Feature Sharing and (In)definiteness in the Nominal Domain

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Penn collection
University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics
Degree type
Discipline
Subject
Funder
Grant number
License
Copyright date
Distributor
Related resources
Contributor
Abstract

In this paper we examine several aspects of the syntax and semantics of the so-called Spanish comparative qualitative binominal noun phrases (henceforth, c-QBNP’s). Structurally, Spanish c-QBNP’s involve two nominal/adjectival phrases joined by a linker de after predicate inversion (cf. den Dikken 2006). While previous literature has mainly focused on the so-called Definiteness Agreement Effect (Español-Echevarría 1997, 1998), we argue that the syntax of this construction is instead subjected to Specificity agreement, for both phrases must at least be specific rather than definite (cf. Villalba 2007). We further evidence that feature sharing properly explains the licensing of the phi-features involved (cf. Frampton and Gutmann 2000, Pesetsky and Torrego 2007). In addition, the syntax and semantics of Spanish c-QBNP’s sheds light on the differentiation between syntactic and semantic definiteness. Crosslinguistic data support our analysis.

Advisor
Date Range for Data Collection (Start Date)
Date Range for Data Collection (End Date)
Digital Object Identifier
Series name and number
Publication date
2011-01-01
Volume number
Issue number
Publisher
Publisher DOI
Comments
Recommended citation
Collection