Browsing by Author "Levinstein Rodriguez, Andrea"

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    An exploration of neuter determiner 'lo' and 'lo que' constructions in Spanish
    (2022-03) Levinstein Rodriguez, Andrea
    This paper presents an exploratory overview of the syntactic properties of ‘lo’, a polysemic definite determiner that is standardly characterized as having a ‘neuter’ grammatical gender. I argue that ‘lo’ is better characterized as a referential pronoun lacking φ features, which refers to non-individuated entities. In addition to this referential ‘lo’, and following Zulaica Hernandez (2018), I argue that there is a non-referential, expletive ‘lo’, which relates a possible world to a predicate which may contain morphologically expressed φ features. However, the distribution and referentiality of ‘lo’ in ‘lo que’ constructions (prepositional clauses where ‘lo’ can be external or internal to the CP; see Plann, 1980) indicate that whether ‘lo’ is referential or expletive is not a matter of syntactic position, contrary to Zulaica Hernandez (2018). Referential ‘lo’ stands in contrast with most structurally defective pronouns, such as impersonal pronouns and expletives, in that it is a definite pronoun with a specific referent. This goes against the standard assumption that a nominal phrase that has properties associated with ‘higher’ layers of structure, such as definiteness (associated with DP), must therefore also have ‘lower’ layers like NumP and nP. Although this paper does not present a solution, it does point out that standard theory cannot account for it and argues for the need to continue developing our understanding of nominal structure.
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    When Articles Go Missing: Analyzing Optionality in Spanish Prepositional Relative Clauses
    (2022-09-15) Levinstein Rodriguez, Andrea; Storoshenko, Dennis Ryan; Ritter, Elizabeth Ann; Cuervo, Maria Cristina
    This thesis project presents a comprehensive overview of article optionality in Spanish prepositional relative clauses. This definite article, which is part of the operator phrase, is subject to a complex pattern of variation that regulates whether it can be present or absent in a given phrase. Through a mixture of experimental and formal analysis, this project investigates (i) the syntactic and semantic factors that influence the presence or absence of the article and (ii) the role of the article within the syntactic structure of Spanish prepositional relative clauses. A corpus study found that the article was significantly more likely to be absent when the antecedent of the relative clause was definite, inanimate, or plural, or when the embedded clause was not negated. In addition to these factors, a significant effect of preposition and an interaction between definiteness and the preposition en, which had not been attested in the literature, were found. Subsequently, an acceptability judgement task conducted on eighty-eight Mexican Spanish speakers showed higher acceptability ratings for article presence, definite antecedent, and the preposition en. The en:Definiteness interaction was replicated in post-hoc testing. Based on these results, I present a modified version of Cinque’s (2020) double-headed structure. I propose that prepositional relative clauses without the article follow Cinque’s matching analysis-like derivation, while those with the article contain a larger relative operator with a [+specific] feature, thus avoiding deletion. This project presents an updated understanding of an under-researched area of Spanish grammar. It provides empirical support to the claim that the presence or absence of the article is not a matter of free variation, and makes headway on identifying the factors that mediate the presence or absence of the article, as well as the mechanisms that underlie them.