Causativity in Southern Peninsular Spanish

The different patterns of the direct (i.e., lexical) causativization exhibited by intransitive verbs are a fundamental topic in the lexical semantics area. The possibilities and restrictions observed in the causativization of intransitives have always triggered divisions in their classification beyond the classical unergative-unaccusative distinction. Spanish is an interesting language in which to explore the limits between possibilities and constraints regarding this phenomenon, given the syntactic variation exhibited by its different dialects. This chapter focuses on variation in the form of contrasts between intransitive predicates that resist lexical causativization in Standard Spanish, such as caer “fall” and entrar “go in,” but allow it in certain Southern Peninsular Spanish dialects such as Andalusian, looking at the relationship between such patterns and other phenomena such as the eventive structure obtained as a consequence of the composition of the verbs under study and other syntactic elements such as reflexive se.

Mass/Count Distinctions in Ibero-Romance Dialects

Some Ibero-Romance dialects show neuter agreement with uncountable nouns. According to data recently compiled in dialect corpora, mass neuter agreement varies according to word classes, being most frequent in pronouns and moderate in adjectives. Pronouns, both overt and null, regularly give rise to mass neuter agreement. Both the syntactic position of the predicate (attributive or predicative) and the predicate type (individual-level [IL] or stage-level [SL] predicate) play a role in triggering mass neuter agreement. Mass neuter agreement is strongly associated with SL predicates, and it proposed that it’s an extension of the so-called Romance neuter, or agreement with nonlexical antecedents, for it implies the syntactical cancellation of gender and number. The origins of neuter morphology should be thus found in the demonstrative neuter pronouns, from which it gradually extends in steps regulated by the syntactic distance between mass antecedents and the agreeing predicates.

Reportative que in Mexican Spanish

This work further investigates the use of a complementizer-like particle que in Spanish with a reportative meaning. The reportative QUE in Mexican Spanish shows an unparalleled behavior as an evidential: it is the only Spanish variety—considering Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula—in which que may appear preceding nonclausal constituents DP, NP, and PP. It will be further shown here that this unexpected property must obey two prosodic restrictions: a pause and a certain intonational pattern are mandatory when the nonclausal constituent is postverbal. Even though the reportative QUE may acquire modal overtones (of doubt or [ad]mirativity), it is not inherently modal, unlike the adverbial dizque and the Mexican innovation según que, which are inherently modal. It is proposed here that the Mexican reportative QUE is the natural extension of the complementizer que of verba dicendi; it is also contended that QUE becomes a grammaticalized reportative evidential.

Contrastive Focus in Yucatecan Spanish

This chapter provides a description and analysis of contrastive focus constructions in Yucatecan Spanish, the dialect of Spanish spoken in the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico. In this variety of Spanish fronted focus constructions are notoriously common. Closer inspection, however, shows that fronted foci in Yucatecan Spanish behave in a way that is markedly different from that of any other variety of Spanish that we are aware of. We provide evidence in favor of the hypothesis that the particular Yucatecan Spanish focus fronting constructions observed in Yucatecan Spanish originate from language contact between Yucatecan Spanish and Yucatec Maya (the Mayan language spoken in Yucatán; ISO code: yua). The main reason is that the syntax of the Yucatecan Spanish focus constructions is strikingly similar to that of comparable constructions in Yucatec Maya.

Clitic Doubling in a Doubling World

This chapter places Clitic Doubling in Argentinean Spanish into the broad perspective of pronominal doubling phenomena. A series of diagnostics is presented based on the interaction of Clitic Doubling with its PF/pragmatic effects, on the one hand, and its syntactic/LF effects, on the other. An important conclusion is that Clitic Doubling must be kept apart from Clitic Right Dislocation and Clitic Left Dislocation. Clitic Doubling is thus conceived of the morphological reflex of the abstract composition of object DPs; concretely, it is an A-dependency triggered whenever the object possesses a [person]-feature, an observation called the Person Feature Condition. So, under the minimal assumption that [3P] features can be optionally encoded on lexical DPs in Argentinean Spanish, but that it is only specified for pronouns in other Spanish dialects, variation facts associated with this phenomenon are explained. By the same token, the different behavior of doubled and nondoubled objects in several syntactic/LF configurations also follows.

Polarity Questions with Fronted Foci in the Spanish of the Basque Country

In the Spanish variety spoken in the Basque Country, a set of directive speech acts is performed with absolute questions with an OV(S) word order such as Una sidra me pones? “will you serve me a cider?” This essay analyzes the structure, interpretation, and possible origin of these constructions, examining how their structure has a “split focus” whereby the left-dislocated element is really focal but rather than being “the focus” of the sentence it stands in a split-focus construction with the polarity of the absolute question (e.g., “[one cider]F -[polarity]F?”). A possible catalyst for the emergence of these structures is the language-contact situation in the Basque Country: Basque is an OV language with a dedicated focus position at the left periphery, and I suggest that transfer of the information structure strategies of Basque into Spanish may be a crucial factor for the emergence of this type of constructions.

Introduction

This introduction offers a summary of the antecedents, goals, and prospects of the present volume. On the one hand, it emphasizes the important role of this collection of papers. It’s the first attempt to provide a global characterization of the syntactic variation of Spanish dialects. This is a very rich, but largely unexplored, area of inquiry, a situation that is probably due to a combination of various factors: lack of theoretical tools, interest in more easily observable (lexical, phonetic, or morphological) differences, etc. On the other hand, it introduces chapters that show varying and complementary formal approaches to the study of the syntactic phenomena of both American Spanish and European Spanish dialects.

Caribbean Spanish and Theoretical Syntax: An Overview

This chapter provides an overview of the main phenomena of syntactic variation that correspond to Caribbean Spanish. It also develops a critical review of the formal analyses proposed in the literature to account for them. After a short theoretical introduction, the presentation of the data is organized into two groups. The first is devoted to constructions that are characteristic of the area under study (including Mexico, Central America, Antilles Islands, Colombia, and Venezuela). The second reviews constructions also found in other territories, but more frequently attested in the Caribbean area. The set of constructions studied relates to major aspects of Spanish grammar, such as the pronominal system, wh- constructions, infinitival subjects, agreement, possessives, cleft constructions, and negation, among others.

Dialectal Variation in Clitic Placement in Andalusian and Asturian Spanish Negative Infinitival Imperatives

This chapter investigates a novel syntactic contrast regarding the placement of clitics in negative root infinitival sentences with imperative illocutionary force in two varieties of Iberian Spanish, (Lower) Andalusian and (Central) Asturian Spanish. Data reveals a stark difference in clitic directionality in second person plural imperatives with infinitives: whereas positive imperatives involve postverbal clitics in both dialects, negative imperatives involve enclisis in AndSp but proclisis in AsturSp, a phenomenon reminiscent of Italian negative singular imperatives. Under a PF-merger+copy-and-delete approach, imperatives involve an affixal null F head that must merge with a PF-adjacent host. This analysis allows for a uniform syntactic treatment of the relevant construction in the two dialects, the difference between the two varieties reducing to PF considerations. This approach also makes use of the same machinery employed to account for the infamous ban on negative imperatives operative in languages like Greek and Spanish, which provides novel crosslinguistic support for the analysis The evidence adduced here also has consequences for verb height and word order as well as for the architecture of the clausal left edge.

On Left-Peripheral Expletives in Central Colombian Spanish

This chapter analyzes a construction involving an expletive-like demonstrative, eso, which appears in the left periphery of the clause in dialects of Spanish spoken in Central Colombia and Venezuela, two closely related null-subject varieties. This expletive is optional, it can only appear preverbally, and is mostly restricted to declarative matrix clauses. When it appears in questions, they can only be interpreted as echo (noninformational) questions. It is incompatible with a wide focus interpretation; rather it introduces a contrast with some discoursive item or some salient element in the context. The essay builds on previous proposals for related optional expletives in Romance, which propose that optional expletives are subjects of predicational cleft-like structures such as it is true that where some parts have been deleted. The current proposal suggests that eso is the subject of a predication whose predicate is the full clause. The expletive, in turn, links to the preceding discourse.