This paper focuses on the notion of "caused possession" as the key factor responsible for a number of properties that Spanish dative structures show when inspected closely. Among other phenomena, the relationship between dative and prepositional structures is explored and some striking contrasts arising in passive and nominal environments are accounted for. The Spanish dative clitic is analysed as the locus of many of these structural and semantic properties and a unified explanation is offered for Spanish dative assignments in double object-like constructions.

Agreement mismatches pose a challenge for standard conceptions of Agree as a Probe-Goal feature valuation process of a single set of φ-features. In this paper we focus on sentences with a subject DP formed by two singular conjoined Ns, such as La madre e hija vinieron juntas, in which agreement inside DP gives rise to Closest Conjunct Agreement – D agrees in singular with the first N – while Subject-Tense agreement is plural. To solve this puzzle we argue for the necessity of incorporating into the minimalist framework the distinction between concord and index features, as proposed in other theoretical frameworks. Ns and Ds carry these two sets of features which, we claim, are introduced in independently motivated bundles. Building on Frampton & Gutmann’s (2000, 2006) Feature Sharing theory and Chomsky’s (2001) Maximization Principle, we articulate a single agreement process which derives the two ways in which agreement proceeds in conjoined structures.

Spanish dative constructions have been widely regarded as equivalent to English double object constructions (Demonte 1995; Bleam 1999; Cuervo 2003). C-command asymmetries are observed in an alternation-like pattern, with the dative clitic being responsible for it: (1) a.*Juan entregó una foto de sí misma a María. Juan handed a picture of herself to María b. Juan le entregó una foto de sí misma a María. Juan CL.DAT handed a picture of herself to María "Juan handed María a picture of herself. Cuervo (2003) assumes a Low Applicative structure à la Pylkkänen (2002) for dative clitic structures like (1b), including those in which the dative encodes a beneficiary (2a), a location (2b) or a possessor (2c) rather than a goal/recipient: (2) a. Juan le construyó un mausoleo al emperador. Juan CL.DAT built a mausoleum to.the emperor "Juan built the Emperor a mausoleum. b. Juan le colocó cortinas al salón. Juan CL.DAT placed curtains to.the living.room "Juan fitted the living room with curtains". c. Juan le rompió la bici a María. Juan CL.DAT broke the bike to Mary "Juan broke María"s bike". Pujalte (2009) notes, however, that not all the sentences in (1) and (2) behave alike. They respond differently to a battery of tests, including nominalisation (3) and passivisation (4): (3) a. La entrega de la foto a María. the handing of the picture to María b.*La construcción del mausoleo al emperador. the construction of.the mausoleum to the emperor c.*La colocación de cortinas al salón. the placement of curtains to.the living.room d.*La rotura de la bici a María. the breaking of the bike to Mary (4) a. A María le fue entregada una foto. to María CL.DAT was handed a picture "Mary was handed a picture". b.*A María le fue rota la bici. to María CL.DAT was broken the bike "María"s bike was broken". These results lead her to distinguish between what she calls "core datives" (i.e. those appearing with bona fide triadic verbs), which are both selected for by the main verb optionally featuring the clitic, and "non-core" datives, which are introduced by a Pylkkänen-style Appl head hosting the dative clitic and adding an argument to an otherwise dyadic verb. Building on Marantz"s (1991) case hierarchy, Pujalte considers the dative case assigned by Appl to be a "dependent" case which needs to be licensed in a nominative assignment environment, preventing non-core datives from appearing in nominalisations and passive. Core datives are allowed because the dative case assigned by V is a "lexical" case. However, this proposal does not account for the c-command asymmetries displayed by "core" dative verbs: if entregar and entregarle project the same structure, the facts in (1) remain unexplained. In addition, the syntactic distinction between core and non-core datives is

This paper focuses on the different properties shown by two types of verbs that surface as transitive verbs in Spanish. The article tries to demonstrate that, beside regular transitive verbs taking a DP complement (e.g. Juan leyó un libro ‘Juan read a book’), other apparent transitive verbs – pseudotransitive verbs – (e.g. Juan golpeó al prisionero ‘Juan hit the prisoner’) hide a deep ditransitive structure in which a nominal argument is conflated into an abstract predicate. Subextraction, nominalization and quantifier scope data are used to support this claim. The analysis derives the different properties exhibited by these two types of verbs from their base argument structure and shows that they are independent from other syntactic mechanisms such as differential object marking.