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On Spanish possessive formation

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  • Sangyoon Kim
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Abstract

This paper discusses Spanish possessive formation processes within a Distributed Morphology framework. I claim Spanish possessives consist of several morphemes forming an extended syntactic domain; they project from a contentless root taking a pronoun as its complement and are categorized as adjectives. Word formation being subject to general syntactic rules, cyclic Vocabulary Insertion is licensed at word-internal level in their domain, always regulated by a categorizing phasal head. Arguments are provided showing that post-syntactic conditions for root suppletion determine their eventual shape.

Abstract

This paper discusses Spanish possessive formation processes within a Distributed Morphology framework. I claim Spanish possessives consist of several morphemes forming an extended syntactic domain; they project from a contentless root taking a pronoun as its complement and are categorized as adjectives. Word formation being subject to general syntactic rules, cyclic Vocabulary Insertion is licensed at word-internal level in their domain, always regulated by a categorizing phasal head. Arguments are provided showing that post-syntactic conditions for root suppletion determine their eventual shape.

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