An exploration of neuter determiner 'lo' and 'lo que' constructions in Spanish

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dc.contributor.authorLevinstein Rodriguez, Andrea
dc.date.accessioned2022-03-18T16:26:53Z
dc.date.available2022-03-18T16:26:53Z
dc.date.issued2022-03
dc.description.abstractThis 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.en_US
dc.identifier.issn2371-2643
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1880/114491
dc.identifier.urihttps://dx.doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/39651
dc.language.isoengen_US
dc.publisher.institutionUniversity of Calgaryen_US
dc.subjectSpanishen_US
dc.subjectneuter 'lo'en_US
dc.subjectneuter pronounsen_US
dc.subjectnominal structureen_US
dc.subjectsyntaxen_US
dc.titleAn exploration of neuter determiner 'lo' and 'lo que' constructions in Spanishen_US
dc.typeworking paperen_US
ucalgary.item.requestcopytrueen_US
ucalgary.scholar.levelGraduateen_US
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Volume 32, 2022