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The purpose of this paper is to explore the properties of preceding pronominal subjects in Caribbean Spanish and to provide an appropriate syntactic analysis for them. On the basis of the Head to Spec movement hypothesis proposed by Matushansky, Vicente and Citko, among others, we propose a novel analysis con cerning the conventional assumption in licensing null subjects. Concretely, it is assumed that the preceding pronominal subject is a spelled out element of the verb that has moved to Spec-IP, and this operation is realized as a clause-level compensation for the weakening of verbal inflection in Caribbean Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to explain the alternation between the prepositions a and de when used as complements to the adjectives contrario 'contrary', diferente 'different', and distinto 'distinct', as illustrated in Yo no fui distinta __mi madre 'I wasn't different __my mother', where both prepositions can be inserted. Relying on Langacker's3 notion of construal, the hypothesis is that a construes the comparison in the sense of 'direction toward' while de construes it in the sense of 'separation' or 'point of departure', and that these senses should be reflected in the usage contexts of the two prepositions. The quantitative analysis of some 800 cases extracted from Davies'4 two billion word Corpus del español, however, shows no indication of a and de setting up different construals. This lack of correlation between usage and semantics appears to be due to the diachronic generalization of a as complement of the three adjectives, thus relegating the use of de to specific collocations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade, morphological studies have started to focus again on compounding, from a crosslinguistic point of view as well as for the particular case of Spanish. In this paper, we will first review a number of classifications of Spanish compounds, with special attention to coordinative compounds. Then we will focus our attention on a particular kind of construction which has been sometimes included among coordinative compounds: the nominal combination (madre-hija) that appears in the relación madre-hija ('mother-daughter relationship') structure. It will be shown that there are formal characteristics which take these structures away from compounds and bring them closer to free syntactic structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the percentage of use of VO and OV structures in Spanish oral corpus of Basque Spanish bilingual adults; pragmatic and discourse functions of OV structures are also examined in order to evaluate Basque syntax influence on Basque Spanish variety. Specifically, three aspects of the referent have been explored: given-new information level, the referent function, and its continuity in the discourse. Results suggest VO structure is usedmost frequently in the Basque Spanish bilingual utterances in Spanish, but OV structure is more regular exploited by unbalanced Spanish bilinguals who are dominant in Basque. Results also reveal that new information usually appears in topicalized positions, and the topicalized referent shows low continuity in the discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the semantic and syntactic properties of the Spanish lexical markers of difference distinto/diferente 'different' and diverso 'diverse'. It analizes, in particular, their behaviour as adjectives and determiners with respect to the selection of an overt item of comparison, the expression of either non-identity or qualitative differences between the entities being compared, and the (anaphoric, NP-internal and sentence-internal) readings they may have depending on how the things to be compared are determined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spanish concessive clauses usually are constructed with the indicative when they refer to facts and with the subjunctive when they apply to hypothetical or future objections. However, the prototypical marker of counterarguments, "aunque," often appears with the subjunctive in merely factual contexts, like in the statement "No soy nacionalista, aunque sea vasco", pronounced by a Basque politician. The traditional explanations of this phenomenon are based upon factors like information structure (the subjunctive is supposed to convey more topical and less relevant information) or the speaker's attitude (the subjunctive is thought to reflect a more polemic and less cooperative behaviour). The aim of this paper, inspired by textual linguistics, is to connect the "aunque"-subjunctive in factual contexts with the underlying textual sequence. Numerous examples obtained from the Real Academia corpus show that the "aunque"-subjunctive plays an important part in polite argumentation and can be considered as a case of what I would like to call "argumentative subjunctive". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]