M Teresa Espinal
Biographic Data
| ID | 435448 |
|---|---|
| NAME | M Teresa Espinal |
| GIVEN NAMES | M Teresa |
| FAMILY NAME | Espinal |
| SIGNATURE | ESPINAL M T |
| AFFILIATIONS | Universitat Autonòma de Barcelona |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8079-7253 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 51 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 177 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 50 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1987 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Experiencers at the syntax-pragmatics interface. The case of the jo ‘I’ – construction in Catalan
This paper aims to support the thesis that Speech Act related operators have landing sites in syntax, specifically at the syntax-pragmatics interface. In order to attain this goal, it presents the first formal analysis of a construction, dubbed the jo ‘I’ – construction, that shows an overt first person strong pronoun sitting in sentence-initial position of declarative sentences both in pro-drop and partial pro-drop languages of the Romance famil…
Indefinite definites in Italian
This paper examines indefinite interpretations associated with morphologically definite articles in Italian, such as Ha comprato {i tulipani / l’olio} (‘She bought (the) tulips / (the) oil’), which allow both a default definite reading and an indefinite interpretation. The paper addresses two main research questions: (i) what grammatical conditions allow indefinite definites in Italian?, and (ii) why do only Italo-Romance varieties, and not other…
Establishing the limits between polarity sensitivity, negative polarity and negative concord
In this paper, by focussing on the behaviour of polarity elements from a variety of languages from different language families (namely, Basque, Hindi, English, Romanian, Spanish, Greek, Czech, and Russian) we investigate the relationship between polarity sensitive items (PSIs) and negative polarity items (NPIs) on the one hand, and between PSIs and negative concord items (NCIs) on the other. Based on a number of contrasts that we find, we argue t…
Bridging Inferences and Reference Management: Evidence from an Experimental Investigation in Catalan and Russian
This article focuses on the choice of nominal forms in a language with articles (Catalan) in comparison to a language without articles (Russian). An experimental study (consisting of various naturalness judgment tasks) was run with speakers of these two languages which allowed to show that in bridging contexts native speakers’ preferences vary when reference is made to one single individual or to two disjoint referents. In the former case, Catala…
Non-agreeing degree constructions
This paper deals with a construction, which we dub Non-Agreeing Degree (NAD) constructions, with the distinguishing property that the agreement pattern between subjects and degree predicates is optionally disrupted, even in languages (like Spanish) where verbs commonly agree with their subjects. We show that the agreeing versus non-agreeing alternation comes with important semantic differences for the interpretation of the degree construction. We…
From a movement verb to an epistemic discourse marker: The diachronic change of Spanish vaya
Besides its main use as a form of the movement verb ir 'to go', the Spanish form vaya (lit. go) is also used as a verbal discourse marker. Here we trace this transition from a purely verbal form to a discourse marker by searching a historical corpus of documents in Spanish, which reveals the increasing use over time of vaya in exclamatives to replace a presentational construction. We focus on vaya in isolation and in combination with an indefinit…
On the property-denoting clitic ne and the determiner de/di: A comparative analysis of Catalan and Italian
The clitic pronoun ne and the functional element de introducing nominal constituents have many nominal and prepositional functions across Romance languages. In this article, we focus on the nominal functions, singling out three different bundles of semantic features that characterize both ne and de. They can denote properties of individual entities, properties of kinds, or predicate properties. The article shows that Catalan ne and de display the…
Greek non-negative min, epistemic modality, and positive bias
Modern Greek displays two variants of the word min ; one corresponds to a negative marker, and the other corresponds to an epistemic modal. We focus on the latter and provide, for the first time to our knowledge, experimental evidence on its exact interpretation, showing that (i) non-negative min is incompatible with the overt realization of polar propositional alternatives { p ,¬ p }, (ii) it conveys medium speaker certainty with respect to the …
On the status of NCIs: An experimental investigation on so-called Strict NC languages
This paper investigates the status of Negative Concord Items (NCIs) in three so-called Strict Negative Concord (NC) languages (namely, Greek, Romanian, and Russian). An experimental study was designed to gather evidence concerning the speakers’ acceptability and interpretation of sequences with argumental NCIs in subject, object, and both positions when dhen/nu/ne were not present. Our results show that NCIs are negative indefinites whose presenc…
A new approach to Negative Concord: Catalan as a case in point
In this paper, we revisit the phenomenon of Negative Concord focusing on the Strict vs. Non-Strict divide. With Catalan as a case in point, we show that Negative Concord Items (NCIs) are not negative quantifiers (NQs) or polarity items (PIs) but inherently negative indefinites by virtue of carrying a negative feature [neg] that contributes a negative semantics to the proposition and is subject to a syntax–phonology constraint that forces it to ov…
Expletiveness in grammar and beyond
This paper sets out to find the defining characteristics of so-called expletive categories and the consequences the existence of such categories has for Universal Grammar. Looking into different instantiations of expletive subjects and impersonal pronouns, definite articles, negative markers and plural markers in various natural languages, we reach the following generalizations: (i) expletive categories are deficient functional elements interpret…
The noun-verb distinction in Catalan Sign Language: An exo-skeletal approach
This paper investigates the morpho-phonological differences between the members of related noun-verb pairs in Catalan Sign Language. Like parallel investigations in other sign languages, our experimental work provides evidence that the major differentiating factors between related nouns and verbs materialize in the movement component of signs and non-manual markers, thus providing empirical support to the hypothesis that most noun-verb pairs have…
The Status of De in Romance Indefinites, Partitives and Pseudopartitives
This paper focuses on the status of de in Romance indefinites, partitives and pseudopartitives. It argues that there is neither a ‘partitive article’ nor a ‘partitive preposition’ in syntax. De in Romance indefinites is the overt Spell‐Out of an abstract operator de that cancels the definiteness of articles and is responsible for indefiniteness. De in Romance partitives is the overt Spell‐Out of a relator head that takes a definite DP as compleme…
On the interpretation of response particles méi(yǒu) and bù to negative polar questions in Mandarin Chinese
Polarity Items in Basque: Experimental evidence for their existential reading
This paper presents the results of an experimental investigation that looks into the acceptability and interpretation judgements that Basque native speakers give to sentences with multiple i -/ bat ere indefinites in declarative sentences. It is argued that Basque i -/ bat ere indefinites are Polarity Items (PIs) rather than Negative Concord Items (NCIs), as they are consistently associated with an existential reading in unacceptable declarative …
(Negative) Polarity Items in Catalan and Other Trans-Pyrenean Romance Languages
This paper identifies the set of properties that polarity items (PI), negative polarity items (NPI) and negative concord items (NCI) satisfy in Catalan, Aragonese, Benasquese and Occitan. It shows that in Catalan, gaire 'much, many' is a PI, pas 'at all' is an NPI with enriched meanings and indefinites such as ningú 'anybody, n-body' come in two sets, as both PIs and NCIs. It further shows that in the trans-Pyrenean Romance varieties studied here…
Greek polydefinites revisited: Polydefiniteness as resumed relative clause modification
This article focuses on the interpretation of the adjectives that appear in Greek polydefinite DP s. It provides empirical support to the established position that restrictive modifiers are preferred in polydefinite environments (Kolliakou 1995). At the same time, it shows that non-restrictively modified polydefinites are not excluded by grammar (Manolessou 2000). To reconcile the facts, a novel syntactic analysis of polydefiniteness as involving…
The interpretation of plural mass nouns in Greek
A syntactically-driven approach to indefiniteness, specificity and anti-specificity in Romance
In this paper we present an original approach to analyze the compositionality of indefinite expressions in Romance by investigating the relevance of their syntactic distribution in relation to their meaning. This approach has the advantage of allowing us to explore the question of how syntactic structure can determine the meaning of different forms of indefiniteness. To that end, we postulate a common derivation for bare plurals, bare mass and de…
Negation, Prosody, and Gesture
This chapter describes the current state of the art with regard to the contribution of prosody and gesture to the semantic and pragmatic expression and interpretation of negation. A review of the literature shows that three types of speech acts involving negation (e.g. denial, rejection, and metalinguistic negation) can be encoded through differentiated prosodic and gestural means across languages. Negative elements in denials tend to be prosodic…
The Oxford Handbook of Negation
In this volume, international experts in negation provide a comprehensive overview of cross-linguistic and philosophical research in the field, as well as accounts of more recent results from experimental linguistics, psycholinguistics, and neuroscience. The volume adopts an interdisciplinary approach to fundamental questions ranging from why negation displays so many distinct linguistic forms to how prosody and gesture participate in the interpr…
Oxford Handbook of Negation
Mismatches in the interpretation of fragment negative expressions in Mandarin Chinese
Manner and result modifiers. The V ben V construction in Catalan
This paper analyzes the ingredients of a Romance construction, henceforth named the V ben V construction, consisting of a verb and its theme object in combination with a degree adverb ben ‘{well, really}’ followed by a verb in past participle or an adjectival form. It describes the properties and restrictions of the various constituents involved in this construction, and it presents a new analysis focusing on the properties of the main predicate,…
Response Systems: The Syntax and Semantics of Fragment Answers and Response Particles
This article critically reviews the main research issues raised in the study of response systems in natural languages by addressing the syntax and semantics of fragment answers and yes/no response particles. Fragment answers include replies that do not have a sentential form, whereas response particles consist solely of an affirmative or a negative adverb. While the main research question in the syntax of fragments and response particles has been…
The Representation of Disjunct Constituents
One problem in linguistic theory concerns the way in which the properties characterizing parenthetical or disjunct constituents are formally recorded in linguistic descriptions. The goals of this paper are to describe the interaction between disjunct constituents and sentential structures and to argue for an extension of the theoretical apparatus initially postulated in autosegmental phonology in order to represent complex syntactic structures co…
Bare nominals and incorporating verbs in Spanish and Catalan
This paper presents an analysis of bare nominals unmarked for number (BNs) occurring in object position in Spanish and Catalan, on which the BN is a syntactic complement to the verb, but not a semantic argument. After describing the properties that distinguish BNs from other indefinite expressions (bare plurals, indefinite singulars preceded by un ‘a’, and bare mass terms), we argue that these BNs occur in a monadic syntactic configuration in the…
Prosody and gesture constrain the interpretation of double negation
Bare nominals in Catalan and Spanish. Their structure and meaning
On the semantic status of n-words in Catalan and Spanish
Double Negation in a Negative Concord language: An experimental investigation
Intonational encoding of double negation in Catalan
Interpreting argumental n-words as answers to negative wh-questions
On classes of idioms and their interpretation
Bare Nominals in Brazilian Portuguese: More on the DP/NP analysis
Diachronic changes in negative expressions: The case of French
A syntactically-driven approach to indefiniteness, specificity and anti-specificity in Romance
In this paper we present an original approach to analyze the compositionality of indefinite expressions in Romance by investigating the relevance of their syntactic distribution in relation to their meaning. This approach has the advantage of allowing us to explore the question of how syntactic structure can determine the meaning of different forms of indefiniteness. To that end, we postulate a common derivation for bare plurals, bare mass and de…
Argument structure and compositionality in idiomatic constructions
It is often assumed that idiomatic constructions basically involve non-compositional meanings (Katz and Postal 1963; Fraser 1970; Chomsky 1980, among others) or special syntax-semantics correspondences (cf. Jackendoff 1990, 1997a, b, 2002). However, we agree with those linguists who claim that there are aspects of idioms that are compositional (Marantz 1996, 1997; Nunberg, Sag, and Wasow 1994). In this article, on the one hand, assuming Hale and …
From a movement verb to an epistemic discourse marker: The diachronic change of Spanish vaya
Besides its main use as a form of the movement verb ir 'to go', the Spanish form vaya (lit. go) is also used as a verbal discourse marker. Here we trace this transition from a purely verbal form to a discourse marker by searching a historical corpus of documents in Spanish, which reveals the increasing use over time of vaya in exclamatives to replace a presentational construction. We focus on vaya in isolation and in combination with an indefinit…
(Negative) Polarity Items in Catalan and Other Trans-Pyrenean Romance Languages
This paper identifies the set of properties that polarity items (PI), negative polarity items (NPI) and negative concord items (NCI) satisfy in Catalan, Aragonese, Benasquese and Occitan. It shows that in Catalan, gaire 'much, many' is a PI, pas 'at all' is an NPI with enriched meanings and indefinites such as ningú 'anybody, n-body' come in two sets, as both PIs and NCIs. It further shows that in the trans-Pyrenean Romance varieties studied here…
Clitic incorporation and abstract semantic objects in idiomatic constructions
This article analyzes inherent clitics of idiomatic constructions as verbal arguments (Jelinek, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 2: 39–76, 1984; Baker, The polysynthesis parameter, Oxford University Press, 1996; Hale, On the significance of Eloise Jelinek's pronominal argument hypothesis, John Benjamins, 2003) that are translated as free variables (Delfitto, Catalan Journal of Linguistics 1: 41–69, 2002): they are anaphoric to a (hidden) no…
The interpretation of no-pas in Catalan
Greek non-negative min, epistemic modality, and positive bias
Modern Greek displays two variants of the word min ; one corresponds to a negative marker, and the other corresponds to an epistemic modal. We focus on the latter and provide, for the first time to our knowledge, experimental evidence on its exact interpretation, showing that (i) non-negative min is incompatible with the overt realization of polar propositional alternatives { p ,¬ p }, (ii) it conveys medium speaker certainty with respect to the …
A new approach to Negative Concord: Catalan as a case in point
In this paper, we revisit the phenomenon of Negative Concord focusing on the Strict vs. Non-Strict divide. With Catalan as a case in point, we show that Negative Concord Items (NCIs) are not negative quantifiers (NQs) or polarity items (PIs) but inherently negative indefinites by virtue of carrying a negative feature [neg] that contributes a negative semantics to the proposition and is subject to a syntax–phonology constraint that forces it to ov…
Single negation interpretations in sentences with multiple negative expressions in Mandarin Chinese. An experimental investigation
A Conceptual Dictionary of Catalan Idioms
Catalan lexicography has traditionally dealt with idioms either as alphabetically ordered lemmas or as non-lemmatic stems. In the case of a non-lemmatic approach, idioms are registered using either the first word with semantic content or the word considered to reflect the main semantic content of the expression. This paper shows that both traditional semasiologic and onomasiologic approaches to the description of idioms have been unified in a new…
On the semantic content of lexical items within linguistic theory
L'A. argumente en faveur de la pertinence d'une distinction entre l'information linguistique encodee conceptuellement et celle encodee proceduralement dans le cadre de l'analyse semantique des items lexicaux. D'autre part, il considere que la classification des types d'information postulee dans la theorie de la pertinace (Wilson et Sperber, 1993) ne doit pas etre correliee avec une classification des items lexicaux selon l'information semantique …
Modal adverbs and modality scales
On the property-denoting clitic ne and the determiner de/di: A comparative analysis of Catalan and Italian
The clitic pronoun ne and the functional element de introducing nominal constituents have many nominal and prepositional functions across Romance languages. In this article, we focus on the nominal functions, singling out three different bundles of semantic features that characterize both ne and de. They can denote properties of individual entities, properties of kinds, or predicate properties. The article shows that Catalan ne and de display the…
On the status of NCIs: An experimental investigation on so-called Strict NC languages
This paper investigates the status of Negative Concord Items (NCIs) in three so-called Strict Negative Concord (NC) languages (namely, Greek, Romanian, and Russian). An experimental study was designed to gather evidence concerning the speakers’ acceptability and interpretation of sequences with argumental NCIs in subject, object, and both positions when dhen/nu/ne were not present. Our results show that NCIs are negative indefinites whose presenc…
Modal adverbs and modality scales
The Representation of Disjunct Constituents
One problem in linguistic theory concerns the way in which the properties characterizing parenthetical or disjunct constituents are formally recorded in linguistic descriptions. The goals of this paper are to describe the interaction between disjunct constituents and sentential structures and to argue for an extension of the theoretical apparatus initially postulated in autosegmental phonology in order to represent complex syntactic structures co…
Expletive Negation and Logical Absorption
The interpretation of no-pas in Catalan
On the semantic content of lexical items within linguistic theory
L'A. argumente en faveur de la pertinence d'une distinction entre l'information linguistique encodee conceptuellement et celle encodee proceduralement dans le cadre de l'analyse semantique des items lexicaux. D'autre part, il considere que la classification des types d'information postulee dans la theorie de la pertinace (Wilson et Sperber, 1993) ne doit pas etre correliee avec une classification des items lexicaux selon l'information semantique …
On the semantic status of n-words in Catalan and Spanish
A Conceptual Dictionary of Catalan Idioms
Catalan lexicography has traditionally dealt with idioms either as alphabetically ordered lemmas or as non-lemmatic stems. In the case of a non-lemmatic approach, idioms are registered using either the first word with semantic content or the word considered to reflect the main semantic content of the expression. This paper shows that both traditional semasiologic and onomasiologic approaches to the description of idioms have been unified in a new…
Laughing Our Heads Off: When Metaphor Constrains Aspect
Argument structure and compositionality in idiomatic constructions
It is often assumed that idiomatic constructions basically involve non-compositional meanings (Katz and Postal 1963; Fraser 1970; Chomsky 1980, among others) or special syntax-semantics correspondences (cf. Jackendoff 1990, 1997a, b, 2002). However, we agree with those linguists who claim that there are aspects of idioms that are compositional (Marantz 1996, 1997; Nunberg, Sag, and Wasow 1994). In this article, on the one hand, assuming Hale and …
Clitic incorporation and abstract semantic objects in idiomatic constructions
This article analyzes inherent clitics of idiomatic constructions as verbal arguments (Jelinek, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 2: 39–76, 1984; Baker, The polysynthesis parameter, Oxford University Press, 1996; Hale, On the significance of Eloise Jelinek's pronominal argument hypothesis, John Benjamins, 2003) that are translated as free variables (Delfitto, Catalan Journal of Linguistics 1: 41–69, 2002): they are anaphoric to a (hidden) no…
Bare nominals and incorporating verbs in Spanish and Catalan
This paper presents an analysis of bare nominals unmarked for number (BNs) occurring in object position in Spanish and Catalan, on which the BN is a syntactic complement to the verb, but not a semantic argument. After describing the properties that distinguish BNs from other indefinite expressions (bare plurals, indefinite singulars preceded by un ‘a’, and bare mass terms), we argue that these BNs occur in a monadic syntactic configuration in the…
On classes of idioms and their interpretation
Bare nominals in Catalan and Spanish. Their structure and meaning
Bare nominals and argument structure in Catalan and Spanish
This article aims at focusing on a set of phenomena related to the syntax and semantics of bare count nominals. We will show that bare count nominals unmarked for number (BNs) can occur both in object argument position and in predicate position, and can form denominal verbs. This is because, in syntax, BNs can only occur as internal arguments of relational categories (V, P) to which bare nouns can move and conflate at some point during the syntac…
Intonational encoding of double negation in Catalan
Le-predicates and event modification in Mexican Spanish
Prosody and gesture constrain the interpretation of double negation
Diachronic changes in negative expressions: The case of French
Reference to kinds and to other generic expressions in Spanish: Definiteness and number
This paper is devoted to the study of definite kinds and other generic expressions, such as subkinds and definite plurals in argument position in Romance, namely Spanish. We support the claim that definite kinds denote the kind itself and are the expression of D-genericity in this type of languages. We argue that at the syntax-semantics interface definite kinds are numberless DPs composed by applying a
Prosody and gesture in the interpretation of yes-answers to negative yes/no-questions
In this paper we investigate the role of prosody and gesture in the interpretation of
Ambiguity resolution and information structure
In this paper we focus on the topic of ambiguity resolution in and beyond grammar. We deal with two questions: where is ambiguity resolved (in particular, the ambiguity of expressions conveying specific forms of information packaging and common ground management), and what is the design of grammar that emerges from the study of ambiguity problems. After a review of the standard analysis of ambiguity within the Principles and Parameters model, in …
Bare Nominals in Brazilian Portuguese: More on the DP/NP analysis
Double Negation in a Negative Concord language: An experimental investigation
Meaning of words and meaning of sentences
Interpreting argumental n-words as answers to negative wh-questions
Linguistics (47 works) · Philosophy (46 works) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (41 works) · Computer Science (36 works) · Psychology (25 works) · Mathematics (24 works) · Philosophy (24 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (16 works) · Catalan (15 works) · Linguistics and Discourse Analysis (15 works)