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Part of
Boundaries, Phases and Interfaces: Case studies in honor of Violeta Demonte
Edited by Olga Fernández-Soriano, Elena Castroviejo Miró and Isabel Pérez-Jiménez
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 239] 2017
► pp. 105–128

Adverbial elatives in Caribbean Spanish

| The Ohio State University
| University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez

This paper is a study of the adverbial modifier bien and its use as an elative or operator of extreme degree in a Caribbean Spanish variety, Puerto Rican Spanish. It is argued that there are several properties setting the elative interpretation of bien apart from other well-known uses in other varieties and from the intensifier muy. The modifier bien is also argued to be exclamative and modal in nature, related to the high degree of commitment of the speaker with the truth of a proposition.

Keywords: elative, degree adverb, superlative, extreme-degree interpretation, modality, Puerto Rican Spanish
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2. Bien in Puerto Rican Spanish
  • 3.Elative expressions
  • 4.The grammar of bien
  • 5.An analysis at the interfaces
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 14 June 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.239.06gut
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