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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]

Copyright of LINRED. Linguistica en la Red is the property of Universidad de Alcala. UAH and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The present paper analyses the meaning of Spanish mood in factive contexts from a Cognitive Grammar perspective. It is argued that terms like assertion and presupposition do not explain the semantics of the subjunctive. Rather, they constitute an initial classification for finding a conceptually grounded explanation of it. The hypothesis is put forward that mood choice in factive contexts can be explained by the elaboration of Maldonado's (1995) notions of dominion and control. On the one hand, the conceptualizer has a low degree of effective control over the described event in presupposed contexts where the subjunctive mood occurs. On the other hand, presupposed contexts with the verb in the indicative mood equates with epistemic control over the described event. Thus, it is argued that the meaning of the subjunctive mood is related to the conceptualizer's epistemic dominion, and to the dominion of effective control. An additional analysis of the subjunctive mood in volitional, causative and perceptual contexts corroborates the initial claim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Talmy’s (e.g., 1985, 2000) seminal work has engendered a great deal of research and debate in the literature on motion event descriptions over the last decades. Despite the vast amount of research on the linguistic expression of motion events, the fact that motion verb roots might encode information apart from Path and Manner of motion is often overlooked. The present paper addresses the semantics of 376 English and 257 Spanish motion verbs by exploring the general conflations which are conveyed by these verbs. In this regard, both crosslinguistic similarities and differences will be pointed out. My research concludes that path-conflating and manner-conflating verbs amount to the largest part of their lexicons but that other minor patterns such as ground conflations, in contradiction to Talmy’s speculations on the lack of ground-conflating verbs, are present as well. Taken as a whole, this paper provides a rich and detailed account on the semantic nature of the English and the Spanish motion verb lexicons, and emerges as a helpful reference for researchers in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract  This paper deals with a number of facts related to the word order of Spanish declarative clauses and develops an analysis where the unmarked word order of Spanish clauses with different classes of verbs is not determined by syntactic conditions such as Case or agreement, but rather by structural conditions that are closely related to the thematic role of the different arguments of the verb. The analysis is based on a set of data that point to the conclusion that even though unmarked word order in Spanish is not determined by Case or agreement considerations, it is still mostly regulated by the EPP. However, these same data indicate that (a) the EPP is a requirement operative in some constructions but not in others, and (b) phrases other than the subject DP can satisfy the EPP. This paper develops an Optimality Theoretic account of these facts where the core of the analysis consists of introducing the notion of the Pole of the clause, defined as the highest specifier of the inflectional layer, and developing a set of markedness constraints whose interaction determines when and whether this specifier position is occupied. Central to this analysis are the characterization of the EPP as a violable constraint that requires the Pole specifier to be filled, and the use of Harmonic Alignment to formalize a hierarchy of markedness constraints that target the relative markedness of an argument or adjunct when it occupies the Pole specifier, independently of the grammatical relation it bears. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a methodology aimed at grouping Catalan verbs according to their syntactic behavior. Our goal is to acquire a small number of basic classes with a high level of accuracy, using minimal resources. Information on syntactic class, expensive and slow to compile by hand, is useful for any NLP task requiring specific lexical information. We show that it is possible to acquire this kind of information using only a POS-tagged corpus. We perform two clustering experiments. The first one aims at classifying verbs into transitive, intransitive and verbs alternating with a se-construction. Our system achieves an average 0.84 F-score, for a task with a 0.33 baseline. The second experiment aims at further distinguishing among pure intransitives and verbs bearing a prepositional object. The baseline for the task is 0.51 and the upperbound 0.98. The system achieves an average 0.88 F-score. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper it is argued that Langacker’s definition of grounding predications is problematic for languages other than English. The idea that in English tense and modal auxiliaries are mutually exclusive grounding elements leads Langacker (1990, 2003) to consider both deontic and epistemic modal auxiliaries as grounding predications, whereas he excludes German modals from being so on the basis of their tense inflection. In this paper I contend that, unlike the deontic modal verbs, and despite their tense marking, Spanish epistemic modals deber ‘must’, poder ‘may’ and tener que ‘have to’ are certainly appropriate for modal grounding due to their reference point function and to the subjectification they undergo. I show that deontic modality is more affected by temporal grounding than epistemic modality. Moreover, the impossibility of inserting an inchoative verb such as ir a ‘to be going to’ corroborates the theoretical underpinning that Spanish epistemic modals effect an epistemic grounding similar to that of the grounding predications in English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses some of the conceptual and semantic properties of entering events in the construction entrar en / a `enter in / to' in Spanish. The first part focuses on the question of how entering events are conceptualised in this language. Recent studies on entering events (Kita 1999) have shown that some of the semantic primitives considered central to the conceptualisation of motion are not necessarily present in all languages. Our starting point will be to test the validity of this argument in Spanish. We will show that Spanish entering events do depict a motion process from one point into another with a boundary crossing involved in most cases. However, we will also argue that the way in which this event is conceptualised varies with respect to two parameters: force dynamics (Talmy 1988) and profiling of events (Langacker 1987, 1991, 2000). The second part deals with the semantic differences brought up by the alternation of the prepositions a and en with the verb entrar. In previous analyses (Morera 1988:149; Gili Gaya 1990:254; Menéndez Pidal 1944:347; Roegiest 1980:94), the difference between choosing a or en was reduced to a diatopical variation based on a higher or lesser degree of dynamism. We will argue that the choice of preposition triggers other semantic interpretations where mechanisms such as metonymy, deixis, and scope play a fundamental role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

Besides its main use as a form of the movement verb ir 'to go', the Spanish form vaya (lit. go) is also used as a verbal discourse marker. Here we trace this transition from a purely verbal form to a discourse marker by searching a historical corpus of documents in Spanish, which reveals the increasing use over time of vaya in exclamatives to replace a presentational construction. We focus on vaya in isolation and in combination with an indefinite DP or a bare NP. We analyze the meaning of vaya as an epistemic discourse marker, by means of which the speaker expresses a judgment, a subjective epistemic and evidential evaluation of a proposition accessible from context. We postulate that these constructions sit in a Judgment Phrase at the syntactic-pragmatic interface (Krifka 2020), a position to which vaya also moves when its meaning is that of an expressive intensifier that directly modifies over one or more (contextually salient) properties of the noun contained in the DP/NP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article engages with the population process of terminal concepts in the nuclear Ontology of FunGramKB. The methodology employed is based on the COHERENT procedure, as our aim is to work on the subontology of #EVENTS by inserting some of the English and Spanish complain verbs that have not been created yet. Although the basic concept +COMPLAIN_00 is lexicalized by some units, lexical items such as boast, brag, object, reclamar, and clamar have not been included. These will be subordinates of +SAY_00 and described in COREL language. It is our purpose in this investigation to develop the terminal concepts of $BOAST_00, $DISAGREE_00, $OPPOSE_00, and $DISAPPROVE_00, which will complete the subdomain of complain verbs in these languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Borealis: An International Journal of Hispanic Linguistics is the property of Nordic Council for Reindeer Husbandry Research and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Borealis: An International Journal of Hispanic Linguistics is the property of Nordic Council for Reindeer Husbandry Research and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The main objective in this study is to describe and offer an account of verbal non-local doubling in Patagonian Spanish (PatSp), an understudied non-standard variety of Spanish in Argentina. We focus on data in which there are duplicated verbs surrounding an XP that bears the nuclear accent of the phrase (XPNA). First, our analysis describes the prosodic, semantic, and morphosyntactic behaviour of the data gathered. Second, we present the problems and challenges that doubling phenomena in PatSp pose for approaches that have tried to explain similar data in other Spanish varieties and other languages, such as the copy theory or prosodic cloning. Third, this work explores a biclausal analysis of verbal non-local doubling in PatSp in which each duplicate originates in a different clause, CP1 and CP2. In this approach, duplicated verbs (V1 and V2, according to their linear distribution) are not derivationally related. We also argue that the XPNA moves to the left periphery of CP2. This movement would account for the three typical traits of verbal duplication in PatSp: the mandatory adjacency between the nuclear accent and V2, the non-locality between verbal duplicates, and the semantic value of mirativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the New Mexico Spanish-English Bilingual Corpus, the present paper examines the variable position of the 1sg Spanish subject pronoun yo—pre- versus post-verbal—to consider the effect that code-switching may have on structural change. In an analysis of close to 700 tokens of yo, a rate of 16% post-positioning is found, which is within the range of post-position in non-contact varieties and thus contraindicative of the convergence hypothesis, in accordance with which the almost exclusive use of preverbal subject pronouns in English would predict lower rates of post-verbal yo in a converged contact variety. Moreover, by testing factors hypothesized to account for choice of post-posing yo using multivariate analysis, it is shown that bilinguals display similar constraints on yo post-positioning in New Mexican Spanish as monolingual speakers of Spanish, providing stronger support for an anti-convergence account. Results are discussed in terms of bilingual parallel activation, syntactic priming, and construction grammar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This variationist study analyzes the first-person subject pronoun expression (SPE) of speakers from Quito, Ecuador. To date, this morphosyntactic variable has not been explored in this Andean variety of Spanish. The data consists of 20 sociolinguistic interviews. Results reveal an SPE rate of 17%, comparable to other Andean Spanish varieties. As per Rbrul's quantitative analysis, the predictors that promote the presence of the 'yo' in this variety of Spanish are co-referential Priming, switch reference, ambiguous TMA endings and main clauses. In addition, following Orozco and Hurtado (2021), lexical effects of the verb were observed by analyzing the verb lemma. This predictor revealed similarly opposing tendencies between verbs in the same lexical category. This study adds to the growing body of SPE research by examining which linguistic variables influence the use of 'yo' in this Ecuadorian Andean Spanish (EAS) variety and comparing these results to those of other Andean Spanish varieties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study addresses a gap in the extensive literature on Spanish indirect objects by offering a study of unmarked datives (i.e., Ø eso le pones un papel de aluminio 'to that you put an aluminum foil'; PRESEEA 2001). Analyzed are the linguistic constraints on the variable absence of dative marker a 'to' in corpora of spoken Puerto Rican Spanish, in which the rate of marker absence is 33% (n = 380). Results of logistic regression analysis reveal that unmarked datives occurred with low frequency, non-prototypical dative verbs. Inanimate referents favored the absence of the dative marker, as did complex DPs, where the dative phrase and the clitic pronoun+verb are not adjacent. The findings are discussed from the twin perspectives of analogy as a mechanism of change and frequency effects: unmarked datives seem to most affect items at the margins of the dative category, in terms of both verbs and referents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current experiment employs a variational pragmatics perspective to explore how the contextual variables of power, distance, and imposition jointly affect social groups' and individuals' choice of verb forms in requests in Madrid, Spain. Using a mixed-method approach to explore the requests of 111 Spanish speakers from Madrid, quantitative analyses determined the level of significance and hierarchical order of the predictor variables of power, distance, and imposition on verb form and also the distribution of verb forms by gender, with male and female participants exhibiting significant differences. Additionally, certain participants demonstrated decreased sensitivity to contextual factors, adopting more categorically indirect or direct request strategies. The examination of both gendered request patterns and the stances that single participants adopt through their verb-form selections contributes to our understanding of the social moves that are made by all speakers, not just those who fall within the gendered norms. The results highlight the different frames and social meanings attached to these forms at the micro- and macro-social levels, providing new insight into the complex relationship among linguistic variables, contextual factors, and social groups and individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies on the constitution of the Spanish periphrastic system show that there is a great ease with which verbal periphrases admit different lexical items in the second verb slot as they go through their grammaticalization process. However, it has not been sufficiently explored whether the evolution of combinatorial patterns in near-synonymous periphrases follows similar grammaticalization paths. Adopting a constructionist, usage-based approach, we investigate the evolution of the so-called near-synonymous periphrases dejar de + inf and parar de + inf, as in Deja de/Para de gritar, 'Stop shouting.' More specifically, we discuss the semantic areas they cover, the functional distribution between the two throughout time, their evolution in terms of collostructional patterns, and their realized and potential productivity, paying special attention to the Aktionsart of the predicates in the Vinf slot. All tokens in the corpus were extracted from CORDE and analyzed in terms of morphosyntactic and semantic-pragmatic parameters, as well as contextual elements. We conduct a distinctive collexeme analysis to investigate which lexemes are strongly attracted or repelled by the Vinf slot in each construction. This analysis shows that the evolution of parar de + inf is not parallel to that of dejar de + inf and that there is a clear distribution of labor between the two constructions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the acquisition of syntax in L2 grammars. We tested adult L2 speakers of Spanish (English L1) on the feature specification of T(ense), which is different in English and Spanish in so-called subject-to-subject raising structures. We present experimental results with the verb parecer “to seem/to appear” in different tenses, with and without experiencers, and with Tense Phrase (TP), verb phrase (vP) and Adjectival Phrase (AP) complements. The results show that advanced L2 learners can perform just like native Spanish speakers regarding grammatical knowledge in this domain, although the subtle differences between both languages are not explicitly taught. We argue that these results support Full Access approaches to Universal Grammar (UG) in L2 acquisition, by providing evidence that uninterpretable syntactic features can be learned in adult L2, even when such features are not directly instantiated in the same grammatical domain in the L1 grammar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the expression of futurity in Spanish, specifically the periphrastic future (PF), the morphological future (MF), and the present indicative (PI) in heritage language learners (HLLs) and second language learners (L2 learners), a comparison that allowed us to explore whether linguistic experience provides HLLs an advantage over L2 learners in the domain of morphosyntax. These forms (PF, MF, and PI) are regulated by certainty, temporal distance, and the presence of temporal adverbials. Previous research showed that L2 learners acquire some of these linguistic constraints and that HLLs tend to reduce the MF to modal uses. Data from a contextualized acceptability judgment task completed by 46 HLLs and 42 L2ers manipulated for verb form, certainty, temporal distance, and adverb and revealed that (i) the PF and the MF were generally rated higher than the PI, (ii) HLLs were sensitive to the three linguistic factors examined, while the L2ers' sensitivity was modulated by proficiency, and, relatedly, (iii) the two groups differed in the effect of proficiency. For the L2 learners, an increase in proficiency led to a closer pattern to that of monolingual native speakers (only for temporal distance). Differences in exposure to and instruction in Spanish are discussed as possible sources of these differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai, Philologia is the property of Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper focuses on expressions of age combined with the verbs ser and estar in the Spanish of Guatemala and Mexico. It analyses the linguistic and extralinguistic factors favoring the extension of estar and the process of linguistic change involved in the expression of age in the two dialectal groups. Based on the analysis of three linguistic corpora from these communities (one from Ciudad de México and two from Guatemala), the results show, on the one hand, that estar is the most frequent copulative form, and, on the other, that some age-related adjectives favor the extension of the copulative form: chico, chiquito, grande. The paper concludes that age expressions with ser and estar are a feature of dialectal differentiation and, at the same time, an evolution of estar at the expense of ser. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this paper we will account for the semantic composition of a productive class of predicates in Mexican Spanish formed by lexical verbs that combine with a defective morphosyntactic clitic. Our analysis is that le corresponds to a lexical affix that is syntactically analysed as a defective High Appl head that selects for intransitive roots or intransitivized verbal bases, and projects a LeP. Semantically, le encodes an intensive meaning and imposes certain restrictions on the specific event schemas denoted by the V it may combine with. We show that le modifies the selected event by classifying it as an Action; and, in addition, the whole modified event may intersectively combine with a locus or goal property denoted by an external locative or oblique topic adjunct. Le is not an argument of the predicate, and therefore can be associated neither with a referential nor with a coreferential interpretation, but is not expletive either. This paper is relevant for showing how morphosyntax feeds semantics. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

It is the purpose of this paper to analyze the grammatical behavior of two elements of Southern Cone Spanish described in the relevant literature as affixes: re and ité. Both share a number of morphological, syntactic, and semantic properties. For instance, they may be combined with different categorial classes (adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, verbs, nouns, and sentences) and they receive a similar appreciative meaning ('very', 'much', 'certainly', 'great' or 'true', depending on the categorial combination). Besides, both are used in informal speech, in the Rio de la Plata Spanish, mainly among the young people (re), and in the Paraguaian Spanish in contact with Guarani (ité). The proposed analysis of these elements follows the lines of Distributed Morphology, intending to reduce both the number of lexical entries and the inventory of formal features in syntax. Additionally, we expect to make a contribution to the general discussion about the concepts of quantification and intensification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Psychogenic Motivation of the Signifier (stem-related) in Two Portuguese Verbs: Ser and Ir. Among the Portuguese verbs called "irregular", the most interesting are ser and ir. Like their Spanish and French counterparts, the specificity of these verbs is that they introduced in their semiomorphic structure a combination of [three] complementary stems (the so-called suppletive stems) in order to assert the systematic unity of the conjugation, from a psychic, ideomorphic point of view. Thus, the stem changes according to mood, kinetic ordination of universe time, and epoch (for the so-called personal moods), and even according to the rank and number of the support person. The principle of distribution, considered from a psychic point of view, is not arbitrary at all, as this paper will show [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the topic of retention in structural and semantic change. While much of the literature on grammaticalization has focused on uncovering the remnants of semantic nuances of lexical items contained in autonomous structures, recent proposals have argued for a parallel effect related to structural conditions. To address this issue, I survey the distribution of hacer 'to do/make'; + time constructions in Spanish used with either a punctual or durative meaning. Using a quantitative analysis of corpus data from spoken Spanish, I argue that hacer + time exhibits both (i) a general leveling across the constructional paradigm resulting in structural and semantic neutralization and (ii) retention of clausal features associated with the source construction, particularly with low-frequency collocates (e.g., hacía). The result of this process of grammaticalization is a type of syntactic 'blend' that expresses features both of a verb and an adjunctival element. The nature of this particular instance of structural and semantic change is argued to be distinct from cases discussed previously in the literature in that the hacer + time construction does not exhibit the same degree of structural autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an analysis of bare nominals unmarked for number (BNs) occurring in object position in Spanish and Catalan, on which the BN is a syntactic complement to the verb, but not a semantic argument. After describing the properties that distinguish BNs from other indefinite expressions (bare plurals, indefinite singulars preceded by un ‘a’, and bare mass terms), we argue that these BNs occur in a monadic syntactic configuration in the sense of Hale & Keyser (1998), that they denote first-order properties, and that they are combined with the verb via a modified version of Dayal's (2003) semantics for pseudo-incorporation. Specifically, the proposal consists of a lexical rule that generates the class of verbs that productively accept BN objects, plus a composition rule that treats the BN as modifier of the verb. We point out the advantages of this analysis over three other well-known semantic analyses for combining verbs with property-type nominals. Finally, we show how the analysis can be naturally extended to existential sentences, which combine with BNs although, prima facie, they do not appear to meet the lexical conditions for doing so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we analyze the Preterit (e.g. Estudié toda la noche) and the Present Perfect (PP) (e.g. He estudiado toda la noche) in the Lima variety of Peruvian Spanish (PER) and in Argentinian River Plate Spanish (ARG). PER and ARG have been described as "pretérito-favoring". We revisit this proposal and show that -- although the Preterit is widespread in both these dialects -- the use of the PP and the tendency for the Preterit to appear in PP contexts is crucially dissimilar. Based on a thorough analysis of a corpus of oral data (125,352 words), we argue that the different patterns of development in PER and ARG are best explained by the disparate PP usage in continuative and same day/ recent past contexts. We contend that conflating PER and ARG under the umbrella term "Latin American Spanish" does not account for observed usage in oral interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on recent work that argues in favor of a return to movement analyses for clitics (Uriagereka & Raposo 2005, Boeckx & Gallego , Roberts , ; Gallego), this paper explains why object clitics need to engage in probe/goal relations with agreeing verbs to value their Case features. A Case‐based account within Phase Theory (cf. Chomsky , ,) allows us to account for previously difficult to explain intervention and other displacement effects associated with these elements, and it also predicts clitic placement in a wide variety of ECM and causative constructions. Clitics in these constructions are sensitive to the timing and location of Case‐assigning mechanisms on the finite embedding verb, highlighting the importance of Case theory in deriving 'raising to object' phenomena in Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how syntactic knowledge interfaces with other cognitive systems by analysing the production of postverbal subjects, V(erb)-S(ubject) order, in an L1 Spanish-L2 English corpus and a comparable English native corpus. VS order in both native and L2 English is shown to be constrained by properties operating at three interfaces: (i) LEXICON-SYNTAX: the verb is unaccusative (Unaccusative Hypothesis); (ii) SYNTAX-DISCOURSE: the subject is focus (End-Focus Principle) and (iii) SYNTAX-PHONOLOGY: the subject is heavy (End-Weight Principle). We show that, since learners produce VS under the same interface conditions as native speakers, unaccusativity is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for VS production. However, learners overproduce VS and make persistent errors in their syntactic encoding. Our findings support recent proposals that these difficulties stem from problems at coordinating syntactic knowledge with knowledge from other external systems, but they suggest that the nature of such difficulties is not external to the syntax. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the difference between connectivity and anti-connectivity effects in specificational copular sentences is heavily influenced by semantics and information structure. It shows that anti-connectivity effects with respect to binding disappear when the influence of information structure is neutralized, whereas anti-connectivity effects with respect to scope result from the semantics of specificational sentences. These data lead to the conclusion that anti-connectivity effects cannot be used as evidence against a syntax-based approach to specificational sentences and binding, that the analysis of specificational sentences should include both a syntactic and a semantic device, and that the syntactic analysis of specificational sentences should rely crucially on their information structure. I present and adopt Heycock & Kroch's (2002) analysis for specificational sentences, in which connectivity effects result from the assembling of ground and focus. The fact that connectivity effects are also exhibited by verb-object-subject word order in French and Spanish, which is marked for the ground-focus partition, is presented as an important piece of independent evidence in favor of this analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Verba: Anuario Galego de Filoloxia is the property of Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, Servicio de Publicaciones and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

A vast amount of research has been carried out inspired by the motion event typology established by Talmy (1985, 2000), that of, verb-framed and satellite-framed languages. However, hardly any research has been devoted to either deeply analyse motion verb lexicons or to explore manner-of-motion verb granularity between languages typologically different or similar (cf. Slobin, 2003, 2006). This paper concentrates on an important subdomain of motion, i.e., human locomotion, and examines the way Spanish and English lexicalise it in verbs. The first part of the paper focuses on the semantics of human locomotion verbs with special attention to the sort of fine-grained manner information that each language encodes. In the second part, an empirical study on how Spanish and English monolinguals categorise human locomotion verbs into three motor pattern categories (Walk -- Run -- Jump) is reported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modal verbs are well-known to license ellipsis of their complements under certain conditions. In the literature on Spanish, such sequences, which I refer to as Modal Ellipsis (ME), have been traditionally argued to involve a null pronoun. These analyses therefore treat ME simply as an instance of Null Complement Anaphora (NCA). In this article, I scrutinize the data adduced in the literature on Spanish and defend that (i) ME in this language is different from NCA, and (ii) ME must involve PF-deletion of a TP node. Even though these claims are not new, I provide novel data in an attempt to clarify some of the controversial facts and claims that exist in the Spanish literature. In doing so, I strengthen the recent view of ME as a PF-deletion phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relatively little is known about how heritage speakers process language in real time, despite recent calls for the use of online methods such as self-paced reading, eyetracking, and ERPs (event-related potentials) in research on this early bilingual population. The present study addressed this gap with an empirical study of the online processing of heritage speakers of Spanish in the U.S. using self-paced reading, which is the online method that is most accessible to a wide body of researchers because it does not require specialized equipment. The processing target was related to the online integration of verb argument specifications, which was chosen because it does not involve ungrammatical sentences and therefore may be less likely to involve metalinguistic knowledge and less likely to put heritage speakers at a disadvantage than measures that rely on the recognition of grammatical errors. More specifically, this study examined an effect that occurs when a noun phrase appears after an intransitive verb, which can cause processing difficulty relative to a comparison condition in which the verb is transitive. The participants were 58 heritage speakers of Spanish and a comparison group of 16 first-generation immigrants raised in Spanish-speaking countries. Both groups showed the expected transitivity effect on the post-verbal noun phrase during self-paced reading, but the heritage speaker group also showed a spillover effect on the post-critical region. Among the heritage speakers, these effects were associated with lower self-ratings for reading skill in Spanish and with slower average reading speed during the experiment. Three theoretical accounts of the apparent susceptibility to spillover effects among heritage speakers are proposed: that it is a characteristic of shallow processing, that it is due to underdeveloped reading skill, and that it is an artifact of the self-paced reading method. The latter two possibilities are especially consistent with a role for reading skill in these results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Spanish copula verb estar is currently taking part in two of the most well-known paths of semantic change across different dialectal varieties of Spanish: (a) as a main copula verb, in its encroachment on the domain of ser, and (b) as the auxiliary in the Present Progressive marker, as it encroaches in the domain of the Simple Present form (i.e., Sánchez-Alonso 2018; Fuchs 2020). Here we argue for the hypothesis that estar's participation in both paths of change is not coincidental. Focusing on the copular use, we present arguments for the proposal that estar's encroachment is connected to its lexico-conceptual structure, which, under specific communicative pressures, is afforded greater conversational informativity, thus systematically expanding its licensing contexts and, as a result, bolstering its use. Evidence consistent with this analysis emerges from use variation for estar across several dialects of Spanish, both in its copular and auxiliary uses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigated the second language processing of grammatical mood in Spanish. Eye-movement data from a group of advanced proficiency second language users revealed nativelike processing with irregular verb stimuli but not with regular verb stimuli. A comparison group of native speakers showed the expected effect with both types of stimuli, but these were slightly more robust with irregular verbs than with regular verbs. We propose that the role of verb form regularity was due to the greater visual salience of Spanish subjunctive forms with irregular verbs versus regular verbs and possibly also due to less efficient processing of rule-based regular inflectional morphology versus whole irregular word forms. In any case, the results suggest that what appeared to be difficulty with sentence processing could be traced back to word-level processes, which appeared to be the primary area of difficulty. This outcome seems to go against theories that suggest that L2 sentence processing is shallow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study aims to throw light on the behavior of the Spanish copulas ser and estar in locative sentences, beyond their classical distinction in terms of Individual-Level (IL) versus Stage-Level (SL) predicates. The behavior of the Spanish copulas in locative contexts constitutes an oddity that we aim to probe here: events (concierto 'concert'), despite their clear spatial and temporal anchorage, combine with ser (El concierto es en París 'The concert is in Paris'), which is the copula typically associated with IL or permanent predicates. To do so, we discuss the behavior of copulas as locative verbs in a broader empirical context, where not just events and individuals are considered, but also other types of nominals, such as qualities and states. We argue that ser emerges with events because time and place constituents combine directly with events, without the intermediation of extra predicational structure. When carrying a marked value, that extra predicational structure triggers the insertion of estar; when there is no predication structure (such as with events) and when the predication structure is unmarked (IL predicates), ser appears as the default copula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines backgrounding strategies for human agents in Catalan Sign Language, that is, constructions featuring human agents that are non-referential. We identify and analyze four types of agent-backgrounding strategies: subjectless constructions, indefinite pronouns, the impersonal axis, and general nouns. Extending on previous work, we offer a description and a semantico-pragmatic analysis of each construction. [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]

The present article presents a corpus-based study of two near-synonymous verbs in Spanish: the locative verbs of putting poner and meter. Starting from the universal principle of linguistic economy, the paper aims to empirically identify potentially influencing variables that determine the native speaker’s choice between the two verbs. It is investigated whether and to what extent the choice is governed by a set of variables related to the nature of the locative movement itself and the characteristics of the participants taking part in the event. The difference between the near-synonyms is shown to be determined mainly by the direction of the locative movement, the semantic nature of the participants (animacy, concreteness), the reflexiveness of the event, as well as the cognitive construal of the locative event (the possibility of a container-reading). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) has long been characterized by its openness towards contributions from other fields. However, it has remained virtually uninformed by neuroscience. Such a disconnection has become all the more unfortunate since SFL ventured into the cognitive domain (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999). Opening a new avenue of disciplinary interaction for SFL, this paper reviews experimental studies on the neurocognitive basis of processes and verbs of doing, highlighting their manifold implications for the theory. Available data corroborates the SFL assumptions that these processes and verbs are (i) conceptually different from participants and nouns, (ii) functionally distinguishable from other process and verb types, and (iii) non-arbitrarily related to each other. Moreover, the evidence shows that (at least some of) the conceptual distinctions within semantics are naturally grounded in more basic (motor and perceptual) neurocognitive distinctions. This, we propose, calls for an elaboration of the stratified SFL model via the inclusion of a sensorimotor stratum. More generally, the article seeks to foster an empirically sound and theoretically relevant dialogue between SFL and promising approaches within cognitive neuroscience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-linguistic research on event typology has revealed considerable variation in the linguistic conceptualization of placement events. Previous studies on second language acquisition have primarily dealt with the semantic re-categorization of placement verbs in a second language, but placement constructions have received less attention. The present study fills this gap by examining the constructions used by Spanish learners of L2 Danish (B1 and B2 levels) and by monolingual speakers of both languages. Data were elicited by means of the PUT task consisting of oral video descriptions and then classified into six main placement construction categories based on their frequency and structure. Results from the learner group suggest learning difficulties when reconstructing the expression of placement events in L2 Danish. In contrast to L1 Danish data, learners (i) kept using their L1 Spanish basic placement construction more often, (ii) avoided semantically more complex constructions, (iii) employed fewer spatial particles, (iv) showed difficulties in selecting the L2 appropriate spatial particles for specific placement scenes, and (v) used non-caused motion constructions. These findings suggest the creation of a linguistic conceptualization pattern on the part of the learners that is different from the respective L1 and L2 monolingual patterns, thus providing further empirical support for proposals arguing that bilinguals’ multicompetence is not equivalent to those of two monolinguals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Answers to wh-questions are the most widespread method to elicit information focus. When studying the syntax of focus, however, this method is problematic because the most natural answer to a wh-question is often a fragment that only includes the focus. This problem has led to considerable controversy in the literature about the position in which information focus is realized, particularly for Spanish, but also for Catalan. In order to enhance the naturalness and reliability of the question-answer test, we designed an experiment with a new elicitation technique (i.e., questions with a delayed answer) in which some material is inserted between the question and the point in which the participant is asked to answer the question, so that the Catalan participants would spontaneously utter a full sentence instead of a fragment, without being explicitly instructed to do so. The material of this production experiment was then adapted in a rating experiment on the acceptability of preverbal and postverbal information foci in Catalan. The results of this second study confirm the findings of the production experiment: postverbal focus is always preferred over preverbal focus, both in the case of subjects and objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several studies have been carried out in various languages to explore the role of the main psycholinguistic variables in word naming, mainly in nouns. However, reading of verbs has not been explored to the same extent, despite the differences that have been found between the processing of nouns and verbs. To reduce this research gap, we present here SpaVerb-WN, a megastudy of word naming in Spanish, with response times (RT) for 4562 verbs. RT were obtained from at least 20 healthy adult participants in a reading-aloud task. Several research questions on the role of syllable frequency, word length, neighbourhood, frequency, age of acquisition (AoA), and the novel variable 'motor content' in verb naming were also examined. Linear mixed-effects model analyses indicated that (1) RT increase in with increasing word length and with decreasing neighbourhood size, (2) syllable frequency does not show a significant effect on RT, (3) AoA mediates the effect of motor content, with a positive slope of motor content at low AoA scores and a negative slope at high AoA scores, and (4) there is an interaction between word frequency and AoA, in which the AoA effect for low-frequency verbs gradually decreases as frequency increases. The results are discussed in relation to existing evidence and in the context of the consistency of the spelling–sound mappings in Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Borealis: An International Journal of Hispanic Linguistics is the property of Nordic Council for Reindeer Husbandry Research and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)