This paper sets the basis for a uniform account of the alternation between the two Spanish copulas (ser and estar) in adjectival and passive clauses. While the copular contrast has been attributed to the different properties of adjectives (e.g. individual vs. stage level) and to an eventive vs. resultative stative dichotomy in passives, this work shows that they all behave alike regarding their temporal interpretation. We derive such uniformity from the syntactic properties of the copulas themselves: estar includes an additional component ser lacks that makes everything it merges with stative, with particular temporoaspectual properties.
Arche, María J.2012. “A Note on the Individual-Level/Stage-Level dichotomy: how aspectual is it?” Borealis, An International Journal of Hispanic Linguistics 1(2): 109–132.
Arche, María J.2014. “The construction of viewpoint aspect. The imperfective revisited”. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 32(3): 791–831.
Arche, María J., and Timothy A. Stowell. In progress. “Evaluative Dispositional Adjectives and the Individual/Stage Distinction”. Ms., University of Greenwich and UCLA.
Bertinetto, Pier Marco and Alessandro Lenci. 2012. “Pluractionality, habituality and gnomic imperfectivity”. In The Oxford Handbook of Tense and Aspect, ed. by Robert Binnick, 852–880. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Boogaart, Ronny. 1999. Aspect and temporal ordering. A contrastive analysis of Dutch and English. The Hague: Holland Academic Graphics.
Brucart, Josep M.2010. “La alternancia ser/estar y las construcciones atributivas de localización”. In Actas del V Encuentro de Gramática Generativa, ed. by Alicia Avellana, 115–152. Maestría en Lingüística, Universidad Nacional del Comahue: Comahue..
Bybee, Joan, Revere Perkins and William Pagliuca. 1994. The evolution of grammar: Tense, aspect and modality in the languages of the world. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Carlson, Gregory N.1977. Reference to Kinds in English. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Massachussetts, Amherst.
Carrasco, Ángeles. 1998. La correlación de tiempos en español. Ph.D. dissertation, Complutense University, Madrid.
Chierchia, Gennaro. 1995. “Individual-Level predicates as inherent generics”. In The Generic Book, ed. by Gregory N. Carlson and Francis J. Pelletier, 176–224. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press.
De Miguel, Elena. 1999. “El aspecto léxico”. In Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española, directed by Ignacio Bosque and Violeta Demonte, 2977–3060. Madrid: Espasa.
Demirdache, Hamida, and Myriam Uribe-Etxebarria. 2000. “The primitives of temporal relations”. In Step by step: Essays on minimalist syntax in honor of Howard Lasnik, ed. by Roger Martin, David Michaels, and Juan Uriagereka, 157–186. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Demirdache, Hamida, and Myriam Uribe-Etxebarria. 2004. “The syntax of time adverbs”. In The syntax of Time, ed. by Jacqueline Guéron and Jacqueline Lecarme, 217–234. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Demirdache, Hamida, and Myriam Uribe-Etxebarria. 2007. “The Syntax of Time Arguments”. Lingua 117: 330–366.
Deo, Ashwini. 2012. “Morphology”. In The Oxford handbook of tense and aspect, ed. by Robert I. Binnick, 155–183. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fábregas, Antonio, Bryan Leferman, and Rafael Marín. 2013. “Evaluative Adjectives are Davidsonian states”. Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 17: 237–253.
Fernald, Teodore. 1999. “Evidential coercion: Using individual-level predicates in stage-level environments”. Studies in the Linguistic Sciences 29: 43–63.
Fernández Leborans, María J.1995. “Las construcciones con el verbo estar: aspectos sintácticos y semánticos”. Verba 22: 253–284.
Fernández Leborans, María J.1999. “La predicación: Las oraciones copulativas”. In Gramática Descriptiva de la Lengua Española, ed. by Ignacio Bosque and Violeta Demonte, 2357–2460. Madrid: Espasa Calpe.
Gallego, Ángel, and Juan Uriagereka. 2009. “Estar = Ser + P”. Paper presented at the XIX Colloquium on Generative Grammar, Vitoria, University of the Basque Country.
Gehrke, Berit, and Nino Grillo. 2009. “How to become passive”. In Explorations of Phase Theory: Features, Arguments, and Interpretation at the Interfaces, ed. by Kleanthes Grohmann, 231–268. Berlin & New York: De Gruyter.
Hale, Kenneth. 1986. “Notes on world view and semantic categories: Some Warlpiri examples”. In Features and Projections, ed. by Peter Muysken and Henk van Riemsdijk, 233–254. Dordrecht: Foris.
Hale, Kenneth, and Samuel J. Keyser. 2002. Prolegomenon to a Theory of Argument Structure. Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press.
Jiménez, Silvia, and Rafael Marín. 2000. “Por activa y por pasiva”. Actas del IV Congreso de Lingüística General, Cádiz, 3: 1501–1513.
Keenan, Edward, and Matthew Dryer. 2007. “Passive in the world’s languages”. In Clause structure, language typology and syntactic description, ed. by Timothy Shopen, 325–361. Cambridge: CUP.
Kenny, Anthony. 1963. Action, emotion and will. London: Routledge and Kegan.
Klein, Wolfgang. 1994. Time in language. London: Routledge.
Kratzer, Angelika. 1994. The event argument and the semantics of voice. Ms., University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Kratzer, Angelika. 2000. “Building statives”. Berkeley Linguistic Society 26: 385–399.
Lakoff, George. 1970. Irregularity in Syntax. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Landau, Idan. 2006. “Ways of being rude”. Ms., Ben Gurion University.
Lenci, Alessandro, and Pier Marco Bertinetto. 2000. “Aspect, adverbs, and events: habituality vs. perfectivity”. In Speaking of events, ed. by James Higginbotham, Fabio Pianesi, and Achille Varzi (eds.), Speaking of events, 245–287. New York: Oxford University Press.
Marín, Rafael. 2010. “Spanish adjectives within bounds”. In Adjectives: Formal analysis in syntax and semantics, ed. by Patricia Cabredo and Ora Matushansky, 307–331. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Mendikoetxea, Amaya. 1999. “Construcciones con se: Medias, pasivas e impersonales”. In Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española, ed. by Ignacio Bosque and Violeta Demonte, 1631–1722. Madrid: Espasa Calpe.
Oshima, David Y.2009. “Between being wise and acting wise: A hidden conditional in some constructions with propensity adjectives”. Journal of Linguistics 45(2): 363–393.
Piñón, Christopher. 1997. “Achievements in an Event Semantics”. In Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory 7, ed. by Aaron Lawson and Eun Cho, 273–296. Ithaca (NY): CLC Publications.
Ramchand, Gillian. 2008. Verb Meaning and the Lexicon: A First Phase Syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schmitt, Cristina. 1992. “SER and ESTAR: A Matter of Aspect”. NELS 22: 411–426.
Stowell, Timothy A.1991. “The alignment of arguments in adjective phrases”. In Perspectives on Phrase Structure: Heads and Licensing [Syntax and Semantics 25], ed. by Susan Rothstein, 105–135. New York, Academic Press.
Stowell, Timothy A.1993. “Syntax of tense”. Ms., University of California, Los Angeles.
Stowell, Timothy A.1996. “The phrase structure of tense”. In Phrase structure and the lexicon [Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory], ed. by Johan Rooryck and Laurie Zaring, 277–291. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Stowell, Timothy A.2007. “The syntactic expression of tense”. Lingua 117: 437–463.
Stowell, Timothy A.2008. “Where the Past is in the Perfect”. In Tiempos compuestos y formas verbales complejas (Lingüistica Iberoamericana Vol. 34), ed. by Ángeles Carrasco, 103–118. Madrid: Vervuert.
Talmy, Leonard. 1978. “Figure and ground in complex sentences”. In Universals of Human Language, edited by Joseph H. Greenberg, 625–649. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Verkuyl, Henk J.1999. Aspectual issues. Studies on time and quantity. Stanford: CSLI.
Zagona, K.2010. “Ser and Estar: Phrase structure and aspect”. In Selected Proceedings of Chronos 8 Cahiers Chronos, ed. by C. Nishida and C. Russi, 303–327. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Cited by (6)
Cited by six other publications
Ntelitheos, Dimitrios & Marta Szreder
2024. Non-verbal predicate negation in child Emirati Arabic. Language Acquisition 31:1 ► pp. 37 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 16 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.