Antonio Fábregas

An argument for phrasal spell-out: Indefinites and interrogatives in Spanish

In this article we will provide evidence in favour of Phrasal Spell Out (PSO), a procedure of lexical insertion where non-terminal nodes in a tree configuration can be targeted by spell-out. We will propose that the formal differences between two Spanish indefinite pronouns, alguien and alguno , can be captured if the morpheme -ien is analyzed as a lexical item which corresponds to a syntactic phrase; this phrase, crucially, is broken in the presence of a plural number projection. Independent properties of the internal syntactic structure of the interrogative make the lexical item -ien compatible with plural in that configuration.

Differential Object Marking in Spanish: state of the art

This state of the art tries to cover as much as possible about the properties, conditions and analyses of Differential Object Marking (DOM) in Spanish. Starting with some considerations about the boundaries of the phenomenon, it considers its morphological, semantic and syntactic properties –with respect both to the internal properties of the direct object and to the wider context in which it appears–. It also reviews the other morphosyntactic phenomena that have been claimed to correlate with DOM, and finally goes through a number of analysis in different theoretical traditions to highlight the points of agreement and debate in the current literature.

A GUIDE TO IL AND SL IN SPANISH: PROPERTIES, PROBLEMS AND PROPOSALS

Abstract . This article provides with a state of the art of how the Individual Level / Stage Level distinction –and the related but distinct issue of the distribution of ser / estar– is instantiated in Spanish. We argue that the IL / SL distinction can be understood in two different ways: as a contrast between properties predicated of an individual or of a stage of that individual, and as a contrast between temporally persistent properties and temporary ones. The paper ends with a specific proposal about how to capture the distinction inside a structural system.

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.

A guide to subjunctive and modals in Spanish: questions and analyses

The goal of this article is to provide an overview of the range of phenomena that in Spanish are related to modal interpretations, with particular attention to the distribution and analysis of subjunctive. The main questions that are discussed in this article are (a) whether subjunctive can be characterised uniformly; (b) what the proper placement of subjunctive is in the functional structure of the clause, and how subjunctive interacts with modals that are placed in different areas; (c) what kind of analysis is necessary to account in an appropriate way for the different aspects of the grammar of subjunctive.

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.

Deriving individual-level and stage-level psych verbs in Spanish

Abstract Aspectual notions, although displayed most clearly in verbs, manifest across categories, with notions like (un)boundedness manifesting themselves in several instantiations which are sometimes specific of individual grammatical categories. This paper contributes to the ongoing debate on how aspectual notions emerge in different categorial domains by an analysis of subject-experiencer and object-experiencer psychological predicates (SEPVs and OEPVs, respectively). We review the evidence that SEPVs denote individual level (IL) states, and provide new facts – taken from the behaviour of participles – in favour of that diagnostic; we also argue that OEPVs should be classified as states of the stage level (SL) class. We argue that OEPVs denote states with an onset, which corresponds to the denotation of SLs. SEPVs simply denote states without boundaries, which we argue to correspond to IL predicates. Finally, we show how these two denotations follow without further assumptions from the structures proposed for SEPVs and OEPVs in previous work, specially Pesetsky (1995), making it unnecessary to postulate that the distinction is of lexical nature.

'Imperfecto' and 'indefinido' in Spanish: what, where and how

This article aims to providing the reader with an overview of the main facts and analyses about the syntax and semantics of imperfecto and indefinido in Spanish. §1 presents the main views of the nature of tense in natural language; §2 introduces the main distinctions and classifications of tense in Spanish, from a descriptive perspective; §3 does the same with aspect. §4, the core of the article, reviews the facts and the analyses about the famous imperfecto ~ indefinido distinction in the Spanish temporoaspectual domain. §5 takes stock of the facts in Spanish, and outlines some conclusions.

On the Locative Reading of Dimensional Adjectives and the Internal Syntax of Estar

Abstract In this article, we analyze a previously undescribed copulative construction with estar: one where the predicate, a dimensional adjective, denotes properties of the location occupied by the clause subject, as in La bandera está alta ‘The flag is placed in a high position.’ We show that this construction provides direct evidence for the analysis of estar as a morphophonological exponent that lexicalizes a copulative verb and a preposition, as proposed in Uriagereka (2001) and Gallego & Uriagereka (2009). We also show that the structure required to account for the locative reading of dimensional adjectives can be used to characterize the other readings where estar, as a copulative verb, is involved.

On why word phases cannot account for Lexical Integrity Effects

This article discusses the possibility that Lexical Integrity effects can be explained by proposing that words are syntactic phases, thus eliminating these effects from the set of phenomena that argue in favour of the autonomy of morphology. The proposal is discussed from both a theoretical and an empirical perspective, and it is shown, in the first place, that the phases proposed to give account of some of these phenomena do not behave like syntactic phases and, secondly, that syntactic phases would be insufficient to cope with the impossibility of pronominal coreference with word internal constituents. It is concluded that, given our present understanding of syntax, Lexical Integrity effects still argue for the autonomy of morphology.