Poco/un poco + adjetivo: diferencias semánticas y consecuencias distribucionales

the objective of this research is to demonstrate that the different semantic value of the quantifiers poco/un poco is reflected in the type of adjectives which they modify. the study is based on data taken from three spanish corpora of the 20th. century: spanish spoken in caracas (cshc), venezuelan literary spanish (clv), and general written spanish, selected from the material of the corpus de referencia del espa？ol actual (crea), collected by the real academia espa？ola. following bierwisch (1989), the adjectives quantified by poco/un poco are classified as dimensional and evaluative, and sub-classified as positive and negative. the results of the analysis show many similarities among the three corpora: there are very few dimensional adjectives, and regarding the evaluative ones, what was found most frequently was that poco modifies positive adjectives (poco feliz), whereas un poco modifies negative ones (un poco desagradable). given the different characteristics of the analyzed corpora, these results seem to reflect tendencies of general spanish.