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An eye tracking experiment examined how exposure to a second language (L2) influences sentence parsing in the first language. Forty-four monolingual Spanish speakers, 24 proficient Spanish–English bilinguals with limited immersion experience in the L2 environment and 20 proficient Spanish–English bilinguals with extensive L2 immersion experience read temporarily ambiguous constructions. The ambiguity concerned whether a relative clause (RC) that appeared after a complex noun phrase (NP) was interpreted as modifying the first or the second noun in the complex NP (El policía arrestó a la hermana del criado que estaba enferma desde hacía tiempo). The results showed that whereas the Spanish monolingual speakers and the Spanish–English bilinguals with limited exposure reliably attached the relative clause to the first noun, the Spanish–English bilingual with extensive exposure attached the relative to the second noun. Results are discussed in terms of models of sentence parsing most consistent with the findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that gapping in Spanish is not a single phenomenon and can be derived from different source structures. The first type of gapping in Spanish involves clausal coordination and is thus derived through TP-deletion, whereas the second type contains low coordination below TP, which allows it to be derived by either vP-deletion or Across-The-Board (ATB) verb movement whose availability depends on the subject-verb agreement patterns found in gapping. This approach also extends to cases where the conjuncts in gapping display various noncanonical word orders, which also fall under two types of gapping and can be analyzed using the same mechanisms as those applicable to SVO-conjuncts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a comparative analysis of two Spanish constructions that are usually characterised as passive, namely the periphrastic or attributive passive – formed with the verb ser 'be' plus a participle – and the reflexive passive – formed with third‐person reflexive clitic se. An isomorphic functional approach is adopted whereby the inherent syntactic‐semantic features of each construction are considered to be at the basis of their discourse‐pragmatic uses. Using a corpus of local written news pieces from the Peninsular town of Salamanca, the grammatical expression of both the initiators and the endpoints of events in each construction is quantitatively and qualitatively analysed, paying special attention to their variable encoding and placement within the clause and the semantic correlates of formal variation. While attributive passives are used to predicate transitive events of topical endpoints, reflexive passives often conceptualise events as thetic, reducing transitivity and defocusing initiators. These meanings are projected onto the discourse‐pragmatic domain by favouring different interpretations of the role of human participants, particularly with respect to their involvement in events amenable to negative judgements. This supports the hypothesis that the syntax and semantics of each grammatical construction are undetachable from its communicative potential in specific contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ambiguous relative clauses with two possible antecedent nouns have been widely studied in Spanish since they cast doubt on the universality of syntactic parsing principles. Current research suggests that there is an early contribution of prosodic information in the disambiguation of this kind or sentences in oral comprehension and production tasks. In this paper we present two comprehension experiments of locally ambiguous relative clauses with two possible attachment sites in Spanish, in which different prosodic parameters were manipulated to yield either congruous or incongruous pairings of prosody and syntax, with the aim of testing their influence on listeners' attachment preferences of the ambiguous clause and on their response times. Additionally, fundamental frequency (F0) and temporal (pause distribution) prosodic parameters were manipulated in different subexperiments so as to assess their separate contribution to participants' performance. Our results confirm an effective and relatively early use of prosodic information by listeners during language processing. In particular, congruous prosody with syntax generally facilitates participants' responses, though this effect was found to vary across the two attachment options. Finally, F0 and temporal prosodic features were found to make a similar contribution to participants' responses, with few occasional differences between them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to study the syntactic structure of a paroemiac subcategory: tautologies. We will observe the diachronic evolution of this type of formulas from the Middle Ages to the present day. The diachronic study confirms the idea according to which sententious phrases, in this case tautologies, are not transmitted in the same form from generation to generation. They adapt to the times in which they are uttered. The structures are reduced over the centuries in both French and Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the phenomena we dub «hyper-agreement»: number agreement between the main verb and an argument of the subordinate clause in biclausal structures (me gustan que los planes salgan bien, lit. ‘me like3pl that plans work out’). At an empirical level, it focuses on structures with dative experiencers required by a psych-verb and shows that hyper-agreement is possible with both finite and non-finite subordinate clauses. In light of these data, it is argued that Agree (Chomsky, 2000, 2001) must not violate the Single Case Constraint (Nevins, 2004). The analysis put forward combines this constraint with the hypothesis that person and number are independent Probes (Rigau, 1991, among others). This proposal accounts both for the unlocking effect on the subordinate clause and for the fact that the long-distance agreement is restricted to partial agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to analyse the Spanish construction resulta que + [clause] from a discourse syntax approach, a macro-syntax. The current use of the structure shows that its conceptual meaning fades and acquires a procedural one related to discourse’s informative dimension; mainly, the characterisation of the information introduced as “surprising” or “not expected”: resulta que mis amigos nunca quisieron que me fuera [“as it turns out, my friends never wanted me to leave”]. Resulta que + [clause] is not as fixated as other discourse elements, such as discourse operators or markers. However, it belongs to the same category of other syntactic constructions which trigger a wide range of discursive values and are not usually tackled by traditional syntactic studies. This research analyses its internal structure and its discourse functioning in order to embed it in a framework which takes into account the potential of this kind of structure in grammar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyze the expressions formed by ni with non clausal phrases (noun phrase with preposition, adjective phrase, adverbial phrase, infinitive, gerund). From this structure come several expressions of rejection very common ones in the current colloquial Spanish, like ni hablar, ni pensarlo, ni queriendo, ni soñando, ni de coña, etc. emerge from this structure. The starting hypothesis is that these expressions, despite coming from different base categories, have a very similar discursive behavior in conversational discourse and show a high level of grammaticalization. To carry out this research, we use the communicative exchanges included in the Corpus MEsA, which includes discourse from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, YouTube, blogs, digital forums and web pages of diverse themes. The methodology followed is the Macrosyntax model of Fuentes Rodríguez (2019a), developed from Pragmatic Linguistics (Fuentes Rodríguez 2000). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes a kind of discourse operator insufficiently studied: the operators that indicate deontic modality, especially those introduced by modal operators in Spanish like por fuerza, in order to locate the insertion of elements belonging to the plane of the modality in the structure of sentence. Checking characteristics of these terms: its distribution, its incidence, its grammaticalization, it can contribute, on the one hand, to its categorical and functional definition and, on the other hand, to development of discourse grammar or macrosyntax. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Micro-discourses are blocks of text that enjoy unity of meaning. A new hypothesis holds that micro-discourses also enjoy syntactic unity. The syntactic structure of micro-discourses is formed by pragmatic statements that have functions and are combined through relationships. This paper tries to test if the syntactic structure of microdiscourses is kept in their translations. A positive result would be empirical proof that the aforementioned hypothesis is true. Our analysis compares the syntactic structure of different translated micro- texts (exposition, enumeration, conversation, etc.) and shows that their syntagmatic structure is almost the same when translated, thus confirming the initial hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents certain cases in which the Spanish discourse marker por (lo) tanto connects non-phrasal utterances, in a type of contexts that we propose to call "reduced contexts". This marker takes part in consecutive structures and in most cases alternates with other expressions, such as por consiguiente, en consecuencia, así que and conque. This study aims to analyze the syntactic, semantics and macrosyntactic features of the structure introduced by the form marker, in both prototypical and reduced contexts, with the goal of considering possible differences when comparing it with examples in which the latter expressions introduce an illative relation. This study was preceded by a previous one in which the quantitative and formal features of this discourse marker were analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes a kind of discourse operator insufficiently studied: the operators that indicate deontic modality, especially those introduced by modal operators in Spanish like por fuerza, in order to locate the insertion of elements belonging to the plane of the modality in the structure of sentence. Checking characteristics of these terms: its distribution, its incidence, its grammaticalization, it can contribute, on the one hand, to its categorical and functional definition and, on the other hand, to development of discourse grammar or macrosyntax. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to analyse the Spanish construction resulta que + [clause] from a discourse syntax approach, a macro-syntax. The current use of the structure shows that its conceptual meaning fades and acquires a procedural one related to discourse's informative dimension; mainly, the characterisation of the information introduced as "surprising" or "not expected": resulta que mis amigos nunca quisieron que me fuera ["as it turns out, my friends never wanted me to leave"]. Resulta que + [clause] is not as fixated as other discourse elements, such as discourse operators or markers. However, it belongs to the same category of other syntactic constructions which trigger a wide range of discursive values and are not usually tackled by traditional syntactic studies. This research analyses its internal structure and its discourse functioning in order to embed it in a framework which takes into account the potential of this kind of structure in grammar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work introduces a subset of informational features (termed core intentional features ), different from standard pragmatic features such as topic and focus. Adopting the basic tenets of the Minimalist program, core intentional features are defined as edge features which sit in the relevant phases and are subject to parametric variation. They are assumed to drive the derivation of the sentence so that it constitutes an intentionally-adequate object (i.e. a categorical or a thetic statement) even in the absence of a particular communicative situation. The paper specifically focuses on one of these features, [DI] ( discourse intention ), and on how it determines the eventual position of the subject in a discourse-prominent language such as Spanish. A preliminary distinction is made between sentences that inaugurate the discourse (d-sentences) and sentences which are integrated in a particular context (context-dependent sentences). It is argued that the SV/VS order in Spanish follows from the conditions of valuation of [DI] in each case; in particular, valuation of [DI] in d-sentences will be a matter of structural and semantic prominence whereas in context-dependent sentences it will depend on pragmatic conditions. The paper also addresses a number of significant contrasts in the much-debated issue of the placement of the subject in Spanish, which receive a principled explanation under the theory of core intentional features proposed here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has two intertwined objectives that are consistent with the overall goal of using an interface grammar to describe different contrasts among languages. The first one is to describe the internal structure of the English resultative construction or KR, to characterize a representative sample of the KR subtypes and to render explicit the syntax-semantics interface conditions that make it possible. KR is a Macroevent that fuses two Events--an Activity and an Event proper--in the temporal sequence of a 'causal course of Events' so that this Event is the Result of the Activity. In order to reach this characterization, it is necessary to subsume Manner under Activity, Result under Change and CAUSE under 'causal course of Events'. The second objective is to expose the features that license the presence of KR in English while permitting a scarce presence of it in Spanish. KR is the Macroevent that complements the prototypical English Event, which opposes to Spanish in so far as it projects an Activity as main verb while the Spanish Event projects an Event proper. Thus, KR is not a complementary structure for the Spanish Event. Furthermore, KR reflects the typical 'open' combinatory English style, which is quite different from the Spanish 'close' one. This means that English allows for an open set of semantic relations between two words under the same structure while Spanish prefers to reduce them to (likely) one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the syntactic and semantic properties of the periphrasis . From a semantic point of view, it is usually assumed that this construction denotes imminent future. We offer arguments against this characterization. These arguments are based on several asymmetries between and the periphrasis , which expresses imminent future. Therefore, we defend that does not denote imminent future and, in particular, that it expresses certain preconditions linked with the realization of the event denoted by the infinitive. From a syntactic point of view, we show that is not derived from , through the ellipsis of the adjective listo, although, according to our proposal, the denotation of both constructions are similar. The reason is that when refers to the previous conditions associated with an event, it does not show the behavior of a copulative construction, contrary to what happens with and with a purpose meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on the display of dom in Catalan and focusing on the Balearic variety, this paper explores this phenomenon arguing for a discourse-driven marking, showing that the assumption that semantic hierarchies as crucial triggers for dom cannot be assumed anymore. We aim to present some ideas to address the correlation between prepositional markings and peripheral positions and to provide arguments for a syntax-pragmatics approach to dom in Clitic Dislocation. Our data shed light on the link between information structure – in particular, anaphoricity- and marked objects. This analysis would also account for other markers (i.e. de) available as a mechanism for signalling the same [+anaphoric] feature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this paper is to investigate the polysemy of Spanish spatial prepositions (a, en, hacia, among others), and offer a syntactic and semantic treatment of this phenomenon. The core idea behind this account is that these prepositions can denote sets of possible locations that are involved in spatial relations. Consequently, the compositional interaction of polysemous prepositions with other parts of speech can determine which specific sense emerges in a sentence. The analysis is couched in a Type- Logical Grammar approach. It addresses data that have not previously been analysed in the literature, involving so-called Boolean constructions (e.g. en la estación y la calle). Also, the paper shows that a single treatment can capture all the relevant data. Therefore, the analysis shows that polysemy is a grammar phenomenon that is better accounted for in architectures with a distinct syntactic/derivational component (e.g. Distributed Morphology), than in architectures lacking this component (e.g. Cognitive Linguistics approaches). Consequences for a theory of grammar are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the geometry of phi-features, with a special emphasis on number and gender in Spanish. We address two sets of questions: (i) are number and gender bundled together or do they constitute separate categories, and (ii) does the internal feature composition of number and gender follow a single- or a multi-valued system? Given the lack of consensus on these issues based on primary data, we approach these questions experimentally, using the phenomenon of agreement attraction: a situation in which ungrammatical sequences are perceived as grammatical when one of the NPs is erroneously identified as determining agreement. Our results offer novel support in favor of an agreement model in which number and gender are in separte projections and are valued independently. In addition, our results indicate that number but not gender in Spanish is multi-valued. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine some semantic, syntactic and pragmatic motivations that may influence the preferred order of the Spanish temporal adjuncts antes 'before' and después 'after', when they function as bare adverbs, as adverbial phrases, and as linkage markers in subordinate clauses. The study of narrative texts reveals that these sequential adjuncts respond differently to each of the motivations under study. [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]

It is most often claimed that in Spanish constituents in narrow presentational or information focus appear rightmost, where they also receive main sentence stress, while shifting the stress to the focus in its canonical position is infelicitous. Some, however, claim that Spanish in fact has recourse to both strategies for making the focus prominent, and some recent quantitative work has shown support for this alternative view. The present paper contributes to this debate by experimentally testing the realization of presentational focus in Mexican Spanish using an acceptability judgment task. The results of the experiment reveal that, for these speakers, focused constituents need not be rightmost and can in fact be stressed in non-final position, contra the consensus view. These findings expand the database on focus in Spanish and indicate that theories of the prosody/syntax interface may need to be revised, especially those theories that motivate discourse-related syntactic movement based on the requirements of the prosody. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper it is argued that unspecified objects in sentences such as Maria leyo anoche (= Maria read (something) last night) should be represented as null incorporated nouns in l-syntax (Hale & Keyser 1993, 2002). Specifically, the material understood as 'something' is a null bare N that incorporates into the verb 'read,' forming an endocentric compound meaning 'THING-read.' While the general idea underlying such a hypothesis is not new (Mateu 2012; Marti 2011; Zubizarreta & Oh 2007), the analysis outlined here provides the first explicit formalization of it in such a way that can account for a wide range of properties (some not yet described in the literature) that are intimately related to what can be broadly defined as 'noun incorporation constructions' cross-linguistically. Like certain types of noun incorporation constructions in other languages, unspecified object constructions have the following properties: (i) they are restricted lexically (in this case to 'activity'/'manner' verbs), (ii) the verb+unspecified object may have a conventionalized interpretation, (iii) unspecified objects are indefinite and take obligatory narrow scope with respect to all other operators, (iv) unspecified objects may be modified 'externally' by a limited set of adjectives (v) the verb+unspecified object gives rise to an atelic reading. All of these properties are shown to derive from the fact that unspecified objects are null incorporated nouns. This is desirable since the same set of properties are shared by different types of noun incorporation constructions in languages outside Romance and, to a large extent, by bare noun constructions in Spanish and other Romance languages (Espinal & McNally 2011). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of ditransitivity is explored at the lexical, syntactic and surface levels. By focusing on several types of ditransitive sentences in Spanish it is revealed that there is a triple dissociation between these levels. First, it is shown that the availability of a ditransitive structure (syntactic level) for a certain verb does not depend on the verb being ditransitive (lexical level). Second, causative structures with dative arguments are shown to be ditransitive at the surface level, but not to have an underlying ditransitive structure. Finally, cases of unaccusative sentences with dative arguments are analysed as instances of ditransitive structures without lexical or surface ditransitivity. The paper argues that ditransitivity is at best a pre-theoretical, descriptive notion, and that ditransitive verbs in fact belong to Levin's (Papers from The Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society 35: 223-247, 1999) non-core transitives: ditransitives are just transitives compatible with taking a relation between two individuals as complement. This analysis accounts for the intralinguistic and crosslinguistic variation in the expression of the relation, both in terms of type (two DPs related by a transitive preposition or an applicative head) and number of objects realized or omitted. Although the idea that there is no syntactic ditransitivity - that is, that no single verbal head can take two complements - has been implicit in most generative work of the last two decades, it has not been directly explored. This investigation leads to the conclusion that a syntactic property, binary branching, is at the basis of the impossibility of syntactic and lexical ditransitivity. Thus, this result suggests that syntax restricts not only possible structures but possible lexical meanings as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Main clauses in Spanish optionally include a root complementizer. The presence of the complementizer adds a reportative component to the meaning of the clause. This paper attempts to characterize more precisely the kind of grammatical object represented by those reports. It argues that the Spanish main clause reports must be analyzed as instances of quotative constructions, and that the latter must be represented as involving an underlying predication between a clausal constituent and a quotative predicate. This predicate is overt in many languages, but silent in Spanish. The paper provides syntactic arguments in support of this hypothesis, as well as a comparison between the properties of those constructions and hearsay evidentiality, which is argued to be a different phenomenon. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

It is widely assumed that the scope of indefinites is island insensitive, i.e., that, generally, an indefinite inside of a syntactic island, such as an adjunct clause, is capable of taking scope outside of that island. This paper challenges this assumption by studying the scope behaviour of the Spanish plural indefinite algunos (roughly, ‘some (pl.)’). It presents an experimental study that shows that the scope of algunos is not free and depends on its syntactic environment, at least in the dialect of Spanish studied here. The paper discusses some of the implications of the study for current theories of indefinite scope: it points out the problems that choice functions and singleton indefinites have with the Spanish data, and it also discusses the implications for Schwarzschild's (2002) solution to the so-called ‘Donald Duck’ problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the relationship between syntax and translatability, particularly in respect of literary texts. By translatability is meant the degree of ease with which one language lends itself to translation into another language. Through practice in the translation between Chinese and some of the major European languages, such as English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Latin, and Greek, as well as between the European languages themselves, it can be found that translating between the European languages is much easier than translating between Chinese and any one of the European languages. Of all the factors that determine whether a language translates more readily or less readily into another language, syntactic differences constitute one of the most decisive. This is because the translator is, during the translation process, constantly dealing with syntax in two directions: the syntax of the source language on the one hand and the syntax of the target language on the other. As a result, problems arising from the syntactic differences between the two languages are bound to figure more prominently than those arising from the differences between individual lexical items and phrases or between cultures. In this paper, syntax will be studied and analysed with reference to Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Latin, and Greek texts. Finally, it will be shown that, mainly because of syntactic differences, there is a higher degree of translatability between any two of the above European languages (which are members of the Indo-European family) than between Chinese (which is a member of the Sino-Tibetan family) and any one of these European languages, and that the syntax of any one of these European languages can cope comfortably with Chinese syntax, but not the other way round. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Besides their common lexical reading, the Spanish verbs amenazar ‘threaten’ and prometer ‘promise’ can also yield a modal reading. The shift from the former reading to the latter implies a change from a control structure to a raising structure and involves grammaticalization, more specifically auxiliation, which ends up in a layered co-existence of the two (or more) constructions. This paper is mainly concerned with the syntactic and semantic categorization of the grammaticalized quasi-modals amenazar and prometer. Generative accounts have focused on the difference between raising and control, but have not addressed the differences between the two verbs. This paper highlights that modal amenazar faces less constraints than modal prometer . Furthermore, the account presented below will show that epistemic and evidential auxiliaries have scope over the qualification expressed by modal amenazar and prometer, and are therefore not to be called “epistemic”. The paper also deals with the tense restrictions that these verbs undergo. Tenses such as the present perfect are not available in modal constructions with amenazar and prometer because of the activation of agentive patterns inherent to the lexical semantics of the verbs in question. The tense criterion is valid for verbs for which the grammaticalized form is not the most frequent one, but it does not account for true modals in Spanish and other Romance languages. The infinitive criterion turns out to be a good alternative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the singular or plural agreement between Spanish verb haber with existential meaning and its plural argument, in 108 interviews collected in Mexico City as a part of a sociolinguistic corpus structured by age, gender and educational level. All relevant data (633) are considered. For the analysis, the proposed methodology in the "Project for the sociolinguistic study of Spanish from Spain and from America (PrESEEa)" is followed, using a wide range of linguistic and social variables. The results are subjected to rigorous statistical analysis and compared with those obtained in other studies. The singular/plural alternative has received considerable attention in the field of study of linguistic variation in Spanish. Mexico City Spanish is grouped with other conservative areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Direct object clitics in Spanish are morphological markers at the interfaces of syntax, phonology, morphology, and information structure (Zwicky, 1985; Ordóñez & Repetti, 2006; Belloro, 2007; Spencer & Luís, 2012). They play an important part in argument morphology in Spanish and are subject to variability in bilingual acquisition (McCarthy, 2008). In this paper we explore the morphology- syntax-information structure mapping of direct object clitics in clitic structures in a range of speakers that includes Quechua-dominant bilinguals and Spanish monolingual individuals along a continuum of language contact situations. Our findings indicate clear dissociation between syntactic properties and marking of morphological features. They also indicate a progression from default gender marking in clitics to a scalar system of clitic forms based on animacy and informational value along the continuum of speakers. Finally, while clitics in liberal clitic doubling varieties receive a focus interpretation (Sánchez, 2010; Sánchez & Zdrojewski, 2013), our data indicate that in some Spanish contact varieties they denote the primary object and secondary topic (Sánchez, 2003; Dalrymple & Nikolaeva, 2011; Mayer, 2008, 2013, forthcoming). The findings of this exploratory study support the view that while clitics exhibit common syntactic properties across a continuum of speakers, they may vary in morphological marking and informational value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of no obstante ('notwithstanding') has been affected by some theoretical preconceptions, which have influenced both the explanation of its emergence as a grammatical device in Castilian language and its description in contemporary Spanish. These misguided descriptions have been motivated by the use of our current grammatical intuition, which considers no obstante the result of a Latin heritage. The entailment to Latin has supported, also, the description of no obstante + NP as an absolute construction. Moreover, the influence of the Theory of Grammaticalization, which usually does not pay much attention to the textual conditions of grammatical forms production, has favoured the neglect of textual contexts that give rise to the Castilian discourse marker no obstante. In this paper, we try to demonstrate that, in the sequences no obstante + NP and no obstante que, no obstante has been reanalyzed as being only a grammatical element with a prepositional function. Further, we deal with the evidence that, in spite of its Latin form, no obstante was introduced into Castilian language via Catalan or Aragonese languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a new framework for the grammaticalization of the Old Spanish manner adverb sí so / yes' as a positive polarity item. My proposal is that Old Spanish and Modern Spanish display different syntactic structures to convey positive polarity; in Old Spanish it involves not only the adverb sí, but it is related to verb movement, focus, clitic placement, VP-ellipsis and the properties of the Po/(arity) Head. I claim that the restructuring of the Left Periphery in Renaissance Spanish set the scenario for the reanalysis of sí as a polarity item and led to the emergence of previously unknown syntactic structures related to the expression of positive polarity, such as sí que or bare sí. Since the strong or weak features of the Pol Head is what regulates whether sí was a polarity item or not, strong features of Pol appear to be the underlying factor which determines the syntactic properties of positive polarity in Old Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some Castilian grammars intended for use in secondary school are published in the decade of1850. These grammars must be understood in relation with those used in primary school. They participate in the consolidation of national subjectivities (thanks to the spread of the common language), in social disciplining (determining the standard to be met by the practice) and in the reproduction of social structures (educating the members of the elite). The present paper refers to the subject of syntax in four texts published respectively in Buenos Aires, Santiago, Guanajuato and Madrid. We consider the units established in the grammars, the treatment of figures and the analysis they propose in exercises or in recapitulating illustrations. The study allows us to appreciate the guidance offered by grammars but also the different perspectives on grammatical knowledge, on its function in secondary school and on the subject who attends school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the phonetics and phonology of initial peaks and final falls in wh-questions produced by speakers of the variety of Spanish spoken in the Castile-La Mancha (Manchego) region of Spain. The acoustic analysis is based on speech data for nine speakers, and the goal is to identify how utterance-initial and utterance-final F 0 gestures relate to broader issues in intonational phonology and the prosodic signaling of wh-questions. The findings for left periphery constituents provide evidence for a H tone at the utterance boundary for all speakers, although the exact autosegmental representation cannot be provided due to variability in peak alignment patterns. The findings for right periphery constituents indicate two distinct speaker groups based on nuclear syllable and posttonic gestures. Specifically, the continuum of final falls is motivated by contrasting bitonal nuclear pitch accent configurations: H + L* vs. ¡L + H*. The boundary L% specification is argued for all speakers in spite of seemingly divergent posttonic gestures. The experimental findings speak to cross-linguistic issues such as prominence marking in wh-question intonation, the syntax-prosody interface in wh-questions, and the internal structure of pitch accent configurations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we present the development of a text simplification system for Spanish. Text simplification is the adaptation of a text for the special needs of certain groups of readers, such as language learners, people with cognitive difficulties, and elderly people, among others. There is a clear need for simplified texts, but manual production and adaptation of existing text is labour-intensive and costly. Automatic simplification is a field which attracts growing attention in Natural Language Processing, but, to the best of our knowledge, there are no existing simplification tools for Spanish. We present a corpus study which aims to identify the operations a text simplification system needs to carry out in order to produce an output similar to what human editors produce when they simplify news texts. We also present a first prototype for automatic simplification, which shows that the most important simplification operations can be successfully treated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the morphological variation related to gender and number in Spanish compounding, such as plural nouns in [V+N]N compounds (el lavaplatos, not el lavaplato; el cazamariposas, not *el cazamariposa), gender and number asymmetries between the actual compound and its parts (cabezafem. + cuadradafem. → el cabeza cuadradamasc., relacionesfem. pl. + públicasfem. pl. → el relaciones públicasmasc.sing.), the presence of inflectional markers inside compounds (sord-o-mudafem, not *sorda- mudafem.), and the variation that takes place in many plural compounds (casas cuartel or casas cuarteles 'house quarter', coches cama or coches camas 'car and bed'). Basing ourselves on the classic model of level ordering with an admixture of Booij's distinction between inherent and contextual inflection, this piece of research proves that these cases of morphological variation can be approached as a morphological component, accessible to syntax. This model also relativizes the importance of the head in compounding and highlights the value of morphology, lexis and syntax interfaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we present an analysis of Spanish heritage speakers' oral production of gender agreement outside the DP as an innovative source of support for the Interface Hypothesis (Sorace & Filiaci 2006). We demonstrate that, besides commonly known factors such as the gender, animacy and morphology of the antecedent, the interface domain in which gender agreement takes place also seems to play a role in how accurately heritage speakers apply gender agreement. Pronominal reference, located at the external syntax-discourse interface, turns out to be more problematic than adjectival predication, which pertains to the internal morpho-syntax interface. Furthermore, we discuss the possibility that, besides the amount of input heritage speakers receive, the quality of this input may also play a role in their gender agreement accuracy, given that the heritage speakers' error pattern with respect to linguistic factors is very similar to that of first generation immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grammar studies have focused lately on speech instead of on written language, being the latter the most traditional approach. This situation confronts us with the necessity of a new definition for some grammar concepts. This paper proposes a new definition for the concept of sentence so that it can be used for spoken Spanish analysis. Already existing definitions are evaluated and discarded because they do not fit with many normal speech structures. Besides, they usually are confusing regarding syntactic, prosodic and pragmatic features. We propose a new definition only based on grammar and semantic features. Conclusions show that this approach allows the syntactic analysis of speech in a much more accurate way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyse schemes with volver as nucleus in Galician, making comparative analyses with Castilian. The study is based on research focused on semantic-syntactic schemes and on the compilation of a dictionary of structures. We will try to analyse the variety of these structures to prove, in the light of the theory of construction and in the theoretical frame of semantic-syntactic schemes, that this predicate cannot be compartmentalized within a single semantic class of movement, since it takes part in constructions of action, process, attitude and situation; a fact that, moreover, proves important in verifying the relevance of the lexis, semantics and syntax interface to language studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I link ‘floating features’ in clitic clusters with two third-person participants to a split object marking system, indicative of a language change in progress. Both clitics are undergoing concurrent reanalysis processes affecting them differentially, i.e. they are located at different stages in the process. Whereas standard varieties draw a clear distinction between direct and indirect object, American Spanish Leísta dialects move to a distinction between primary and secondary object. Clitic cluster agreement in those dialects is triggered by a loss of case restrictions on the third-person clitics resulting in a tendency to mark the primary object. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to provide a descriptive panorama of the different approaches to verbal impersonality in the Spanish grammatical tradition, from very primitive testimonials of the Latin-Romance scholastic grammar to the end of the Spanish "Siglo de Oro". Once the specific phenomena of verbal impersonality are collected and interpreted, results about the linguistic conception underlying the analyzed grammars will be generated. It is particularly interesting to know how an adequate terminology was being the semantic and morphosyntatic maps of language was studied in-depth. At the same time, the difficulties of some grammarians to establish a Latin independent grammatical model are confirmed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the functioning and evolution of the adverbs demás, además, and encima from the first existing texts until the 15th century. Our purpose is double: on the one hand, to describe the process that conforms the adverbs into discourse markers specialized in an additive meaning; on the other hand, to contribute to their lexicographical description in a historical dictionary. We analyze their grammaticalization processes and verify in texts the loss of demás, the advance of además--which will become the prototype item of this sort of connectors--, and the acquisition by encima of a subjective meaning --the most important feature as an additive connector--, may be connected with the meaning of the substantive cima in certain contexts during the Middle Ages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of "zero sign" is both functionally and semantically valid in those cases where an absence (a silence) systematically contrasts with a presence in a given context. Rabanales (1966) has posited the existence in Spanish of a recurrent "zero preposition" in the direct object, when the preposition "a" contrasts with an absence of a preposition. This paper offers cases and analyses that corroborate his position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this paper we offer a syntactic description of Spanish exceptive constructions headed by excepto, salvo or menos (‘except’). Framing our hypothesis in an adjunction analysis of coordination, we argue that these exceptive markers head a Boolean Phrase, like other coordinating conjunctions. Two types of exceptive phrases can be identified, depending on the level of the constituents conjoined. In connected exceptives two DPs are conjoined. In free exceptives two CPs are conjoined; the exceptive markers select for a full-fledged CP as complement, whose null head (C) triggers a process of ellipsis in which all the syntactic material inside TP is marked for PF-deletion, except the remnant constituent(s). Our proposal supports a structural approach to ellipsis whereby elliptical constituents are in fact fully fledged though non-pronounced syntactic structures. It also supports the hypothesis that the differences in the syntactic behaviour of coordinate sentences and subordinate adverbial clauses cannot be derived from their phrase structure geometry but are instead due to the properties of individual conjunctions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]