The definite article in Romance expletives and long weak definites

Espinal, M. Teresa; Cyrino, Sônia

doi:10.5334/gjgl.160

Cited by 6 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…The strong definites, as in (136), can be in preverbal position, while the weak definites are restricted in Spanish to postverbal positions, and they do not convey uniqueness. (137) is one of the examples provided by Espinal & Cyrino (2017); as we can see, here -as in the cases that Leonetti (1999a) argued satisfy uniqueness due to the stereotypicality of the situation-it is not implied that the surgeon had only one finger.…”

Section: Properties and Uses Of Elmentioning

confidence: 86%

“…Let us now consider this variety of uses from a slightly more theoretical perspective. Part of the literature has distinguished three main uses of definite expressions (Vergnaud & Zubizarreta 1992, Longobardi 1994, Beyssade 2013, Aguilar-Guevara 2014, Espinal & Cyrino 2017: strong referential definites, weak definites and expletive definites. The strong referential definites have the wider distribution and convey the notions of familiarity and uniqueness.…”

Section: Properties and Uses Of Elmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Determiners and quantifiers in Spanish: types, tests and theories

Fábregas¹

2018

Borealis

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This article provides an overview about the main facts and analytical options in the domain of determiners and quantifiers in Spanish. It covers the main classification of determiners and their basic syntactic and semantic properties (§1), the differences in behaviour between quantifiers and determiners in the strict sense (§2), the notion of definiteness and the contrasts in the use of the definite and indefinite articles (§3), the notion of specificity (§4) and the main types of quantifiers and how they can be identified (§5). In terms of analytical problems, it discusses whether determiners should be considered heads or not (§6), the areas within the determiner and quantifier domain (§7), the nature of the indefinite article as an element that shares properties with existential quantifiers (§8), the problems posed by proper names (§9) and the possible existence of phonologically null determiners in Spanish (§10). Conclusions are presented in §11.

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Section: Properties and Uses Of Elmentioning

confidence: 86%

Section: Properties and Uses Of Elmentioning

confidence: 99%

Determiners and quantifiers in Spanish: types, tests and theories

Fábregas¹

2018

Borealis

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“…The remaining phenomenon we would like to discuss in this section as exemplifying semantic expletiveness relates to the definite article present in inalienable constructions in Romance (Vergnaud & Zubizarreta 1992) and in long weak definite constructions in English (Poesio 1994;Barker 2005) and Romance (Espinal & Cyrino 2017). Consider the examples in ( 21) and ( 22).…”

Section: Semantic Expletivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Expletiveness in grammar and beyond

Tsiakmakis

Espinal

2022

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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This paper sets out to find the defining characteristics of so-called expletive categories and the consequences the existence of such categories has for Universal Grammar. Looking into different instantiations of expletive subjects and impersonal pronouns, definite articles, negative markers and plural markers in various natural languages, we reach the following generalizations: (i) expletive categories are deficient functional elements interpreted as introducing an identity function at the level of semantic representation, (ii) they can be divided into syntactic expletives, that occur to satisfy some syntactic relationship with another item in the clause, and semantic expletives, that stand in a semantic dependency with some c-commanding category, and (iii) expletive categories tend to develop additional meaning components that are computed beyond core grammar, at the level where speech act-related information is encoded. Our discussion reveals that all categories that have been traditionally considered as expletive in the linguistic literature are interpretable in grammar or beyond and, thus, do not violate Chomsky’s Full Interpretation Principle. We conclude that there are no expletive elements in natural languages and that expletiveness is not a grammatically relevant concept.

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“…They can also act as expletives or can obtain readings of bound variables, more similar to indefinites. See Espinal and Cyrino (2017) for a recent discussion of these readings. 9 As already seen in example (10) above, the definite has a suffixal nature in Romanian.…”

Section: Prepositional Accusatives In Romanianmentioning

confidence: 99%

Differential objects and other structural objects

Irimia

2018

Proc Ling Soc Amer

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Abstract. Several recent accounts take adpositional differential marking to indicate those classes of DPs that require obligatory licensing (Case). Here, we examine data from Gujarati and Romanian where this analysis is harder to implement. The two languages exhibit structural DPs that are signaled via a preposition. But they also contain other structural objects which must be equally analyzed in terms of licensing, leaving the difference from the adpositional objects unexplained. The solution proposed builds on the idea of secondary licensing on the same DP, going back to Kayne's Generalization. The conclusion is that, at least in some languages, differential objects are classes that undergo an additional licensing operation.

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The definite article in Romance expletives and long weak definites

Cited by 6 publications

References 41 publications

Determiners and quantifiers in Spanish: types, tests and theories

Determiners and quantifiers in Spanish: types, tests and theories

Expletiveness in grammar and beyond

Differential objects and other structural objects

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