Syntactic description of Spanish Final Paper PDF

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Syntactic description of Spanish

LING 320: Syntax Department of Modern Languages, Linguistics & Intercultural Communication, UMBC Dr. Renée Lambert-Brétière Fall 2020

2 Table of Contents 1. List of Glosses…………………………………………………………………….……………3 2. Introduction……………………………………………………….…………………..………..5 3. Unmarked Constituent Order……………………………………………….…………...……..5 4. Head Order in the Clause…………………………………………………..…………………..7 5. Clausal Negation…………….……………………………………………….………………...8 6. Wh-Constructions..…………………………………………………...…………...…………..10 7. Valency-Changing Processes………………………………………………………..………...14 a. Passive…………………………………………………………………………..…….14 b. Mediopassive………………………………………………………………………….15 c. Impersonal construction………………………………………………...……………..16 d. Causatives…………………………………………………………………..…………18 11. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………...………19 12. References………………….………………………………………………………….……..20

3 List of Glosses S: Subject V: Verb O: Object C: Complement N: Neuter Adj: Adjective POSS: Possessive PRET: Preterite tense PRES: Present tense DET: Determiner SG: Singular PL: Plural F: Feminine M: Masculine IMP: Imperfect tense AUX: Auxiliary verb PTCP: Participle

4 NEG: Negator/negation particle DAT: Dative Case DEM: Demonstrative Pronoun CL: Clitic Pronoun 1SG: first person singular 2SG: second person singular 3SG: third person singular 3PL: third person plural PL: plural SBJV: Subjunctive mood PRET: Preterite tense

5 Introduction Spanish, known to its speakers as Castellano or Español, is a language in the Western Romance family. More specifically, it is a part of the Italo-Western and West-Iberian families (Eberhard et al.). Spanish is a part of the Romance genus and is closely related to other languages such as Italian, French, Portuguese, and Romanian, all of which descended from IndoEuropean (Eberhard et al.). Many nations, including Spain and its colonies, Equatorial Guinea, eighteen Central and South American countries, and the US territory of Puerto Rico, speak Spanish as their primary official language. Modern Spanish is spoken by slightly less than 300 million people worldwide, making it one of the three or four most commonly spoken languages, along with Mandarin Chinese, English, and Hindi (Zagona, 2003). Due to the widespread popularity of Spanish, there are certainly many dialects spoken throughout the world in numerous countries. However, this paper will focus on Castilian Spanish, the variety of Spanish spoken in Central and Northern Spain. This paper will provide a short overview of Castilian Spanish by examining this language’s unmarked constituent order, head-complement order within clauses, clausal negation, the formation of wh- constructions, and valency-changing processes through the analysis of data. Unmarked constituent order Spanish is predominantly a right-branching language (Zagona). A Spanish sentence's neutral component order is Subject Verb Object, or Verb Object, as only a finite Verb is required to form a complete clause (Green). This is because inflectional morphology in Spanish is rich, and a verb may reflect person, gender, tense, number, voice, and mood (Zagona). Spanish is a pro-drop language and tends to drop the subject pronoun in declarative sentences (Tallerman). The subjects of clauses in Spanish are commonly omitted, but when overt subjects are used, the

6 placement of this subject is “free” within finite, declarative sentences (Zagona). This means that the subject of a clause may either follow the predicate or precede it. In finite declarative sentences, SVO and VOS and orders are the most common grammatical orderings. Examples (a) and (b) below demonstrate these constituent orders, respectively, in a transitive sentence with the same meaning. Example (c) demonstrates that VSO order may still be used though less common and natural. Sentence (1) is an example of a transitive sentence having a direct and indirect object:

TRANSITIVE (1) (a)

Mi

hermana

escribió

la

carta.

POSS.1SG

sister

write.3sg.PRET

DET

letter

V

O

S ‘My sister wrote the letter.’ (b)

Escribió

la

carta

mi

write.3sg.PRET

DET

letter POSS.1SG

V

O

hermana. sister S

‘My sister wrote the letter.’ (c)

?Escribió

mi

hermana

la

carta.

write.3sg.PRET

POSS.1SG

sister

DET

letter

V

S

(semi-grammatical) ‘My sister wrote the letter.’

O

(Zagona)

7

Sentence (2) is an example of an intransitive sentence with no object. (2)

Los

niños bailan

DET

S

(Zagona)

V

‘The children dance.’ The orders for transitive and intransitive neutral constituents are the same because both follow a Subject-Verb constituent order. Head order in the Clause Spanish is predominantly a head-initial language, with the most informative parts of a phrase coming first. With head-initial languages, in noun phrases, the noun comes first when writing a noun phrase, with the adjunct phrase following: (3)

Una

casa

DET.F

house beautiful

(NP) Head

hermosa.

AP

‘A beautiful house.’ (4)

estudiante de física DET.M

good.M

(NP) Head

PP

man

(Zagona)

‘Student of physics.’ As shown in examples (3) and (4), the construction of a phrasal head, or X0 with a complement, gives the order: head-complement, so nouns, adjectives, verbs, and prepositions precede their complements (Zagona). The verb also comes first in verb phrases before the direct object; V-O:

8 (5) Construyeron

un

puente

con

un

martillo

build.3PL.PRET

DET.M

bridge

with

DET.M

hammer.M

(VP) Head

Object

PP

- (NP) Complement

‘They built a bridge with a hammer.’

(Zagona)

Functional categories occur before the lexical categories they govern - determiners come before noun phrases, and complementizers come before clauses. Because auxiliary verbs may be considered functional or quasifunctional, they occur before the clause's main verb (Zagona). The auxiliary verb form of hablar “to speak” is demonstrated in example (6): (6)

Habíamos

hablado

have.3PL.IMP.AUX speak.PTCP

del

problema.

of.DET.M

problem.M

(Zagona)

‘(We) had spoken about the problem.’ Determiners always occur before the head (Zagona). Clausal negation Clausal negation, both with main and subordinate clauses, is identified by the presence of a pre-verbal no in the majority of cases. The simplest way to negate words in Spanish is to place the negative particle no in front of the conjugated verb: (7)

Juan

no

cantó.

Juan

not

sing.PRET.3SG.

(Zagona)

‘Juan didn’t sing.’ Nonclausal constituent negation is more varied, both in terms of form and position of negation. In the first type of nonclausal constituent negation, when the negation morpheme no comes before the verb inflected for finiteness, clausal negation readings are possible, and only clitics may intervene between no and the verb (Zagona):

9 (8) (a)

María no M.

leyó

ese

NEG read.3SG.PRET

capítulo.

DEM chapter

‘Maria didn’t read that chapter.’ (b)

María

no

lo

leyó.

M.

NEG CL(Acc.)

read

‘Maria didn’t read it.’

(Zagona)

No may also precede a non-finite verb and the head of nominalized clauses in the following example: (9)

Juan

prometió

ayer

[no

intervenir].

J.

promise.3SG.PRET

yesterday

not

meddle.INF

‘Juan promised yesterday not to meddle.’

(Zagona)

In subordinate clauses, when the negative particle no is used to negate the main VP, it does not reflect in the subordinate clause: (10)

Juan

no

dijo

[que

J.

NEG say.3SG.PRET that

Pedro era

inteligente].

P.

intelligent.N

be.3SG.IMP

‘Juan didn’t say that Pedro was intelligent.’ Other negative words and expressions are used to negate positive statements - Besides the basic negative particle word no, words such as nadie, nunca, ningún, and jamás can be used to contradict verbs and clauses (Serigos). The following sentence uses the negative word nunca to negate the first clause, and no to negate the second: (11) Nunca

teníamos

radio,

o

sea,

no

escuchaba

noticias

10

Never.NEG

have.3PL.IMP

radio

or

be.3PL.PRES.SBJV NEG

‘We never had radio, in other words, I didn’t hear the news.’

listen.IMP.3SG

news

(Serigos)

Finally, a larger class of negative words known as Negative Polarity Items require a negative context in which to occur. This represents Negative Concord in the language, and is common amongst the Romance languages (Zagona). At least one negation particle must occur pre-verbally. The phrases todavía and en absoluto in the examples below depict the use of NPIs: (12) (a)

Juan

*(no) ha llegado

todavía.

J.

not

yet

arrive.PRET.PFV

‘Juan hasn’t arrived yet.’ (b)

Ese

niño

DEM child.M

*(no) come not eat.3SG.PRES

en absoluto. at all

‘That child doesn’t eat at all.’

(Zagona)

Wh- movement This section will explore wh-constructions in Spanish, including wh-questions, relative clauses, and focus constructions. Wh-questions In interrogative sentences, the interrogative phrase tends to appear in the clause-initial position. This placement applies to both indirect and direct questions. Interrogative phrases in Spanish include relative pronouns qué, quien, el que, cual, and cuyo (Butt). Comparing the declarative phrase position in example (13a) and the interrogatives that correspond in (13b) and (13c), it is clear that the interrogative marker is placed initially in the clause. (13) (a)

Declarative

11

(b)

Juan

leyó

ese

J.

read.3SG.PRET

DEM book.M

libro.

Interrogative - Direct Question ¿Qué libro

leyó

Juan? (Direct Question)

INT

read.3SG.PRET

Juan?

book.M

‘Which book did Juan read?’ (c)

Interrogative - Indirect Question María no M.

sabe

[qué

libro

leyó

Juan].

[INT

book.M

read.3SG.PRET

J.]

NEG know.3SG.PRES

‘Maria doesn’t know which book Juan read.’

(Zagona)

It is also possible to use multiple interrogatives, but it requires that one interrogative constituent take the initial clause position. The rest are expected to remain in-situ (Zagona). Multiple interrogatives are shown in sentence example (14): (14) (a)

¿A

quién

le

mandó

qué

to(dat.)

whom

CL(Dat.)

send.3SG.PRET

which book?

To whom did he/she send which book? (b)

¿Qué libro mandó

a

quién?

What book

to(Dat.)

whom

send.3SG.PRET

What book did he/she send to whom?

(Zagona)

libro?

12 If there is an availability for a second initial landing site for a clause, one can move more interrogative constituents. Grammatical forms with this kind of extraction out of an indirect question can depend on the grammatical function of the extracted constituents (Zagona). (15)

Qué

libro

What book.M

no

sabe

NEG know.3sg.PRES

Juan

[quién compró?]

J.

INT

buy.3SG.PRET

‘What book doesn’t Juan know who bought?’

(Zagona)

Relative clauses, often known as adjective clauses since they operate as noun modifiers, have been shown to share certain basic features with interrogatives (Zagona). (16) (a)

¿A

quién conoció

Juan?

PA

whom met.3SG.PRET

Juan?

‘Whom did Juan meet?’ (b)

la persona [a quien conoció

Juan]

the person PA whom meet.3SG.PRET

J.

‘The person whom Juan met’ The interrogative a quién is viewed as the verb's complement in (a), and it fills a "gap" that corresponds to the absent complement. The relativized word a quien is also linked to a direct object gap within the relative clause in (b). The main distinction between the two formulations is that the relative pronoun, la persona, contains an antecedent, but interrogative phrases do not. As a result, the two constructs have different methods for determining reference (Zagona)

13 In Spanish, there are two major grammatical distinctions between interrogatives and relative clauses. The first distinction is the order of constituents, as seen in example (17). The first sentence is ungrammatical: (17) (a)

*¿A

quién Juan

vio?

PA

whom J.

see.3SG.PRET

“Whom did Juan see?” (b)

La

persona

[a

quien Juan

vio]

DET

person.F

PA

whom J.

see.3SG.PRET

(Zagona)

Subject-verb inversion is required in sentences with interrogatives with corresponding verb arguments as in (17a), but it is not required in sentences with relative clauses, as illustrated in (17b).

The second distinction between relativized elements and related interrogative phrases is their forms. These factors determined relativized clauses forms: 1. whether the relative clause is restrictive or nonrestrictive 2. the grammatical function of the relative phrase inside the relative clause 3. the antecedent's characteristics (gender, number, definiteness 4. in rare situations, [+HUMAN] specified feature (Zagona).

Focus movement Focus movement is possible in Spanish. This is achieved by simply fronting the topic of focus:

14 (18) (a)

(b)

[Susana]TOPIC [leyó

el

S.

DET.M

read.3SG.PRET

[Esta mañana]FOCUS [leyó DEM.F

morning.F

diario

el read.3SG.PRET

esta paper.M

DEM.F morning.F

diario DET.M

mañana]FOCUS.

Susana]TOPIC. paper.M

S.

(Zagona) ‘Susana read the paper this morning.’ The intonational peak, or main stress, is seen in the Focus constituent in both phrases above. In sentence (a), this stress is on the predicate, while in sentence (b), the stress is on the adjunct phrase esta mañana (Zagona). Valency-changing processes Languages may utilize various methods to raise or reduce the valency (or number of arguments) of a verb. Spanish uses nonactive voice (passive and mediopassive), impersonal, and causal constructions. It lacks the antipassive since it is not an ergative-absolutive language, and it also lacks the applicative construction (Zagona). Similar to the antipassive, dative shift is possible, though this is different from a true applicative construction (Cuervo). Passive voice In Spanish, passive voice refers to the connection between the verb's action and the sentence's subject. If the subject performs the action, it is referred to as the "agent," and must be discussed in an active voice (Tallerman). The passive voice is used when the subject of the clause does not perform an action, but rather receives the action (is the sentence’s "patient"). Constructions come in many forms; the main form of the passive is the one I will describe, known as the pasiva propia. This voice is used to focus on the action of the sentence

15 (spanishviaskype). It is constructed by using the verb ser “to be” + the past participle of the main verb. The agent of the clause is introduced using the word por: (19) Los

argumentos

fueron

rechazados

(por

el

DET

arguments.M.PL

be.PRET.3P

reject.PPRT.M.PL.

(by

the judge.M.SG).

‘The arguments were rejected by the judge.’

juez).

(Zagona)

The finite verb rechazados in example (19) above agrees in both number and person with the derived subject argumentos, the participle rechazados also agrees in number and gender with the derived subject, and the agent is known to the reader because it is in a prepositional phrase headed by por "by." The derived subject may stay in the post-verbal position (Zagona). Mediopassive Spanish also has a mediopassive voice, which is usually expressed through the use of a reflexive clitic pronoun. This can have a middle-voice (subject acting on itself or for its own advantage), or passive-voice interpretation (something acts onto the subject) (Green). The clitic pronoun se is used to form the mediopassive in combination with an active verb form to generate middle/passive compounds. The verb agrees in person and number with the derived subject, and the clitic itself agrees in person and number with the derived subject (Zagona). The clitic in such constructions is identical in sound to reflexive clitics. Due to this fact, the clitic may be interpreted in three different ways, (20) (a) transitive reflexive, (b) passive voice, and (c) intransitive middle voice (Zagona): (20)

El

coche se

movió.

DET

car.M CL

move.3SG.PRET

(Zagona)

16 a) ‘The car moved itself.’ b) ‘The car was moved.’ c) ‘The car moved.’ The passive and mediopassive constructions appear to be identical on the surface, but they may be distinguished by their argument structure and related temporal features (Zagona). Impersonal construction In Spanish, impersonal phrases are used to convey an activity without naming the individual who carried it out. One may use these phrases to stress any aspect of the phrase other than the subject (Butt). The subject argument is silenced here, as it is in the passive, but the impersonal construction does not generate a new subject, unlike the passive (Tallerman). Many impersonal constructions are possible, including with an (i) intransitive verb, (ii) transitive verb, (iii) with uno/una as a pronoun, (iv) with impersonal tú, or (v) with impersonal t...