This book is a compilation of articles on different aspects of Spanish grammar in the areas of current theoretical syntax and semantics. The issue brings together scholars working on some formal aspects of Spanish predicative complementation (e.g., dequeísmo), neuter demonstrative pronouns, the subject of Psych verbs, the nature of non-verbal predication, and the internal structure of the Determiner Phrase (DP), cf. gender variation, among other topics. Linguists and philologists with interests in Spanish and/or in other Romance languages are the main target audience. The book will appeal also to researchers and students specializing in generative grammar, semantics and in the syntax/semantics interface. It will also be of interest to historical linguists and dialectologists addressing theoretical/formal issues (cf. Afro-Bolivian Spanish). The research in this book points to a cohesiveness in Spanish linguistics that lies in the integration of up-to-date empirically-based linguistic research with current theoretical assumptions on the nature of syntax and semantics.

A clear and well-organised introduction to Spanish syntax, assuming no prior knowledge of current theory.

Adjectives are comparatively less well studied than the lexical categories of nouns and verbs. The present volume brings together studies in the syntax and semantics of adjectives. Four of the contributions investigate the syntax of adjectives in a variety of languages (English, French, Mandarin Chinese, Modern Hebrew, Russian, Spanish, and Serbocroatian). The theoretical issues explored include: the syntax of attributive and predicative adjectives, the syntax of nominalized adjectives and the identification of adjectives as a distinct lexical category in Mandarin Chinese. A further four contributions examine different aspects in the semantics of adjectives in English, French, and Spanish, dealing with superlatives, comparatives, and aspect in adjectives. This volume will be of interest to researchers and students in syntax, formal semantics, and language typology.

The scholarly articles included in this volume represent significant contributions to the fields of formal and descriptive syntax, conversational analysis and speech act theory, as well as language development and bilingualism. Taken together, these studies adopt a variety of methodological techniques—ranging from grammaticality judgments to corpus-based analysis to experimental approaches—to offer rich insights into different aspects of Ibero-Romance grammar. The volume consists of three parts, organized in accordance with the topics treated in the chapters they comprise. Part I focuses on structural patterns, Part II analyzes pragmatic ones, and Part III investigates the acquisition of linguistic aspects found in the speech of L1, L2 and heritage speakers. The authors address these issues by relying on empirically rooted linguistic approaches to data collection, which are coupled with current theoretical assumptions on the nature of sentence structure, discourse dynamics and language acquisition. The volume will be of interest to anyone researching or studying Hispanic and Ibero-Romance linguistics.

No detailed description available for "Current Issues in Spanish Syntax and Semantics".

"This book examines how speakers of Ibero-Romance 'do things' with conversational units of language, paying particular attention to what they do with utterance-oriented elements such as vocatives, interjections, and particles; and to what they do with illocutionary complementisers, items attested cross-linguistically which look like, but do not behave like, subordinators. Taking the behaviour of conversation-oriented units of language as a window into the indexical nature of language, it argues that these items provide insight into how language-as-grammar builds the universe of discourse. By identifying the underlying unity in how different Ibero-Romance languages, alongside their Romance cousins and Latin ancestors, use grammar to refer-i.e. to connect our inner world to the one outside-, the book's empirical arguments are underpinned by the philosophical position that the architecture of grammar is also the architecture of thought. The book thus brings together the recent flurry of work seeking to incorporate aspects of the context of the utterance into the syntax, a line of enquiry broadly founded on empirical considerations, with the pursuit of explanatory adequacy via a so-called 'un-Cartesian' grammar of reference. In so doing, it formalises the intuition that language users do things not with words, but with grammar. The book brings new insight to the comparative morphosyntax of (Ibero-)Romance, particularly in its diatopic, diastrastic, and diamesic dimensions, and showcases the utility of careful descriptive work on this language family in advancing our empirical and conceptual understanding of the organisation of grammar"--

It is quite remarkable that, after over a half-century of generative grammar, there is still uncertainty with respect to the analysis of preverbal subjects in a number of languages. According to canonical analyses, preverbal subjects are arguments (A-elements). However, following non-canonical analyses, preverbal subjects are not arguments, but rather A’-elements that behave like topical preverbal direct and indirect objects, which have received a CLLD analysis in the literature (e.g. Cinque 1990). The implications of this debate are far-reaching for generative theory: if preverbal subjects are non-arguments, one must question the universality of the EPP (as in e.g. Alexiadou & Agnostopoulou 1998), as well as its associated features and feature-strengths. Galician is an underdocumented Romance language within the generative paradigm. In this book, I develop an experimental program for establishing clausal word order preferences for a number of information structure contexts. The preference data suggest that preverbal subjects behave like canonical elements, and not CLLD elements. These results inform the model of the preverbal field that I propose for Galician, which also takes into account the enclisis-proclisis divide and reco.

Complementizers offer a window into the architecture of the left-periphery and further our understanding of the demarcation of the boundaries between the C(omplementizer) and T(ense) domains. Using the articulated left-periphery as a laboratory and Spanish constructions featuring more than one complementizer as a point of departure, the author delivers new insights into the syntactic positions and behavior of Spanish complementizer que along the left edge. These observations have far-reaching consequences to such fundamental linguistic concepts as the derivation of left dislocations, ellipsis, and locality of movement. Of great interest to syntax graduate students and researchers in general, this volume provides a stepping stone to cracking the code on several current syntactic questions, including the widely-contested position of preverbal subjects in null-subject languages like Spanish. In addition, it offers the linguist a bountiful toolbox for the cross-linguistic investigation of a number of left-peripheral and clausal phenomena.

The Enciclopedia de Linguistica Hispánica provides comprehensive coverage of the major and subsidiary fields of Spanish linguistics. Entries are extensively cross-referenced and arranged alphabetically within three main sections: Part 1 covers linguistic disciplines, approaches and methodologies. Part 2 brings together the grammar of Spanish, including subsections on phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. Part 3 brings together the historical, social and geographical factors in the evolution of Spanish. Drawing on the expertise of a wide range of contributors from across the Spanish-speaking world the Enciclopedia de Linguistica Hispánica is an indispensable reference for undergraduate and postgraduate students of Spanish, and for anyone with an academic or professional interest in the Spanish language/Spanish linguistics.

Inquires in Hispanic Linguistics: From Theory to Empirical Evidence showcases eighteen chapters from formal and empirical approaches related to Spanish syntax and semantics, phonetics and phonology, and language contact and variation. Drawing on data from a number of monolingual and contact Spanish varieties, this volume represents the most current themes and methods in the field of Hispanic linguistics. The book brings together both established and emerging scholars, and readers will appreciate the variety of theoretical approaches, ranging from generative to variationist perspectives. The book is geared towards researchers and students in Spanish and Romance linguistics. Given its scope and quality, this volume is also well-suited for graduate courses in Spanish morphosyntax, phonetics, sociolinguistics, and language contact and change.