SEMANTIC 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 440'045-DC21 98-55455 ISBN 90 272 3679 8 (Eur.) / 1 55619 890 6 (US) (Hb; alk. paper) CIP © 1999 ֊ John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. • P.O.Box 75577 • 1070 AN Amsterdam • The Netherlands John Benjamins North America • P.O.Box 27519 • Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 • USA 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.