Deconstructing the Conative Alternation in Romance

MANGIALAVORI RASIA, MARÍA EUGENIA

Theory, data and practice: Selected papers from the 49th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages

Language Science Press

Lugar: Berlin; Año: 2023; p. 161 - 183

In conative alternations, an alternate argument structure realization (object of transitiverealized as a PP; e.g., John hit at the fence) coincides with a relevant semanticshift (e.g.„ in telicity/resultativity drop). The conative alternation is generallyseen with verbs whose meaning includes both motion and contact (Guerssel et al.1985; Levin 1993), and is widely attested in various languages (e.g.„ English, Danish,German). Yet, it is generally believed to be unavailable in Romance. Here wedraw on historical corpus data from Old Spanish, consonant with findings in Galician(Mıǵ uez 2016), to argue that the conative alternation is possible and productivein Romance. According to data, conative alternation in Old Spanish allowsverb classes similar to those commonly attested (across languages): i.e., cutting(e.g., cortar ‘cut’), contact (e.g., dar ‘hit’, disparar ‘shoot’, morder ‘bite’) and consumptionverbs (e.g., beber ‘drink’, comer ‘eat’, picar ‘nibble’). Further, the alternationin Old Spanish seems productive with verb classes believed to be excludedfrom/predicted not to allow conative alternation, like change-of-state (e.g., matar‘kill’, destrozar ‘shatter’, destruir ‘destroy’, romper ‘break’) and pure contact verbs(e.g., tocar ‘touch’). Thus, data from Old Spanish suggest that (i) the required motionplus contact denotation for verbs to alternate is not a necessary condition; (ii)further verb classes could be conative alternation-productive; (iii) widely-claimedrestrictions on the conative alternation, linking meaning and syntactic behavior,could be actually language-specific.