Copular alternation in Spanish and Catalan attributive sentences
Abstract
This paper deals with copular selection in Spanish and Catalan attributive clauses. We develop an analysis of the copular alternation that is based on the relation of coincidence. Locative attributives, the class of copular sentences that has received less attention in the literature, are analyzed in detail. It is concluded that locative attributives express an abstract path; that is, a terminal coincidence relation between a figure (the entity that is located) and a ground (the location). The use of estar in these sentences is justified by the fact that this copula has an interpretable terminal coincidence feature that can license its uninterpretable counterpart in the attributive clause. Nevertheless, ser –the default copula– can also co-occur in locative attributives when the notion of bounded path is already incorporated in the entity that is being located. This is the case in Catalan, which uses a–a preposition that expresses a limit– instead of en –a central coincidence preposition. The copula ser also appears in the location of eventive entities and in path noun constructions. The terminal coincidence feature of estar can also superimpose a delimiting aspectual boundary to the attributive relation when there is no uninterpretable terminal coincidence feature to value in it. In these cases, evidential and sensorial readings are conveyed. Finally, a possible analysis is sketched for the differences in the selection of the copula between Spanish and Catalan with participles and perfective adjectives. It is suggested that the selection of estar in these cases may be due to the fact that both classes have a weaker functional structure in Spanish than in Catalan.
Downloads
References
Alexiadou, A., Haegeman, L. & Stavrou, M. 2007. Noun Phrase in the Generative Perspective. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Arche, M. J. 2006. Individuals in Time. Tense, Aspect and the individual/ stage distinction.Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Benveniste, É. 1960. Être et avoir dans leur fonction linguistique, Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris. 55: 113-134.
Bosque, I. 1990. Sobre el aspecto en los adjetivos y los participios. In: I. Bosque (Ed.). Tiempo y aspecto en español. Madrid: Cátedra, 177-214.
Bowers, J. 1993. The Syntax of Predication. Linguistic Inquiry. 24: 591-656.
Brucart, J. M. 2005. Las construcciones atributivas de localización. In: L. Santos Río, J. Borrego Nieto, J. F. García Santos, J. J. Gómez Asencio & E. Prieto de los Mozos (Eds.). Palabra, norma, discurso. En memoria de Fernando Lázaro Carreter. Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca, 167-185.
Brucart, J. M. 2010. La alternancia ser/ estar y las construcciones atributivas de localización. In: A. Avellana (Ed.). Actas del V Encuentro de Gramática Generativa. Neuquén: Editorial Universitaria del Comahue, 115-152.
Camacho, J. 2012. Ser and estar: the Individual/ Stage-level distinction and aspectual predication. In: J. I. Hualde, A. Olarrea & E. O’Rourke (Eds.). The Handbook of Hispanic Linguistics. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 453-477.
Carvalho, M. J. 2010. A variação ser/estar num corpus alcobacense medieval. Diacrítica. 24/1: 349-372.
Clements, J. C. 2006. Ser-estar in the Predicate Adjective Construction. In: J. C. Clements & J. Yoon (Eds.). Functional Approaches to Spanish Syntax. Lexical Semantics, Discourse and Transitivity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 161-202.
CREA. Corpus de referencia del español actual. Madrid: Real Academia Española. http://corpus.rae.es/creanet.html
Demonte, V. 1979. Semántica y sintaxis en las construcciones con ser y estar, Revista Española de Lingüística. 9: 133-171.
Demonte, V. 2011. Los eventos de movimiento en español: construcción léxico-sintáctica y microparámetros preposicionales. In: J. Cuartero Otal, L. García Fernández & C. Sinner (Eds.). Estudios sobre perífrasis y aspecto. München: Peniope, 16-42.
den Dikken, M. 2006. Relators and Linkers. The Syntax of Predication, Predicate Inversion, and Copulas. Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press.
Diesing, M. 1992. Indefinites. Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press.
Duarte, I. 2003. A família das construções inacusativas. In: M. H. M. Mateus, A. M. Brito, I. Duarte, I. H. Faria, S. Frota, G. Matos, F. Oliveira, M. Vigário & A. Villalva. Gramática da Língua Portuguesa. Lisboa: Caminho, 507-548.
Fábregas, A. 2007. An Exhaustive Lexicalization Account of Directional Complements, Tromsø Working Papers on Language & Linguistics: Nordlyd. 34: 165-199.
Fábregas, A. 2012. A Guide to IL and SL in Spanish: Problems, pending issues and a proposal. Ms. (to be published in Borealis, 1).
Falk, J. 1979. Visión de norma general versus visión de norma individual. Studia Neophilologica. 51: 275-293.
Fernández Leborans, M. J. 1999. La predicación: las oraciones copulativas. In: I. Bosque & V. Demonte (Eds.). Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española. Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 2357-2460.
Franco, F. 1984. “Ser” y “Estar” + Locativos en español. Hispania. 67: 74-79.
Gallego, Á.& Uriagereka, J. 2009. Estar = Ser + P. Paper presented at the XIX Colloquium on Generative Grammar. Vitoria-Gasteiz: Universidad del País Vasco.
García Méndez, M. J. 2008. La construcción ‘Ser + Participio’: rasgos característicos y diferenciadores en los estudios contrastivos de español – portugués. In: A. Moreno Sandoval (Ed.), Actas del VIII Congreso de Lingüística General. Madrid: Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 795-814.
Gehrke, B. 2007. Putting Path in Place. In E. Puig-Waldmüller (Ed.), Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung, 11. Barcelona: Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 244-260.
Grimshaw, J. 1990. Argument structure. Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press.
Hale, K. 1986. Notes on World View and Semantic Categories: Some Warlpiri Examples. In: P. Muysken & H. van Riemsdijk (Eds.). Features and Projections. Dordrecht: Foris, 233-254.
Halle, M. & Marantz, A. 1994. Some key features of Distributed Morphology. In: A. Carnie & H. Harley (Eds.), MITWPL 21: Papers on phonology and morphology,Cambridge (Mass.): MITWPL, 275-288.
Holtheuer, C. 2011. The distribution of ser and estar with adjectives: A critical survey. Revista Signos. 44 (75): 33-47.
Huddleston, R. & Pullum, G. K. 2002. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jackendoff, R. S. 1990. Semantic Structures. Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press.
Kayne, R. S. 1994. The Antisymmetry of Syntax. Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press.
Kratzer, A. 1995. Stage-Level and Individual-Level Predicates. In: G. Carlson & F.J. Pelletier (Eds.). The Generic Book. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 125-175.
Leonetti, M. 1994. Ser y estar: estado de la cuestión. Barataria. 1: 182-205.
Levin, B. & Rappaport-Hovav. M. 1995. Unaccusativity: At the Syntax-Lexical Semantics Interface. Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press.
Maienborn, C. 2007. On Davidsonian and Kimian states. In: I. Comorovski & K. von Heusinger (Eds.). Existence: Semantics and Syntax. Dordrecht: Springer, 107–130
Marín, R. 2010. Spanish adjectives within bounds. In: P. Cabredo Hofherr & O. Matushansky (Eds.). Adjectives: Formal analyses in syntax and semantics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 307–332.
Masullo, P. J. 2008. The Syntax-Lexical Interface. Prepositionalizing Motion Verbs in Spanish. Ms. University of Pittsburgh.
Morimoto, Y. 2001. Los verbos de movimiento. Madrid: Visor.
Moro, A. 1997. The Raising of Predicates: Predicative NPs and the Theory of Clause Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pustet, R. 2003. Copulas. Universals in the Categorization of the Lexicon. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Resnik, G. 2010. Los nombres eventivos no deverbales en español. Doctoral dissertation. Barcelona: Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
Rizzi, L. 1997. The Fine Structure of the Left Periphery. In: L. Haegeman (Ed.). Elements of Grammar. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 281-337.
Romero, J. 2009. El sujeto en las construcciones copulativas. Verba. 36: 195-214.
Salazar, V. 2004. Ser y estar en expresiones locativas. In: M. Villagrande (Ed.). Actas del V Congreso de Lingüística General. Madrid: Arcolibros, 2495-2506.
Stowell, T. 1983. Subjects Across Categories, Linguistic Review. 2: 285–312.42.
Uriagereka, J. 2001. Adjectival Clues. Paper presented at the 5th Hispanic Linguistic Symposium. Acquisition of Spanish & Portuguese. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Vañó-Cerdá, A. 1982. Ser y estar + adjetivos. Un estudio sincrónico y diacrónico. Tübingen: Gunter Narr.
Zagona, K. 2008. Ser and estar differ in both structure and aspectual features, presented at Chronos 8. International Conference on Tense, Aspect, Mood, and Modality, University of Texas at Austin.
Zagona, K. 2011. Ser and estar: Phrase structure and aspect. In: C. Nishida & C. Russi (Eds.). Selected Proceedings from Chronos 8. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1-20.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2017 Linguística Revista de Estudos Linguísticos da Universidade do Porto
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
