Old Spanish resultatives as low depictives
Víctor Acedo-Matellán, Josep Ausensi, Josep Maria Fontana, Cristina Real-Puigdollers
January 2021 

In this paper, we propose an analysis of a construction found in Old Spanish corpora that can at first sight be identified with an adjectival resultative construction (cf. John shot him dead), e.g., lo abatió a tierra muerto, lit. ‘they knocked him down dead’. The alleged existence of adjectival resultative constructions in Old Romance varieties is puzzling, since they are absent in earlier varieties (Latin) or Modern Romance varieties. We provide evidence that these constructions are not true adjectival resultative constructions. Our main claim is that these constructions are a type of low depictive attached to the resultative layer within the VP, adopting the framework of transitions developed in Acedo-Matellán (2016), and a modified version of the theory of depictives, as put forth in Pylkkännen (2008). In doing so, we offer an analysis of a type of construction that appears in old varieties of Spanish and disappears later on. All in all, the distribution of the constructions studied here depends on a different set of conditions, crucially not related to the satellite/verb-framed parameter. In addition, this study contributes to the understanding of secondary predication from a diachronic perspective.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/005706 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	To appear in Howe, Chad L., Timothy Gupton, Margaret Renwick, and Pilar Chamorro (eds.), Open Romance Linguistics 1. Selected papers from the 49th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages. Berlin: Language Science Press.
keywords:	talmy's typology, resultative constructions, argument structure, secondary predication, satellite-framed languages, verb-framed languages, semantics, syntax
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