Spanish participios activos are adjectival antipassives (original) (raw)

Origins and development of adjectival passives in Spanish. A corpus study

New Perspectives on the Study of Ser and Estar, ed. by Pérez-Jiménez, Isabel, Manuel Leonetti and Silvia Gumiel-Molina (eds.) , 2015

To date, it has generally been assumed that most contemporary uses of Spanish estar ‘be.loc’ arose some time after the use of ser ‘be’, and that the former eventually took over most uses of the latter. Previous analyses of diachronic change in estar claim that the usage of this verb became generalized as a result of some reanalysis or grammaticalization change, presumably taking over the result state and locative uses of ser. In this paper we wish to go one step further and investigate the questions of how adjectival passive estar + participle emerged in Spanish and how it extended its usage at the expense of ser based on an empirical analysis of data coming from a large corpus of Spanish texts from the 12th to the 20th century. We propose that the first and most frequent uses of estar determined the way the participial construction emerged and further extended itself, gradually usurping uses of ser, and that the language change mechanism which drove this development was analogy. More specifically, we argue that this development was driven by the analogical relations established between participles appearing with this verb and locative prepositional phrases.

Tracing the development of Spanish participial constructions: An empirical study of semantic change

2012

The main aim of this thesis is to trace the development of four different constructions involving auxiliaries and participles through the history of the Spanish language. These constructions are the perfect construction expressed by haber 'have'+ past participle (PTCP), the verbal passive expressed by ser 'be'+ PTCP, the adjectival passive expressed by estar 'be. LOC'+ PTCP and the stative possessive expressed by tener 'tener. POSS'+ PTCP. Specifically, in this thesis I explore changes in the interpretations of these periphrases, ...

Spanish adjectival passives with a progressive reading

Isogloss, 2022

This paper addresses Spanish adjectival passives with estar showing a progressive reading. In the previous literature, it has been acknowledged that the participles of verbs encoding non-dynamic events, such as vigilar 'guard', give rise to a progressive reading when embedded in adjectival passives. Yet, we have identified another group of verbs, those of the type of perseguir 'chase', which denote dynamic atelic events (i.e., activities) and whose participles are also attested in estar-passives with a progressive denotation. This is a very significant finding, since it is commonly assumed that only participles of verbs including a stative component in their event structure (i.e., telic or stative verbs) can be part of adjectival passives. After comparing the behaviour of these two types of verbs, we propose that they share a relational layer that in the case of vigilar-verbs defines an event as non-dynamic and in the case of perseguir-verbs defines a motion event as

The Spanish ‘present participle’: lexical elaboration of a morphosyntactic gap?

Romanistisches Jahrbuch, 2022

The Latin present participle in ‑nte(m) did not survive systematically in Romance. In Spanish, although a small number of forms in ‑nte may be considered inherited words, the overwhelming majority are cultured borrowings (cultismos) which hugely contributed to the elaboration of the written language; many have also diffused into everyday usage and are amongst the commonest words in the contemporary language. Such substantial cultural borrowing also paved the way for internal creations and later morphological calques from English forms in ‑ing, as a result of which forms in ‑nte are continuing to grow in both numbers and frequency. However, despite what may be seen as cultured experiments in the more systematic elaboration of a true present participle category in Spanish, forms in ‑nte came into competition with adjectives formed with the agentive suffix ‑dor, in which they were subject to restrictions of both an aspectual and pragmatic nature. This article traces the successful diffusion of ‑nte forms and suggests reasons which hindered their regaining total productivity.

The argument structure of adjectival participles revisited (with Artemis Alexiadou, Florian Schäfer)

Lingua 149B:118-138, 2014

In this paper, we argue that adjectival passives across languages do not seem to differ in terms of the presence/absence of verbal layers (v, Voice), and we provide morphological evidence for this claim from German, English, and Greek. Particular restrictions observed with adjectival passives compared to verbal passives, such as a more limited availability of event-related modification, are best accounted for under a semantic explanation. In particular, we propose that it follows from an account according to which the underlying event of adjectival passive remains in the kind domain, due to the category change from verb to adjective.

Passives of Spanish Subject-Experiencer Psychological Verbs are Adjectival Passives

Probus: International Journal of Romance Linguistics, Vol. 34, Issue 2, pp. 367–395, 2021

This paper argues that <ser 'to be' + past participle> constructions with subject-experiencer psychological verbs are adjectival passives, contra the received view that <ser + past participle> constructions are verbal passives across the board. We put forth a battery of morphological, syntactic and semantic tests to support our claim. The divide, we argue, is based on the individual-level/ stage-level distinction, rather than on the lexical category of the participle. We provide a theoretical, aspect-based account that generates the distribution of ser and estar in verbal and adjectival participles and paves the way for a comprehensive analysis of the ser and estar distribution across other constructions where the alternation is attested, such as underived adjectives and prepositions.

The Lexical Integrity Hypothesis and the notion of irregularity: the case of Spanish participles

2016

The research that underlies this article is supported by projects DGI BFF2003-06053 ("Léxico-sintaxis del español. Clases de predicados verbales") and HUM2004-04235-C02-01/FILO ("Límites intercategoriales: las categorías híbridas. Teoría, descripción y aplicaciones"). The authors gratefully acknowledge Mark Aronoff, Olivier Bonami, Gilles Boyé, Carlos Piera, Angeliki Ralli and the audience of the 5th Mediterranean Morphology Meeting for comments and insightful remarks.