Table Of ContentROMANCE LINGUISTICS 2008
AMSTERDAM STUDIES IN THE THEORY AND
HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE
General Editor
E.F.K. KOERNER
Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Typologie  
und Universalienforschung, Berlin
[email protected]
Series IV – CURRENT ISSUES IN LINGUISTIC THEORY
Advisory Editorial Board
Lyle Campbell (Salt Lake City)
Sheila Embleton (Toronto) 
Elly van Gelderen (Tempe, Ariz.)
Brian D. Joseph (Columbus, Ohio)
John E. Joseph (Edinburgh) 
 Manfred Krifka (Berlin)
Martin Maiden (Oxford)
E. Wyn Roberts (Vancouver, B.C.)
Joseph C. Salmons (Madison, Wis.)
Volume 313
Karlos Arregi, Zsuzsanna Fagyal, Silvina A. Montrul and Annie Tremblay (eds.)
Romance Linguistics 2008. Interactions in Romance. 
Selected papers from the 38th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages 
(LSRL), Urbana-Champaign, April 2008
ROMANCE LINGUISTICS 2008
INTERACTIONS IN ROMANCE
SELECTED PAPERS FROM  
THE 38TH LINGUISTIC SYMPOSIUM  
ON ROMANCE LANGUAGES (LSRL), 
URBANA-CHAMPAIGN, APRIL 2008
Edited by
KARLOS ARREGI
University of Chicago
ZSUZSANNA FAGYAL
SILVINA A. MONTRUL
ANNIE TREMBLAY
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of 
8
American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of 
Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
  Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (38th : 2008 : Urbana-Champaign, Ill.)
  Romance linguistics 2008 : interactions in romance : selected papers from the 38th linguistic 
symposium on romance languages (LSRL), Urbana-Champaign, April 2008 / edited by Karlos Ar-
regi ... [et al.].
  p.   cm. (Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science. Series IV,  Current 
Issues in Linguistic Theory, issn 0304-0763 ; v. 313)
  “The papers selected for this volume were originally presented at the 38th Linguistic Sympo-
sium on Romance Languages held at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign on April 3-5, 
2008. Linguists working on Romance languages from North America, South America and Europe 
met to discuss the latest developments in the field of Romance linguistics.”
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1.  Romance languages--Congresses.  I. Arregi, Karlos. II. Title: Interactions in romance. 
PC11.L53    2010
440--dc22  2010022710
isbn 978 90 272 4831 2   (Hb ; alk. paper)
isbn 978 90 272 8787 8  (Eb)
© 2010 – John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any 
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa
Table of contents
Acknowledgments  vii
Editors’ introduction: Interactions in Romance  1
part i. Language contact and bilingualism
Subject pronoun expression in bilinguals of two null subject languages  9
Hilary Barnes
Where are hiatuses left? A comparative study of vocalic  
sequences in Argentine Spanish 2 3
Laura Colantoni & Anna Limanni
Loanword adaptation in the French of Spanish-speaking  
immigrants in Montréal 3 9
Michael L. Friesner
part 2. Phonology and interfaces
Morphology and phonology of word-final vowel deletion  
in spoken Tuscan Italian 5 7
Luigia Garrapa & Judith Meinschaefer
Relativization, intonational phrases and rich left peripheries in Romanian 7 3
Simona Herdan
Stress domain effects in French phonology and phonological development 8 9
Yvan Rose & Christophe dos Santos
part 3. Syntax and morphophonology
Syntactic realizations of plural in Romance and Germanic nominalizations  107
Artemis Alexiadou, Gianina Iordăchioaia & Elena Soare
	 Romance Linguistics 2008
The syntax of Spanish parecer and the status of little pro  125
Adolfo Ausín
Two types of (apparently) ditransitive light verb constructions  139
María Cristina Cuervo
Modal Ellipsis in French, Spanish and Italian:  
Evidence for a TP-deletion analysis  157
Anne Dagnac
Optional prepositions in Brazilian Portuguese  171
Mary A. Kato
An apparent ‘number case constraint’ in Romanian: The role of syncretism  185
Andrew Ira Nevins & Oana Săvescu
part 4. Semantics and morphology
Generic bare singulars in Brazilian Portuguese  203
Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin & Roberta Pires de Oliveira
Aspect shift in stative verbs and their arguments  217
Joshua Rodríguez
part 5. Psycholinguistics
Experimenting with wh-movement in Spanish  233
Grant Goodall
How Spanish phonotactics informs psycholinguistic  
models of speech production  249
Michael Shelton, Chip Gerfen & Nicolás Gutiérrez Palma
Index  265
Acknowledgments
The papers selected for this volume were originally presented at the 38th Linguis-
tic Symposium on Romance Languages held at the University of Illinois at Urbana 
Champaign on April 3–5, 2008. Linguists working on Romance languages from 
North America, South America, and Europe met to discuss the latest develop-
ments in the field of Romance linguistics.
We gratefully acknowledge the Department of Linguistics, the Department 
of French, the Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, the College of 
Liberal Arts and Sciences, the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics, the 
Center for Advanced Study, and the Beckman Institute at the University of 
Illinois, Urbana-Champaign for their generous financial support for this event.
The selected papers went through a rigorous double-blind review process. We 
would like to express our gratitude to all the reviewers who contributed their 
time and expertise:
Lourdes Aguilar, Daniel Altshuler, Julie Auger, Nicoleta Bateman, Dennis 
Bouchard, Travis Bradley, Joyce Bruhn de Garavito, José Camacho, Manuel Díaz-
Campos, Elena Castroviejo Miró, Sonia Colina, Laura Colantoni, João Costa, 
Marie-Hélène Côté, Laurent Dekydstpotter, Mariapaola D’Imperio, Gorka Elordieta, 
Olga  Fernández  Soriano,  Anastasia  Giannakidou,  Alessandra  Giorgi,  Grant 
Goodall, John Grinstead, Javier Gutiérrez-Rexach, David Heap, José Hualde, Tania 
Ionin, Haike Jacobs, Svetlana Kaminskaïa, Paula Kempchinsky, Peter Lasersohn, 
Juana Liceras, Luis López, Marta Luján, Pascual Masullo, Jaume Mateu, Jean-Pierre 
Montreuil, Francisco Ordóñez, Silvia Perpiñán, François Poiré, Cecilia Poletto, Lara 
Reglero, Morris Richard, Teresa Satterfield, Ryan Shosted, Roumyana Slabakova, 
Brian Smith, Cristina Schmitt, Esther Torrego, Irene Vogel, Thomas Werner, Malcah 
Yaeger-Dror, James Hye Suk Yoon, and María Luisa Zubizarreta.
Finally, we thank the editor of the Current Issues in Linguistic Theory series 
E.F.K. Koerner for useful feedback and Anke de Looper of John Benjamins for 
assisting us with the publication process.
All remaining errors are our own.
Karlos Arregi, Zsuzsanna Fagyal, Silvina Montrul, Annie Tremblay
Champaign-Urbana and Chicago, Illinois
February 2010
Editors’ introduction
Interactions in Romance
This volume consists of a selection of sixteen theoretical and methodological 
studies presented at the 38th Linguistic Symposium of the Romance Languages 
held in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois in the spring of 2008. The unifying theme of 
these papers is commonly referred to as linguistic interfaces, i.e., links between 
different grammar modules (lexicon, phonology, morphology, syntax, seman-
tics), as well as between grammar and articulatory, perceptual, and cognitive-
intentional systems (e.g., Chomsky 1995, Jackendoff 2002, Ramchand & Reiss 
2007). Furthermore, in addition to focusing on linguistic theory, the papers ex-
plore connections with psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, language-acquisition, 
and bilingualism. The selection of Interactions in Romance as the title of the vol-
ume also reflects the fact that, in addition to addressing interdisciplinary issues, 
several of the papers make significant typological-comparative contributions to 
the issue of the theoretical and practical dynamic connections between Romance 
and other languages. Interactions between, and interfaces within, the Romance 
languages themselves, as well as between Romance languages and other languag-
es, are discussed in several papers, as all major Romance languages (Spanish, 
French, Italian, Romanian, and Portuguese), and many of the languages with 
which they are currently in contact are represented in the volume. In order to ap-
preciate both the particular focus and the connections between the selected pa-
pers, we have organized them into five areas, as described below.
1.  Language contact and bilingualism
The papers in the first section of the volume shed light on linguistic interactions 
between phonology and morpho-syntax in stable societal bilingual situations. 
Each paper reports on a study of bilingual individuals or communities, and seeks 
to determine the effects of bilingualism on subject-pronoun expression, hiatus-
diphthong realizations, and loanword adaptation.
Barnes investigates variable patterns of subject-pronoun expression in the 
speech of Spanish-Veneto adult language learners, heritage speakers, and speakers
Description:The sixteen papers here united have been selected from the 38th Linguistic Symposium of the Romance Languages held in Champaign-Urbana in 2008. The papers, whose authors include both well-known researchers and younger scholars, cover a broad and truly interdisciplinary range of topics in phonology,