Functional Syntax and the Concept of Syntactic Function: Approaches of Spanish Linguistic Schools

This study aims at examining the notion of function in the context of the views of the founders of the three largest functional syntax schools in Spain: the University of Oviedo, the University of Leon and the University of Santiago de Compostela. The analysis of the above-mentioned scholars’ theoretical papers made it possible to identify a significant homogeneity in the basic definition of syntactic function among Spanish linguistic associations. At the same time, significant differences were also found in the subsequent theoretical development of the initial definition and its synthesis with other functional-syntactic approaches, which allowed us to identify, in a given context, a general tendency to move from formal-structuralist concepts to functional-semantic and functional-pragmatic ones.