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In:Inquiries in Hispanic Linguistics: From theory to empirical evidence
Edited by Alejandro Cuza, Lori Czerwionka and Daniel Olson
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 12] 2016
► pp. 39–52

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On the grammaticality of recomplementation in Spanish

 | University of Texas at Austin
Published online: 1 November 2016
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.12.03fra
In English, an overt secondary complementizer has been described as a grammatical violation, a claim that cannot be corroborated for Spanish. The present study fills this gap in the literature by asking whether the overt variety is associated with a decrement in acceptability judgment when compared to the null variety. Results from a speeded aural acceptability judgment task suggest that there is indeed a significant decrement in acceptability rating. This finding is robust across both statement and question constructions. A processing-based account is offered in order to unify results from both Spanish and English. Importantly, given that the native Spanish speakers do not fully reject the overt variety, the proposed account is meant to complement rather than to replace existing grammar-based accounts.
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VILLA-GARCÍA, JULIO & DENNIS OTT
2024. Recomplementation as a paratactic phenomenon: Evidence from Spanish and English. Journal of Linguistics 60:1 ► pp. 213 ff. DOI logo
Suárez-Büdenbender, Eva-María
2020. Alejandro Cuza (ed.). Cuban Spanish Dialectology: Variation, Contact, and Change. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 13:1 ► pp. 247 ff. DOI logo

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