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In:Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 13: Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’ 29, Nijmegen
Edited by Janine Berns, Haike Jacobs and Dominique Nouveau
[Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 13] 2018
► pp. 111–126

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Spanish adjectives are PathPs

 | University of Tromsø
 | Université Lille 3 – CNRS
Published online: 13 July 2018
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https://doi.org/10.1075/rllt.13.08fab
The goal of this contribution is to explore the hypothesis that not all languages that have a lexical open class of adjectives project them syntactically as the same kind of object. Specifically, we will argue that Spanish adjectives syntactically project their scales as PathPs, while English adjectives are PlacePs of sorts which do not encode the potential syntactic differences between types of scales. We contend that three previously unrelated contrasts between English and Spanish can be elegantly explained through this hypothesis: (i) the availability of adjectives as strong result complements, (ii) the availability of positive degree adjectives as the base of degree achievements and (iii) the availability of comparison class PPs with semantically absolute adjectives. The proposal that adjectives can be projected differently in two languages is coherent with the claim that adjectives are not defined by UG, which is supported by the existence of languages that lack this category.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction and main claims
  • 2.The non-universality of adjectives
  • 3.Contrasts I: resultative phrases in Spanish vs. English
  • 4.Contrast II: change of state with adjectives in English and Spanish
  • 5.Contrast 3: syntactically-represented standards of comparison
  • 6.Conclusions and further extensions
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
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