Borealis – An International Journal of Hispanic Linguistics

Copulas in Spanish: Scalar structure and interpretive economy

Carmelo Bazaco — 2020-11-12

This article analyzes the distribution of the copulas ser and estar in Spanish, based on a scalar theoretical framework. The main proposal is that their distribution can be captured in terms of the scalar structure of the predicates involved and the presence of cognitive salient points on those scales. The proposed framework centers around ser predicates involving a single degree on the scale, while those with estar involve an interval, which additionally must involve an onset, or salient point.

This analysis has two advantages. First, it accounts for subjects and closed-scale adjective pairs not being able to alternate between ser or estar. The endpoints present on closed-scales act as strong salient points that, based on the Principle of Interpretive Economy, require that the copula estar is used if it can. Second, this analysis also accounts for the distribution of estar with open-scale predicates and explains why adjectives like famoso ‘famous’ or rico ‘rich’ are virtually absent from estar predications, despite having the appropriate temporal reading. Cognitive salient points are also responsible for generating the appropriate scalar interval required for estar predications, although their being weaker than endpoints on closed-scales does not require estar be the only copula available. The article also accounts for the nature of these onsets on open-scale adjectives and provides a diagnostic tool to determine which adjectives have them, and consequently can appear in estar predications.

(No) competition between deverbal nouns and nominalized infinitives in Spanish

Barbara Schirakowski — 2020-11-10

This paper explores the distribution of deverbal nouns and nominalized infinitives that are built on transitive verbs and occur in eventive interpretations. The study is empirically oriented and based on an acceptability judgment experiment in which argument realization and interpretational possibilities are manipulated as the independent variables. The results show that deverbal nouns prefer but are not limited to realizing the lower argument of the base, whereas nominalized infinitives are mostly restricted to realizing the higher argument. Furthermore, deverbal nouns turn out to be insensitive with regard to the distinction between episodic and generic event readings, while nominalized infinitives are shown to be specialized on generic interpretations. Deverbal nouns and nominalized infinitives are, thus, mostly neither paradigmatically interchangeable nor complementarily distributed as nominalized infinitives reach the same degree of acceptability as deverbal nouns only under very narrow conditions. With regard to the ecological validity of the experimental approach, a comparison to corpus data indicates that high frequency clearly correlates with acceptability, but that the same does not hold for low frequency and unacceptability, that is forms that are not (sufficiently) attested in the corpus do not necessarily receive low ratings within the judgment task. The study, thus, also addresses a number of methodological issues in the study of event nominals.

La inacusatividad y la alternancia causativa. El caso de los clíticos marginales en el español rioplatense

Juan José Arias — 2020-11-10

El siguiente artículo pretende analizar la presencia del clítico marginal la en estructuras inacusativas del español rioplatense, más específicamente con un subgrupo de los llamados verbos existenciales-presentacionales (Masullo 2014), los cuales comprenden distintos tipos de verbos de compleción gradual (Rappaport-Hovav 2015): verbos de cambio de estado de escala abierta o de múltiples puntos (e.g. adelgazarla, empeorarla, mejorarla), de escala cerrada o de dos puntos (e.g. morirla, pirarla, palmarla), como así también verbos de movimiento o cambio de ubicación (e.g. aparecerla, llegarla, volverla). Basada en los principios de la Morfología Distribuida (Halle & Marantz 1993, y trabajos posteriores), nos proponemos demostrar que la presencia de este clítico acusativo con verbos inacusativos se trata de un fenómeno productivo y composicional del español rioplatense. En concreto, postulamos que la es un clítico morfológico o post-sintáctico (Pujalte & Saab 2012), en tanto es un elemento con propiedades expletivas no presente en la sintaxis que se inserta en FF. Argumentaremos a favor de que la es un alomorfo de Ø y que ambos exponentes compiten con el clítico anticausativo se para lexicalizar rasgos asociados al núcleo Voz. En líneas generales, los datos analizados de la variedad rioplatense ofrecen evidencia a favor de que la ausencia de se en las variantes anticausativas simples no debe equipararse con la ausencia de estructura, sino más bien con la presencia de un morfema nulo Ø en la posición de Voz.

Early and late bilingual processing of Spanish gender, morphology and gender congruency

Irma Alarcón — 2020-11-10

The present study investigates whether advanced proficiency-matched early and late bilinguals display gender agreement processing quantitatively and qualitatively similar to that of native speakers of Spanish. To address this issue, a timed grammaticality judgment task was used to analyze the effects on accuracy and reaction times of grammatical gender, morphology, and gender congruency of the article and adjective within a noun phrase. Overall results indicated no significant statistical differences between the native speakers and the two bilingual groups. Both early and late bilinguals displayed similar grammatical gender knowledge in their underlying grammars. A detailed examination of the congruency effect, however, revealed that the native speakers, not the bilinguals, displayed sensitivity to gender agreement violations. Moreover, the native and heritage speakers pattern together in accuracy and directionality of gender agreement processing: both were less accurate with incongruent articles than with incongruent adjectives, while the second language learners were equally accurate in both agreement domains. Despite having internalized gender in their implicit grammars, the late bilinguals did not show native-like patterns in real time processing. The present findings suggest that, for high proficiency speakers, there is a distinct advantage for early over late bilinguals in achieving native-like gender lexical access and retrieval. Therefore, age of acquisition, in conjunction with learning context, might be the best predictor of native-like gender agreement processing at advanced and near-native proficiency levels.

La segunda persona objetivadora (tú) en las redes sociales y revistas: datos de textos escritos

Zaida Gonzalez Abrante — 2020-11-10

La segunda persona del singular tú en el español puede adquirir dos tipos de referencias diferentes, dependiendo de las situaciones discursivas y comunicativas en las que se utilice. El primer uso es el deíctico, es decir, aquella que apela directamente al oyente. El segundo es el uso no deíctico, es decir, el que se utiliza no para referirse a un oyente real, sino para transmitir significados que tradicionalmente se han denominado como generales o inespecíficos. Este fenómeno ha sido denominado como tú genérico o inespecífico. Sin embargo, en investigaciones recientes que han profundizado en las propiedades cognitivas y discursivas de este uso, se ha optado por denominarlo como tú objetivador debido a que se trata de un recurso comunicativo que tiende a expresar el discurso de forma objetiva mediante la prominencia cognitiva. Se analizará el uso de la segunda persona del singular tú como recurso objetivador en el discurso escrito de las redes sociales y publicaciones periódicas, partiendo de la idea de que, al ser la expresión de opiniones, argumentaciones o ideas propias y la propia experiencia personal las funciones que más aparecen en las redes sociales y revistas, este debe usarse para construir un significado que ayude a logar tal objetivo comunicativo. Este presenta dos variantes: expresa y omitida, lo que implica que cada una de estas expresa un significado diferente. Además de esto, hay elementos gramaticales o inductores de genericidad que promueven ese uso objetivador del pronombre tú.

Superlative syntactic amalgams in an Iberian Spanish dialect

Luis Ángel Sáez del Álamo — 2020-11-10

This article addresses an as yet unnoticed Spanish superlative construction attested in the mid area of Northern Spain. This construction features two striking properties: (i) it contains a relative pronoun which, at first glance, does not seem to introduce a TP (there is no overt verb to its right), which raises the question how the relative pronoun can obtain its Case/theta role; (ii) even if it were true that the relative pronoun actually introduces a TP and heads a full subordinate clause (presumably a free relative), the latter would arise in an anomalous position which disrupts the natural word order of the main clause and where it seems to lack any obvious licensor (as an adjunct, argument or predicate). A simultaneous answer to both problems will be obtained from the proposal that the construction at issue is a “syntactic amalgam” (Lakoff 1974): (i) assuming Kluck’s (2011) approach to amalgams, the relative pronoun of the construction can unproblematically be considered to introduce a sluiced TP, so it heads a full relative clause and does have a (covert) Case/theta-role licensor; (ii) the disruptive position of the relative clause and the opacity for licensing from the main clause are now expected as they are the defining properties of the so-called “interrupting clauses” in Horn-/Andrews-amalgams. As in Kluck (2011), such properties will be assumed to result from the operation “par-merge” giving rise to paratactical configurations (de Vries 2007).

The syntax and semantics of degree expressions in Spanish

Antonio Fábregas — 2020-10-07

This article provides an overview of the syntax and semantics of degree in Spanish, eventually suggesting that degree structure should be viewed as equivalent to aspect in the verbal domain. §1 introduces several of the themes that will be discussed in the article, while §2 introduces the semantics of degree. §3 discusses the basic syntactic properties of degree, particularly with adjectives. §4 introduces the notion of scale, which we will argue should correspond to Aktionsart in the verbal domain. §5 analyses positive degree, and explains how it differs from a scale both in syntax and in semantics. §6-§8 discuss comparative and superlative degrees, first their morphological facts (§6), then the specific properties of comparatives (§7) and finally those of superlatives (§8). The article ends with some conclusions in §9.

Restrictions on ordering of adjectives in Spanish

Ana Pérez-Leroux — 2020-05-06

Abstract. Sequences of multiple modifying adjectives are subject to poorly understood lexical ordering restrictions. There are certain commonalities to these restrictions across languages, as well as substantive language variation. Ordering restrictions in Spanish are still under empirical debate, with some proposing strict ordering for direct modifier adjectives; others proposing broad ordering restrictions based on the contrast between intersective and non-intersective adjectives, and yet others raising the possibility that adjectival order is fully unrestricted. The goal of the present study is to examine corpus evidence for adjectival sequences. We look at both sequences of two postnominal adjectives (Noun +Adjective + Adjective, NAA sequences) as well as sequences of one prenominal, and one postnominal adjective (Adjective + Noun +Adjective, ANA sequences). The results from the NAA datasets clearly categorically confirms that relational adjectives are structurally closer to the noun. There is some evidence for an ordering bias along the line of the intersectivity hypothesis, but little else in term of hard evidence for restrictions. Additional ordering constraints appear once we incorporate the ANA datasets into the empirical picture. One interpretation is that these restrictions can be subsumed under an approach where evaluative adjectives have to occupy the prenominal restriction. In sum, the evidence is most compatible with the middle ground approach, but not with a fully articulated set of ordering restrictions.

Exceptionality in Spanish Onset Clusters

Katerina A. Tetzloff — 2020-05-06

Spanish complex onsets have been traditionally described as consisting of a stop (/p, t, k, b, d, g/) or the fricative /f/ plus a liquid. Given that all Spanish varieties have other fricatives (/x, s/), the obstruents that can form part of an onset cluster do not straightforwardly compose a natural class. As such, past studies have argued that /f/ is exceptional in its ability as a fricative to pattern with stops in onset clusters. This paper presents empirical data from a nonce word judgment task that challenges this claim and shows that Spanish listeners rate unattested /xr/ clusters as more acceptable than ungrammatical /sr/ clusters. These results suggest that /s/, and not /f/, is exceptional in its inability to form complex onsets in Spanish. As /s/ is the sole sibilant in the Spanish consonant inventory and is uniquely characterized by the feature [strident], this generalization is easily capturable in an Optimality Theory framework. This analysis further predicts that other non-sibilant fricatives should also be acceptable in onset cluster position, such as /θ/, which is supported by data from a follow-up study with speakers of Peninsular Spanish who have this phoneme in their dialect. This analysis also predicts that other sibilants should be unacceptable in onset clusters. This is supported by data from the related languages Portuguese and Catalan that have other sibilant phonemes (/z, ʃ, ʒ/)yet also have similar onset cluster phonotactics as Spanish in that they disallow all sibilants from being in an onset cluster.

On pseudo-coordination in Spanish

Ana Bravo — 2020-05-06

Abstract. Pseudo-coordination, that is, sequences of a least two verbs of the form <V1 + and + V2> raise a number of problems that stem from the fact that they share properties with a wide range of different syntactic phenomena. As regards Sp. <V1 + and + V2> schema, in this paper I address the discussion of whether it qualifies as a verbal periphrasis or not. A number of arguments are provided that show that the relation between V1 and V2 is not that of auxiliarization. Likewise, it is argued that its meaning is not aspectual. Instead, a stance is taken in favour of the analysis that argue that it is discourse related. In addition to this, it is shown that Sp. pseudo-coordinatives are subject to a high variation. Namely, V1 verbs may be divided into two big classes: go-class verbs, highly grammaticalized and, take-class verbs, less grammaticalized and with an agentive meaning. In addition to this, va y lit. goes and functions as an adverb, similarly to puede que lit. can that, ‘maybe’.