The Internal Structure of Perfective Adjectives: States and Blocking

• Autores: Rafael Marín Gálvez, Antonio Fábregas Alfaro
• Localización: Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone linguistics, ISSN-e 2199-3386, ISSN 1939-0238, Vol. 13, Nº. 2, 2020, págs. 331-360
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The goal of this article is to discuss the nature of so-called perfective adjectives in Spanish (desnudo ‘naked,’ suelto ‘loose’). We do so through a discussion of the problem that participles are blocked by perfective adjectives in some contexts (Dejó la habitación {limpia / ∗limpiada} ‘He left the room {clean / ∗cleaned}). We will argue that perfective adjectives contain in their internal structure a StateP that can contextually be interpreted as a result state; this head has morphological, syntactic and semantic effects, and makes the structure spelled out by the perfective adjective identical to the one associated with a small participle, with the result that a principle of lexical economy blocks the participial morphology in situations where only the small participle is allowed.