Spanish VN compounds and the source of valued gender and number features
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 24226887 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Andrés Fábregas (0000-0001-9907-5878, Norwegian University of Science and Technology) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Pages | 27-56 |
| Publication date | 2026-02-27 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | CHAPTER |
| Venue | Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | John Benjamins Publishing Company (PUBLISHER • NL) |
| DOI | 10.1075/la.291.02fab |
| OpenAlex | W7131799245 |
| ISBN | 9789027233899 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 32 |
While our current linguistic theories predict that zero elements should exist, sometimes null heads are posited in contexts which have properties that are incompatible with how we expect zeroes to behave. In this article, I provide an analysis of apparent gender and number mismatches involving VN compounds, and some similar prefixed words, and I argue that positing a null nominal for such cases makes the wrong empirical predictions. Instead, I show how adopting a matching theory of agreement and taking seriously the licensing conditions of predicates derives the attested facts without the need to posit a null nominal head or nominaliser.
gender agreement · number agreement · prefixed words · Spanish language · Language Development and Disorders · Spanish Linguistics and Language Studies · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation
Beyond Morphology
Lexical Plurals
Simpler Syntax
Agreement and Its Failures
Two Functional Categories in Noun Phrases
Where’s Phi? Agreement as a Postsyntactic Operation
The Plural is Semantically Unmarked
Generalized quantifiers and natural language
Ii.—on Denoting
Deconstructing Spanish prefixation
On [V] on v
Gender ‘Translation’ And Distributed Gender
Gender
On the predictiveness of Natural Morphology
Three Factors in Language Design
The Rich Agreement Hypothesis Rehabilitated
Relabeling Heads
| Highly cited | No |
|---|