Volume 18, Issue 1

In Dominican Spanish, consonantal reduction in the syllable rhyme is so pervasive that /s/ is systematically absent from this position. Some speakers attempt to emulate more conservative styles by reinserting postnuclear /s/, often resulting in hypercorrection. Epenthesis is unattested before intervocalic taps and trills, which can be explained in terms of structure preservation if the intervocalic trill is analyzed as a heterosyllabic geminate tap (Harris 1983, 2001, 2002, Núñez Cedeño 1988, 1989, 1994). The present study reconsiders the issue of rhotic representation in light of the Dominican hypercorrection facts. I show how Padgett's (2003) analysis of Catalan and Spanish, cast within a recent version of Dispersion Theory (Flemming 1995, 2002), offers a simpler account of the behavior of syllable-initial rhotics that does not require a geminate representation. I develop a constraint-based account of epenthesis in which the appearance of non-underlying [s] is driven by a high-ranking output-output correspondence constraint. The failure of hypercorrect [s] to appear before intervocalic rhotics is accounted for by a phonetically-grounded phonotactic constraint against [strident][vibrant] clusters in the output. Since an analysis in terms of surface phonotactics does not require an underlying geminate representation of intervocalic trills in Spanish, it is fully compatible with the Dispersion-theoretic account.

This paper deals with complement clauses embedded under a present perfect. In such a context a simple past can exhibit the same ambiguity between a simultaneous and a shifted reading as if it were embedded under another simple past. Our purpose is to provide an explanation of this similarity. We begin with a review of Brugger's (1997) approach to the relevant data. Contra this author, we will first demonstrate that there is just one underlying structure for the three present perfects, i.e., the existential, the resultative and the continuative. Second, we will highlight the role of aspectual anteriority instead of temporal anteriority in the licensing of the simultaneous reading of the embedded simple past.

This paper is a comparative study in the micro-variation of the syntax of interrogatives in Caribbean versus non Caribbean Spanish. In field work done by us, we show that the lack of inversion effects with subjects in Caribbean Spanish only occurs with pronominal elements. We characterize those pronominal subjects as weak pronouns in the sense of Cardinaletti and Starke (1999) and we assume they land preverbally in Spec AGRS. We argue that inversion involves IP movement to an exploded CP as Kayne and Pollock (2001). The IP that moves to the exploded CP contains preverbal weak pronominals in Caribbean Spanish. Non Caribbean Spanish lacks these weak pronominals and therefore subjects are either in situ (postverbal) or have been topicalized to the CP, previous movement of the whole IP.

This paper presents an analysis of secondary stress in Brazilian and European Portuguese (BP and EP) based on Optimality Theory (OT). We argue that a representational analysis has the following advantages: (i) generating all the facts of Brazilian and European Portuguese without postulating any cases of absolute neutralization; (ii) not forcing the usage of the notion of directionality, thus implying a simplification of the phonological theory; and (iii) being able to generate variant forms in parallel. We have developed a computer program, sotaq, that tests proposed stress systems (formulated in terms of constraint hierarchies) for both varieties of Portuguese against observed actual stresses and in large corpora, thus allowing for automatic testing of Optimality Theory predictions for secondary stress.

Left dislocated constructions in the Porteño dialect of Spanish may have, in addition to the obligatory clitic and/or subject agreement marker, an anaphoric epithet doubled by the clitic (CL). This construction sheds some light on the controversial issue of whether the LD phrase reaches its final position via movement or whether it is directly merged where it appears. After summarizing the properties of Clitic Left Dislocations (CLLD), I briefly discuss the movement and the base-generation hypotheses for the LD constituent. I also point out the strengths and weaknesses of each approach. I derive the examples of CLLD with and without epithets by merging the LD phrase directly into TopP while accounting for connectivity effects and select island sensitivity through long distance agreement between the CL and TopP. Finally, I show that the proposal explains the properties of both subtypes of CLLD constructions without the disadvantages of previous accounts.