Lexical Syntax of the AP and the architecture of Spanish copular constructions

MANGIALAVORI RASIA, MARÍA EUGENIA

General Roca

Encuentro; VI Encuentro de Gramática Generativa; 2013

UNCo

Although the topic of estar has already been dealt with at great length in the literature, as one of the major subjects of analysis in Spanish grammar, a more accurate and precise account of its grammatical properties, regarding both structure and meaning, may yet be attained. In particular, besides being involved in a much studied complementary alternation with the copula ser, this verb can be said to be especially interesting for other reasons. In particular, over the past decades, grammarians and scholars have felt the need to explain the fact that clauses featuring estar (as only verb in the clause) essentially comprise two different constructions, briefly exemplified in (1). (1) a. Guillermo Moreno está furioso b. Guillermo Moreno está en Angola The general intuition behind this phenomenon is that these constructions involve two entirely different grammatical scenarios, if not two different verbs. However, the analysis can be simplified by addressing these constructions as alternative realizations of a same verb (copula). Moreover, the heads alternating as copular complement (AP, PP) can be deemed as semantically and syntactically alike if both (a)a lexical-syntactic decomposition is allowed and (b)we consent to regard attributive cases like (1a) as constructions encoding abstract places. The structural analogy ensues from lexical syntactic decomposition as AP are endowed with the same structural configuration than PPs since Hale&Keyser 1993. In fact, several studies support the consideration of the A as a non-primitive head resulting from the conflation of P+N (Mateu 2002, Jayaseelan 2007: ?adjective? is not one of the basic [i.e., primitive] categories of human languages). The same parallelism could be adopted for reading State and Place functions from sentential syntax, i.e., a copular structure would always contain a P(lace) structure realized either as P (or A). In short, the structures in (1) can be reduced to one: the P(lace) applying to L-syntactically ?complex? (derived) noneventive relational elements (AP) and to superficially ?simple? non-eventive relational elements (SP) as well. In addition, conceptual semantics also supports the analogy proposed. From a Jackendovian perspective, the Conceptual Structure assigned to (1a) can be argued to contain a relational element introducing an abstract Place (AT). In fact, this extension conforms to the Thematic Relations Hypothesis (Jackendoff 1983 inspired on Gruber 1965), according to which the same conceptual functions we use when dealing with physical space can also be applied to our conception of abstract space (e.g. : John is furious [the equivalent to ((1)a) would be ascribed with the conceptual structure [State BE [Thing John], [Place AT [Property furious]]]; cf. Jackendoff 1983:194 ). Thus, a formal analogy arises between As and Ps which can also be lined up with the syntactic structure assembled prelexically in the proposal of Hale&Keyser. All in all, the simplification put forward in these subsections could be said to support our claim that the (apparently) different constructions yielded by estar can actually be seen as structurally alike at different grammatical levels.li Moreover, it could be shown to be not only empirically or theoretically supported, but actually welcome from a methodological perspective, since it offers a much more economical solution to the problem addressed in this paper. Further to this, a formal analogy also seems natural from a conceptual perspective, on the basis of the much studied parallelism between physical and abstract spatial domains. In view of this, the question naturally arises of whether the same reasoning should be valid with respect to Spanish. Considering that it is generally assumed that the clause structure proposed for English copular clauses holds across languages, including Spanish, then there is no apparent reason to think that estar clauses in (1) ?featuring AP and PP (as well as AdvP) complements? should not be comprised by the mainstream notion of copular clause. Moreover, the only restriction indicated is not connected with spatial PP complements; rather, our proposal is also vindicated by the observation that the only case that is generally not regarded as a copular sentence is that in which the copula is followed by a VP, ?such as in John is coming here or John is to come here? (which are in fact expressions also involving estar in Spanish, as in Juan está viniendo, Juan está por venir, we may add) ?since the verb be in these cases rather plays the role of an auxiliary or a modal respectively? (Moro 2007:18). On the other hand, the above-mentioned parallelism between physical and abstract spatial domains receives in turn further empirical support when considering the case of estar and the two kind of constructions yielded; thus, allowing us to regard them as the contrast between the primitive syntactic/conceptual relation and a derived syntactic/conceptual construction via conflation and abstraction, respectively. Thus, empirical motivation for the simplification initially suggested arises at a theoretical level