (including 14 hapaxes) occurred in the corpus.

45It was striking that in the fregare-construction with masculine nouns (2,303 out of 2,347 instances, i.e. approx. 98% of the construction-compatible instantiations), there were only 10 different lexical items. This indicates the low productivity of the construction in terms of its type frequency (similar to importare).

46The word cazzo (‘dick’) appeared in approximately 30% of all the occurrences (in contrast, for example, to importare: approx. 9%). The high number of occurrences (1,755 occurrences) of this taboo lexeme may have been favored by the informal character of the verb fregare, which was mostly used in family contexts (e.g., among friends); followed by: tubo (‘tube’; 177), accidente (‘incident/unfortunate event’; 88), niente (‘nothing’; 77), fico (secco) (‘(dried) fig’; 69), cavolo (‘cabbage’; 61), nulla (‘nothing’; 24), piffero (‘pipe’; 22), granché (‘nothing special’; 21), ciuffolo (‘bushes’; 9).

47The above semantic constraint was also found in less frequent lexemes renewed in these constructions, such as beep (‘beep sound’; 8), cappero (‘caper’; 7), corno (‘horn’; 6), ceppo (‘(tree) stump’; 4), membro (‘member’; 4), baffo (‘moustache’; 4), picchio (‘woodpecker’; 4), tubero (‘tuber’; 2), or in 14 hapaxes.

48As far as the filler of the NP-position with feminine nouns (635) is concerned, a similar renewal was seen to the importare-constructions, although the ranking of the fillers changed. They denoted predominantly worthless objects or fruits, which often adopted a sexual reinterpretation: sega (‘saw’ ➔ ‘wanking’), mazza (‘stick’ ➔ dick), cippa (reg. ‘runk’ ➔ ‘long dick’), fava (‘field bean’ ➔ ‘acorn’/‘dick’), ceppa (‘tree stump’ ➔ ‘dick’), pippa (‘pipe’ ➔ ‘wanking’). An exception here was minchia (reg. ‘dick’), as this noun explicitly refers to the male sexual organ. While in the importare-constructional idiom the lexemes sega (‘wanking’), mazza (‘cudgel’), and cippa (‘trunk’) were found in the first three positions respectively, these positions were occupied by the lexemes mazza (‘cudgel’), cippa (‘trunk’) and minchia (‘dick’) in the fregare-constructions, with mazza accounting for approx. 44% of all the occurrences.

49Other slot fillers are: cippa (‘trunk’; 205), minchia (‘dick’; 36), sega (‘wanking’; 34), ceppa (‘tree stump’; 29), fava (‘field bean’; 29), pippa (‘pipe’; 6). These nouns represented approximately 97% of all compatible constructs (620 out of 635).

50In total, 23 feminine nouns (14 of which are hapaxes) occurred in the constructional idiom with fregare, which were often abbreviated (because of their taboo character), shortened or used in non-standard spelling variants with emphatic value.

51The constructional idioms of ‘Lack of Interest’ [NP_subject (non) NP_{ind_object} FREGARE] and [NP_{ind_object} (non) FREGARE NP_{{minor/taboo}}] ‘sth. does not interest sb. at all’ showed both similarities and differences compared to the importare construction:

1. 1. overall, there were more construction-compatible constructions with the verb fregare (48%) than with the verb importare (33%);

   2. in both fregare and importare, the degree of entrenchment was higher with masculine nouns, since the type frequency of masculine nouns was significantly higher than that with feminine nouns; more than twice as much evidence was found for constructions with the verb fregare than with importare:

   3. both fregare and importare had a significantly higher percentage of construction-compatible occurrences with negation (fregare: 74% masculine and 52% feminine nouns; importare: 68% masculine and 39% feminine nouns). A notable difference, however, was seen in the greater number of occurrences in the fregare-constructions: without negation, 64% of the tokens occurred with masculine and 37% with feminine nouns (with importare this was 16% and 29%, respectively). This indicates that the fregare-construction without negation is more entrenched than that with importare;

   4. in terms of productivity, both the importare- and fregare-constructions were less productive compared to Spanish, given their type frequency (see also section 2). In the fregare-construction, for example, only 14 masculine and 14 feminine singular hits could be found (in the importare construction there were 12 and 5, respectively);

   5. in addition, again in the [NP_ind__object (non) NP_{{minor/taboo}}] construction, the instantiations with certain nouns were more entrenched than with others, for example, cazzo (‘dick’) and mazza (‘cudgel’) accounted for approximately 43% and 30% of all occurrences, respectively.

4. The German constructional idiom [NP_subject INTERESSIEREN NP_{dir. object} (einen/nicht/keinen) NP_{{minor/taboo}}]

52The German constructional idiom [NP_subject INTERESSIEREN NP_{dir. object} (einen/nicht/keinen) NP_{{minor/taboo}}] has the same meaning as the constructions already discussed in Spanish and Italian, namely: ‘sth. does not interest sb. at all’ (not to give a damm/shit/fuck about sth.). Analysis of the construction family of ‘Absolute Lack of Interest’ in the three languages immediately revealed difference in structure, despite all the parallelism in form and content. This difference lies in the fact that in the Spanish and Italian constructions the semantic role of the experiencer is realised by a preceding nominal or pronominal indirect object (Sp. Me importa un comino, It. Non ce ne frega un cazzo di questa cosa), whereas in German the experiencer is usually verbalized by a following (direct) object pronoun (accusative object). This means that, as far as the syntactic order of the constituents is concerned, the nominal phrase which semantically expresses something of little value and taboo ([NP_{{minor/taboo}}]) is positioned in both Romance languages immediately after the verb belonging to the frames interest or commitment, whereas in German it is positioned only after the pronoun (Germ. Das interessiert mich einen Scheißdreck [‘I don’t give a shit about that’]). Since, therefore, it always takes the postverbal position in German, and never the postverbal position in Italian and Spanish in which the experiencer constituent appears, there is a fundamentally different setup for the corpus research and this conditions the expected results. The following queries in deTenTen13 tied in directly with those in Spanish and Italian. However, in the construction [NP_subject INTERESSIEREN NP_dir. object (einen/nicht/keinen) NP_{{minor/taboo}}], differentiation was made primarily according to gender (masculine, feminine, neuter), in the second respect according to the three meso-constructions (see Traugott 2008: 236) 1. [NP₁ INTERESSIEREN PERS.PRON._acc INDEF.ART._acc NP₂], 2. [NP₁ INTERESSIEREN PERS.PRON._acc INDEF.PRON._acc NP₂], 3. [NP₁ INTERESSIEREN PERS.PRON._acc nicht DEF.ART._acc NP₂], illustrated in (25) to (27), and in the third respect according to the four inflectional forms of the third person singular and plural in the present and imperfect tenses:

53The results of the corpus analyses concerning the three (meso) constructions are summarized below.

4.1. [NP₁ INTERESSIEREN PERS.PRON._acc INDEF.ART._acc NP₂]

54Slot fillers denoted worthless or inferior objects as well as taboo objects, just as in Spanish; however, in German, these were not from the sexual but only from the fecal sphere, which reflects a well-known difference between German and Romance vulgarisms (see Mellado Blanco 2020b). As for the masculine slot fillers, 80.26% were construction-compatible, with the most frequent lexemes being the following: Dreck (192 tokens), Scheiß (120), Scheißdreck (96), Kehricht (54, of which feuchten Kehricht 51), Furz (12), Staub (5), Pups (3), Feuchten18 (3), Käse (3), Quark (2). The rest were hapax legomena of 16 lexemes (e.g., Blödsinn, Käse, Keks).

55The majority of the slot fillers belonged to the areas of ‘dirt’ or ‘rubbish’ (Dreck, Kehricht, Schmutz) and ‘faeces’ or ‘excreta’ (Scheiß, Scheißdreck, Furz, Pups, Kackhaufen, Eselsdung, Rattenschiss). Beyond that, especially as far as the lexemes with few instances or only one occurrence were concerned, the meaning of the ‘inferior’ or ‘worthless’ was expressed (e.g., alter Hut), even though the etymology of these meanings may have already faded (Quark, Deut, Käse, Tineff). In other cases, metonymic shifts could be observed, as from ‘worthless piece of writing’ (Wisch) to ‘worthless’, as in Das interessieren mich einen Wisch!, or from jemandem schnurz sein (‘someone doesn’t care’) to Das interessiert mich einen Schnurz!

56In language usage, new constructions can also emerge through construction crossings or construction mixtures (blends), for example, Das interessiert mich keinen Deut! and Das interessiert mich einen X! becomes Das interessiert mich keinen Deut!

57It astonishes that construction 1 allowed only one slot-compatible feminine occurrence (28) out of 277 licensed instances. This could indicate the attraction of masculines in this construction, which in turn could have arisen through a generalization of masculine lexemes such as Dreck, Scheiß, Kehricht:

58The construction-compatible lexemes introduced with the neuter indefinite article (18 out of 329 instances) were, remarkably, all masculine (Dreck, Scheiß, Scheißdreck). Presumably, these were originally contracted colloquial forms (einen > ein’), which were also represented in writing in these corpus documents.

59A search for construction 1 with an obligatory pre-modifying adjective (à la Das interessiert mich einen feuchten Kehricht ‘I don’t give a good damn about that’)19 found 1,199 occurrences, of which 506, i.e., almost 42%, are construction-compatible; this is approximately 44%-48% lower than the Spanish importar-construction. The most frequent slot fillers of the German construction are:20 Kehricht 51 (54), Dreck 32 (192), Furz 7 (12), Staub 5 (5), Scheiß 2 (120), Käse 2 (3), all with the adjective feucht. The other slot fillers are hapaxes, most of which were also modified by this adjective. Conclusion: the adjective feucht, whose closest connection is with the meaning-related masculine nouns (i.e. frame elements) Kehricht, Dreck and Staub (frames dirt and rubbish), has also extended its modification scope to other nominal bases. However, only in the case of Schmutz was a synonymic relationship to the source nouns mentioned; otherwise, the adjective feucht modified nouns originating from the fecal domain or other frames.

4.2. [NP₁ INTERESSIEREN PERS.PRON._acc INDEF.PRON._acc NP₂]

60The search for construction 2 (cf. 25) was carried out with the same syntax as before, but with the addition of the negative indefinite pronoun in the accusative (keinen, keine, kein). Compared to Spanish (importar) and Italian (importare, and especially fregare), only 26.86% of all the slots in question were filled with such lexemes that express disdain or taboo terms, and thus fulfilled the meaning of Absolute Lack of Interest (in the two Romance languages, the construction compatibility of the slots here was 75%-100%). Of the comparatively few tokens for masculine nouns (43), 33 (76%) were construction-compatible. The slot fillers are Deut 17, Meter 4 and 1 each of (feuchten) Dreck, Fatz, Futzen, Hacken, Millimeter, Pfifferling, Pfurz, Sack, Scheiß, (blassen) Schimmer, Strich, Stück (keinen (!) Stück). It is noteworthy that the meaning ‘insignificance’ here was expressed by a spatial concept (Meter, Millimeter).21

61There were only two construction-relevant feminine slot fillers (Spur and Bohne, cf. 28).

62The fact that both instances were from a Swiss blog is surely no coincidence. Regardless of whether these are regional or idiosyncratic uses, the two occurrences showed that also here hybridization of two constructions has taken place, triggered by the negated lexeme Bohne in the expressive construction of Absolute Lack of Interest, the prototype of which is undoubtedly the subtype Das interessiert mich nicht die Bohne!

63The hits obtained for neuter nouns made up 31.41% of construction-compatible lexemes, based on the slot fillers Stück (by far the most frequent) and a few instances each for Meter, Stückchen, Dreck and Stecken.

4.3. [NP₁ INTERESSIEREN PERS.PRON._acc nicht DEF.ART._Akk NP₂]

64The nominal phrase introduced by [negative adverb nicht + definite article] is a type of construction that only occurs in German (see 26). The instances found were highly construction-compatible (874 out of 1,050 tokens; 83.24%). Due to the strong linkage of this construction with the feminine definite article (87.93%), there was a very high degree of entrenchment with the type Bohne (‘bean’) and also a correspondingly high token frequency of this type (depending on the inflectional form of the verb interessieren) of 95%-100%. The cognitive consolidation was also underlined by the fact that hyponymic subtypes of Bohne were in use, albeit with a low token frequency: Sojabohne (‘soya bean’) and Schokobohne (‘chocolate bean’).

65However, the [nicht die Bohne] construction proved to be highly unproductive, not only with masculine but also with neuter slot fillers. Only the following types could be identified: das Geringste (‘the least‘) (3), das Mindeste (‘the least’) (2), and the two hapaxes das Wursthaar (‘the sausage hair’) and das kleinste bisschen (‘the smallest bit’).

5. The construction family of ‘Absolute Lack of Interest’ from a contrastive perspective: brief summary and concluding remarks

66This study analyzed the family of negative polarity ‘Absolute Lack of Interest’ constructions with the meaning ‘sth. does not interest sb. at all’ (not to give a damm/shit/fuck about sth.) in German, Italian and Spanish. In particular, instantiations with the verbs Sp. importar, It. fregare and Ger. interessieren were examined in consideration of their functional equivalence.

67Since the corpora that were used for this study differ in size, the data were analyzed using the relative frequency as set out by Mellado Blanco, Mollica & Schafroth (2022).22 This allowed a more precise contrastive approach to the frequency, productivity, and degree of entrenchment in each language.

68Data analysis showed differences in the ‘Absolute Lack of Interest’ construction between the three languages. The most entrenched constructions were:

• the Spanish construction with importar with masculine nouns without negation, followed (with a significantly lower degree of entrenchment) by:

• the Italian construction with fregare with masculine nouns with and without negation, and

• the Spanish construction with importar with feminine nouns without negation.

69The German construction had a rather lower degree of entrenchment compared to Spanish and Italian (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Degree of entrenchment of the construction of ‘Absolute Lack of Interest’ from an interlingual perspective. %: relative frequency parameter.

70Contrastive comparison showed divergences regarding the lexical renewal of the fillers.

• In Italian, the lexical items were predominantly from the sexual domain or represented fruits or inferior objects. Generally speaking, there was no strong tendency to elision of the negation, which occurred only to a limited extent with feminine slot fillers. The elision of negation is interesting in that it showed a clearer tendency towards grammaticalization as a prototypical element of negative polarity.

• In Spanish, sexual organs, fruits and worthless objects were also used as fillers with many diatopic variants, unlike in Italian or German, in which no dialectal varieties were attested in the corpora. In contrast to German, scatological items (apart from the feminine mierda [‘shit’]) hardly ever occurred. A clear elision of negation could be observed above all with masculine slot fillers; this was also found with feminine nouns, albeit to a lesser extent.

• In German, scatological items and inferior objects or small fruits were the most frequent lexical domains, but there was a different distribution. Elements of negative polarity were mainly scatological items and items from the fields of ‘dirt’ (Dreck, Kehricht, Schmutz), often in connection with the adjective feuchten.

71With negation, lexemes expressing worthless or inferior through a spatial concept (such as Meter ‘meter’ and Millimenter ‘millimeter’), or fruits (such as Bohne (‘bean’) and Rosinen (‘raisins’)) predominated. Although in the latter group, the grammaticalization process was not clear.

72Figure 2 shows the five most frequent masculine slot fillers in all three languages. The Spanish importar and Italian fregare constructions had almost similar frequencies regarding the nouns bledo (‘amaranth’) and cazzo (‘dick’) respectively, while carajo (‘dick’) and comino (‘caraway’) were slightly less frequent. It should be noted that the highest frequency of fillers was in Spanish and the lowest in German.

Figure 2. The first five masculine slot fillers in the construction of Absolute Lack of Interest from an interlingual perspective.

73Based on the type and token frequency of the individual lexical fillers and on the number of hapaxes, which served as an indicator of productivity and as an entrenchment parameter, it can be concluded that the constructional idiom of ‘Lack of Interest’ had the highest degree of entrenchment in Spanish and the lowest in German, with Italian exactly between the two.

74Overall, our analysis of the construction family of ‘Absolute Lack of Interest’ identified many extremely interesting features. In particular, from a contrastive point of view, the lexical items renewing the slots (mainly lexical dysphemisms, metonymic dysphemisms, dysphemistic euphemisms) reflect the world’s conceptualization and culture of each linguistic community. The study of such phenomena contributes to the establishment of links between linguistic and cultural specificities.