Los adjetivos deverbales en español: un estudio nanosintáctico

Abstract

This thesis looks in detail at Spanish deverbal adjectives, and how these are syntactically built. In-depth analyses of three Spanish suffixes (-ón, -dizo and -dero) that form these kinds of derivations are carried out. We identify three non-episodic readings of these adjectives –habituality, dispositionality and modality– and focus on how these three readings are obtained. I claim that the differences are not only semantic, but also syntactic. I make use of the framework of Nanosyntax, and suggest that the different readings can be accounted for once syntax is made sufficiently fine-grained. I adopt the approach of Caha (2013), and suggest that the three identified readings should be analysed in a ‘cumulative decomposition’ manner: the different readings of the AP are specified with a certain set of features. The number of these features grows consistently, depending on the desired reading, in a cumulative manner, and the combination of these features determines the reading of the adjective. These features correspond to heads of their own functional projections, which are projected hierarchically, above a verbal base: [HABITUAL-2 Z2 [HABITUAL-1 Z1 [DISPOSICIONAL Y [MODAL X VP]]]].