Table Of ContentSEMANTIC ISSUES IN ROMANCE SYNTAX
AMSTERDAM STUDIES IN THE THEORY AND
HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE
General Editor
E. F. KONRAD KOERNER
(University of Ottawa)
Series IV - CURRENT ISSUES IN LINGUISTIC THEORY
Advisory Editorial Board
Raimo Anttila (Los Angeles); John E. Joseph (Edinburgh)
Hans-Heinrich Lieb (Berlin); Ernst Pulgram (Ann Arbor, Mich.)
E. Wyn Roberts (Vancouver, B.C.)
Volume 173
Esthela Treviño and José Lema (eds)
Semantic Issues in Romance Syntax
SEMANTIC ISSUES
IN ROMANCE SYNTAX
Edited by
ESTHELA TREVIÑO
JOSÉ LEMA
Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Itzapalapa
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed
Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Semantic issues in Romance syntax / edited by Esthela Trevino, José Lema.
p. cm. - (Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science. Series IV,
Current issues in linguistic theory, ISSN 0304-0763 ; v. 173)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Romance languages-Syntax. 2. Romance languages-Semantics. I. Trevino, Esthela. II. Lema,
José. III. Series.
PC201.S45 1999
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PREFACE
The idea that certain aspects of meaning impose conditions on the form of
linguistic expressions has propelled a wealth of linguistic works oriented to
wards the discovering of semantic features which account for certain syntactic
behaviors. This view has led linguists to propose more abstract and more complex
syntactic computations in order to reflect those aspects of meaning which can be
properly seen as part of an autonomous mental system of grammatical knowl
edge. Such approach has been prompted by the most recent theoretical inclina
tion in linguistics, now commonly referred to as The Minimalist Program.
This volume presents a collection of articles on semantic issues directly
dealt within the syntactic component of the language processing faculty. The
articles here included are revised versions of works originally presented at the
XXVI Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages in Mexico City, a fact
which, along with the relevance and quality of these works, warranted the pub
lication of the present edition specially dedicated to studies on Semantic Issues
in Romance Syntax. A shared characteristic in all of the articles, is that they
focus on issues having to do with the interaction of form and meaning, and most
of them are developed under the principal thesis of the Minimalist Program.
Semantic notions like focus, completive, directional, and telic, and still oth
ers of a more abstract nature, appear as morphosemantic features to be syntac
tically computed. It is further proposed that some such features may project an
independent syntactic structural position; others are claimed to justify the ap
pearance of a functional projection, and still others are suggested to participate
as members of a cluster of features which define an already existing lexico-
functional projection. Depending on an abstract property associated with mor
phological strength, the morphosemantic features may force the realization of
certain syntactic operations, such as particular word order instances or changes,
unique agreement properties, and so forth. Moreover, it is argued that certain syn
tactic categories, like particular prepositional phrases or particles, emerge as a
consequence of the spell-out of relevant morphosemantic features, in those
languages exhibiting the appropriate morphological strength properties. It is
evident from these works that the theoretical linguistic trend, is to discover the
VI PREFACE
semantic aspects which are assumed to have visible syntactic repercussions
through morphosyntactic and morphosemantic features. These features are
"visible" if they appear holding a position in the structural projection of a
given computation. If so, these features will be accountable for a wide range of
syntactic properties like those related with word order, c-command relation
ships, constraints on predicate modification or predicate composition, or even
with the surfacing of "unexpected" morphophonological (PF) material (exple
tives, particles, (dis)agreement markings), and so forth. Whether the Minimal
ist Program is the right theory or not, it is undeniable that such an approach has
launched the development of new and creative analyses in theoretical linguis
tics whose particular and specific outcomes, well integrated and with a high
level of internal cohesion, cannot be ignored.
We believe that this book offers a collection of works developed under a
body of tight assumptions and principles which will contribute to strengthen
and to open new routes of inquiry to the fields of morphology, syntax, seman
tics, and even phonology. In a very particular manner, we think this volume
should be of interest to philosophers, logicians and pragmatists whose interests
directly touch on language issues. Of great importance to the growth of linguis
tic knowledge are the language acquisition studies which substantively nourish
the linguistic theory but which are also fashioned after the current theoretical
discoveries and innovations. The many proposals presented in this book might
prove to be quite a challenge for the design and investigation of language ac
quisition facts, but the general shared expectation amongst the contributing
authors, seems to be well summarized by one of the authors: "For now, we
hope to have shown that certain facts, commonly attributed to human experi
ence and said to be outside the realm of the Grammar, can be described in
configurational terms within the minimalist program."
Finally, we wish to express our gratitude to Konrad Koerner and Anke de
Looper for their interest, and for actually promoting the publication of this
book. We must also acknowledge Javier Torres Oyarzún 's expert and careful
technical edition. We owe the authors our sincerest appreciation for their un
derstanding and patience in view of the "change of plans" which, fortunately
and ultimately, benefitted us all. This edition was sponsored by the Consejo
Nacional de Cienciay Tecnologia, grant No. 400200-5-04545H.
Esthela Treviño & José Lema
UAM-I, Mexico City
November 1998
CONTENTS
Preface v
Manuela Ambar
Infinitives vs. participles 1
Carlo Cecchetto
Without expletive replacement? 21
Anna-Maria Di Sciullo
Verbal structures and variation 39
Jenny Doetjes
French degree quantifiers and the syntax of mass and count 57
Javier Gutiérrez Rexach
Neuter relatives and the degree operator 69
Elena Herburger
On the interpretation of Spanish n-words 89
Julia Herschensohn
What does zero syntax add to an analysis of French psych verbs?. . 105
Michael Allan Jones
The pronoun ~ determiner debate: Evidence from Sardinian
and repercussions for French 121
Sonia Maruenda & Margaret Salome
A minimalist approach to compositionality of aspects 141
Pierre Pica & Johan Rooryck
Configurational Attitudes 155
Manuela Pinto
Information focus: Between core and periphery 179
viii TABLE OF CONTENTS
Gemma Rigau
Relativized impersonality: Deontic sentences in Catalan 193
Yves Roberge
Quaint agreement and the theory of spell-out 231
Montserrat Sanz
Aktionsart and transitive phrases 247
Cristina Schmitt
Determiner transparency: Evidence from Brazilian Portuguese . . . 263
Christina M. Tortora
The post-verbal subject position of Italian unaccusative
verbs of inherently directed motion 283
Index of Authors 299
Index of Terms & Concepts 303
Index of Languages & Language Families 308
INFINITIVES VS. PARTICIPLES 1
MANUELA AMBAR
Universidade de Lisboa
0. Introduction
Assuming that both infinitival and participial structures do have Tense —as
proposed in earlier work by Ambar ((1988), (1993), (1994)) and, with inde
pendent motivation by Kayne (1993), Déchaîne, Rooryck and Hoekstra (1994),
Giorgi & Pianesi (1992) and Peres (1992) (see also Hernanz (1991) and De
Miguel (1991) for a proposal considering the existence of an Aspect node in
the same type of structures)2—, we still have to say why these two structures
have a different behavior concerning at least the following phenomena: The
value of theirs tenses (generic vs. single event reading), agreement, Case, word
order, passive, negation and cliticization.
This work aims at shedding some light on these questions and is organized
as follows: first, we will consider what constitutes our crucial motivation for
considering two tenses in sentence structure: the generic vs. the single event
reading in infinitives vs. participles, respectively, through the observation of
lexical restrictions on verb movement in both type of constructions.3 Second,
we will see how our proposal can be conciliated with the following facts: sub
ject agreement vs. object agreement, nominative Case vs. accusative case, (in
infinitives vs. absolute participial constructions vs. have+past participle con
structions), cliticization, passive and word order. We will then conclude with
1 The presentation of this paper at the 26th LSRL 1996, was partially subsidized by the University
of Lisbon. 1 thank Itziar Laka and Joao Peres for relevant discussion.
2 The motivation underlying these works is however quite different. Even my first proposal (cf.
Ambar (1988)) for the existence of Tense (and Comp) in participle constructions was built on
another type of argumentation. What is interesting is that, departing from different data in differ
ent languages and making use of different tools, the works referred to in the text arrived to the
same conclusion. This is still more interesting when also the areas we are working on are different
—the case of Peres (1992) whose work is developed in the field of formal Semantics.
3 For a development of this issue see Ambar (1992) and (1993). The analysis of infinitives pre
sented here is based on this last work.
