On the structure and variation of ‘hace’ as a temporal expression

Abstract

The goal of this article is to analyse a case of variation in Spanish. In most varieties, constructions of the form Hace dos días que ("it has been two days since") reject nominal expressions like todo el día ("all the day"), hence *Hace todo el día que (lit. "it has been all the day that"). However, a particular variety of Argentinean Spanish allows it. This article proposes that in the non-Argentinean varieties, hace ("make") is the spell out of a temporal relator placed in the extended projection of the verb; the nominal expression that accompanies it is a measure phrase providing the length of the vector it projects. These varieties build hace dos días que-constructions through movement of the temporal relator to the CP area. However, the Argentinean variety builds hace dos días que-constructions without movement, as a temporal verb that takes a durative argument. This explains the different range of nominal expressions allowed in each variety.

Spanish time constructions withhacer

“…A representative expression of this sentiment is that of Rasmussen (1981: 131) who commented that "when the main verb is hacer, the measurement of time prevails semantically; When it is subordinate, the action of the verb is more important" (translation mine). This constitutes a parallel with clefts and other focalizing constructions and may be suggestive of a derivational relation between the clausal (cleftlike) and the adverbial constructions, which is something some authors (Rigau 1999;Fábregas 2016) propose. Many others (e.g.…”

“…Pérez Toral (1992) and RAE-ASALE (2009), for example, believe pronominalization of the argument of hacer is possible whereas Sáez del Álamo (1987) and Fábregas (2016) believe it is not. Fábregas (2016) writes, as well, that in the clausal construction one finds only the subjunctive, the imperfective past, the future and the present, which is much less than the variety posited, for example, by RAE-ASALE (2009). Rasmussen (1981) mentioned that time adjuncts cannot occur in the adverbial construction while García Fernández (1999) or RAE-ASALE (2009) believe they are possible.…”

“…Negation, unlike the above mentioned properties, is a issue which has been left untackled by most linguists who have addressed these constructions (e.g. Pérez Toral 1992; García Fernández 1999; Rigau 1999;RAE-ASALE 2009;Brucart 2015 andFábregas 2016). When mentioned, it has been suggested that it is hardly an interesting feature because there are barely any differences between the behavior of negation in the clausal and in the adverbial construction or between the possibilities for negation in hacer+time as opposed to other verbs and constructions.…”

“…Along with the verbal or prepositional nature of hacer in adverbial contructions, a much debated issue is that of the relationship between the clausal and the adverbial constructions. Some like Brucart (2015) consider they are independent constructions while others like Rigau (1999) or Fábregas (2016) argue they are derivationally related and that the phrase headed by hacer is, in clausal constructions, a constituent fronted from its position in the adverbial construction and thus not the main verb.…”

“…Because of these interesting properties, there has been a fair amount of research around these Spanish expressions (e.g. Rasmussen 1981, Pérez Toral 1992, Rigau 1999, Howe 2011, Brucart 2015, Fábregas 2016 but disagreement still prevails concerning both the nature (i.e. grammatical category) of hacer in these constructions, as well as the relationship between the two constructions where temporal hacer can appear.…”