In many languages, an argument external to a nominal can be interpreted as a possessor of that nominal. Korean and Spanish both have such constructions, but the external possessors contrast in their case features, grammatical functions, distribution, and semantic properties (e.g. alienability).… read more
Licensing of NPIs in Spanish varies depending on the semantics of the trigger. Nonveridical operators license n-words, and antiveridical operators license ni-minimizers. I argue that the NPIs that can occur in antiveridical contexts have a scalar presupposition, but those that are licensed in… read more
This paper argues that in Spanish negative phrases of the form “ni XP ni XP” 'neither XP nor XP', ni is a polarity-sensitive disjunction. Following the widening/strengthening account of polarity sensitivity in Heim (1984), Kadmon and Landman (1993), and others, it is argued that ni-XPs have a… read more
Old Spanish had a split auxiliary system in the perfect tense, reminiscent of what is found in Modern French and Modern Italian. In this paper, I trace the progress of the displacement of ser ‘be’ by haber ‘have’ with intransitive and reflexive verbs in the history of Spanish. The data support the… read more