The definite article in Romance expletives and long weak definites

This paper focuses on some issues involving expletive articles and long weak definites in Romance (mainly Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese and Catalan), in comparison to DPs that elicit a strong reading. We show the similarities between expletive definites and long weak definites, and we argue for an a...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Espinal, M. Teresa|||0000-0002-8079-7253, Cyrino, Sonia|||0000-0003-1333-3851
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2017
País:España
Institución:Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Repositorio:Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:ddd.uab.cat:266310
Acceso en línea:https://ddd.uab.cat/record/266310
https://dx.doi.org/urn:doi:10.5334/gjgl.160
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Definite articles
Expletive articles
Long weak definites
Polar items
Romance
Descripción
Sumario:This paper focuses on some issues involving expletive articles and long weak definites in Romance (mainly Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese and Catalan), in comparison to DPs that elicit a strong reading. We show the similarities between expletive definites and long weak definites, and we argue for an analysis in common to other polarity items in terms of polarity sensitivity. We reach the conclusion that the definite article in Romance comes in two variants: the referentially unique variant (to be translated as the semantic iota operator) and the polar variant, formally characterized with an abstract [+σ] feature, that encodes a weak bound reading (to be semantically translated by an existential operator).