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This paper analyzes the semantics of the French and Spanish prepositions en from the point of view of diachrony. We focus on the spatial variation of their usage in both languages. Our methodological approach is based on a corpus analysis. We draw on comparable ancient texts and analyze some semantic categories that are fundamental for the spatial description. Our results reveal a fairly active evolution of prepositions with increases and decreases of usage where we did not expect them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The semantics of zero-derivation/conversion has attracted renewed interest both as a subject of description and as a means towards refined descriptions of the process. This paper takes the latter stance and compares which semantic categories occur in zero-derivation/conversion and in overt affixation in two languages with a different morphological model: English and Spanish. For attestation and distribution of the semantic categories, the paper relies on a stratified sample of denominal verbs collected from two comparable corpora: the British National Corpus and the Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual. The sample consists in sets of ca. 50 denominal verb-forming resources, one per affixation process, namely affixation by -ate, -(i)fy, -ize/-ise, -en, en- in English, a-...-ar, en-...-ar, -ear, -ecer, -(i)ficar, -izar in Spanish, and zero-derivation/conversion in both languages. The results are contrasted within and across affixes/processes, within each language and across the two languages for the adequacy of a description as zero-derivation or as conversion. Statistical analysis shows that the process/affixes form a cline with overlaps and closer associations between specific affixes/processes and semantic categories, but no clear divide between zero-derivation/conversion and the rest of processes as far as the semantic categories are concerned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the second most widely spoken language in the City after English, Spanish in New York has long been the object of scholarly attention. Recent publications have reported on work based on data from the Otheguy-Zentella corpus, one of the largest corpora of spoken Spanish ever gathered in the United States. The corpus provides the common thread for research in this issue, which addresses problems having to do with phonology, lexicon, and grammar in Spanish in New York. Some of the papers address issues of language contact, others look at Spanish in the City without reference to the influence of English. The data from the corpus consists of naturalistic speech samples obtained from both first- and second-generation speakers from a variety of Latin American origins. The papers deal with the relationship between loanwords and collocations, the role of efficiency in determining which patrimonial words are retained and which replaced by loanwords, the nature of suprasegmental variation in phonology, and the variable use of subject personal pronouns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a compositional interpretation of Spanish simple conditional morphology (cantaría 'would sing') in independent sentences set within the semantic situations framework. It proposes that Spanish simple conditional morphology is composed of (a) a past component that encodes a topic situation, (b) a universal future operator with either an epistemic flavor or a temporal (i.e. historical) flavor/accessibility, and (c) a universal imperfective operator with a variety of flavors. Based on the interactions of these three components, the paper develops derivations for (1) past-oriented inferential readings that distinguish Spanish from French and Italian, (2) future-oriented conditionals involving past plans, which are apparently shared with French and Italian, and (3) future-in-the-past conditionals, where Spanish appears to resemble French and differs from Italian. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Spanish reverse-psychological verbs, the experiencer argument can have accusative or dative case marking. Transitivity-based approaches identify different factors that influence this accusative-dative alternation(Miglio, Viola G., Stefan T Gries, Michael J Harris, Eva M Wheeler & Santana-Paixão Raquel. A strong predictor for accusative case marking in Spanish r-psych verbs is the animacy of the stimulus. However, there are also instances where the stimulus is inanimate and the experiencer is case marked accusative. In this paper, I provide an analysis of such instances, drawing on corpus data and native speaker judgments. I argue that agentivity, measured on a scale, is a factor that better accounts for the accusative-dative alternation exhibited by Spanish reverse-psychological verbs. I first propose a definition of agentivity and diagnostics for it; then I present evidence that there is a correlation between higher degrees of agentivity and accusative case marking and lower degrees of agentivity and dative case marking. The agentivity scale presented is not unconditional as there are several factors that contribute to case marking. Nevertheless, the agentivity scale accounts for accusative case marking with inanimates and also serves to highlight some parallels between causative verbs and reverse-psychological verbs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

This paper compares the diachronic development of tornar( e)+ a+infinitive (henceforth abbreviated RETURN+INF) constructions in Spanish, Catalan, and Italian, a topic that especially for Catalan and Italian has not received much attention. I develop and explore the hypothesis that due to their lexical origin, iterative constructions develop from a restitutive to a repetitive function. A diachronic analysis of a corpus of RETURN+INF tokens from the three languages suggests that the grammaticalization of RETURN+INF constructions can be measured in terms of (a) actionality and (b) restructuring as mirrored in the possibility of clitic climbing. A statistical analysis using generalized linear mixed-effects regression modeling demonstrates an interplay between restructuring and the actionality of the predicates in the development of RETURN+INF constructions: the grammaticalization process affects state, achievement, and accomplishment predicates before activity predicates because activity predicates exclude a restitutive meaning. The paper thus identifies a grammaticalization path for RETURN+INF constructions common to three Romance languages that suggests a link between typological and diachronic observations. At the same time, it identifies differences in the diachronic development of these periphrases between the Ibero-Romance languages and Italian. In addition, it proposes a statistical means of assessing quantitative differences in the degree to which a verbal periphrasis is grammaticalized across related languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines a special pattern of tautological constructions - a is a and b is b - in Spanish and Russian. The phenomenon was first described by A. Wierzbicka, who cited Rudyard Kipling's "East is East and West and West," referring to it as "double tautologies" with the associated meaning of "irreducible difference." Later, J. Meibauer called this pattern "coordinated tautologies" (CT) and suggested that they carry the implicature that "the referents of the respective subject NPs should be kept distinct, should not be confused, etc.". In the present study, we address the issue of compositionality in the construction and interpretation of CT. The data taken from Spanish and Russian corpora listed in the appendix and an Internet survey conducted with 91 native Spanish speakers prove that "irreducible difference" is not a necessary ingredient in the interpretation of and-conjoined tautologies, nor is it its only argumentative point. We also argue that "irreducible difference" is not associated with this pattern alone (it can also appear in tautologies linked by the conjunction but, or without any conjunction) and that the exact number of conjuncts is not limited to two. Later, we discuss how exactly the frequent contrastive interpretation arises. Finally, we conclude that coordinated tautologies are not fixed form/function pairs; rather, the meaning they encode can be accounted for in regular compositional terms, and their different interpretations are the result of pragmatic enrichment in which the encoded meaning is combined with contextual information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internationally recognized brands are an increasingly essential asset for present-day companies. This paper takes a cognitive perspective on the semantics of commercial brands (and their related logos), and explores the role of image schemas in endowing them with a cross-culturally significant core meaning. Two surveys were carried out among speakers of four different languages (i.e., English, Spanish, Chinese, and Arabic) in relation to the logos of several car categories (minis, family cars, 4 × 4s, and sports cars) and a limited set of image schemas (CONTAINER, FORCE, and ATTRIBUTE). The analysis of the results reveals a consistent correlation between the participants' semantic interpretation of the car brands, and the basic meanings deriving from the image schemas included in their logos. The outcome of the surveys also points to the existence of potential constraints on the universal reach of image-schematic-based communication. These limitations emerge either from the combination of image schemas with additional idealized cultural models, or from the use of specific richer configurations of the image-schematic visual cues at work. In this connection, the present study explores the inventory of visual configurations available for the representation of the image schemas under scrutiny, assesses their universal significance, and raises awareness about differences in the cross-cultural communicative effectiveness of the various layouts of a given image-schematic cue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of whether different linguistic patterns differentially influence semantic and conceptual representations is of central interest in cognitive science. In this paper, we investigate whether the regular encoding of shape within a nominal classification system leads to an increased salience of shape in speakers' semantic representations by comparing English, (Amazonian) Spanish, and Bora, a shape-based classifier language spoken in the Amazonian regions of Columbia and Peru. Crucially, in displaying obligatory use, pervasiveness in grammar, high discourse frequency, and phonological variability of forms corresponding to particular shape features, the Bora classifier system differs in important ways from those in previous studies investigating effects of nominal classification, thereby allowing better control of factors that may have influenced previous findings. In addition, the inclusion of Spanish monolinguals living in the Bora village allowed control for the possibility that differences found between English and Bora speakers may be attributed to their very different living environments. We found that shape is more salient in the semantic representation of objects for speakers of Bora, which systematically encodes shape, than for speakers of English and Spanish, which do not. Our results are consistent with assumptions that semantic representations are shaped and modulated by our specific linguistic experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to provide a clearer understanding of the widely discussed topic of grammaticalization of constructions. One unresolved problem concerns the identification of the relevant constructional level of language change, i.e., either the substantial level of specific occurrences or the schematic level of generalizations. Another issue addressed in many current analyses is the degree of schematicity of analogical forces. The present case study addresses these questions in the context of Spanish binominal quantifiers, basing its claims on synchronic and diachronic corpus analysis. The synchronic layering of uses in Present-Day Spanish-which encompasses quantifying and premodifying uses in addition to literal head uses-will be argued to reflect the outcome of grammaticalization. The synchronic as well as diachronic semantic clustering of binominal quantifiers and the prototype function of high-frequency montón de 'heap of' are hypothesized to result from the close interaction between analogical thinking and conceptual persistence. In line with the usage-based approach to language change, the dramatic increase in frequency observed for quantifying montón de will lead me to distinguish several constructional levels of change and to establish a schematic 'N1 de N2' pattern linked to quantity as a driving force. The strong collocational preferences characterizing the individual binominal constructions, the systematicity of the premodifying use and the tendency to reinforce conceptual elements of the original head use will be accounted for by considering the quantity assessment of the (schematic) binominal string as just one possible realization of co-extensiveness, in addition to quality assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the semantic features of the so-called “neuter” in the demonstrative system of Modern Spanish and presents a diachronic analysis of the semantic as well as morphophonological changes which have taken place from Latin to Spanish. We show that the semantic features commonly assumed as being associated with gender (or classification), and more particularly, with the “neuter”, (e.g., [(in)animate]), are not able to capture the semantic difference between “neuter” and feminine / masculine, neither in Latin nor in Spanish. For Latin, we argue that the relevant difference for this classification is based on the fact that the neuter is underspecified for a feature [discrete] (vs. presence of the feature [discrete] for masculine / feminine) and elaborate a feature geometry for demonstratives which captures this fact. As the opposition between [discrete] and [non-discrete] is strictly speaking not a matter of classification, i.e., one of gender, but a specification of the operation of individuation, this leads ultimately to the reduction of the Latin classification-node in the geometry and to the Modern Spanish feature geometry. There, the absence of [individuation] results in what mistakenly is called “neuter”, i.e., in expressions whose referent does not have to be individuated (vs. feminine/masculine, with a specified feature [individuation]). We present a detailed morphophonological analysis of the Latin pronominal morphology, which is based on a realizational approach and which uses case feature decomposition and the morphological schemes proposed by Wiese (Zur lateinischen Nominalflexion: Die Form-Funktions-Beziehung, IDS Mannheim, 2003). This analysis leads us to the conclusion that there are no specific morphological schemes for the neuter in the Latin demonstratives (Vd, i.e., /ud/, being the mere default in our analysis). The most intriguing fact here is the absence of genuine neuter endings in the plural, both in Latin and in Modern Spanish. We do not consider this a mere coincidence, but as a hint at the fundamental semantic change mentioned above, the feature [individuation] being superordinate to [group] (for plural). Finally, we describe the important morphological change in the pronominal system from Latin to Spanish, i.e., the reduction from a five-case-system to a two case-system, in detail and argue, based on the notions of underspecification and default, that Spanish /o/ just preserves the default status of Latin /ud/, being thus no “neuter” gender marker at all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many languages that display Differential Object Marking (DOM) and Clitic Doubling (CD), like Spanish and Romanian, show specificity restrictions in both grammatical environments. This paper is devoted to the problem of explaining why specificity effects are present in those constructions. I intend to give an answer to two interrelated questions: (i) What kind of connection holds between the two kinds of object marking?; (ii) How do specificity effects arise in both cases? An answer to question (i) involves a reexamination of the fundamental intuition behind so-called ‘Kayne's generalization’, i.e., the assumption that CD requires the object to be case-marked. I claim that the systematic co-occurrence of CD and DOM in certain languages is simply an effect of their semantic contribution to the proposition expressed. As for question (ii), my claim is that there is no unified account of specificity restrictions. In CD, they originate in the [+definite] feature of the clitic and the interpretive requirements it imposes on the associate DP (Gutiérrez-Rexach 2001): when the associate is an indefinite DP, the only way it can obey the matching condition established by the definite clitic in the doubling configuration is being assigned a specific (partitive or discourse-linked) reading. DOM, on the contrary, is not associated with specificity by means of definiteness and discourse-dependence. The basic property that triggers specificity constraints in DOM contexts, whatever it may be, does not give rise to the same presuppositionality effects and anaphoric readings that CD forces. Thus, specificity effects derive from different semantic features in the two constructions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a semantic analysis of several contrasting properties between the Spanish plural existential determiners unos 'a-pl.' and algunos 'some-pl.' is presented within the framework of Discourse Representation Theory (DRT). Some of these properties can be directly related to the distinction between the thetic and the categorical judgment, as understood by Kuroda and Ladusaw. Others, related to plurality and the interaction of quantifiers, provide evidence for an extension of the scope of the distinction and its implementation as a procedural semantic difference. It will be argued that the determiner unos contributes a group discourse referent to a Discourse Representation Structure (DRS). This discourse referent is subject to a no linking constraint, and does not trigger box-splitting of the DRS. This forms the basis for the claim that this plural determiner participates only in thetic judgments. On the other hand, the determiner algunos is not subject to a no linking constraint and may contribute a duplex condition to the DRS. Thus, it can participate in categorical judgments. This type of judgment corresponds to a set of construction rules which yields an updated DRS in which a new discourse referent has been introduced and, in contrast to the thetic judgment, a linking condition and a duplex condition are introduced. The analysis is extended to account for the effects of contrastive focus and scopal interactions with other operators in the semantics of Spanish existential determiners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advertising language in peninsular Spanish has been the subject of extensive study due to its innovative nature and richness of expression. Most attention has been paid to the communication processes involved, its linguistic functions, and its shortening communicative mechanisms at morphological, lexico-semantic and syntactic levels; however, the functions of English and German loanwords and the reasons for their remarkable productivity in advertising written texts have been addressed less frequently. Using data from a 200,000 word personally gathered linguistic corpus extending throughout the period 1998–2007, I focus on the reasons and factors that are responsible for the high productivity of these lexical Anglicisms and the noteworthiness of Germanisms in contemporary press advertising peninsular Spanish. The analysis here examines their semantic nature following a semantic typology adapted for the special tecnolect of advertising. Under discussion will be, among others, the main reasons which may account for the high productivity of loanwords in advertising language with special reference to several examples and a presentation of the results obtained comparing both Anglicisms and Germanisms regarding their semantic categorization and the corresponding considerations that derive from it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In some Romance languages, including French and Spanish, there is an interesting asymmetry concerning the behavior of isolated clitics and clitic clusters with respect to coreference. In the French example Anne croit qu'on va la lui recommander pour la promotion 'Anna thinks that they will recommend her to him for the promotion', the accusative clitic la 'her' in the embedded clause cannot corefer with 'Anne' when a dative clitic, lui 'to him', co-occurs in the cluster. The only previous account of this constraint () attributes this to a binding restriction. Based on new data disentangling binding and logophoricity, we show that the generalization capturing the distribution of clitics clusters in French and Spanish is the following: an accusative clitic cannot be clustered with a dative clitic if the accusative clitic refers to a logophoric center and is read de se. We derive this antilogophoricity effect from perspective conflicts, which we represent as intervention effects in the presence of a single logophoric operator in the relevant domain. This analysis furthermore provides a semantic motivation for intervention effects that have been postulated for the Person-Case Constraint (PCC), which we hypothesize also derives from perspective conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The frequency of expressed first-person-singular subjects is significantly higher in European Portuguese (EP) than in Peninsular Spanish (PS). In both languages, subject expression is sensitive to the relative focusing of attention on different participants of the event and same/switch reference. In addition, in both PS and EP, subject-pronoun usage with the most frequent verb lexemes shows a tendency to grammaticalization. The different grammaticalizing constructions account for part of the differences found between the two languages. In addition to examining the variable subject pronoun expression in PS and EP, the article discusses the use of semantic roles in cross-linguistic analysis and the role of frequency and formulaicity in grammaticalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although both constituent order and variation in the expression of pronominal subjects are well-established research topics in Hispanic and Lusophone linguistics, the placement of pronominal subjects has received relatively little attention in previous research. The goal of the present study is to fill this gap by examining postverbal pronominal subjects in spoken Peninsular Spanish and European Portuguese using data from the Corpus del Español and Corpus do Português, taking into account such factors as verb semantics and transitivity. It is shown that the factors affecting the placement of pronominal subjects differ from those related to nominal subjects, as pronouns typically represent old information in discourse. Pronominal subjects are relatively uncommon in the postverbal position in both languages, but especially in European Portuguese where they appear mostly in grammaticalized constructions (e.g. quotatives). The postverbal placement of pronominal subjects is often related to non-topical status of the subject and serves a backgrounding function in discourse. It is most frequently associated with twoargument verbs characterized by low transitivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims at focusing on a set of phenomena related to the syntax and semantics of bare count nominals. We will show that bare count nominals unmarked for number (BNs) can occur both in object argument position and in predicate position, and can form denominal verbs. This is because, in syntax, BNs can only occur as internal arguments of relational categories (V, P) to which bare nouns can move and conflate at some point during the syntactic derivation (Hale & Keyser, Prolegomenon to a theory of argument structure, MIT Press, 2002). On the other hand, BNs -- being property denoting expressions -- can neither occur as internal arguments of unaccusative and complex transitive verbs nor as external arguments due to a structural constraint on subjects / specifiers (Kallulli, The comparative syntax of Albanian. On the contribution of syntactic types to propositional interpretation, University of Durham dissertation, 1999): they must be properly licensed by appropriate functional categories. The novelty of this article is to relate the occurrence of bare nominals with the argument structure position in which they may occur at a syntactic level of representation, and to explain the relationship between argument structure and the interpretation of bare nominals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We conduct quantitative analyses of 5,569 tokens of Spanish word-final /s/ in the speech of Spanish/English bilinguals and monolinguals to test the Exemplar Model of Lexical Representation. We establish that reduction (aspiration, deletion) of word-final /s/ in the speech of New Mexico is significantly lower in Spanish words whose English translation equivalent has a word-final /s/ and significantly higher in words with no word-final sibilant in their English counterpart. The same crosslinguistic similarity effect is not found in a nearly identical (monolingual) variety of Spanish (Chihuahua), owing, we argue, to the lack of influence from word-final /s/ in English. Results of variable rule analyses reveal that the bilingual exemplar connections are not uniform across all words. Rather, the crosslinguistic ties are strongest where more phonological, orthographic, or semantic overlap can be posited (i.e., cognates). Results provide evidence of bilingual lexical connections in support of an exemplar model of lexical representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the reasons for an argument to be chosen as sentence topic are discussed. I argue that a topic expression can be prototypical or not, depending on how its thematic/semantic properties reflect humans' preference to talk about certain things and not others. Although subjects are mostly prototypical topics, I show that a non-subject topic is prototypical with predicates that select a patient subject and an IO with protoagent properties but volition (psych-verbs, unaccusative verbs). Constructions like passives or arbitrary subjects may also have a prototypical topic object. As for nonprototypical topics, they are generally left dislocated direct objects. Their presence is justified by the fact that discourse needs may overrule the requirement of a topic to be prototypical. In particular, they are used in contrastive contexts. It follows that whenever a topic is non-prototypical, it is automatically interpreted as contrastive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the past decade several large, freely-available online corpora of Spanish and Portuguese have become available. With these new corpora, researchers of Spanish and Portuguese can now carry out the same type of corpus-based research that has been done for other languages (such as English) for years. This includes advanced research on morphological and syntactic variation (thanks to full functionality with substring searches, part of speech tagging, and lemmatization), semantics and pragmatics (via collocates, synonyms, customized word lists, and word comparisons), and historical changes and synchronic register variation (via architectures and interfaces that allow easy comparisons of frequency in different sections of the corpus). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of the marker a with a direct object in Spanish is an instance of Differential Object Marking (DOM), which is cross linguistically a well-documented phenomenon. In Spanish, there are two main dimensions that determine a-marking of direct objects: (i) the semantic and (discourse) pragmatic properties of the direct object, such as animacy, definiteness, specificity and topicality; and (ii) the lexical semantics of the verb, such as aktionsart properties and selectional restrictions with respect to the position of the direct object. Diachronically, a-marking spreads along the Referentiality Hierarchy from personal pronouns and proper names to definite and finally indefinite noun phrases, a process that has been well examined. In this study, I focus on the influence of the lexical semantics of verb classes on this process. I present original findings from two corpus searches from the 12th to the 20th century. The data show that the diachronic evolution of a-marking crucially depends on the verb semantics of the governing predicate, and that the change proceeds according to the Constant Rate Hypothesis of Kroch. These findings suggest that a-marking in Spanish, and DOM in general, can only be described in a multi-dimensional space consisting of the semantic properties of the direct object and the lexical semantics of the verb. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is often assumed that idiomatic constructions basically involve non-compositional meanings (Katz and Postal 1963; Fraser 1970; Chomsky 1980, among others) or special syntax-semantics correspondences (cf. Jackendoff 1990, 1997a, b, 2002). However, we agree with those linguists who claim that there are aspects of idioms that are compositional (Marantz 1996, 1997; Nunberg, Sag, and Wasow 1994). In this article, on the one hand, assuming Hale and Keyser's (2002) configurational theory of argument structure, we show that a class of idiomatic constructions which can be found in both “satellite-framed languages” like English and “verb-framed languages” like Catalan and Spanish (Talmy 1985, 1991, 2000) involves different applications of a lexical syntactic process of conflation. Unlike Jackendoff (1990, 1997a), we argue that the relevant crosslinguistic variation must be expressed in l(exical)-syntactic terms rather than via correspondence rules. On the other hand, assuming Marantz's (1996, 1997) division of labor between the computational system and the encyclopedia, we show the relevance of syntactic argument structures in structuring the compositional meaning of an idiomatic construction, and that of distinguishing between syntactically transparent compositional meanings and syntactically non-transparent non-compositional ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I will deal with sentences consisting of preposed locative phrases and postverbal determinerless subjects. Most generative grammarians have analyzed these sentences as examples of unaccusative or unaccusativized predications, in which the postverbal determinerless phrase is characterized as an internal argument. I will claim, however, that these agreeing determinerless phrases are nominative constituents inherently predicative, which get referential content and argument status, thus triggering a proper agreement relation with the verb inflection, its extensional nucleus. In addition, I will argue that the sentences in focus, headed by intransitives (unaccusatives and pure intransitives), but also by transitive verbs, are complex existential predications composed of a locative main predication modified by an activity or accomplishment secondary predication. I will explain also why the preposed locative phrases are obligatory and must fill the topic. Complex existential predication sentences in Spanish will be compared with ne-cliticization in Italian and there-insertion sentences in English. The semantic representation is based on Van Valin and LaPolla (1997). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The distribution of Spanish focused and depreciative bare plurals presents a problem for standard syntactic accounts within the Government & Binding paradigm, either based on the notion of government or on incorporation mechanisms. It is argued that a minimalist account is superior to the previous ones because the licensing of focused and depreciative bare plurals can be integrated in the general theory of feature movement. This operation takes place in constituent structures allowing multiple specifiers and relating the focus feature with other features of the D and the C systems. Evidence is provided of the checking of a focus feature in these two domains, a fact that supports the symmetric pattern of licensing of focused (and depreciative) hare plurals in matrix and embedded contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores one case of semantic and syntactic shift of a single word in the Spanish language; namely the development of Latin gustare among the Romanic languages of the Iberian peninsula. In particular, an attempt is made to link, in a partially causal manner, the semantic shift and the syntactic evolution of the various reflexes of gustare, and to outline the possible mechanism of a semantically motivated syntactic change. It was shown that the semantic evolution of a verb resulted in an immediate discrepancy between the deep semantic structure and the surface structure, and required the application of an additional transformation to map between these two levels.