Micro-variation in Spanish: non-standard uses of a directional P

MANGIALAVORI RASIA, MARÍA EUGENIA; MARÍN, RAFAEL

MADRID

Workshop; Workshop on Linguistic Variation at the Interfaces; 2017

UAM

Certain varieties like Mexican Spanish [MS] display productive use of estar with the directional Phasta [up to]. This combination is used to locate an entity in space (1) (Lope Blanch 2008, Bosque& Bravo 2011), and even a resulting state in time (2). Such occurrences involve an importantdivergence with respect to ?standard? (Paffey 2012 i.a.) Spanish [SS]; but, in particular,constructions like (1)-(2) are unexpected more generally (crosslinguistically) for different reasons.(1) a. La casa está hasta la punta del pueblo.the house isESTAR up to the tip of-the village ?The house is at the end of the village?b. La caja gris que está hasta la derecha.the box grey that isESTAR up to the right ?The grey box that is on the left?c. En la lista de Fortune Slim está hasta adelante.in the list of Fortune Slim isESTARup to in front ?In the Fortune Magazine list, Slim is ahead?d. El salón comedor estaba hasta el último piso.the dining room wasESTAR.PT up to the last floor ?The dining room was on the top floor?(2) a. La tarea estará acabada hasta el final del día.the work beESTAR.FUT finished up to the end of-the day ?The work will be finished by the end of the day?b. La normativa recién estará lista hasta julio.the regulation only beESTAR.FUT ready up to july ?The regulation will be ready by July?Namely, note that hasta is possible in SS in similar environments, although under a different (after)reading, more in line with a directional boundary P, as in (3). Cases like (1)c also show that MSdiverges from SS by combining the dynamic P hasta with other prepositions/adverbs (e.g.adelante[in front], arriba [up]) which in SS appear directly with estar (e.g. está (*hasta) arriba/adelante).(3)El equipo estará completo hasta el lunes.the team beESTAR.FUT complete up to the Monday ?The Team will be complete by/until Monday?Problem. A dynamic boundary preposition is found where a different type of P is expected. Inprinciple, the boundary component of hasta is not a problem; actually, this is also the case of thepreposition a [at], which is standardly combined with estar to this effect, in alternation with alocative P (en). Rather, the important point is that hasta, as a directional boundary preposition, isgenerally expected with dynamic verbs, but not with stative ones; and it is certainly not expected toyield locative uses like (1), according to both SS and general (crosslinguistic) standards.A logical question is whether these anomalous (Lope Blanch, 2008:58) MS constructions are tobe related to some innovative use of either the copula or the preposition. However, a relevantsemantic contrast with the locative yielded by the standard P choice (estar en/a) discouragessimplifications along these lines, as well as a coercion-like solution to the alleged conflict between adirectional P and a stative verb. Specific surveys on natives indicate that estar hasta is used tointroduce a sense of distance with respect to an implied starting point (in principle, the location ofthe speaker), thus allowing to introduce additional spatial information. In any event, any successfulapproach cannot overlook the fact that locative estar hasta (1) coexists non-trivially with estar en/ain MS. We also want to avoid an analysis carried out under the assumption that the P is ambiguousbetween a stative and a dynamic reading. In general, there are no lexically ambiguous prepositions;rather, Ps are either locative or directional. Instead, the situation is closer to the notion that thedelivery of a relation different from the one lexically encoded by P is compositional (Gehrke 2006).Proposal. Consider the possibility that hasta somehow serves as a directional boundary P involvedin other circumstances rather than merely expressing goal and/or endpoint of a dynamic relation.This has both empirical and theoretical motivations. The key to the problem is provided by acrosslinguistic condition (cf. (i) infra) that bears on the combination of a copula with a directional P,which is further supported by an ampler empirical frame including other verbs freely combinedwith hasta in MS (5). While the analysis is compatible with fundamental definitions of hasta suchas Talmy?s (2000:254), the specific theoretic analysis applied here is adopted from studies wherethe aspectual contribution of spatial Ps is laid out in terms of Vector Space Semantics [VSS](Winter 2001 i.a.). The condition in question (i), applied to locative constructions (1) and nonspatialconstructions like (2) supports the proposal that hasta determines a specific circumstancewhere the PP introduces a relevant boundary in an (abstract) set of ordered vectors, with anendpoint, a starting point, and points in between, on which this direction imposes an ordering(Zwarts?s definition of path 2005:744). In turn, the stative verb guarantees the non-temporalinterpretation of the path thus supplied. Importantly, this conception is amenable to the idea that Pintroduces a terminus which, applied to estar, produces specific consequences. Importantly, thedistinct semantic flavour of locative estar hasta, which is central to the non-trivial distribution ofhasta/en/a, matches the additional variable introduced by ?from here? in ((4)a); further, in contrastto SS, the second condition bears out for MS (La casa está hasta una milla del final del pueblo).Thus, insofar as this is no impediment for hasta to be associated with a spatial relation, cruciallydifferent from the one yielded by the locative boundary Ps (i.e., a), a natural explanation for MSconstructions arises:(i) Locative Ps can always be used in combination with the copula be in a locative sentence; withdirectional Ps this is sometimes possible if the location is understood as the endpoint of ahypothetical journey described by the preposition from an implicit point of view, as in (4)a, orwith a measure phrase, as in (4)b (Zwarts 2005:742 following Cresswell 1978; emphasis ours).(4) a. The house is {behind/outside/across} the woods (from here) (Zwarts 2005(3))b. The car is one mile {from the garage/to the east}(5) Juan {vive/se sienta} hasta adelante. ?Juan lives/seats at the front? (cf. Lope Blanch 2008:78)Analysis. Two central assumptions are involved: a) location and other spatial properties are definedas relative positions modeled by vectors (Zwarts 1997, 2003, Zwarts & Winter 2000); b) paths areseen as atemporal stretches of space which require a fixed reference object [RO] (Zwarts2005:283). Even if this RO also figures in simple locative constructions (estar en/a), when appliedto directional Ps this essential relativity give us the possibility to accommodate the from-hereentailment that makes hasta a non-trivial choice in MS, in terms of path structure. Zwarts &Winter?s (2000:28) use vectors directly in the semantics of directional Ps, namely by representingthe movement of an object along a spatial stretch (a vector) that connects the starting point and theendpoint of the movement. Given the assumption that atemporal uses of directional Ps determinethat the path merely preserves a linear ordering (Zwarts & Winter 2000:29(59)), this means that theset of ordered vectors (path) supplied may be a line of sight, a walking distance or, ultimately, theroute for the hypothetical journey in (4)a. Crucially, hasta introduces DPs grammatically realizingsuch sets of vectors and allowing to identify the endpoint that is central to the condition at work (lapunta, el final, el borde de). If our proposal is correct, the path introduced by hasta would have anendpoint (or rather, its final vector) at the RO and a starting point (or zero-point) at an unspecifiedlocation, presumably set by default at location of the speaker, which crucially lines up with the?from-here flavor? involved in the relevant condition ((4)a). Importantly, if a specific location isused as RO, estar hasta requires an identifiable boundary that can be interpreted accordingly (asendpoint of the non-temporal path) (6). This extends to non-spatial uses (2), where hasta marks theendpoint of the process overlapping with the resulting state.(6) La casa está hasta *(el final/ el borde/ el límite/la punta de) el pueblo. the house isESTAR up to (the end/ the border/ the limit/ the tip of) the town.Conclusions. If correct, this general approach preserves the denotational properties of the P;second, it shows a key correlation between the distinct semantics of locative estar hasta and therelevant condition on such a combination. Moreover, it shows that there is a systematic way inwhich locative structures can be produced from a directional P. Given the non-trivial coexistence ofestar hasta and the standard estar en/a, we take these facts to indicate that in MS a grammaticalchoice motivates a non-trivial prepositional alternation delivering two structurally different locativeconstructions.