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The Spanish discourse marker bueno has multiple functions ranging from the expression of (dis)agreement to topic management. The present paper sets out to explore what happens when bueno starts to be used in written monological contexts. We examine the use of bueno in spoken sociolinguistic interviews and written internet texts in Mexican and Peninsular Spanish. We propose a unified account of the different functions of bueno based on preference structure and mitigation, tracing a grammaticalization path from adjectival to dialogical and, subsequently, monological uses of bueno. We use regression analysis to examine the hypotheses that (a) written medium serves as a catalyst for monologization, and (b) the two dialects studied represent two different stages of grammaticalization of bueno. While the first hypothesis is confirmed, evidence supporting the second hypothesis is less conclusive, suggesting that written uses are more similar between the two dialects than the spoken ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the diachronic development of tornar( e)+ a+infinitive (henceforth abbreviated RETURN+INF) constructions in Spanish, Catalan, and Italian, a topic that especially for Catalan and Italian has not received much attention. I develop and explore the hypothesis that due to their lexical origin, iterative constructions develop from a restitutive to a repetitive function. A diachronic analysis of a corpus of RETURN+INF tokens from the three languages suggests that the grammaticalization of RETURN+INF constructions can be measured in terms of (a) actionality and (b) restructuring as mirrored in the possibility of clitic climbing. A statistical analysis using generalized linear mixed-effects regression modeling demonstrates an interplay between restructuring and the actionality of the predicates in the development of RETURN+INF constructions: the grammaticalization process affects state, achievement, and accomplishment predicates before activity predicates because activity predicates exclude a restitutive meaning. The paper thus identifies a grammaticalization path for RETURN+INF constructions common to three Romance languages that suggests a link between typological and diachronic observations. At the same time, it identifies differences in the diachronic development of these periphrases between the Ibero-Romance languages and Italian. In addition, it proposes a statistical means of assessing quantitative differences in the degree to which a verbal periphrasis is grammaticalized across related languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the distribution of a phonetically null pronoun and the clitic lo referring to a proposition as the direct object (DO) of cognition and communication verbs in Spanish. The use of this null object referring to propositions is found cross-dialectally in Spanish, and this paper argues that the completeness of the proposition constrains in crucial ways the distribution of these two propositional anaphors. The analysis of five different cases in which the DO pronoun refers to an incomplete proposition illustrates that the null object is the anaphor preferred when the proposition being referred to is incomplete, whereas the propositional pronoun lo is preferred to refer to complete propositions. Completeness of the proposition - defined here as a gradient feature and not a binary distinction - is discussed in relation to the notion of saliency or accessibility of the referent and the data analyzed in this article for propositional anaphora is discussed in relation to NP anaphora. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the referring properties of post-nominal demonstratives in Spanish with an aim to contributing to our present understanding of this marked construction. A corpus analysis is presented, where 600 cases of pre- and post-nominal demonstratives are analyzed based on their discourse anaphoric properties: direct vs. indirect anaphora. The data reveal that post-nominal demonstratives are significantly preferred in cases of indirect anaphora; that is, where no antecedent is linguistically realized in the discourse, and the reference of the demonstrative anaphor has to be inferred from the discourse or situational context. Pre-nominal demonstratives, on the other hand, show a more balanced picture sharing similar numbers in direct and indirect anaphora. However, the data also reveal that post-nominal demonstratives can be used in direct anaphoric uses, which poses a problem for a categorical distinction between pre- and postnominal demonstratives at the referential level. Since variability appears to be the nature of the phenomenon, I propose a uniform presuppositional characterization for pre- and post-nominal demonstratives that is able to account for the observed referential flexibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an analysis of transparent gerunds in Spanish, as in ¿Qué llegó [silbando ] Juan? 'What arrived [whistling ] Juan?', using a decomposition of Aktionsart in a series of syntactic heads. A traditional analysis of these secondary predicates as adjuncts would undermine well-established syntactic principles restricting movement and extraction. We argue that these transparent gerunds should be analyzed as syntactic constituents merged as part of the syntactic projections associated with Aktionsart. More precisely, they qualify as RhemePs - assuming Ramchand's First Phase Syntax system - thus allowing their arguments to be extracted. Well-attested differences between Spanish and English gerunds will be explained in our analysis by proposing that the Spanish gerund projects as PathP (given it carries a path preposition), whereas English gerunds are simply RhemeP (lacking any sort of preposition). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the construal of temporality in personal narratives written in English, Spanish, and Hebrew, three languages that differ in their morphological marking of tense-aspect. Participants were native speakers of each language in four different age groups from middle childhood across adolescence into adulthood, so taking into account developmental facets of narrative temporality in each language. Focus is on distribution of situations on and off the timeline of the story from the point of view of the linguistic configurations employed by narrators to express the temporal domains of tense and aspect in the three languages at both the intra-clausal and inter-clausal levels. Hebrew was found to differ from Spanish and English, both of which have more enriched system of grammaticized aspect, in the distribution of situations on and off the timeline both developmentally across age groups and in the linguistic means conflated in expression of temporality. The more impoverished system of grammatical aspect in Hebrew led narrators writing in Hebrew to prefer a more linear temporal organization than their counterparts in Spanish and English. The study distinguishes between shared versus language-particular patterns of narrativeembedded temporality from the point of view of linguistic forms and their temporal functions in the context of extended discourse. Results of the study shed light on the interrelations between local linguistic means and the discourseembedded expression of temporality in narrative development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the long-running and framework-independent discussion among historical linguists on the dominant mechanism in grammaticalization, viz. 'reanalysis' or 'analogy', recent case studies (De Smet 2009, 2012, forthcoming; Fischer 2007, 2008, 2012) have proposed in favor of analogy that syntagmatic associations often precede and to some extent trigger structural reanalysis. This article supports analogical thinking in both the grammaticalization (diachrony) and functional organization (synchrony) of binominal quantifiers in Spanish (e.g., un montón de gente 'a lot of people'). The corpus-based analysis starts off from the 'hybrid' status of quantifying nouns (e.g., montón 'heap, lot'), as they continue to exploit typical noun features in functional uses. The variation in the co-selection patterns is shown to arise from the complex interaction between (conceptual) persistence, analogy and discourse integration. In addition to providing additional evidence for the prevalence and driving force of syntagmatic associations over paradigmatic pressure, the paper characterizes conceptually driven analogy as a two-way discourse phenomenon and zooms in on the reasons for some grammaticalization processes to remain (at least temporarily) 'on hold.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At least three DOM-related constructions can be observed in Ancient Greek, but only one of them has received due consideration in the DOM bibliography (Bossong 1998). In this paper I will deal with the other two: the partitive genitive and a borderline instance of alternation in case marking of objects due to aspectual and affectedness variations in the interpretation of the predicate. I will also deal with the relation of the neuter accusative of unspecific objects with DOM, a relatively neglected construction. Central to the relation of Ancient Greek with DOM is the fact that its case marking is both universal and obligatory (or 'symmetrical' in two different uses of the term). This explains why in Ancient Greek the functions differentiated by DOM are not Subject and Object, but Object and Extensions to core. Following other authors, I present here some examples of Spanish that show how the 'differentiating' function (Comrie 1989) is not enough to explain DOM, even in the classical example of a DOM system, thus making clear the necessity to include constructions as the two mentioned above in a comprehensive definition of DOM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on first-hand data, this paper shows how Mexican Romani-Spanish bilinguals have replicated several uses of the Spanish estar in Romani, using the nearly obsolete 3d person subject clitic pronouns. The Romani subject clitics ( lo, la, le) have become associated with the Spanish copula estar 'to be' in affirmative present tense clauses, thus restricting the uses of the native Romani copula. Moreover, the subject clitics have replicated the uses of estar in locative predications and in constructions with participles. These findings contribute to the general discussion over the complexification or simplification of languages in contact settings. It is argued that although the replication of Spanish estar has rendered Romani more complex, the resulting convergence may be considered as an overall simplification for the bilingual speakers (Matras 2009). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the constructional meaning of NPs preceded by a demonstrative determiner and NPs preceded by a definite article, in both Spanish and Dutch. First, I will give a brief, general description of the meaning of the two constructions, focusing on three features: unique identifiability, deictic force and predicating force. Then, a contrastive analysis will show that demonstrative determiners and definite articles differ crosslinguistically. A quantitative analysis of translational shifts will reveal a systematic shift between Dutch demonstrative determiners and Spanish definite articles. Through the qualitative analysis of several subgroups of examples, I will show that the Dutch and Spanish paradigms differ with regard to the features of deictic and predicating force. Both Dutch demonstratives and definite articles seem to be more semantically bleached and hence more grammaticalized than their Spanish counterparts, which may well go some way to explaining the frequent and systematic translational shifts. Finally, I will draw attention to some specific phenomena, such as the cultural embeddedness of anaphoric relations, and the role of demonstratives in evoking a visual frame, which also motivate translational shifts between demonstratives and definite articles, but are better interpreted as local translator's decisions, rather than as systemic contrastive differences between Dutch and Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with two Spanish prefixation processes, namely auto- and co- prefixation, which affect the participants in the event expressed by the verbal bases to which the), apply. From our point of view, these two prefixation processes provide new evidence for the claim that it is necessary to distinguish two levels of lexical representation in the study of the relation between lexical semantics, morphology, and syntax, in the line of Booij (1992), Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1995, 1998), and Sadler and Spencer (1998). We will show that only verbs belonging to a specific lexical class can undergo co- prefixation. Therefore, it seems that this process has to be accounted for at the level of lexical semantic structure. As for auto- prefixation, it will be shown that this morphological process can apply to verbs belonging to very different lexical classes. This seems to indicate that autoprefixation has to be accounted for at the level of argument structure. However, we will show that the existence of an additional semantic restriction governing auto- prefixation makes it necessary to have reference both to a lexical syntactic level of representation like argument structure and to a semantic level of representation like lexical semantic structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with two apparently unrelated Spanish word-creation processes. trisyllabic nominal truncation and-ata/-aca suffixation. We claim that it is possible to account for these two morphological processes in a unified way. Our analysis is based on Colina's (1996) and Piñeros's ( 2000a, 2000b) account of Spanish standard nominal truncation and hypocoristic formation, developed within optimality theory. The word-creation processes that we have chosen as a case study provide new evidence for two recent proposals of phonological theory that have pro red to be relevant for morphological analysis: the substitution of sequential rules on the input by output constraints and the availability of prosodic information to some word-formation processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though the study of conditional sentences in terms of their meanings and functions has expanded rapidly over the past twenty years, analyses have not often dealt with noncanonical conditional constructions, focusing instead on canonical conditionals like those marked by if in English. This paper attempts to partially redress this bias by examining the meaning and function of a noncanonical conditional construction in Spanish.' the como conditional. While prior analyses of this construction have characterized it as expressing pragmatic counter-expectation, here it is shown on empirical grounds that such an analysis is misguided. A more accurate account of the meaning of como conditionals is then provided, based on the pragmatic notion of argumentative insufficiency: a condition marked by como is one that would normally be considered "insufficient" for the ensuing consequent but is asserted as sufficient by the speaker. It is demonstrated that this analysis makes correct predictions about the formal and functional properties of como conditionals. The implications of the analysis for the (possible) relationships between noncanonical conditionals and their canonical counterparts are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the claim that the native grammar of the learners is the initial state of second-language acquisition, as far as the acquisition of universal grammar parameters is concerned. Two opposing views on L1 transfer are discussed: the first hypothesis maintains that learners start out with the L1 parameter value (Schwartz and Sprouse's 1994, 1996 fulltransfer/full-access hypothesis), while the second hypothesis argues that L1 transfer plays a minimal role in the acquisition process (Epstein et aL 1996's no-transfer/full-access hypothesis). The parameter under investigation is the aspect parameter, postulating two different ways in which languages mark telicity in the verbal phrase. In order to distinguish between the two views of transfer with experimental means, the study examines the competence as two groups as low-intermediate learners of English, native streakers of Spanish, a language sharing the same parameter value with English, and of Bulgarian, a language exhibiting the opposite parametric value. Results indicate that the differences in the performance of learners from the two language groups are directly traceable to their native language. Thus the full-transfer/full-access hypothesis' receives experimental support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the information structure of VP-anaphora constructions in English, Spanish, and German. The goal is to provide an initial account of the syntactic and prosodic licensing mechanisms of VP-anaphora and to suggest some theoretical consequences for the syntactic representation of the different types of focus and topic. Recent studies (e.g. Rooth 1992b; Tomioka 1995; Fox 1998) have proposed that the characteristic feature of VP-anaphora constructions is that they bear contrastive focus on the remaining subject. We argue against this claim by providing evidence from prosodic and syntactic investigations of the remaining elements. Our hypothesis is that presentational focus in VP-anaphora is realized on the negative/affirmative expression and that the remaining constituent is free to take various discourse Junctions depending on the context and the type of construction in which the VP-anaphora occurs. Our main empirical argument against the above claim comes from Spanish, where the remaining constituent can never be interpreted as a contrastive focus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the two main truncation processes that occur in Spanish. Type A and type B hypocoristics represent two different degrees of emergence of the unmarked. Whereas type A hypocoristics achieve unmarkedness at the prosodic level only (e.g. a minimal prosodic word), type B hypocoristics further achieve unmarkedness at the segmental level (e.g. onset and nucleus optimization). Spanish hypocoristics are equivalent to a Min Wd because they must contain no more than a single binary foot. When the source form (SF) exceeds this limit, some of the segmental material may not be preserved. In type A hypocoristics faithfulness to the initial part of SF is enforced by the constraints ANCHOR-L and I-CONTIGUITY, whereas in type B hypocoristics faithfulness to the head of the PWd is secured by HEAD(PWd)MAX. Type B truncated forms display an additional tendency toward unmarkedness by favoring CV syllables with optimal peaks and margins. In addition to causing the deletion of certain segments, this tendency toward greater unmarkedness yields the selection o flow-sonority segments to fill the syllable onset and high-sonority segments to fill the nucleus. There are also certain sound substitutions that take place in type B hypocoristics (e.g. [c] < [s], [p] < If], [k] < [x], [l] < [r]). These are analyzed as a way to optimize the syllable by parsing segments that are more harmonic with the onset position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationships among lexical classes, argument structures, and sin tactic constructions. Focusing on the ditransitive construction in English, Chinese, and Spanish, the author shows that the interpretation of indirect object of certain classes of verbs, such as transference verbs and state-changing verbs, is goal in English, source in chinese, and either goal or source in Spanish. In addition, creation verbs, but not consuming verbs, are permitted in the English ditransitive construction. In contrast, consuming verbs, but not creation verbs, are permitted in the chinese ditransitive construction. Spanish allows both classes. The author attributes the contrast to the interactions between lexical meaning and construction meaning. In particular, the author argues that the default meaning of the ditransitive construction is transference to the referent qj the indirect object in English, transference from the referent of the indirect object in chinese, and simply transference, without a specification for direction, in Spanish. creation verbs, for example, are compatible with the transference-to meaning and are thus acceptable in the English but not the Chinese ditransitive construction; consuming verbs are compatible with the transfrrence-from meaning and are thus allowed in the chinese but not the English ditransitive construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]