Drawing on preliminary insights in Pérez (2001), Pérez and Ruiz de Mendoza (2002), and Ruiz de Mendoza and Baicchi (2007), the present contribution presents a constructional approach to the study of illocutionary meaning. In so doing, I analyze the speech act category of condoling in order to establish the relationship between its semantic makeup and the linguistic realization procedures provided for its realization. From this perspective, illocutionary constructions are defined as pairings of

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... he semantic conditions of the conceptual representation of a speech act category and those mechanisms which activate them linguistically. The results of the analysis allow for different degrees of implicitness in the production and understanding of illocutionary meaning, as well as for the existence of conventionalized expressions associated to the realization of speech acts.