Table Of ContentLinguistik Aktuell Linguistics Today 239
Boundaries, Phases
and Interfaces
Case studies in honor of
Violeta Demonte
Edited by
Olga Fernández-Soriano
Elena Castroviejo
Isabel Pérez-Jiménez
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Boundaries, Phases and Interfaces
Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today (LA)
issn 0166-0829
Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today (LA) provides a platform for original monograph
studies into synchronic and diachronic linguistics. Studies in LA confront empirical
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Universität Wien / Ludwig Maximilian Universität München
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Universität Wien / Arizona State University
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University of Venice Christer Platzack University of Aarhus
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Volume 239
Boundaries, Phases and Interfaces. Case studies in honor of Violeta Demonte
Edited by Olga Fernández-Soriano, Elena Castroviejo and Isabel Pérez-Jiménez
Boundaries, Phases and Interfaces
Case studies in honor of Violeta Demonte
Edited by
Olga Fernández-Soriano
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Elena Castroviejo
Ikerbasque and UPV/EHU
Isabel Pérez-Jiménez
Universidad de Alcalá
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Amsterdam / Philadelphia
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
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doi 10.1075/la.239
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isbn 978 90 272 5722 2 (Hb)
isbn 978 90 272 6572 2 (e-book)
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Table of contents
Introduction. Boundaries, phases and interfaces 1
Elena Castroviejo, Olga Fernández-Soriano & Isabel Pérez-Jiménez
Section 1. (Morpho)phonology-Syntax interface
Syntacticizing blends: The case of English wh-raising 27
Lieven Danckaert & Liliane Haegeman
Does the verb raise to T in Spanish? 47
José Camacho & Liliana Sánchez
Locative DPs and deictic adverbs/pronouns in subject position in
Brazilian Portuguese 63
Eloisa Silva Nascimento Pilati, Rozana Reigota Naves &
Heloisa Maria M. Lima-Salles
A note on the syntax of possession in Paraguayan Guaraní 85
Maria Luisa Zubizarreta & Roumyana Pancheva
Section 2. Syntax-Semantics interface
Adverbial elatives in Caribbean Spanish 107
Javier Gutiérrez-Rexach & Melvin González-Rivera
On weak definites and their contribution to event kinds 129
M.Teresa Espinal & Sonia Cyrino
The grammaticalization of ‘big’ situations: The IMPF operator and
perfective imperfects in Bulgarian 151
María Luisa Rivero, Ana Arregui & Nikolay Slavkov
On the scalar properties and telicity of degree achievements 173
Louise McNally
Section 3. Syntax-Discourse interface
Multiple Wh-Movement in European Spanish: Exploring the role of
interface conditions for variation 195
Ángel J. Gallego
Table of contents
Subextraction at the discourse-grammar interface: A featural approach
to island effects 223
Mara Frascarelli & Ángel L. Jiménez-Fernández
On the de se reading in the de se center shift in Korean: An account
based on logophoric binding 255
Semoon Hoe & Dongsik Lim
Section 4. Lexicon-Syntax interface
Spanish participial adjectives and individual-level/stage-level interpretations
in nominals 279
Karen Zagona & Heles Contreras
Two types of transitive verbs in Spanish: Ditransitives in disguise 305
Héctor Fernández-Alcalde
Grammatical categories at the Lexicon-Syntax-Semantics interface:
The case of prepositions 325
Juan Romeu
State and change of state in Latin: A view from the Lexicon-Syntax interface 343
Jaume Mateu
Index 367
Preface
In May of 2014, we celebrated the 24th Colloquium on Generative Grammar in the
city that first hosted it, Madrid. This nowadays well known conference was first con-
ceived of by Violeta Demonte, who thought, back in the 1990s, that Spain had to foster
research in the domain of theoretical linguistics as other countries had done. In that
month of May of 2014, many friends and colleagues got together again to homage Vio-
leta by presenting their cutting-edge work and discussing it with her. This volume is a
selection of the revised versions of the papers presented at the CGG and the workshop
on interfaces that followed it.
In a hypothetical word cloud of Violeta Demonte’s past and current life experi-
ence, nouns like innovation, science, creativity and public service would stand out at
least as much as other bundles of concepts such as formal linguistics and generative
grammar, or such as teacher, mentor and friend. Then, of course, we would be miss-
ing her adjective cloud, with items such as strong, intelligent, perceptive, passionate,
persistent, proactive… Violeta has made a life of building groups from scratch and
leading them with the sole criterion of excellence; she has learned, brought and imple-
mented the most novel and revolutionary ideas; she has shared her knowledge with the
community and brought up several generations of linguists; she has given life oppor-
tunities to many young researchers, and she has taught us enthusiasm for pursuing
explanatory, rigorous and accurate analyses.
Along years of productive work in theoretical linguistics, Violeta Demonte has
led many research projects and her work has touched upon and deepened many cen-
tral themes in linguistic theory, from (Extended) Standard Theory to Minimalism.
Chronologically, her first research works were on sentential boundaries, in particu-
lar subordination, and this is precisely the topic underlying her latest publications:
embedded clauses, sentence left periphery and the status of stratified CP. Boundaries
and barriers within DP’s (and AP’s) have also been among the topics covered by her
work. In between, interfaces have been at the heart of her research. She has contrib-
uted to our understanding of the nature of the Lexicon-Syntax-Semantics interface
and has elaborated penetrating inquiries into particular empirical issues such as verb
types, lexical alternations, the nature of datives, event structure or telicity (through
the study of phenomena such as passives, the ser/estar distinction or prepositional
verbs). She has also crucially contributed to the study of adjectives (classes, order-
ing, features…) and secondary predicates. Her work on infinitives and variation on
agreement in different constructions (coordinate NPs, partitive structures) concerns
the Syntax-Morphology interface, and the Syntax-Pragmatics interface studies have
Preface
benefited from her work on Evidentiality and sentence structure. Also, the Gramática
Descriptiva de la Lengua Española, which she co-directed with I. Bosque, is probably
the most important contribution to the descriptive study of Spanish.
But Violeta Demonte’s importance in the field goes further: We should highlight
the organization of the PhD Program in Linguistics of the Instituto Universitario de
Investigación Ortega y Gasset, which brought to Madrid the most prestigious names of
international linguistics to teach the new generations of researchers. Moreover, she has
fostered scientific research by teaching all of us to avoid hasty conclusions and side-
stepping of problems, to handle hectic and frantic periods and concentrate on rigorous
work… in sum, to strive for excellence. We have learned to endorse her respect for a
job well done, and we will live by this teaching ever after.
The impact she has had in our lives and careers cannot be mapped into the brief
preface of a book on phases and interfaces (here, we refer the interested reader to
<http://palabrasparavioleta.weebly.com/palabras.html>). However, we have attempted
to provide a context for the publication of this thematic volume, which was born, grew
and was completed out of many people’s affection and admiration towards Violeta.
Introduction
Boundaries, phases and interfaces
Elena Castroviejo, Olga Fernández-Soriano & Isabel Pérez-Jiménez
Ikerbasque and UPV/EHU / Universidad Autónoma de Madrid /
Universidad de Alcalá
1. Boundaries: cycles and phases
The notion of boundary is central in linguistic theory. In this book we approach this
concept through two other relevant implementations, namely the idea of phase and the
idea of interface. In both cases, we will be dealing with cross-roads between different
linguistic domains. The notion of phase will be more specific to syntactic derivation,
and that of interface will be more broadly understood as the meeting point of Syntax
and the rest of linguistic modules that are able to receive formal treatment. Let us start
with the first notion in point.
1.1 Phases and grammatical theory
The concepts underlying phase-theoretic ideas have played a significant role in linguis-
tic theory in the various forms it has taken. In fact, Phase Theory is nowadays one of
the central debated issues within the current framework of theoretical linguistics. The
spirit and motivations underlying the concept of phase can be traced back to the idea of
cyclicity, “in essence, the intuition that the properties of larger linguistic units depend
on the properties of their parts” (Chomsky 2012: 1), which was first proposed for pho-
nology. In particular, as Chomsky (2013: 41) states, “the concept [of cycle] perhaps
received its first clear formulation and application in a 1956 paper on stress contours
(Chomsky et al. 1956)”. It was then extended to Morphology, Syntax and Semantics.
The syntactic notion of cycle is closely related to the idea of boundary (first defined
as bounding node in Chomsky 1977, later as barrier in Chomsky 1986). From this per-
spective, the initial purpose of phases has to be understood within the general aim to
keep structure to a minimum (Chomsky 2000), as well as to maximize computational
efficiency and reduce complexity by restricting access to the Lexicon. It can be said
that phases are the result of applying the notion of cycle to Lexical Arrays (the lexical
“working space” for syntactic derivations): the computational system (CS) is designed
to construct derivations from the mental lexicon to the interpretive interfaces in an
doi 10.1075/la.239.01cas
© 2017 John Benjamins Publishing Company
