Noms d’événement en espagnol: classement et proprietés

Este trabajo constituye un estudio de los nombres de evento. Se propone que deben ser divididos en dos clases, puros y trasladados, tales que los primeros siempre rechazan denotar un objeto efectuado o un resultado. Se exploran sus propiedades gramaticales y se muestra que han de ser distinguidos nítidamente de los nombres no eventivos que expresan temporalidad, por un lado, y de las nominalizaciones deverbales, por otro. El trabajo destaca también el hecho de que todos los nombres de evento, puros o trasladados, deben ser contables; esta generalización tiene consecuencias teóricas a favor de no tratar la semántica y la sintaxis como niveles independientes uno de otr

Una nota sobre la variación morfológica: las nominalizaciones en -dera en español

In this article we study a word formation process that involves the suffix -dera in some variaties of American Spanish, where it can give rise to event nouns with a meaning of intensity. After presenting its precise dialectal distribution and its semantic role, we contend that this process is related with the highly productive participial nominalizations in American Spanish, and, thus, that this case of morphological variation needs to be reduced to a more basic phenomenon

Diminutives as heads or specifiers: the mapping between syntax and phonology

This article provides evidence for an analysis where the properties of lexical exponents are determined by the position they occupy in the structure and the con!guration they establish with other items. It is argued that cross-linguistically and inter-linguistically, an item that can be introduced as a head or as a speci!er displays syntactic, semantic and phonological properties that can be fully accounted for in the con!guration. "e study concentrates on the case of diminutives in Spanish, German and Czech. We show, through di#erent tests, that diminutives can be introduced as heads, in which case they form a Command Unit with the noun or adjective with which they combine, and can therefore change the semantic and grammatical properties of that base and phonologically integrate with it. In other cases they are introduced as speci!er, so that when phrasal movement of the base takes place they belong to di#erent Command Units; in such cases they do not select for the base, they do not change its semantic or grammatical properties and they are not phonologically integrated with it. We argue that this account is superior to an analysis that uses any procedure where single lexical items are associated with sets of arbitrarily related properties

On Spanish Prepositional Prefixes and the Cartography of Prepositions

Despite its potential appeal, the possibility of analyzing prefixes as prepositions (and thus as syntactic objects) faces several problems related with selection, headedness and semantic isomorphism. In this article, I try to understand and solve these problems. I focus on prefixed nouns, and more specifically on the fact that some of them have their bases interpreted as grounds (precoma, 'something before a coma'), while others have them interpreted as figures (pre-cognition, 'cognition before something'). I will propose that in the structures where the base can be interpreted as figure or ground the prefix is a very low prepositional modifier of the noun and the two readings depend on the interpretation of a pronominal category introduced by the preposition. This configuration is forced by the absence of a functional category from the preposition's structure; when independent conditions force this functional category to be present, the figure reading is impossible and the prefix behaves as a preposition.Malgrat que és inicialment atractiva, l'anàlisi dels prefixos com a preposicions (i, doncs, com a objectes sintàctics), causa diversos problemes relacionats amb la selecció, la natura del nucli i l'isomorfisme semàntic. En aquest article abordem aquests problemes. Ens concentrem en els noms prefixats, i més exactament en el fet que n'hi ha que interpreten la base com a fons (pre- coma), mentre que d'altres la interpreten com a figura (precognició). Proposem que a les estruc- tures on la base pot interpretar-se com a fons o com a figura el prefix és un SP introduït com a modificador i que pren una categoria pronominal com a complement, mentre que en els casos on la lectura de figura és obligatòria el prefix és un Sp que té els efectes sintàctics propis de una pre- posició plena. La segona configuració és obligatòria quan hi ha certes condicions, que s'exploren en detall a l'article

Ideología y movimientos culturales: una nota sobre su influencia en la actividad lingüística

Una vista de pájaro sobre los movimientos culturales en Latinoamérica y su recepción en España nos muestra que se fue pasando progresivamente de cierta preconcepción de que las naciones hispanohablantes de América debían necesariamente aceptar la supremacía cultural de España, fundada en su precedencia histórica, hasta un planteamiento más policéntrico en el que, poco a poco, se iba aceptando la autonomía de las naciones americanas, hasta culminar en el concepto de panhispanismo, que es estándar en nuestros días, al menos sobre el papel. El objetivo de este trabajo es hacer una cala en esta evolución cultural y mostrar cómo se refleja en dos aspectos del estudio de la lengua: el diccionario y la gramática. Más en particular, exploraremos cómo la actividad lingüística de la Real Academia Española y la Asociación de Academias durante el siglo XX y los comienzos del XXI siguió un desarrollo que replica estos cambios culturales, pivotando sobre todo en los conceptos de unidad, diversidad y panhispanismo, que han sido centrales en la historia cultural reciente de Latinoamérica

Rising possessors in Spanish

In this paper we propose that some nominal structures involve rising of a possessive pronoun from a lower, defective nominal domain to a structure headed by a noun with which they do not hold any direct semantic relation. The conditions under which this operation can take place are explored. It can only happen when the lower domain is severely impoverished; it is introduced by a weak preposition that does not define a phase and when the PP is selected by the head noun as its complement.Este trabajo propone que algunas estructuras nominales tienen instancias de ascenso de un pronombre posesivo desde un dominio nominal defectivo hasta una estructura más alta, encabezada por un nombre con el que no guarda relación semántica. Esto puede suceder solo cuando se cumplen ciertos requisitos sintácticos, entre ellos que el dominio nominal bajo sea radicalmente defectivo y esté introducido por una preposición débil, incapaz de definir una fase, que el sustantivo más alto toma como argumento interno.Neste artigo propomos que algumas estruturas nominais envolvem a subida de um pronome possessivo de um domínio nominal defectivo mais baixo para uma estrutura encabeçada por um nome com o qual não possuem qualquer relação semântica directa. As condições sob as quais esta operação pode tomar lugar são exploradas: apenas ocorre quando um domínio mais baixo é severamente empobrecido, é introduzido por uma preposição fraca que não define a fase e quando o SP é seleccionado pelo núcleo nominal como seu complemento

(Axial) Parts and Wholes

In this article I identify some Spanish words as AxParts (Svenonius 2006) and I discuss their properties, some of which have already been noted in the previous literature. I show that there are three characteristics of these elements that contrast with English AxParts, and I provide an analysis that allows a unified analysis of AxParts in Spanish and English by deriving all three differences from the same independent property: the syntactic representation of part-whole relationships. A second contribution of this article is that I argue that the difference between two series of AxParts that have been identified in Spanish follow naturally if the members of one of the series select a DP as their ground, while those of the second series take a phonologically empty pronoun

The Exhaustive Lexicalisation Principle

In this article I revisit the well-known empirical problem of manner of motion verbs with directional complements in Spanish. I present some data that, to my mind, had not received due attention in previous studies and I show that some manner of motion verbs actually allow directionals with the preposition a, while all of them allow them with prepositions like hacia or hasta. I argue that this pattern is due to a principle that states that every syntactic feature must be identified by lexical insertion, the Exhaustive Lexicalisation Principle. The crucial problem with directional complements is that the Spanish preposition a is locative, in contrast with English to, and, therefore, unable to identify the Path feature. Some verbs license the directional with a because they can lexicalise Path altogether with the verb; all verbs can combine with hasta or hacia because these prepositions lexicalise Path. When neither the verb nor the preposition lexicalise the Path, the construction is ungrammatical

Are some interfixes appreciative morfemes?

Este artículo se ofrecen varios argumentos para considerar que los interfijos y los morfemas apreciativos son en realidad la misma clase de objetos, como sugiere Lázaro Mora (1999), lo cual permite tratarlos unificadamente como marcadores de la no prototipicidad de lo expresado en la base. Entre las consecuencias de esta propuesta se encuentra que no pueden asociarse los diminutivos específicamente al cotejo del género de la base.In this article we offer a series of arguments that interfixes and appreciative morphology belong in fact to the same class of objects (as Lázaro Mora 1999 suggests); this allows for a unified treatment of both as markers of the non-prototipicity of that denoted by the base. Among the consequences of this proposal we find the fact that diminutives cannot be specifically associated to the checking of the gender of the base