Evaluative prenominal possessives in Spanish

Abstract

In this paper, the properties of Spanish evaluative prenominal possessives (i.e. the affective possessive preceding a proper name, the so-called “emphatic possessive”, and the possessive in the Old and American Spanish doubled possessive construction) are thoroughly described, and compared with those of canonical prenominal possessives. It is mainly proposed that evaluative possessives, in contrast to canonical prenominal possessives, are not base-generated as nominal modifiers and then raise to D0, but are directly merged (mostly) within the DP domain, thus capturing the fact that affective, emphatic and doubling possessives just evaluate the relation between the possessum and the possessor, and are not interpreted as complements of the noun. In order to account for their different distribution, it is further argued that the three types of Spanish evaluative prenominal possessives are inserted (basically) in different structural positions in an split-DP.

Existential Constructions, Definiteness Effects, and Linguistic Contact: At the Crossroads between Spanish and Catalan

“…Two types of possessive determiners will be argued to be attested in the pivot position of haber ('to be') in Spanish: strong possessives and emphatic possessives. It seems, at least prima facie, that existential haber ('to be') in Spanish prevents possessive determiners from occupying the pivot position (see Eguren 2018Eguren , 2023 Neither non-animate (14a) nor human (14b) referents seem to be grammatical in the pivot position of existential haber ('to be').…”

“…Instead, what seems to be at work is an emphatic, non-contrastive interpretation of a previously stablished possession relationship. Eguren (2018Eguren ( , 2023, quite convincingly, I believe, hypothesizes that the difference between canonical possessives, such as those in (15a-d), and emphatic possessives, such as those in (15e-i), lies in that emphatic ones are generated in situ, i.e., they are not transformationally related to an argument position, as happens with prenominal possessives (see also Eguren 2016). The pivots in (15e-i) are thus non-definite and compatible with non-specific interpretations.…”

“…and (b) what is labeled inEguren (2018Eguren ( , 2023 and Del Barrio de la Rosa (2022), emphatic possessives.…”

Relaciones inanimadas y codificación de rasgos en la forma <em>su/sus</em> en el español de la Ciudad de México

“…La caracterización de los rasgos se ha generado a partir de la multiplicidad de contextos gramaticales en donde aparece el proclítico su/sus. Tras esta diversidad contextual, en otros estudios (Picallo y Rigau, 1999;Huerta, 2017;Company y Huerta, 2017;Eguren, 2018) se han presentado propuestas para dar cuenta de la naturaleza de esta forma. Aunque en este trabajo no se establece una discusión profunda sobre los detalles de dicha bibliografía, se puede decir, por ejemplo, que Picallo y Rigau (1999) señalan que la proximidad de sentido de los posesivos átonos y tónicos puede verse en la polifuncionalidad de los usos (vocativos, interjecciones y formas exclamativas); o bien, Eguren (2018), más que referir a la "polifuncionalidad" considera que la forma su/sus aparece duplicada, así se establece, desde el punto de vista del hablante, una relación intrínseca entre el "poseedor" y el "poseído".…”

Un determinante con contenido: El caso de su/sus

“…La empatía (cf. Moya-Albiol, et al, 2010;Eguren, 2018) Una segunda característica importante de este rasgo es que remite solamente a la entidad que puede poseer porque la relación que se establece con lo poseído es estrictamente afectiva, siempre en términos positivos. Recuérdese que las afectaciones negativas se clasifican como proximidad antipática.…”