Specificity, Definiteness and the Definite Article in Spanish Nominal Expressions

Research output: Chapter in Book/Entry/PoemChapter

Abstract

This chapter discusses the location available to the different types of determiners depending on their meaning and the interaction between the type of determiner (and the semantics it introduces) and the overall syntactic properties of the structure. Regarding this issue, the main claim of this chapter is that the presence or absence of the functional category Determiner Phrase (DP) in the structure will affect the movement possibilities in the structure, due to its interaction with the locality conditions on movement analyzed in the book. Furthermore, the chapter examines the properties of wh-extraction from nominal expressions headed by the definite article in Spanish and compares them to the cases of so-called specificity effects in the literature. The claim to this respect is that the presence or absence of definiteness and specificity features in the definite article in Spanish results in the possibility (or impossibility) of extracting an argument out of the structure.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationStudies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media B.V.
Pages83-119
Number of pages37
DOIs
StatePublished - 2010

Publication series

NameStudies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory
Volume79
ISSN (Print)0924-4670
ISSN (Electronic)2215-0358

Keywords

  • Definite Article
  • Noun Phrase
  • Relative Clause
  • Specific Reading
  • Syntactic Property

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Language and Linguistics

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Specificity, Definiteness and the Definite Article in Spanish Nominal Expressions'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this