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This paper addresses how the negative particle no interacts with Spanish deverbal nominalizations that denote an event. Firstly, it is pointed out that, when preceded by negation, these nominalizations only give rise to the inhibited eventuality reading, contrary to what happens with verbs, which give rise to both the inhibited eventuality reading and the negated eventuality reading. Secondly, it is shown that, when these nominalizations co-occur with no, their lexical aspect is modified, as they share properties with events, but with states as well. Thirdly, a proposal of analysis for is presented. We claim that both the interpretation and lexical aspect of this construction follow from the interaction of negation with the syntactic configuration of the nominalization and, specifically, with the projection responsible for the triggering of the eventuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Passive sentences have been traditionally analyzed in French by descriptive studies in the aim of elucidating the use of the auxiliary verbs être and se faire (Tesnière 1988; Le Goffic 1993; Riegel et coll. 1994; Le Bellec 2014). In Spanish, the formally equivalent auxiliary verbs are ser and hacerse but their use is not concurrent since hacerse is semantically restricted to express beneficial actions (e.g., Se hizo masajear la espalda, He had his back massaged). The goal of our paper is to compare –in spoken French and Spanish– the grammatical and lexical means used in the topicalization of non-volitional patients involved in unpleasant actions. Our results showed that French speakers produced 59.3% of passive sentences, whereas Spanish speakers showed a preference to conceptualize the Patient-victim as an accusative within active voice sentences (37.5%). Concerning the passive sentences produced by each group, French speakers showed an overt preference for the auxiliary se faire (78.9%), whereas in Spanish the Patient-victim's topicalization was most frequently marked by a Latin-derived prepositional object complement (58.8%). Our paper indicates that the topicalization of a Patient-victim is a distinctive typological feature between French and Spanish, and suggests the salience of passive-perspective conceptualizations in French for the semantic domain of unpleasant actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the means of expressing positive epistemic judgement in Spanish and Italian: modals in their epistemic interpretation, epistemic adverb + indicative/subjunctive, with particular attention to the verbs creer/credere and their possible combination with the subjunctive. The constructions are analysed through the prism of cognitive grammar, specifically Langacker's theory of grounding. It is argued that the different types of epistemic judgement are analogous to nominal grounding elements (demonstrative pronouns, the definite article and relative quantifiers). The subjunctive after epistemic adverbs and verbs (such as tal vez or credere) is seen as the verbal counterpart of the relative quantifier some. Analyses suggest that this analogy helps to define the semantic difference between similar structures with the indicative and to resolve questions concerning the function of the subjunctive in epistemic contexts, such as the degree of uncertainty or the speaker's attitude towards the propositional content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The behavior of Spanish verbs of becoming (e.g., volverse rico 'to become rich'), also known as pseudocopular or semicopular verbs, has received relatively little attention in the literature. Bybee & Eddington (2006) (B&E) analyze these verbs employing an exemplar model based on frequency and semantic similarity. The current paper presents an analysis of verbs of becoming based on the notion of cluster concepts (Jackendoff 2002, 2019, 1983), set within a scale, as an alternative account to B&E's, that explains the behavior of this class of verbs in a more precise and comprehensive way. The current study shows that there are strong tendencies in the use of adjectives with a given verb of becoming, which correlate to their use with the copular verbs ser/estar. Crucially, the cluster concept model accounts for uses of adjectives that do not fall into any particular grouping in B&E's model. A corpus study supports the analysis. The current study represents an original contribution in that it is the only study that treats verbs of becoming using the notion of cluster concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an ongoing work on the multilingual event-type ontology SynSemClass, where multilingual verbal synonymy is formalized in terms of syntactic and semantic properties. In the ontology, verbs are grouped into synonym classes, both monolingually and cross-lingually. Specifically, verbs are considered to belong to the same class if they both express the same meaning in a specific context, and their valency frame can be mapped to the set of roles defined for a particular class. SynSemClass is built following a bottom-up approach where translational equivalents are automatically extracted from parallel corpora and annotated by human annotators. The task of the annotators consists in mapping the valency frame of a particular verb with the set of roles defined for the class where the verb is included as a potential class member, establishing links to external resources, and selecting relevant examples. The Spanish part of the ontology currently contains 257 classes enriched with Spanish synonyms. The resulting resource provides finegrained syntactic and semantic information on multilingual verbal synonyms and links to other existing monolingual and multilingual resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies analysing the differences in emotionality in first and second language suggest that affective content of lexical items is modulated in certain contexts. This paper investigates the differences in valence and arousal ratings for 300 early words, in both oral and written modalities, through speakers' subjective appraisal of words given by two immersion groups of Spanish late bilinguals (Chinese and European) compared with a group of native speakers. The main goal of our study is to identify the lexical areas where variability occurs, regarding to a set of affective (emotional charge and intensity), grammatical (nouns, adjectives and verbs) and semantic (concreteness) features of words. Our results show that valence is the dimension where the greatest variability is observed between native and bilinguals, although the influence of the independent factors differs considerably. Besides, arousal yields illuminating data regarding the grammatical category of words and differentiation between the groups of participants. [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]

In this paper we present a study that aimed to reflect on the implications of the use of cambio verbs in the acquisition process of Spanish as an L2 by Brazilian learners and to analyze the effects of a pedagogical intervention based on a self-instruction about these verbs in predicative constructions, contrasting their aspectual properties. The experiment was carried out with a group of participants who performed sentence acceptability judgment tasks with the target verbs (ponerse, quedarse, hacerse and volverse) in predicative constructions, interspersed by the self-instruction. Data analysis revealed that there was a slight increase of the accuracy and the reaction times decreased afterthe instruction. These results, although without a solid statistical significance, may indicate the potential of this pedagogical intervention to contribute with the learning of cambio verbs in Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based on the idea that the study of peripheral phenomena or marginalia in language can shed new light on the interpretation of other, less marginal linguistic data. Specifically, it focuses on the joining or separation of linguistic elements, which is often considered a typically marginal phenomenon, but which constitutes one of the syntactic criteria for classifying verbal periphrases. For this purpose, interpolation, i.e. the separation of the two components of a periphrasis by another element, is examined in three specific cases: , and . The analysis offers clues for reconsidering interpolation as a criterion for the classification of periphrases. At the same time, the study makes it clear that, on the one hand, verbal periphrases are characterised by a type of syntactic ambiguity and, on the other hand, their semantic value is decisive in determining their periphrastic nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, our aim is to present the results of our researchs about the anaphoric accusative object in the Spanish variety of Madrid and in the Brazilian Portuguese variety of São Paulo and to propose a theoretical analysis to these constructions based on minimalist developments (CHOMSKY, 1999, 2000, 2004). Interviews of the Spanish variety of Madrid (CESTERO MANCERA et al. 2014) and Brazilian Portuguese variety of São Paulo (LIMA-HERNANDES; VICENTE, 2012) were analysed. Regarding the theoretical approach, the biological (CHOMSKY, 1981, 1986) and social (LABOV, 2008; WEINREICH; LABOV; HERZOG, 2009) perspectives on language were combined. We observed the effect of the antecedent referenciality, of the determinant indefinite features, of the bare nouns, of the structure and lexical aspect of verbs on possibility of elipsis in the Spanish variety of Madrid. Concerning the Brazilian Portuguese variety of São Paulo, the null objects were almost categorical and the lexical pronoun presented restrictions to less referencial antecedents. These results ressemble the tendencies of our previous research (SIMÕES, 2015) and the Spanish varieties of País Vasco (LANDA, 1993) and Quito (SUÑER; YÉPEZ, 1988). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that constructions with subject-experiencer psychological verbs are adjectival passives, contra the received view that constructions are verbal passives across the board. We put forth a battery of morphological, syntactic and semantic tests to support our claim. The divide, we argue, is based on the individual-level/stage-level distinction, rather than on the lexical category of the participle. We provide a theoretical, aspect-based account that generates the distribution of ser and estar in verbal and adjectival participles and paves the way for a comprehensive analysis of the ser and estar distribution across other constructions where the alternation is attested, such as underived adjectives and prepositions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I will pay attention to the behavior of adjectives such as altísimo and torpe, called ambivalent (Luján 1981) or underspecified (Fernández Leborans 1995), due to the fact that they can be combined with both the copulative verb ser and the copulative verb estar in languages such as Spanish. More specifically, I am interested in two structures, both of them dependent on the Spanish verb of perception ver. In the first, altísimo and torpe combine with the copula estar in infinitive clauses. In the second, subordinate infinitive clauses are headed by the copula ser. I will try to elucidate which is the contribution of the copulative verbs to the interpretation of these structures. With Escandell-Vidal (2018), I assume that the adjectives altísimo and torpe in combination with estar give rise to an evidential effect: the spatio-temporal situation to which the property they denote is anchored is conceived as a situation of visual experience. In the first of the structures I am interested in, the source of information is likewise encoded in the verb of perception. Therefore, the research question that will guide this study is whether the evidential content is actually being expressed twice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]