The Internal Structure of Perfective Adjectives: States and Blocking (original) (raw)

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, ...

The Semantic Characterization of Predicate Adjectives in Spanish

2003

Until recently, the semanticity of adjectives in Spanish had previously been relatively unexplored. The range and scope of adjectival categories is a lot more intricate and varied than a preliminary overview might reveal. The importance of studying the adjective is its dynamic nature since it is the grammatical constituent that brings the most complexity to any utterance. In rescinding an adjective from any given utterance, the meaning is not always substantially affected (Demonte 453), but the utterance stands to lose some of its intricacy and definition. The objective of this text is to present the way the copulative verbs ser and estar work with adjectives, and to introduce some of the most important issues related to that function. First, the notion of predicate complements is discussed, and then the specific case of predicate adjectives is explained. Then, the role of copulative verbs and more specifically how they affect the semantic nature of the predicate adjective is covered, along with the syntactic and semantic features needed in order to characterize the use of the two copulative verbs in Spanish. Finally, the semantics of the adjective position is briefly discussed, and then a few conclusions are drawn, as the directions in which a future research in the subject could point are indicated.

Spanish participios activos are adjectival antipassives

The Linguistic Review, 2017

n many languages a set of adjectives are characterized by their “past/passive” participial morphology. Lexicalist and syntactic approaches to word formation converge on the claim that such adjectives can be derived from verbal inputs with no external argument but never from verbal inputs with an external argument. That is, there are “adjectival passives” but no “adjectival antipassives” marked with the same morphology. I argue that a sub-class of adjectives marked with the “past/passive” participial morpheme

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 perfective aspect in english and portuguese: a constrative study on semantic basis

Alfa Revista De Linguistica, 1980

An exam of the occurrences of the PRESENT PERFECT in English was made in such a way as to establish the prevailing semantic features of this verbal form. It was verified up to what an extent the meaning of the PERFECTIVE thus characterized is expressed in the corresponding Portuguese sentences in the PRETÉRITO PERFEITO. It was found that in Portuguese the verbal inflexion itself characterizes in a much smaller degree the PER-FECTIVE ASPECT.

Spanish adjectives within bounds

The present paper reexamines the relationship between the two Spanish copulas ser "be" and estar "be.locative" and the i-level/s-level contrast. It is shown that the compatibility with the copulas does not yield an adequate classification of adjectives as i-level or s-level, if this distinction is defined in terms of boundedness. Additional criteria for boundedness have to be taken into account, namely the compatibility (i) with certain pseudo-copular verbs, (ii) with adjunct predicates and (iii) with absolute constructions. Adjectives like enfermo ('ill'), which in addition to their compatibility with estar can appear in all these contexts, can be properly considered bounded. Among so-called ambivalent adjectives at least two types can distinguished: nervioso ('nervous') type adjectives are compatible with ser and are also allowed in any of the other s-level-contexts, while viejo ('old') type adjectives allow ser and estar, but do not pass any of the other tests for boundedness. Finally, within the class of IL adjectives, it is also necessary to introduce a distinction between adjectives of behavior, like /discreto/ ('discreet'), which under certain circumstances can be coerced to appear with estar, and relational adjectives like /vegetariano/ ('vegetarian'), which cannot be coerced.

On the edge. Nominalizations from evaluative adjectives in Spanish

Romance Linguistics 2012. Selected Papers from the 42rd LSRL. Ed. by J. Smith and T. Ihsane , 2015

In this paper we examine the elements, structure and formation process of derived categories, by analyzing the properties of nouns derived from adjectives. We will discuss the event structure underlying them and argue that, although it is commonly assumed that deadjectival nouns denote qualities (wisdom, beauty) or states (sadness, perplexity), there is a group of deadjectival nominalizations (imprudence, cruelty) that refer to occurrences of events (Beauseroy, 2009). We show that such occurrential nominalizations are possible only when derived from evaluative adjectives. This is due, we argue, to the fact that such adjectives can be predicated of events in addition to the sentient individual (Stowell, 1991). Finally, we furthermore show that the existence of a structure of origin with the relevant properties does not guarantee the existence of the derived category, leaving what seem to be gaps in the universe of possible derivations.

Aspectual Interpretation in Spanish of Adverb-Modified Verbal Forms

2002

express what in the literature is known as "Continuative Perfect", and held that this aspectual variety focalises an event from its beginning until an internal point, without focalising its end. He further proposed a classification of aspectual varieties whose first and foremost division was that between conclusive and inconclusive events. Imperfect and Continuative were regrouped within the first division, Continuative being considered as an aspectual variety different from the Perfect. The aim of the present paper is, in the first place, to cover the possible morphological expressions of the Continuative and study which ones are shared with the Imperfect aspect. We will later establish the restrictions imposed upon them by the different Aktionsarten. We will furthermore analyze the relationships between the Continuative and the Imperfect aspect variety called "continuous", and, lastly, we will provide an explanation for the obligatory use of certain adverbial complements in the Continuative's expression. *. A shorter version of this paper, written in collaboration with Luis García Fernández, was presented in October 2001in Münich at the 27th German Conference on Romance Languages, Linguistic panel « Verbal Periphrases ». I wish to thank in his name and in mine all the comments and suggestions, especially the ones made by Daniel Burgos and Brenda Laca. This paper was supervised by Luis García Fernández, to whom I am greatly indebted. Needless to say, all the errors are mine.