Comparative Syntax: English and Spanish Linguistic Analysis
1. Grammaticality Asymmetry in Preposing
The contrast between English and Spanish in (1) and (2) stems from different syntactic constraints. In (1), Left Dislocation is restricted to referential NPs in English, whereas Spanish allows broader usage. In (2), the lack of asymmetry is due to the requirement for I-to-C movement (subject-verb inversion) in both English Negative Inversion and Spanish focalization structures.
2. Syntactic Operations: Object Positioning
- (a) Heavy NP-Shift: The object shifts rightward for prosodic reasons. English allows this when the object is complex.
- (b) Scrambling: Spanish allows free reordering based on information structure (topic/focus) rather than strict syntax.
- (c) Right-dislocation: The object is realized as a clitic and a full DP for clarification or backgrounding.
- (d) Clitic climbing: In Spanish, clitics can attach to a higher finite verb in restructuring contexts.
3. VP-Ellipsis and Lexical Verbs
English and Spanish differ in the position of lexical verbs. In English, verbs remain in V, allowing dummy do in INFL. In Spanish, the lexical verb moves to INFL, leaving no room for dummy do. This explains why Spanish lacks direct equivalents for English VP-ellipsis or do-so replacement.
4. Nominal Ellipsis and Genitives
English cannot delete nouns by stranding an adjective (e.g., *”she drinks Spanish” is ungrammatical; “the blue” is ungrammatical). The pro-form one is required for count nouns. Spanish allows N-dropping more freely with quantifiers or specific modifiers.
5. Genitive Ambiguity
The phrase my son’s robbery is ambiguous:
- Subjective genitive: The son committed the robbery.
- Objective genitive: Someone robbed the son.
6. Resultative and Depictive Predicates
English resultative structures (e.g., painted the door yellow) require specific object-oriented predicates. Spanish often uses prepositional phrases (e.g., pintó la puerta de amarillo) to encode these changes of state.
7. Intransitive Subjects: Spanish vs. English
Spanish exhibits greater word order flexibility, allowing both SV and VS structures. English is more restrictive, typically requiring an expletive there for postverbal subjects with unaccusative verbs, while unergative verbs generally forbid postverbal subjects.
8. Stylistic Inversion and Operator Inversion
So-inversion and Negative Inversion are operator-driven syntactic processes involving auxiliary movement. In contrast, Stylistic Inversion is a discourse-presentational phenomenon triggered by information structure, typically involving unaccusative verbs.
9. Information Structure and Prosody
Given (old) information is prosodically deaccented. New information receives the main pitch accent. English expresses these informational distinctions primarily through prosody and fixed SVO order, whereas Spanish utilizes word order variation (Object Shift/Scrambling) to align with discourse requirements.
10. Directed Motion Events
Talmy’s typology distinguishes between satellite-framed languages (English), which encode Path in satellites, and verb-framed languages (Spanish), which encode Path in the verb. While Spanish can express Manner, it typically does so via gerunds or secondary predicates rather than conflating it within the main motion verb.