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This paper offers an in-depth analysis of a novel elliptical construction in Spanish, dubbed Topic-Remnant Elided Polar Questions (or polar TREQs in short). A detailed examination of polar TREQs in Spanish will provide evidence for the claim that (a) they are a type of clausal ellipsis, triggered by the presence of an [E]-feature on C, and (b) the remnant is a topicalized XP that undergoes movement out of the ellipsis site. Furthermore, the analysis of polar TREQs in various contexts (in particular, with respect to the so-called connectivity effects) confirms the need of syntactic identity between the linguistic antecedent and the ellipsis site. Moreover, an examination of the patterns related to the presence or absence of an overt complementizer in this elliptical construction provides empirical support for Merchant's (2001) Sluicing-COMP Generalization. In summary, this paper not only provides a comprehensive account of the syntactic intricacies of a new elliptical construction in Spanish, but also provides valuable insights into the broader landscape of elliptical phenomena in this language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the presence of Anglicisms in the field of drinks in Spanish. After analyzing 22 digital media using the search tool "Observatorio Lázaro", a sample of seventy-eight anglicized non-adapted lexical units has been excerpted. The extracted terms refer to various types of alcoholic drinks, some of which already have a Spanish equivalent, whereas in other cases, those terms refer to new concepts that do not have Spanish equivalent due to its novelty. [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]

It has been claimed in the literature that referential null subjects receive definite readings in consistent null-subject languages, like Spanish. That is why they are said to display the typical behavior of definite pronouns (referential pro). However, referential null subjects can receive indefinite readings under the following conditions: i) the antecedent must be a bare plural, ii) the indefinite null argument is interpreted as a bare noun, typically as an internal argument, and iii) identity of sense anaphora is involved. Crucially, referential null objects appear under similar conditions, and receive indefinite readings in European Spanish. This suggests that the gap could be analyzed in the same way. In this paper, I argue that both null arguments should not be analyzed as empty pronominals (pro), given the syntactic behavior that they show. By contrast, I will argue that an argument ellipsis analysis should be assumed, given that the internal argument position is occupied by an indefinite, non-specific bare noun, the null gap can receive sloppy readings, and the omission is not as 'big' as the one at verb-stranding VP-ellipsis, nor as 'small' as the one at nominal ellipsis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to describe the prosodic features --nuclear pitch configurations and pitch range-- of neutral and oriented interrogative utterances in the Spanish of Mexico City. We carried out a study of polar and wh- questions recorded in the free conversation module of the Corpus Norma Lingüística Culta (Lope Blanch 1971) and Habla Popular de la Ciudad de México (Lope Blanch 1976). The findings of the qualitative analysis show: i) the nuclear pitch configuration L* (L)H% --with the variants L* (L)H%, L* ¡H%, !H* ¡H%-- in information-seeking yes-no questions and confirmation questions, ii) the nuclear configuration L* L% documented in neutral wh- questions, and the boundary tone H% produced in the non-neutral condition --hypothetical or confirmative-- of the utterance; iii) the use of the pitch range as a potential prosodic resource for the expression of lesser or greater knowledge about the expected answer. The spontaneous speech data partially confirm the descriptions based on discourse completion tasks for this variety of Spanish (de-la-Mota et al. 2010). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT. In Mexican Spanish, the indefinite quantifier "uno que otro" is used to refer to low cardinalities of entities separated over space or time. Even though they have a strictly singular form, noun phrases with "uno que otro" always refer to more than one entity. And, despite their notional content of plurality, they reject collective predicates. In this paper we propose a semantic analysis of this expression as a distributive indefinite, that is, an indefinite whose reference covaries as a function of a distributive operator, in the way that adnominal distributive numerals do in other languages (Gil, 1983; Cable, 2014). Distributive numerals are supposed not to exist in Spanish; however, we claim that "uno que otro" is a distributed share marker (Choe, 1987; Bosnić et al 2020) related to a set of events (Balusu, 2006; Cable, 2014; Romero, 2006). This set is necessarily plural, although of low cardinality, and involves the precondition that its elements (atomic events) occur in non-contiguous time or space intervals. The semantic characterization of "uno que otro" as a distributive indefinite captures its referential dependence, its plural sense, its rejection of collective predicates and its content of separation as a secondary effect of a precondition on the events over which it is distributed. We thus show that Spanish has an adnominal expression of the same semantic nature as distributive numerals, with the precision that it requires distribution over events and not over entities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to explain the differential object marking (DOM) of inanimate objects in Spanish. Generally, animate objects in Spanish are marked with an A morpheme; however, it is possible for the A-marker to appear also with inanimate objects in specific circumstances. In this article, I defend the idea that the marking of inanimate objects in Spanish responds to the interaction of the feature of existence presupposition of the verb with the feature that dominates the object's specificity. The analysis will be done using mainly two theoretical tools: the feature geometry of Harley & Ritter (2002) and Chomsky's (2013, 2015) labeling theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine existing analyses for (restrictive) relative clauses and propose an analysis for Spanish relatives from the perspective of a lexicalised Tree Adjoining Grammar (TAG). We will provide a summary of the main proposals in the literature and examine the questions that any analysis of relative clauses should address. Our TAG approach synthesises the descriptive and theoretical advantages of existing models (the head external analysis, the raising analysis, and the matching analysis) and offers a solution to some of the main problems that have been observed in the literature. We will focus on the internal configuration of relative clauses, their structural position, and the category of the expression que in Spanish. [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 paper discusses the effect of mood on the availability of an existential interpretation of negative words such as nadie in the complement of affective emotive factive predicates in Spanish. In these contexts, the subjunctive mood allows nadie to function as a NPI, and it may be interpreted either as a non-negated existentially quantified expression, ∃x, equivalent to alguien, or as negative universally quantified expression, ∀x¬, equivalent to the English "nobody". On the other hand, the indicative mood allows only for a negative universal interpretation, as ∀x¬. An account of this phenomenon is proposed in terms of the notion of settledness. A proposition expressed by an indicative complement is asserted, and the speaker is signaling their intention that it be settled in the context set. It is said that the proposition is grammatically settled. By expressing a proposition in the subjunctive mood, the speaker is not intending that it be settled at the time of utterance, and, as a consequence it is in a grammatically unsettled state (p/¬p: a state in which it is undetermined whether p or ¬p). A negative word such as nadie is analyzed as denoting a quantity scale <∀, ∃>. Within an asserted complement, the interpretation of nadie is fixed at the highest, most informative, point in the scale, ∀. On the other hand, within the grammatically unsettled complement of an affective predicate, which allows for scale reversal, the interpretation of nadie is not fixed. This indeterminacy allows it to assume the value of the lowest point, ∃. It is noted that this possibility provides an expressive tool which may be used to add an emphatic hue to an utterance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I analyze inflected complements of perception, causative and permissive verbs in Spanish in which the null subject is obligatorily co-referent with the matrix object antecedent. Even though these configurations have mostly received a control or a 'pseudo-relative' analysis, I pursue the line of reasoning that finite 'subject-to-object' raising, which has been proposed for languages like Greek, Romanian, Japanese or Korean, might also exist in Spanish. I will argue that this analysis captures several intriguing properties of this configuration which have been noted in the literature, such as temporal anaphoricity, direct perception readings, obligatory co-reference, floating quantifiers, emphatic pronouns, and resumptive pronoun strategies. I argue that left-peripheral as well as temporal deficiency of the embedded clause has the consequence that the CP is not a strong phase and cannot legitimate structural nominative case, enabling A-movement out of the inflected complement. Finally, I discuss some related structures that point to the conclusion that 'finite raising' might exist in the pro-drop language Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a terminological system to name major voseo types in Spanish. Two are the main contributions intended with this proposal. On the one hand, the parametric system will clearly set the limits to the variation space when describing any variety of voseo. On the other hand, the parametric analysis will provide the bases for a transparent, efficient, consistent and memory-friendly terminology. The parametric system here presented is meant to have scope over all types of variation on the grammatical plane, leaving aside all sociolinguistic and ecoglottic considerations. It contains some revisions of previous terms, a slightly refined taxonomy of voseo allomorphy, as well as an alternative approach to the functional aspects that shape the distribution of verbal voseo within the conjugation. [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]

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 TP-ellipsis with a polarity particle in Spanish, with particular attention to its occurrence in multiple-complementizer clauses (i.e., ... que XP que ellipsis licensor ellipsis site). The paper argues for a version of the standard ΣPaccount of TP-ellipsis, with the polarity/focal item (e.g., también/tampoco/sí/no) crucially involved in the licensing of ellipsis. It is argued that the XP-que sequence is hosted in TopicP. The XP is a contrastive topic functioning as the remnant of TP-ellipsis and que instantiates recomplementation que -a topic marker. The ellipsis licensor, for its part, sits in a CP-related projection that follows TopicP. In light of the parallelism drawn here between the polarity elements that can partake in the licensing of TP-ellipsis and run-of-the-mill foci, the paper provides a host of arguments from Spanish and related languages underscoring the role of focus in this type of ellipsis operation, which may ultimately lead to the conflation of ΣP and FocusP. Similarly, I explore the relationship established between TopicP (the remnant) and ΣP/FocusP (the ellipsis licensor) in the process of TP-ellipsis as well as offer a principled account of the inability of jussive/optative que to survive ellipsis, unlike recomplementation que. The results of this paper therefore have wide-ranging consequences for the derivation of TP-ellipsis phenomena alongside the delineation of the preverbal field in Spanish and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the pronominalization of the patient in reflexive impersonals in Peninsular Spanish. This issue will be addressed from two different points of view, namely, the semantic features of the patient and the unstressed pronoun that is used in the pronominalization. It is commonly agreed that only human and definite patients can be replaced by an unstressed pronoun in these constructions in Standard Peninsular Spanish. However, some varieties seem to be less restricted as for the animacy features of the patient. The matter of which pronoun is used in these constructions has been largely discussed, since both dative pronouns (le(s)) and accusative pronouns (la(s), lo(s)) are attested. This study uses dialectal data from spoken Peninsular Spanish in order to investigate the geographical distribution of the construction and the contexts that seem to favour it. One of the main claims of the paper is that relating the loss of some of the pronominalization restrictions in certain varieties to the different pronominal solutions at work in those varieties is crucial to understand the different types of pronouns used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spanish syllable-final s has been found to be completely stable in the great majority of the varieties in which it has been studied as a sociolinguistic variable. The same is true for the variety of Ciudad Real, Spain, where our data have shown not only lack of indication of any type of change at the present moment through inferences made from apparent time, but also evidence of its stability in the last hundred years by looking at the data from the available linguistic atlases. However, in our investigation, we performed a study of all the separate contexts in which the syllable-final s occurs, and it was discovered that in one of them, the sequence /s/+/t/, a different kind of behavior was registered. Namely, in this specific context, apparent-time inferences additionally supported by the older linguistic atlas data show a clear pattern of a change from above towards a normative realization of the sibilant. In this paper, we will try to explain how it is possible for a stable variable to contain within itself a subvariable which in turn shows signs of a change in progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aspectual modifiers that have adverbial and adjectival counterparts are an important source of information for researching lexical aspect in the nominal domain. One class of such modifiers are adverbs of completeness (completamente 'completely', totalmente 'totally'), which are maximizers when modify adjectives, and their correspondent adjectives (completo 'complete', total 'total'). This paper addresses the inheritance of aspectual features and its relation to degree in event nominalizations of incremental theme verbs (traduccción 'translation', destrucción 'destruction') through the analysis of the modification performed by adjectives of completeness in Spanish. The proposal combines a syntactic account of deverbal nominalizations with a scalar approach to aspect. Adjectives of completeness are argued to be aspectual modifiers, with a contribution equivalent to that of their adverbial counterparts both in the verbal and in the adjectival domain, establishing thus a parallelism between degree modification of adjectives, verbs and nominals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines Spanish echo questions, an understudied phenomenon even in extensively described languages such as English. In particular, it focuses on a very particular type of echo questions, such as those made in response to a previous yes/no question (e.g. -Did you buy {mumble}?; -Did I buy WHAT?) and makes a detailed description, on the one hand, of inherent echo features, common across most languages, and, on the other, those language-specific. In particular, I argue that wh-in-situ is not the only possible option in Spanish EQs in order to get a proper, echo interpretation. In addition, I offer some evidence from Spanish data in favour of a particular syntactic structure underlying this sort of questions (Sobin 2010). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper aims at accounting for the Spanish Imperfecto, Perfecto, Pluscuamperfecto and the Indefinido by applying three binary tense oppositions: Present vs Past, Synchronous vs Posterior and Imperfect(ive) vs Perfect(ive). For the sixteen Spanish tense forms under analysis a binary approach leads to covering twelve of them. Their relation with the preterital forms outside the range of the three oppositions is accounted for by two surgical operations: (a) the notion of Imperfect(ive) is severed from the notion of ongoing progress by restricting it to underinformation about completion and by seeing continuous tense forms as involving a more complex semantics; (b) the notion of (non-)stative is strictly severed from interference of information coming from the arguments of a verb. These theoretical moves make the way free for a formal-semantic insight into the interaction of Spanish tense and aspect. It also paves the way for a principled distinction between completion and anteriority. Restricted to tense forms pertaining to the past, our analysis sheds light on the struggle for survival of tense forms outside the binary system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper a novel view of the distribution of null subjects in Spanish is explored in which the discourse category of the antecedent of pro is crucially paid attention to. Implementing Frascarelli's (2007) work, I propose that the relevant interpretative condition to meet is for the null subject to be coreferential with an Aboutness-Shift Topic, which must be either an explicit one or a null (i.e. silent) double in the local domain where pro occurs. When silent, this antecedent can refer back to any type of discourse category in a previous clause. This implies an update of the information provided in the sentence containing pro. The analysis is supported by an experiment run among native speakers of Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that so-called subextraction (e.g., Whoi has John seen a picture of ti?; cf. Corver 2006 for recent discussion) does not involve movement of a whphrase to a DP internal escape hatch position before reaching the CP layer. Instead, we claim that apparently subextracted wh-phrases are actually direct dependents of the verb after a process of reanalysis (or readjustment; cf. Chomsky 1977, Kayne 2002) applies. Our proposal rethinks an old (Bach & Horn 1976) idea, reframes it in modern terms and argues against the cyclic status of DPs (cf. Bruening 2009, Leu 2008, Ott 2008, and references therein), by leaning on new evidence from Spanish. The non-cyclic status of DPs is a fairly standard idea ever since clausal properties were assumed to hold for nominal domains (cf. Chomsky 1970, Brame 1982, Abney 1987, and much subsequent literature). [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 empirical evidence showing that Differential Object Marking (DOM) in Spanish is determined by structural conditions related to Case and agreement. We also argue that semantic concepts such as specificity, definiteness, animacy, or topicality, tightly connected to the presence or absence of A, must be parasitic on the syntactic configurations where DOM is licensed. We also present some consequences of our analysis for the general theory of agreement. We argue that the same structural relation is involved in all cases of DOM, as well as in Dative Clitic Constructions, where the presence of the particle A preceding clitic-doubled datives is syntactically unified with DOM phenomena. The accusative/dative distinction traditionally attributed to the Spanish pronominal system does not correspond, in synchronic terms, to different case relations, but distinguishes between agreeing and nonagreeing arguments. Similarly, the distribution of DOM corresponds to a Casechecked/Caseless difference. We extend the analysis to account for well-knownrestrictions on the co-appearance of two DOM arguments, which are analyzed as the consequence of a competition between two arguments for a single target. To finish, the analysis of some additional DOM phenomena in Spanish also leads us to conclude that Case and agreement must be independently maintained as two separated checking relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with a small set of data from clusters of three clitics in Spanish that questions the empirical adequacy and scope of previous analyses of clitic clusters in Romance. It is shown that the output of the Spurious se Rule is not identical to genuine se, at some level that is relevant for linearization of clitics within a cluster. A proposal is presented to capture the neglected data, and this is done in a way that illuminates the debate on the division of labour in clitic phenomena between phonology, morphology and syntax. Central questions in morphology, such as ordering of operations, syncretisms, linearization principles and consequences of lexical insertion are addressed and re-examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While it has been contended that the intervocalic tap/trill contrast has been lost in many Spanish varieties, maintenance of this phonemic contrast has been attested via segmental duration rather than the number of lingual contacts. The present paper investigates the neutralization of the intervocalic rhotic contrast in emerging, bi-dialectal speakers of Northern Belizean Spanish, an understudied variety of contact Spanish with innovative patterns of rhotic distribution. Acoustic analysis of data from 10 adolescent speakers from Orange Walk, Belize showed that in the elicited, oral production data, speakers were able to more consistently maintain their native Spanish variety's intervocalic tap/retroflex approximant phonemic contrast. However, in an effort to phonetically switch to a more standard variety of Spanish in the read-aloud task, speakers' overgeneralization of the tap led to neutralization of the tap/trill contrast and partial loss of their native Spanish variety's intervocalic phonemic contrast. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the behavior of deadjectival nominalizations in Spanish is studied regarding the presence of an eventuality reading. It is shown that whereas abstract nominalizations (la belleza del libro 'the beauty of the book') clearly encode an eventuality according to standard tests, neuter nominalizations (lo bello del libro 'the beautiful part of the book') lack any eventuality reading altogether. It is argued that the difference lies in the different kind of nominalization process involved. As for abstract nominalizations, after the nominalizer is merged, the nominal functional head Classifier will encode the stative eventuality derived from the adjective root. In the case of neuter nominalizations, we lack any nominal functional structure, but rather the AP is directly selected by the neuter determiner, which, following a suggestion by McNally & de Swart (2012), is the syntactic realization of Chierchia's (1982) ∩ ('cap') operator, which shifts a property into its entity correlate. Moreover, a slight modification of this semantic operation allows a simple and principled analysis of the difference between the two main neuter deadjectival nominalizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this paper is to present a unified analysis of both ditransitive constructions and transitivity alternations (i.e. dative/accusative alternations) in Spanish and Catalan. Regarding the first of these two phenomena, and more concretely the purported existence in these languages of something comparable to the dative alternation seen in English, we will show the weaknesses of what we consider an analysis that seeks to find phenomena proper to English reflected exactly in Romance languages. Thus, we will refute the hypothesis defended by several authors (Masullo 1992, Demonte 1995, Romero 1997, Cuervo 2003a,b) according to which Spanish ditransitive constructions with dative clitic doubling correspond to double object constructions (DOC), whereas non-doubled constructions correspond to the so-called prepositional constructions (PC), or to-dative, in English. Basing on the careful and exhaustive examination of the data in Pineda (2013a,b), we will argue that Spanish (and Catalan) ditransitive constructions instantiate DOC, whether they bear clitic doubling or not. An analysis of pronominalization in Catalan, a language which preserves prepositional clitics, will support this view, which is based on the postulation of an affectedness/possession relation. As for the second phenomenon under study, the existence of true case alternations in Spanish, it will be argued that we are dealing here with a kind of variation constrained by the same relation (or a version of it) as that which acts in the realm of ditransitive predicates. Again, Catalan data will prove indispensable for our analysis. Crucially, we will show that what lies behind Spanish and Catalan dative/accusative alternation is an instance of Differential Indirect Object Marking (DIOM). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]