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This paper aims to provide a clearer understanding of the structure known in the literature as the innovative use of estar, illustrated in sentences like Luego salgo/voy a visitar usuarios que están muy morosos [Medellín, Colombia; Preseea] ("Today I am going to visit users that are.ESTAR defaulting debtors"). In such sentences, no comparison is established between stages or counterparts of the subject of predication with regard to the property expressed by the adjective, as opposed to estar-sentences in standard/general Spanish. This innovative structure is a syntactic scheme employed throughout different Latin American Spanish varieties. The goal of this paper is twofold: it is both descriptive and theoretical. From a descriptive perspective, it offers an exhaustive and updated empirical characterization of the extent of this structure in Latin American Spanish based on an analysis of the Preseea corpus. This description takes into consideration both its geographical distribution in the different Latin American dialectal varieties and the lexical–syntactic classes of adjectives that appear as predicates in innovative estar-sentences. Building on this, from a theoretical point of view, a critical evaluation is made of the existing proposals in the literature that explain the properties—both syntactic and semantic—of the innovative construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes the behavior of aesthetic adjectives (bonito 'beautiful') in the so-called innovative constructions with estar 'beestar', documented in some American varieties of Spanish. These innovative structures (El poema está bonito 'The poem is beautiful') do not compare stages of the subject with respect to an aesthetic property (as would be their meaning in general Spanish), but rather express a perspectivized assertion, linked to the subjective judgment of the speaker about a particular quality. The article explains this pattern of variation on the basis of the work by Gumiel-Molina, Moreno-Quibén and Pérez-Jiménez (2020) and Moreno-Quibén (2022), according to which the classes of adjectives that appear in perspectivized estar-sentences have undergone a process of argument augmentation. Aesthetic adjectives in innovative estar-construction have an experiencer in their argument structure in the varieties of Spanish where this construction is possible. This experiencer serves as the basis for establishing the comparison required by estar and ultimately gives rise to the subjective/perspectivized meaning of the copular structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the properties and distribution of the forms ser and estar when combined with adjectival complements in copular sentences in Iberoromance languages. The paper sets a detailed data paradigm that brings into light several differences between Western Iberian Romance languages (Galician, Portuguese, Castilian) and Eastern ones (like Catalan). The explanation relies on the hypothesis developed in Gumiel-Molina, Moreno-Quibén and Pérez-Jiménez 2015a to account for the properties of the «copula + adjective» structure in Spanish. The specificities shown by Catalan can be explained if one auxiliary hypothesis is assumed: a process of linguistic change is taking place in Catalan so that two estar forms coexist synchronically. Moreover, it will be proposed that the form estar in Western Iberian languages underwent a grammaticalization process that accounts for the fact that the so-called «evidential use of estar» is fully extended in these languages, but not in Catalan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of comparison class has figured prominently in recent analyses of the gradability properties of adjectives. We assume that the comparison class is introduced by the degree morphology of the adjective and present a new proposal where comparison classes are crucial to explain the distribution of adjectives in Spanish copular sentences headed by the verbs ser 'be' and estar 'be'. The copula estar 'be' appears whenever a gradable adjective merges with a within-individual comparison class, a modifier expressing a property of stages. The copular verb ser 'be' appears when a gradable adjective merges with a between-individuals comparison class, a modifier expressing a property of individuals. The distinction between relative and absolute adjectives can be reduced to the semantic properties of the modifier expressing the comparison class that is merged in the functional structure of the adjective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]