Paula Kempchinsky

• University of Iowa

In this paper we offer an analysis of the so-called causative SE construction exemplified by sentences like Juan se afeita en la barbería (‘Juan gets a shave at the barbershop’). Even though these sentences look like ordinary reflexive constructions, the subject is not interpreted as an agent, but as a causer who initiates an event whose agent is i...

The Cambridge Handbook of Spanish Linguistics - edited by Kimberly L. Geeslin August 2018

Cambridge Core - Latin American Studies - The Cambridge Handbook of Spanish Linguistics - edited by Kimberly L. Geeslin

This experimental study tests the Interface Hypothesis by looking into processes at the syntax–discourse interface, teasing apart acquisition of syntactic, semantic and discourse knowledge. Adopting López’s (2009) pragmatic features [±a(naphor)] and [±c(ontrast)], which in combination account for the constructions of dislocation and fronting, we te...

This paper examines the obviation which holds between the pronominal subject of a subjunctive complement to desiderative/ directive predicates in Romance and proposes that this obviation is due to the effect of a quasi-imperative operator, located in the head of FinP, on semantic binding of the pronominal subject. True imperatives yield an interpre...

Much recent research in SLA is guided by the hypothesis of L2 interface vulnerability (see Sorace 2005). This study contributes to this general project by examining the acquisition of two classes of subjunctive complement clauses in L2 Spanish: subjunctive complements of volitional predicates (purely syntactic) and subjunctive vs. indicative comple...