Cover not available

Article published In: Revue Romane: Online-First Articles

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload EPUB
authorization required

Nominal placeholders in Southern Cone Spanish

An explorative discussion on Rioplatense coso and Chilean este/esta

ORCiD logo with link | Universidad Austral de Chile
Published online: 7 May 2026
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/rro.25027.mux
Abstract
This paper examines the grammatical behavior of two nominal placeholders in Latin American Spanish: coso in Rioplatense Spanish and este/esta in Chilean Spanish. These expressions function as substitutes for nouns that are forgotten or deliberately left unmentioned. Drawing on novel data, I show that both elements systematically give rise to interpretations involving a sort of epistemic specificity, a property that distinguishes them from general nouns such as cosa ‘thing’. At the same time, they differ with respect to a number of morphosyntactic properties. To account for these contrasts, I propose an analysis according to which coso is a noun that incorporates into a specificity projection within the nominal structure, while este/esta is a demonstrative modifier accompanying a phonologically empty noun. This analysis shows that nominal placeholders do not form a uniform grammatical class; rather, their varying properties emerge from the interaction of lexical and morphosyntactic factors.
Article outline
  • 1.Introducción
  • 2.Some distinctive properties of nominal placeholders
  • 3.Grammatical differences between coso and este
  • 4.Toward an analysis of nominal placeholders
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgement
  • Notes
  • References
References (38)
References
Amiridze, Nino. 2010. Placeholder verbs in Modern Georgian. In Nino Amiridze, Davis Boyd H. & Margaret Maclagan (eds.), Fillers, pauses and placeholders, 67–94. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Benninghoven, Vera. 2018. The functions of ‘general nouns’. Theory and corpus analysis. Berlin: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bernstein, Judy. 1993. Topics in the syntax of nominal structure across Romance. New York: City University of New York dissertation.
Bosque, Ignacio. 2001. Adjective position and the interpretation of indefinites. In Javier Gutiérrez Rexach & Luis Silva-Villar (eds.), Current issues in spanish syntax and semantics, 17–38. Amsterdam: De Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brugè, Laura. 1996. Demonstrative movement in Spanish: a comparative approach. University of Venice Working Papers in Linguistics 6(1). 1–53.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2002. The positions of the demonstratives in the extended nominal projection. In Guglielmo Cinque (ed.), Functional structure in DP and IP, 15–53. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Casullo, Fernando H. 1964. Diccionario de voces lunfardas y vulgares. Buenos Aires: Editorial Freeland.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Channell, Joanna. 1994. Vague language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Conde, Oscar. 2004. Diccionario etimológico del lunfardo. Buenos Aires: Taurus.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2013. Lunfardo rioplatense: delimitación, descripción y evolución. In Neus Vila Rubio (ed.), De parces y troncos. Nuevos enfoques sobre los argots hispánicos, 77–105. Lleida: Edicions de la Universitat de Lleida.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cornilescu, Alexandra & Alexandru Nicolae. 2016. Romanian adjectives at the syntax-semantics interface. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 63(2). 197–240. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
De Mello, George. 1992. El artículo definido con nombre propio de persona en el español hablado culto contemporáneo. Studia Neophilologica 64(2). 221–234. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
De Miguel, Elena. 2025. Nombres de objeto recategorizados como eventivos en la construcción dársele a alguien {bien/mal} algo. Asterisco: Revista de lingüística española 3(1). 23–53. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fábregas, Antonio. 2019. Lexical and syntactic aspects of D-like and Q-like adjectives in Spanish. In Natascha Pomino (ed.), Proceedings of the IX Nereus International Workshop “Morphosyntactic and semantic aspects of the DP in romance and beyond”, 41–68. Konstanz: Fachbereich Linguistik der Universität Konstanz.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Farkas, Donka F. 2002. Specificity distinctions. Journal of Semantics 19(3). 213–243. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fodor, Janet Dean & Ivan A. Sag. 1982. Referential and quantificational indefinites. Linguistics and Philosophy 5(3). 355–398. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael & Ruqaiya Hasan. 1976. Cohesion in English. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heim, Irene. 1982. The semantics of definite and indefinite noun phrases: University of Massachusetts dissertation.
Konan, Yannick Romain & Genoveva Puskas. 2021. On quantified DPs in Baule-Kode. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 6(1). 1–45. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Koopman, Hilda & Anna Szabolcsi. 2000. Verbal complexes. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kornfeld, Laura & Andrés Saab. 2004. Nominal ellipsis and morphological structure in Spanish. In Reineke Bok-Bennema, Bart Hollebrandse, Brigitte Kampers-Manhe & Petra Sleeman (eds.), Romance languages and linguistic theory 2002, 183–198. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Longobardi, Giuseppe. 1994. Reference and proper names: A theory of N-movement in syntax and logical form. Linguistic Inquiry 25(4). 609–665.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mihatsch, Wiltrud. 2024. Sustantivos comodines como recursos discursivos: el caso de chisme. Filología 56(1). 103–126. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Muñoz Pérez, Carlos. 2026. On personal articles in Chilean Spanish. Manuscript, Universidad Austral de Chile.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Núñez Pertejo, Paloma. 2018. A contrastive study of placeholders in the speech of British and Spanish teenagers. In Arne Ziegler (ed.), Jugendsprachen/youth languages. Aktuelle Perspektiven internationaler Forschung/Current perspectives of international research, 391–418. Berlin: De Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Oroz, Rodolfo. 1966. La lengua castellana en Chile. Santiago: Universidad de Chile.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Panagiotidis, Phoevos. 2002. Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Podlesskaya, Vera I. 2010. Parameters for typological variation of placeholders. In Nino Amiridze, Davis Boyd H. & Margaret Maclagan (eds.), Fillers, pauses and placeholders, 11–32. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Real Academia Española y Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española. 2005. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas (DPD). [URL]
Rizzi, Luigi. 1986. Null objects in Italian and the theory of pro. Linguistic Inquiry 17(3). 501–557.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Saab, Andrés. 2008. Hacia una teoría de la identidad parcial en la elipsis. Buenos Aires: Universidad de Buenos Aires dissertation.
. 2019. Nominal ellipsis. In Jeroen van Craenenbroeck & Tanja Temmerman (eds.), The oxford handbook of ellipsis, 526–561. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Seraku, Tohru. 2022. Interactional and rhetorical functions of placeholders: A relevance-theoretic approach. Journal of Pragmatics 1871. 118–129. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2023. Grammars for placeholders: The dynamic turn. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 8(1). Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Simone, Raffaele (ed.). 2010. Enciclopedia dell’italiano : il vocabolario Treccani. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana fondata da Giovanni Treccani.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vogel, Petra M. 2020. Dingsbums and Thingy. Placeholders for names in German and other languages. In Lívia Körtvélyessy & Pavol Štekauer (eds.), Complex words. Advances in morphology, 362–383. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Von Heusinger, Klaus. 2002. Specificity and definiteness in sentence and discourse structure. Journal of Semantics 19(3). 245–274. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue