María Cristina Cuervo

The End of Argument Structure

Includes papers that explore the issues and re-assess generally accepted premises on the relationship between lexical meaning and the morphosyntax of sentences by confronting two competing approaches to this issue.

Double Objects in Spanish as a Second Language: Acquisition of Morphosyntax and Semantics.

This experimental study on the acquisition of the double-object construction in Spanish as a second language (L2) by a group of first language (L1) English adults investigates the role of Universal Grammar (UG) and its interaction with L1 in two modules of grammar: morphosyntax and semantics. The double-object construction in Spanish differs from its English counterpart in its morphosyntactic properties (case, clitic doubling, word order) and its semantics (interpretation of arguments and restrictions on the construction). Results show that L2 learners are sensitive to most of the morphosyntactic properties of the double-object construction but lag behind in the acquisition of its semantics. The experimental group shows evidence of UG-constrained acquisition in their sensitivity to morphosyntactic properties not instantiated in their L1 as well as in their nontarget but UG-licit analysis of the semantic restrictions of Spanish double objects. The dissociation between level of knowledge of morphosyntax and of semantics suggests that modularity of grammar is reflected in SLA exactly as it is in L1 acquisition. I am extremely grateful to Suzanne Flynn, Joyce Bruhn de Garavito, Andrew Stringfellow, Laura Colantoni, and Ana Teresa Perez-Leroux for their generous assistance in terms of comments, encouragement, sharing of materials, and statistical analyses. I also want to thank the teachers and students that participated in the study as well as three anonymous SSLA reviewers for their useful comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this article.

LA ALTERNANCIA CAUSATIVA Y SU INTERACCIÓN CON ARGUMENTOS DATIVOS

Este trabajo investiga la alternancia causativa y su compatibilidad con diversos tipos de argumentos dativos. Se desarrolla un analisis constructivista de la alternancia segun el cual tanto la construccion transitiva causativa (Pablo rompiola radio) como la intransitiva incoativa (Se rompio la radio) son construcciones igualmente complejas, bi-eventivas, que comparten el estado resultante (la radio rota) y se diferencian por el tipo de evento superior. Se propone que existen dos tipos de predicados transitivos (causativos y simples -no causativos) y dos tipos de predicados inacusativos (incoativos y simples) que participan en construcciones sintacticas distintas y, por derivacion, diferenciadas semanticamente. La propuesta ilumina el analisis de los argumentos dativos y permite dar cuenta de contrastes sistematicos en las propiedades sintacticas y semanticas de argumentos dativos con verbos transitivos e inacusativos simples, por un lado, y causativos e incoativos, por el otro. Se muestra como la interaccion entre los dos analisis ilumina la relacion entre sintaxis y semantica.

Spanish clitic clusters

This paper deals with a small set of data from clusters of three clitics in Spanish that questions the empirical adequacy and scope of previous analyses of clitic clusters in Romance. It is shown that the output of the Spurious se Rule is not identical to genuine se, at some level that is relevant for linearization of clitics within a cluster. A proposal is presented to capture the neglected data, and this is done in a way that illuminates the debate on the division of labour in clitic phenomena between phonology, morphology and syntax. Central questions in morphology, such as ordering of operations, syncretisms, linearization principles and consequences of lexical insertion are addressed and re-examined.

1: Remarks On Argument Structure

This volume explores a basic but central question that drives much of the current research in formal syntax. Simply put, this question asks where the various components used to create a clause come from. This area of linguistic research has been investigated in the last few decades within a certain domain called argument structure (AS), and within the generative framework, there are two competing approaches (with variants). This chapter offer remarks on the nature of argument structure designed to set the stage for the various contributions included in this volume. As such, they are not meant to exhaustively present the state of the art in this area of linguistic research, and the references cited here should be complemented by the ones found in the subsequent chapters. The last section of this chapter provides a short summary of the papers included in this volume. Keywords: argument structure; linguistic research