M. Teresa Espinal

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at Autonomous University of Barcelona

This paper aims to support the thesis that Speech Act related operators have landing sites in syntax, specifically at the syntax-pragmatics interface. In order to attain this goal, it presents the first formal analysis of a construction, dubbed the jo ‘I’ – construction, that shows an overt first person strong pronoun sitting in sentence-initial po...

This paper examines indefinite interpretations associated with morphologically definite articles in Italian, such as Ha comprato {i tulipani / l’olio} (‘She bought (the) tulips / (the) oil’), which allow both a default definite reading and an indefinite interpretation. The paper addresses two main research questions: (i) what grammatical conditions...

This paper deals with a construction, which we dub Non-Agreeing Degree (NAD) constructions, with the distinguishing property that the agreement pattern between subjects and degree predicates is optionally disrupted, even in languages (like Spanish) where verbs commonly agree with their subjects. We show that the agreeing versus non-agreeing alterna...

The clitic pronoun ne and the functional element de introducing nominal constituents have many nominal and prepositional functions across Romance languages. In this article, we focus on the nominal functions, singling out three different bundles of semantic features that characterize both ne and de. They can denote properties of individual entities...

Besides its main use as a form of the movement verb ir ‘to go’, the Spanish form vaya (lit. go) is also used as a verbal discourse marker. Here we trace this transition from a purely verbal form to a discourse marker by searching a historical corpus of documents in Spanish, which reveals the increasing use over time of vaya in exclamatives to repla...

This paper investigates the status of Negative Concord Items (NCIs) in three so-called Strict Negative Concord (NC) languages (namely, Greek, Romanian, and Russian). An experimental study was designed to gather evidence concerning the speakers’ acceptability and interpretation of sequences with argumental NCIs in subject, object, and both positions...

In this paper, we revisit the phenomenon of Negative Concord focusing on the Strict vs. Non-Strict divide. With Catalan as a case in point, we show that Negative Concord Items (NCIs) are not negative quantifiers (NQs) or polarity items (PIs) but inherently negative indefinites by virtue of carrying a negative feature [neg] that contributes a negati...

This article focuses on the choice of nominal forms in a language with articles (Catalan) in comparison to a language without articles (Russian). An experimental study (consisting of various naturalness judgment tasks) was run with speakers of these two languages which allowed to show that in bridging contexts native speakers' preferences vary when...

This paper provides experimental evidence in support of the view that Greek does not have three productive morphological classes of anticausative verbs, but only two: the class of verbs that bear non-active voice morphology and the class of verbs that are morphologically active. Across two experiments, native Greek speakers are found to prefer for...

Modern Greek displays two variants of the word min ; one corresponds to a negative marker, and the other corresponds to an epistemic modal. We focus on the latter and provide, for the first time to our knowledge, experimental evidence on its exact interpretation, showing that (i) non-negative min is incompatible with the overt realization of polar...

The interpretation of isolated response particles (m ei(yǒu)/bù) in Mandarin Chinese, when used as fragment answers to negative polar questions, has traditionally been considered as conveying Double Negation. The present study shows that these response particles may express a Single Negation meaning in addition to a Rejection interpretation when sp...

This paper sets out to find the defining characteristics of so-called expletive categories and the consequences the existence of such categories has for Universal Grammar. Looking into different instantiations of expletive subjects and impersonal pronouns, definite articles, negative markers and plural markers in various natural languages, we reach...

This paper presents the results of an experimental investigation that looks into the acceptability and interpretation judgements that Basque native speakers give to sentences with multiple i -/ bat ere indefinites in declarative sentences. It is argued that Basque i -/ bat ere indefinites are Polarity Items (PIs) rather than Negative Concord Items...

This paper identifies the set of properties that polarity items (PI), negative polarity items (NPI) and negative concord items (NCI) satisfy in Catalan, Aragonese, Benasquese and Occitan. It shows that in Catalan, gaire ‘much, many’ is a PI, pas ‘at all’ is an NPI with enriched meanings and indefinites such as ningú ‘anybody, n-body’ come in two se...

This paper focuses on the status of de in Romance indefinites, partitives and pseudopartitives. It argues that there is neither a ‘partitive article’ nor a ‘partitive preposition’ in syntax. De in Romance indefinites is the overt Spell‐Out of an abstract operator de that cancels the definiteness of articles and is responsible for indefiniteness. De...

In this paper we present an original approach to analyze the compositionality of indefinite expressions in Romance by investigating the relevance of their syntactic distribution in relation to their meaning. This approach has the advantage of allowing us to explore the question of how syntactic structure can determine the meaning of different forms...

This paper focuses on the interpretation of what has been considered an expletive marker in the grammar of the Greek nominal domain: the plural number of mass nouns. We present the results of an experimental investigation on the interpretation of plural mass nouns by native speakers of this language, and we propose a speech act analysis according t...

The article compares the interpretation of singular topical nominals in Romance (Catalan) and Slavic (Russian), and its relation to the presence/absence of the article in the overt morphosyntax. The empirical study, presented in this paper, confirmed the theoretical prediction that in Catalan the presence of a definite article conveys uniqueness of...

This article focuses on the interpretation of the adjectives that appear in Greek polydefinite DP s. It provides empirical support to the established position that restrictive modifiers are preferred in polydefinite environments (Kolliakou 1995). At the same time, it shows that non-restrictively modified polydefinites are not excluded by grammar (M...

Tal com es discuteix a la bibliografia descriptiva i formal, les expressions nominals del rus que fan referència a classes poden aparèixer en singular o en plural (Chierchia 1998; Doron 2003; Dayal 2004). La contribució principal d’aquest article és argumentar que les expressions que fan referència a classe i que són morfològicament singulars són s...

The chapters in this book represent the theme of “bridges” – bridging research approaches and directions across languages, methodologies and disciplines. Alongside descriptive and theoretical studies, the contributions present experimental studies addressing issues in syntax, phonetics-phonology and sociolinguistics. And alongside investigations of...

In this volume, international experts in negation provide a comprehensive overview of cross-linguistic and philosophical research in the field, as well as accounts of more recent results from experimental linguistics, psycholinguistics, and neuroscience. The volume adopts an interdisciplinary approach to fundamental questions ranging from why negat...

This paper investigates the morpho-phonological differences between the members of related noun-verb pairs in Catalan Sign Language. Like parallel investigations in other sign languages, our experimental work provides evidence that the major differentiating factors between related nouns and verbs materialize in the movement component of signs and n...

The aim of this paper is to investigate experimentally the mismatches in the interpretation of Mandarin Chinese (MC) argumental negative expressions (namely, méi(yǒu)rén ‘no one’ and méi(yǒu)shénme ‘nothing’) when they are used as fragment answers to negative wh-questions. The acoustic correlates that characterize these fragment answers are identif...

Inflectional languages, and Romance languages in particular, display morphological variation in plural marking within the nominal domain. While standard varieties show plural inflection on all the constituents within the DP, other varieties show this plural marking only on some of its constituents. We investigate a set of puzzling data and propose...

In this article we analyse Russian definitional sentences, which are a type of generic sentence. We focus on the structure and meaning of canonical definitions, which express an identity/identification relation between two nominal concepts. In Russian such definitions are given in the form of a bi-nominative structure: 'NP1 – èto NP2' (‘NP1 is NP2’...

This article critically reviews the main research issues raised in the study of response systems in natural languages by addressing the syntax and semantics of fragment answers and yes/no response particles. Fragment answers include replies that do not have a sentential form, whereas response particles consist solely of an affirmative or a negative...

In this paper it is argued that objects of subject experiencer psychological verbs do not have kind reference, but rather refer to individual object entities: specific individuals, generic plurals, and even entity correlates of a property. We argue that objects of transitive subject experiencer psychological verbs must refer to atoms or sums of ato...

This paper reports the results of an experimental investigation designed to test the interpretation of the optional doubling of the negative markers no and pas in Expletive Negation (EN) contexts and in preverbal Negative Concord Items (NCI) contexts in Catalan. We show that in EN contexts a negative interpretation of no is preferred to an expletiv...

Although contemporary linguistic studies routinely use unacceptable sentences to determine the boundary of what falls outside the scope of grammar, investigations far more rarely take into consideration the possible interpretations of such sentences, perhaps because these interpretations are commonly prejudged as irrelevant or unreliable across spe...

This paper analyzes the ingredients of a Romance construction, henceforth named the V ben V construction, consisting of a verb and its theme object in combination with a degree adverb ben ‘{well, really}’ followed by a verb in past participle or an adjectival form. It describes the properties and restrictions of the various constituents involved in...

This volume surveys a variety of verb valency change phenomena among diverse languages and from diverse theoretical viewpoints. It offers typological studies comparing languages in topics like applicative polysemy, complex predicate formation and locative alternation, but also works describing the different valency-changing operations in specific l...

This book approaches the concept of boundary, central in linguistic theory, and the related notion of phase from the perspective of the interaction between syntax and its interfaces. A primary notion is that phases are the appropriate domains to explain most interface linguistic phenomena and that the study of (narrow) interfaces helps to understan...

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...

The problem Marantz (1996) and McGinnis’s (2002) claim that the aspectual meaning of idioms is structural, systematic and compositional: 1. non-idiomatic a. Hermione hung a picture in five minutes. TELIC b. Harry hung pictures/laundry for/#in an hour. ATELIC 2. idiomatic a. Hermione hung a left in five minutes. [= ‘to turn left’] TELIC b. Harry hun...

This paper addresses the central question of whether Mandarin Chinese (MC) is a canonical truth-based language, a language that is expected to express the speaker’s disagreement to a negative proposition by means of a negative particle followed by a positive sentence. Eight native speakers of MC participated in an oral Discourse Completion Task tha...

We examine the role of number in one type of kind-referring expressions in Russian.

This paper aims to provide an explanation of the lexical characterisation and final semantic interpretation associated with isolated argumental n-words in Question-Answer pairs in Negative Concord languages, namely Catalan and Spanish. We argue that there are two competing lexical variants of n-words in these languages: a polarity variant and a neg...

This study focuses on the interaction between prosody and syntax in the interpretation of single negation and Double Negation in two Negative Concord languages, namely Catalan and Spanish. By means of two perception experiments, we investigate the role of two major formal conditions in the interpretation of Double Negation in Catalan and Spanish an...

Previous research has proposed that languages diverge with respect to how their speakers confirm and contradict negative questions. Taking into account the classification between truth-based and polarity-based languages, this paper is mainly concerned with the expression of REJECT (a semantic operation that signals a contradiction move with respect...

McGinnis (2002) makes the claim that, in spite of the so-called non-compositionality of phrasal idioms (cf. idiomatic phrases, Nunberg et al. 1994), the very same pattern extends to idiomatic VPs that contain either a singular DP (hung a left ) vs. a bare plural or a mass noun (hung fire). She concludes that the aspectual meaning of idioms is struc...

This paper investigates the interpretation and processing of simple transitive Catalan sentences with multiple negative expressions experimentally. Our results provide empirical confirmation that Negative Concord (NC) is the preferred and faster interpretation for negative sentences that either omit or contain the overt negative marker no ‘not’. Ho...

This paper is devoted to the study of definite kinds and other generic expressions, such as subkinds and definite plurals in argument position in Romance, namely Spanish. We support the claim that definite kinds denote the kind itself and are the expression of D-genericity in this type of languages. We argue that at the syntax-semantics interface d...

In this paper we focus on the topic of ambiguity resolution in and be-yond grammar. We deal with two questions: where is ambiguity resolved (in par-ticular, the ambiguity of expressions conveying specific forms of information packaging and common ground management), and what is the design of gram-mar that emerges from the study of ambiguity problem...

see http://www.fcsh.unl.pt/linguistica/goingromance2014/GR_Prog.pdf pp 29-31

This volume brings together studies in the domain of weak referentiality, the phenomenon that a definite or indefinite noun phrase lacks its usual referential force. Several papers investigate syntactic or semantic properties of indefinite noun phrases, such as modality, number neutrality, narrow scope, incorporation, predication, and case marking,...

Diachronic changes in the distribution of French negative expressions are studied, concentrating on the period covering Old and Middle French (9th c. to 16th c.). An account is provided for the evolution in the distribution of the Old French n-initial negative expressions (negun, nuns, nesun, nient, nului), as well as for the emergence of Modern Fr...

In this paper we claim that Bare Nominals in Brazilian Portuguese come in two shapes. Real BNs, by which we mean bare count nouns not specified for number and definiteness, correspond to NPs that can only occur as objects of a reduced class of predicates (namely, those that express a have-relation) and are interpreted as property-type expressions....

In this paper we investigate the role of prosody and gesture in the interpretation of yes-answers to negative yes/no-questions in Catalan, a language with a polarity-based system of confirmation/contradiction of negative yes/no-questions. Two rating experiments were conducted to test (i) whether yes-answers to negative yes/no-questions are perceive...

In this talk we discuss the variation in the distribution and acceptability of a particular kind of indefinite, namely bare singular nominals (BSNs) with intensional transitive verbs in Catalan and Spanish (e.g., necessitar / necesitar 'need', buscar / buscar 'look for', voler / querer 'want', and desitjar / desear 'desire'), in contrast to prototy...

The phenomenon of double negation (DN), by which two negative elements negate each other in such a way that a positive interpretation is obtained, has traditionally been considered in terms of its syntactic and semantic grammatical properties. Yet, correlated prosodic and gestural features exist, such as specific pitch contours and gestures which p...

In this paper we defend three hypotheses. First, all languages that have Determiners (null or overt) have definite kinds, a possibility which does not prevent languages from using other means to refer to kinds. Second, kinds are referred to by definite DPs with no Number involved. Third, the subkind interpretation is built on Number. We will provid...

In this paper we will account for the semantic composition of a productive class of predicates in Mexican Spanish formed by lexical verbs that combine with a defective morphosyntactic clitic. Our analysis is that le corresponds to a lexical affix that is syntactically analysed as a defective High Appl head that selects for intransitive roots or int...

In this piece of research we examine a structure that linguistically encodes a double negation reading in simple sentences in Catalan. This structure contains a sentential negative adverb and an indefinite which is the complement of a preposition that functions as an adjunct. We claim that words like res can behave as free choice items or as n-word...

In this paper we shall explore the phenomenon of double negation (DN) in a negative concord language like Catalan from an inferential perspective. According to recent developments within the generative approach to the theory of sentential grammar, a proper account of this phenomenon requires an analysis of the lexical, syntactic, and semantic condi...

This article aims at focusing on a set of phenomena related to the syntax and semantics of bare count nominals. We will show that bare count nominals unmarked for number (BNs) can occur both in object argument position and in predicate position, and can form denominal verbs. This is because, in syntax, BNs can only occur as internal arguments of re...

In this paper, we will show that the well-known distinction between idiomatically combining expressions (ICE) and idiomatic phrases (IP) is not as clear-cut and uniform as has been assumed in the literature: for example, we show that V one's head off idioms can neither be neatly classified within one class nor within the other. We compare our appro...

This paper focuses on the nominal system of Catalan and Spanish, two Romance languages that have both a morphologically binary number distinction and a determiner system, but which still allow bare singular count nominals (BNs) in internal argument position.In particular, this paper investigates the structure and meaning of these nominal expression...

This paper presents an analysis of bare nominals unmarked for number (BNs) occurring in object position in Spanish and Catalan, on which the BN is a syntactic complement to the verb, but not a semantic argument. After describing the properties that distinguish BNs from other indefinite expressions (bare plurals, indefinite singulars preceded by un...

This article analyzes inherent clitics of idiomatic constructions as verbal arguments (Jelinek 1984; Baker 1996; Hale 2003) that are translated as free variables (Delfitto 2002): they are anaphoric to a (hidden) nonreferential discourse topic or (right) dislocated constituent. Furthermore, since they denote abstract semantic objects (Asher 1993), t...

This volume is a collection of papers presented at the IV NEREUS (http://www.ilg.uni-stuttgart.de/Nereus/) international workshop on the topic Definiteness and DP Structure in Romance Languages, held at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona on October 9th and 10th, 2008. The main theme of the workshop was the relation between the semantic notion de...

It is often assumed that idiomatic constructions basically involve non-compositional meanings (Katz and Postal 1963; Fraser 1970; Chomsky 1980, among others) or special syntax-semantics correspondences (cf. Jackendoff 1990, 1997a, b, 2002). However we agree with those linguists who claim that there are aspects of idioms that are compositional (Mara...

Negation has always been and still is a central topic in typological studies and theoretical research. Its centrality shows itself in the fact that it is not restricted to a given linguistic field but compasses the whole domain of linguistic studies. Very often, works on negation are brought about in a one-sided perspective which excludes other poi...

In this paper I shail approach certain questions that can be posed in the study of Catalan negative constructions: (a) how many negative markers can be distinguished; (b) how the difference between no and no pas should be described in the core grammar of this language, and (c) what sort of syntactic representation should be assigned to negative sen...

Comparative correlative (CC) constructions have received much attention in recent years. Major issues have been whether they involve special constructions and whether they have symmetric or asymmetric structures. Evidence from Romance suggests that they require special constructions and that they may be either symmetric or asymmetric. French has a...

Catalan lexicography has traditionally dealt with idioms either as alphabetically ordered lemmas or as non-lemmatic stems. In the case of a non-lemmatic approach, idioms are registered using either the first word with semantic content or the word considered to reflect the main semantic content of the expression. This paper shows that both tradition...

In this study I shall focus on two Romance idiomatic patterns and the semantics of nouns. It is shown that idioms, in addition to having distinct basic argument structure representations, are formed in syntax by various instantiations of Merge. It is argued that there is a lexicalization pattern reflecting semantic conflation (Talmy 1985, 2000) bet...

Aquest Diccionari de sinònims de frases fetes (DSFF) és un diccionari conceptual i un diccionari d'ús d'expressions lexicalitzades de la llengua catalana, fonamentalment del català contemporani.A partir de conceptes proporciona informació gramatical i lingüística referida a frases fetes de naturalesa gramatical diversa. Innova en l'especificació de...

This volume brings together a selection of articles presented at 'Going Romance' 1999. The articles focus on current syntactic and semantic issues in various Romance languages, including Catalan, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and a number of Northern Italian dialects. A large number of articles focus on negation, which was the theme of the...

This paper provides some arguments for the claim that Catalan and Spanish n-words are not lexically ambiguous. I put forward the hypothesis that they are intrinsically negative expressions, in the sense that they are indefinites incorporated into a numeral meaning ∥0∥, and they are weak quantifiers, in the sense that they are underspecified for qua...

The aim of this paper is twofold First, I shall argue the relevance of a distinction between conceptually encoded and procedurally encoded linguistic information within the semantic analysis of lexical items. Second, I shall argue that the classification of types of information postulated within relevance theory (Wilson and Sperber 1993) should not...

In this paper 1 shail be concerned with a set of issues which will allow me to approach the interface between linguistics, conceived as a theory of linguistic knowledge (Chomsky 1992, 1995), and pragmatics, conceived as a theory of utterance interpretation (Sperber-Wilson 1986), and in particular to examine the contribution of linguistic meaning to...

In this paper I shall put forward the hypothesis that no-pas in Catalan — in contrast to no — is a negative operator which contributes to implicatures, but not to truth-conditions. Assuming a cognitively oriented pragmatic relevance framework, I shall argue that the specific interpretations systematically associated with Catalan no-pas negative str...

This paper is concemed with two different linguistic problems raised by Catalan no- pm negative clauses, and will examine their representational effects. It is argued that pas can occur within the boundaries of a Tense Dependent subordinate clause if, and only if, there is a modal constituent c-commanding the NegP, and the structural requirements f...