SE in Spanish

This article provides an overview of Spanish SE, covering the main empirical facts, analyses and theoretical issues that it raises, and exploring the prospects to unify all uses –which are over a dozen in the literature– under one same object that keeps its surface properties invariable. We will show that it is almost inescapable to propose that SE is associated to two types of objects, defective arguments and defective verbal heads; both objects share the property of not introducing referentially independent DPs, which can be argued to be the result of the grammaticalisation of a reflexive element in contemporary Spanish. The chapter proposes that a treatment of SE as a projection introduced high in the clausal structure and acting as an agreement locus can be a fruitful way to unify all uses of SE.

“Escribir artículo“: nombres singulares escuetos en posición de objeto en español rioplatense

En este artículo analizamos el comportamiento semántico-sintáctico de un grupo de nombres singulares contables en español rioplatense. Específicamente, nos referimos a los nombres singulares que aparecen en posición de complemento de verbos de presentación y de creación, como en presentó obra y escribió artículo. En primer lugar, presentamos una serie de diagnósticos que muestran que estos escuetos presentan las propiedades típicamente atribuidas a los fenómenos de seudoincorporación. Luego de ofrecer una descripción sistematizada, presentamos un modelo formal —inspirado en Dayal (2011) y Baker (2014)—, con el fin de capturar su naturaleza semántica y sintáctica seudoincorporada. En resumen, nuestro análisis propone que estos escuetos denotan una propiedad de un individuo y que alcanzan la proyección de SNúm. Asimismo, mostramos que los análisis anteriores —como el de Espinal & McNally (2011) y Rinaldi (2018)— centrados en los nombres singulares que aparecen como complemento de verbos de posesión, son insuficientes para dar cuenta del fenómeno que aquí nos interesa.

Decomposing Spanish dative clitics

In Spanish, dative clitics have standardly been analyzed differently from accusative ones. The apparent different constraints that regulate each of these clitic doubling constructions have been at the base of the differing analyses. In this paper, we will argue that in spite of the alleged differences, clitic doubling in Spanish (both accusative and dative) has more in common than meets the eye. In light of a generally neglected structure in which Spanish dative clitics may not show agreement with their plural double (a.k.a. le-for-les), we will argue for a decompositional analysis of Spanish dative clitics. For us, dative clitics instantiate an applicative (Cuervo 2003, a.o.) morpheme which may be combined with a Dº head (Uriagereka 1995). This analysis will allow us not only to explain the le-for-les phenomenon observed, accounting for its distribution and syntactic licensing, but also the definiteness interpretation that an agreeing dative clitic is subject to, in turn providing a uniform account for the parallelisms between accusative (i.e., purely Dº) and dative (i.e., Applicative + optional Dº) clitic doubling. Finally, certain contexts in which les surfaces and that fail to be accounted for under our proposal are provided an account in terms of “harmonic agreement,” while still keeping the analysis proposed to account for both new and old data and observations.

Correlations between Case and the D-system and the interpretability of Case

A correlation between articles and Case has long been noted based on diachronic evidence. Beyond articles, evidence supports that this correlation extends further to clitics and the determiner system (the D-system) at large. The D-system in turn supports referential functions in grammar and is closely correlated to Person. The aim of the present article is to link support for these facts to the broader foundational question and independent recent theories of the function of Case as governing referential meaning in grammar at the level of clauses. This link is supported by specific evidence from the use of Accusative and Partitive clitics in Romance, which play the same roles strong Accusative vs. weak Partitive Case play in Finnish, which lacks articles, and similar patterns in languages such as Turkish, Russian, and Latin. Case therefore arguably determines the referential function of (pro-) nominals as part of event structures, whether synthetically or else analytically via the left periphery of the NP. This explains the historical links between Case and the D-system, which we further argue evidence from Greek has been incorrectly argued to contravene.

¿Qué es 'Puentes entre trincheras'?

El editor de la revista escribe un breve comentario donde presenta al lector 'Puentes entre trincheras', la nueva sección de Borealis que iniciamos en su décimo aniversario.

Sociopragmatic variation in attention focus: 'mira', 'fíjate', and 'oye' in San Juan and Mexico City

Discourse markers of attention focus (enfocadores de alteridad in Spanish) frequently serve the purposes of drawing the hearer’s attention to what the speaker is saying, either to establish or maintain contact between the two interlocutors. The current study aims to determine whether the choice of appellative marker is socially or grammatically motivated. Using sociolinguistic corpora from two major Latin American cities, the study will analyze the variation among the markers. More specifically, are there extenuating factors that influence whether a speaker elects to use mira, fíjate or oye to focus the attention of the hearer? The study finds that the choice between markers in San Juan and Mexico City is conditioned by different markers in each locale and, additionally, hints that the style of discourse may have an effect on the prevalence of these markers in general.

"Macho": The singularity of a mock Spanish item

This paper scrutinizes the path of the semantic extension of the originally neutral Spanish term macho‘male animal’ to the pejorative ‘animal-like man’. Semantic pejoration belongs to one of the techniques that Hill (1995b) identifies when describing Mock Spanish, a type of racist discourse used by monolingual English speakers when using single Spanish words. My objective was to identify if the origin of this pejoration and its subsequent proliferation had some relation to Mock Spanish. Methodologically, this is conducted by means of a lexical research of diachronic corpora in Spanish and English. I trace the origin of macho as an exclusively Spanish and neutral term to an international word with a pejorative connotation. My analysis leads me to conclude that the semantic shift of macho, at least in its written form, developed in both sides of the Mexican-American border in the first half of the XX century. Macho as an ‘animal-like man’ acquires a negative meaning northwards and a positive southwards. The latter during the Nationalist uproars of the Mexican Revolution.

Regional perceptions of the 'ejque'

This paper explores the language attitudes of listeners from six different regions of Spain, Asturias, Castile and León, Castile-La Mancha, the Canary Islands, Catalonia and the Balearic Islands, towards a nonsibilant variant of coda /s/, the velarized /s/. This velar pronunciation, known by some as the ejque madrileño, has previously been found to index a Madrid identity for Madrileño listeners, though the traits ascribed such a speaker are quite negative. The current paper finds that like Madrileños themselves, participants from Asturias and Castile and León also associate velarized /s/ with Madrid. Participants from Castile-La Mancha, the Canary Islands, Catalonia and the Balearic Islands do not consider the velarized variant to be Madrileño. Furthermore, differing judgments of the nonsibilant /s/ are found among the regions tested, with participants from Catalonia and the Balearic Islands showing the most negative judgments while participants from Castile-La Mancha show no negative variable effect in their judgments. It is found that all of these out-group listeners do not show as severe of judgments as those seen by in-group members (Madrilenos themselves) in previous literature.

Futuro y condicional en las lenguas iberorromances

El futuro morfológico y el condicional en las lenguas iberorromances expresan tanto modalidad como temporalidad, pero cada vez más autores señalan que también pueden configurar evidencialidad. Los datos que se manejan a día de hoy proceden de escasos ejemplos o provienen de la introspección del propio investigador. En este artículo pretendemos dar cuenta de la vigencia actual del futuro y el condicional en todo el espectro iberorromance a través de las ocurrencias de una serie de corpus dialectales que reflejan habla oral y espontánea. La muestra cuantitativa permitirá precisar si ambos tiempos verbales se han convertido en marcas de evidencialidad, en qué medida alguno de ellos ha condicionado al otro y qué tipo de evidencialidad pueden denotar. Asimismo, analizaremos qué lengua es la difusora de evidencialidad, qué direccionalidad ha experimentado y hasta qué punto es posible atestiguar las diferentes etapas por las que estos tiempos transitan hasta su especialización como fuente de información.

La gramática de construcciones. Una mirada externa

En este artículo se analiza la Gramática de Construcciones como marco teórico, así como algunas de sus conexiones con otros enfoques, sean antiguos o modernos. El objetivo del trabajo no es oponerse a este modelo en su conjunto o defender una teoría alternativa a él, sino valorar sus aspectos positivos y destacar a la vez aquellos que no lo son tanto, examinados por un lingüista no constructivista. Entre los aciertos de ese marco teórico se resalta especialmente la concepción escalar o gradual de la composicionalidad, con notables consecuencias para la relación léxico-sintaxis. Entre los aspectos menos positivos se menciona la atribución de significado a las construcciones mismas, así como las dificultades que el modelo presenta para incorporar las relaciones sintácticas que se establecen a distancia.