Superlatives, partitives and apparent φ-feature mismatch in Spanish
Toquero Pérez, Luis Miguel (University of Southern California)

Date:	2024
Abstract:	Adjectival superlatives in Spanish are expressed by a definite determiner and the com-parative morpheme m ́as 'more/-er' modifying the adjective. While gender and numberconcord between the determiner, adjective and noun is generally obligatory, there is asubset of cases where it seems to be disrupted: the determiner surfaces as the so-calledneuter lo, the adjective spells out masculine and there is no overt noun. I argue that thisnon-canonical pattern is the result of a failed Agree dependency between probes on D anda noun underspecified for φ. Failure to value the probe triggers the emergence of defaultsat the point of Vocabulary Insertion: lo and masculine morphology on the adjective. Theanalysis that lo as genderless and numberless receives support from coordination patterns.
Rights:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Language:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Subject:	Syntax-morphology ; Phi-agreement ; Superlatives ; Partitives ; Spanish
Published in:	Isogloss, Vol. 10 Núm. 2 (2024) , p. 1-33 (Articles) , ISSN 2385-4138

Adreça original: https://revistes.uab.cat/isogloss/article/view/v10-n2-toqueroperez
DOI: 10.5565/rev/isogloss.277

33 p, 277.5 KB

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