Superlatives, partitives and apparent φ-feature mismatch in Spanish
Adjectival superlatives in Spanish are expressed by a definite determiner and the com-parative morpheme m ́as 'more/-er' modifying the adjective. While gender and numberconcord between the determiner, adjective and noun is generally obligatory, there is asubset of cases where it seems to b...
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| Formato: | artículo |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2024 |
| País: | España |
| Recursos: | Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona |
| Repositorio: | Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB |
| Idioma: | inglés |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:ddd.uab.cat:291771 |
| Acesso em linha: | https://ddd.uab.cat/record/291771 https://dx.doi.org/urn:doi:10.5565/rev/isogloss.277 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palavra-chave: | Syntax-morphology Phi-agreement Superlatives Partitives Spanish |
| Resumo: | Adjectival superlatives in Spanish are expressed by a definite determiner and the com-parative morpheme m ́as 'more/-er' modifying the adjective. While gender and numberconcord between the determiner, adjective and noun is generally obligatory, there is asubset of cases where it seems to be disrupted: the determiner surfaces as the so-calledneuter lo, the adjective spells out masculine and there is no overt noun. I argue that thisnon-canonical pattern is the result of a failed Agree dependency between probes on D anda noun underspecified for φ. Failure to value the probe triggers the emergence of defaultsat the point of Vocabulary Insertion: lo and masculine morphology on the adjective. Theanalysis that lo as genderless and numberless receives support from coordination patterns. |
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