Search

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]

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 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]