Yucatec Spanish displays a type of sentence that appears to mix elements of an active impersonal and a passive. For example, “te castigaron por mi tío” may be interpreted as “you were punished by my uncle”, where a by-phrase headed by the preposition por introduces an agent rather than a cause or reason. The verb has active morphology—it is always third-person plural, and accusative clitics (e.g., te) and DOM-marked objects are possible. This type of sentence, which I descriptively label an active–passive (A-P) hybrid, has been mentioned in previous literature on contact varieties in Mayan-speaking regions of Mexico and Guatemala, but it has not been precisely described or analyzed formally. I argue that A-P hybrid constructions are instances of grammatical object passives. Grammatical object passives have certain active properties—accusative case is assigned to a theme argument and the morphology of the verb is active, but like passives, they require that the expression of the agent be a by-phrase rather than a grammatical subject. I claim that this is possible in this variety of Spanish due to the emergence of a null pronoun, absent in other varieties of Spanish, that can merge in the specifier of Voice and restrict, rather than saturate, an agent argument, permitting the subsequent addition of a third-person by-phrase. I demonstrate that this analysis is able to explain its hybrid properties as well as other person restrictions on the by-phrases that express the agent. Finally, I describe avenues of future research that will help discern the role that language contact may have played in the emergence of A-P hybrids.

In both the typological literature and literature on formal syntax and semantics, a division is drawn between nouns that are inalienably possessed such as body parts and kinship terms and nouns that are alienably possessed such as owned materials. In this paper I re-examine data from Spanish and Mayan languages and propose an analysis of it that emphasizes two important points regarding the roots and structures associated with inalienable and alienable possession. I first make the novel observation that various types of external possession in Spanish provide clear support for the idea that inalienable possession is structurally less complex than alienable possession: inalienable possessive relations are introduced within a complex n head that consists of a root and nominalizing head. I then explore attributive possession in Mayan languages and highlight data that leads to conflicting conclusions about where, precisely, inalienable relations such as part-of and kin-of are encoded: on n heads or on roots. I outline avenues for future research with the Mayan language family that may help elucidate which of these two analyses may ultimately be correct.

The Romance Inter-Views are short, multiple Q&A pairs that address key issues, definitions and ideas regarding Romance linguistics. Prominent exponents of different approaches to the study of Romance linguistics are asked to answer some general questions from their viewpoint. The answers are then assembled so that readers can get a comparative picture of what’s going on in the field.For the first Inter-Views we selected (morpho-)syntactic research, and asked 8 syntacticians, representing four approaches to the study of Romance linguistics, to answer our questions. The approaches we selected are Cartography, Distributed Morphology, Minimalism, and Nanosyntax. The scholars we interviewed are listed hereafter.For Cartography:Luigi Rizzi, professor of Linguistics at the Collège de France;Norma Schifano, lecturer in Modern Languages at the University of Birmingham. For Distributed Morphology:Karlos Arregi, associate professor in Linguistics at the University of Chicago;Andrés Saab, associate researcher at CONICET, Buenos Aires and associate professor in Linguistics at the University of Buenos Aires. For Minimalism:Grant Armstrong, associate professor of Spanish Linguistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison;Caterina Donati, professor of Linguistics at the CNRS Laboratoire de Linguistique formelle, Université de ParisFor Nanosyntax:Karen De Clercq, CNRS researcher at the Laboratoire de Linguistique formelle (Université de Paris).Antonio Fábregas, professor of Linguistics at UIT, The Arctic University of Norway

Before presenting a selection of the most characteristic morphological variation phenomena of current Spanish, we will review some concepts in relation to the Spanish-speaking world, geographical variation

The main goal of this paper is to provide a solution to a puzzle regarding a constraint on multiple external possession relations in Spanish prepositional double object verbs like poner ‘put.’ When both the direct object and prepositional object are body parts with different external possessors, the subject must be the possessor of the direct object body part and a dative clitic the possessor the prepositional object body part, not the other way around. Assuming that possessor movement to theta positions is what gives rise to external possession, I claim that the unacceptable interpretation is due to a locality violation that is incurred when an external possession relation is established between a subject and prepositional object body part that crosses over another external possession relation between a dative clitic and direct object body part.

In this chapter, we outline a framework for understanding the syntactic and semantic complexity of the SE clitic. We adopt the idea that the source of the multiple uses of SE is reflexive SE itself. Moreover, assuming that reflexive SE is syntactically tied to Voice/little v, we argue that we can profitably understand SE’s diverse uses as a result of two directions of change, one where SE takes on novel syntactic and semantic functions related to Voice/little v and above; the other where SE takes on novel syntactic and semantic functions in positions below Voice/little v. We also summarize the remaining chapters in the volume and situate them within these two broad divisions. Finally, we highlight directions for further research that naturally emerge from this study.

Allomorphy and suppletion both refer to a situation in which a morpheme has more than one phonological exponent. This chapter provides an overview of diferent types of allomorphic alternations in Spanish and what triggers them. Finally, some key issues that inform current analyses are discussed.

In this paper we offer an analysis of the so-called causative SE construction exemplified by sentences like Juan se afeita en la barbería (‘Juan gets a shave at the barbershop’). Even though these sentences look like ordinary reflexive constructions, the subject is not interpreted as an agent, but as a causer who initiates an event whose agent is implicit. For instance, in the sentence above, the barber is the agent of the shaving event, not Juan. We propose that this unique interpretation arises only in certain transitive configurations that involve change of state semantics and intrinsic reflexivity. This syntactic configuration, coupled with extra-linguistic knowledge about causal chains, accounts for the syntactic and semantic properties of causative SE constructions.

Abstract This paper discusses the descriptive properties of se-marked directed motion constructions typically instantiated by verbs such as caer-se (fall-se), ir-se (go-se) or subir-se (go up-se). I argue that such constructions are surface representations of two distinct underlying syntactic configurations: an anticausative (Schäfer, 2008) and a figure reflexive (Wood, 2014). The anticausative analysis corroborates work on the same topic by Cuervo (2014), Jiménez-Fernández & Tubino (2014) and Pineda (2016) while the figure reflexive analysis is a novel contribution.

In 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 - do in Spanish, labeled participios activos in descriptive grammars, should be treated as adjectival antipassives in precisely this sense. I propose that Spanish has an Asp head that (i) is spelled out with "past/passive" participial morphology and (ii) selects an unergative verbal input creating a state/property whose argument corresponds to the external argument of that verbal source. If on the right track, the proposal supports the existence of a typology of adjectivizing heads that are spelled out uniformly with " past/passive" participial morphology but must be distinguished in terms of selectional and semantic properties (Bruening 2014, Word formation is syntactic: Adjectival passives in English. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 32. 363-422; Embick 2004, On the structure of resultative participles in English. Linguistic Inquiry 35. 355-392). It differs from previous approaches in claiming that such a typology must include root-derived adjectives, as well as 'active (= unergative)' and 'passive' deverbal adjectives.

El objetivo de este trabajo es contribuir a los estudios de sintaxis formal de las lenguas mayas mediante un análisis de las cláusulas con un predicado no verbal del maya yucateco. El trabajo pretende integrar las detalladas descripciones de las construcciones de predicado no verbal que se encuentran en la literatura de orientación funcional (Lehmann 2002 [1998]; Verhoeven 2007; Vapnarsky 2013) con las recientes propuestas generativistas sobre la legitimación de argumentos y la estructura oracional de las lenguas mayas (véase Coon 2016) y las llamadas cláusulas mínimas (del inglés “small clause”, véase Citko 2011). Se concluye que las oraciones no verbales en maya yucateco son cláusulas mínimas incrustadas bajo una proyección Flex (=Infl), que sirve como el núcleo de finitud/aspecto estativo en vez de flexión de tiempo. Se argumenta que esta estructura sencilla y una serie de operaciones morfosintácticas previamente propuestas para explicar ciertos aspectos de las cláusulas mínimas y la legitimación de argumentos/orden de palabras en las lenguas mayas permiten dar cuenta de una gama de propiedades de las oraciones no verbales, lo cual representa una mejora con respecto a los análisis previos de Armstrong (2010), Pye (2011) y Coon (2014). Original recibido: 2016/07/13 Dictamen enviado al autor: 2016/11/11 Aceptado: 2017/05/03

This paper proposes a unified account of three types of constructions in which the se clitic appears, which are dubbed pronominal verb constructions (PVCs) . unaccusatives like acatarrar-se (get sick), unergatives like quejar-se (complain) and transitives like zampar-se algo (to wolf something down). The main claims are (i) that the verbs in question represent classes that are specified to select a "defective" head (= a head that does not introduce a theta role and/or assign case) in their predicate-argument argument structure and (ii) Spanish marks such defective heads as [ϕ], a diacritic that triggers insertion of se post-syntactically at T. The different classes of PVCs are derived from the type of defective head that is selected, Voice[ϕ] in the case of intransitives and P[ϕ] in the case of transitives.

AbstractPronominal verbs (PVs) are a morphological form class of intransitive verbs in Spanish such asacatarrar-se(= to get a cold) andquejar-se(= to complain) that are obligatorily marked with the reflexive, orse, clitic. The main objective of this paper is to propose a solution to the following puzzle: PVs represent a heterogeneous set of argument structure configurations but are formally marked in the same way. In order to do so, I empirically motivate the existence of two different argument structure configurations within the class of PVs, unaccusative and unergative. I then show that what makes these configurations unique is that they contain a deficiency in Voice, in the form of unchecked formal features. This deficiency has a different source in each configuration: it is an unchecked categorial D-feature in unaccusatives and unvalued phi-features in unergatives. The reason why these two configurations are marked in the same way is because, as proposed in Pujalte and Saab (2012, Syncretism as PF-repair: The case of se-insertation in Spanish. In Maria C. Cuervo & Yves Roberge (eds.), The end of argument structure? 229–260. Bingley, UK: Emerald Press.), theseclitic paradigm is used as a general repair mechanism to eliminate unchecked D and phi features on Voice post-syntactically.

Abstract This article provides a detailed description of the syntactic and semantic properties of the degree term bien in Spanish, which appears in expressions such as un jugador bien alto, and proposes a novel analysis that captures those properties. We propose that bien is a degree operator that is generated as a Deg head and binds the degree argument of a gradable adjective by means of an evaluative predicate we label GOOD. We define a “good degree” as one that evaluates a property with respect to a comparison class that exceeds a prototypical or expected standard. Un jugador bien alto is a player that is tall in a way that exceeds a prototypical or expected way of being tall for a player. It is argued that such an analysis not only accounts for the mixed set of properties that bien has, which overlap with certain degree modifiers, elatives and exclamatives, but does so in terms of a manner component (the predicate GOOD), which is part of the lexical meaning that bien has maintained in its evolution from manner adverb to degree term.

While allomorphy is a widespread phenomenon in the functional vocabulary of the world’s languages (i.e. English past tense -d, -t and -O), its status in the domain of roots is still an open question. Does root allomorphy, or suppletion, exist? In this paper we review the recent controversy attached to this question within the framework of Distributed Morphology (DM) and then provide an argument in favor of the existence of suppletion from the distribution of vocabulary items mat- (kill) and mor- (die). Using a model for analyzing suppletion outlined in Harley (2013), we propose that these two vocabulary items are members of the same set of lists that are accessed by a single syntactically-active root node. Mat- is specified to appear in agentive verbal environments while mor- is an elsewhere morpheme.

In this paper it is argued that unspecified objects in sentences such as Maria leyo anoche (= Maria read (something) last night) should be represented as null incorporated nouns in l-syntax (Hale & Keyser 1993, 2002). Specifically, the material understood as 'something' is a null bare N that incorporates into the verb 'read,' forming an endocentric compound meaning 'THING-read.' While the general idea underlying such a hypothesis is not new (Mateu 2012; Marti 2011; Zubizarreta & Oh 2007), the analysis outlined here provides the first explicit formalization of it in such a way that can account for a wide range of properties (some not yet described in the literature) that are intimately related to what can be broadly defined as 'noun incorporation constructions' cross-linguistically. Like certain types of noun incorporation constructions in other languages, unspecified object constructions have the following properties: (i) they are restricted lexically (in this case to 'activity'/'manner' verbs), (ii) the verb+unspecified object may have a conventionalized interpretation, (iii) unspecified objects are indefinite and take obligatory narrow scope with respect to all other operators, (iv) unspecified objects may be modified 'externally' by a limited set of adjectives (v) the verb+ unspecified object gives rise to an atelic reading. All of these properties are shown to derive from the fact that unspecified objects are null incorporated nouns. This is desirable since the same set of properties are shared by different types of noun incorporation constructions in languages outside Romance and, to a large extent, by bare noun constructions in Spanish and other Romance languages (Espinal & McNally 2011).

This paper investigates the structure of transitive sentences that contain a non-doubling reflexive clitic such as Juan se lavó todos los platos and María se leyó un libro. Though these are traditionally labelled unselected (non-core) agreeing datives or aspectual datives, I argue that this label obscures a relevant difference between two classes of constructions. agentive reflexive clitic (= ARC) constructions are characterized by a uniform set of effects on the external argument (= it must be an agent) and the aspectual interpretation of the VP (= it must be an accomplishment). On the other hand, transitive se clitic (= TSC) constructions do not impose any type of uniform restrictions on the kind of external argument they take or on the aspectual interpretation of the VP. I propose that the difference between these two constructions may be captured by treating se in the ARC construction as the realization of a special vDO head, based on an idea in Folli & Harley (2005), while se in the TSC construction is generated in the complement position of the verb and incorporates into V, forming a complex predicate, following work by De Cuyper (2006), MacDonald (2004, 2008) and MacDonald & Huidobro (2010). It is shown that many of the empirical and theoretical disagreements that plague the literature on the role of non-doubling se in transitive sentences have a simple solution given the new division established here