Old Spanish resultatives as low depictives

Conference item

In this paper we propose an analysis of a construction found in Old Spanish corpora (12th16th c.) that can be identified with an adjectival resultative construction (cf. John shot him dead): Old Sp. 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 depictives, as put forth in Pylkkänen (2008). In doing so, we account for the emergence of a new type of construction in old varieties of Spanish, and its disappearance 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.

Authors: Acedo-Matellan, V; Real-Puigdollers, C; Ausensi, J; Fontana, J-M

• Publication status: Accepted
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Acceptance date: 2020-07-14
• Event title: 49th Linguistics Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL 49)
• Event location: University of Georgia, USA
• Event website: https://linguistics.uga.edu/symposium/linguistic-symposium#:~:text=The%20University%20of%20Georgia%20is,May%201%20%2D%204%2C%202019.
• Event start date: 2019-05-01
• Event end date: 2019-05-04
• Language: English
• Keywords: satellite-framed languages; depictive constructions; resultative constructions; Old Spanish; verb-framed languages; secondary predication.