Utrecht Theoretical Linguistics

Events

9 June 2022
16:00 - 17:00
Ms Teams

SIL talk: Edgar David Martínez García (University of Cyprus)

On the 9th of June, Edgar David Martínez García (University of Cyprus) will give a Syntax Interface Lecture with the title Towards a Grammar of English and Spanish Minimizers

If you wish to attend and you are not enrolled in the SIL group on Teams please contact the organizers

Abstract

The main objective of this dissertation is to provide an account of the scalar features pertaining to minimizers in both English and Spanish. Minimizers are nouns designating objects of stereotypically small dimensions, and they appear in complex VPs. A red cent or un ápice (an iota) are common examples in English and Spanish.

Although minimizers are consistently cited in the literature as NPIs, through corpus searches and my own intuitions as a native speaker of Spanish I have come to observe that they may be felicitous in positive environments:

(1) a. My first 2 years of college were great, because I actually had an iota of personal responsibility.

b. If you do, they will take every red cent of that $5,000.

(2) a. hace poco nos llegó una migaja de insumos

[Not long ago we got delivered a tiny bit of the supplies]

b. Un (…) usuario que exprime cada ápice de potencia, (…) de un móvil

[An user that takes every bit of power from a cell phone]

To account for this data, I will adopt two main assumptions:

a) Minimizers are measure phrases.

b) Their polarity and scalarity is determined by a covert focal particle embedded in their syntactic structure (Tubau, 2016).

Considering (a), I will further the hypothesis that minimizers are nominal quantifiers of varied polarity restrictions, which range from unconstrained (bipolar items), to semi-constrained (paucal nouns), and to constrained (minimizer predicates). Additionally, I will demonstrate that the definiteness of the thematic argument that the minimizer measures out is determinant of their availability in environments such as (1b) and (2b).

Considering (b), I will adopt Greenberg’s (2018, 2015) analysis of even and Kennedy and McNally’s (2005) classification of scales. More concretely, I will assume that conventional minimizers are associated to closed scales in which they behave differently depending on the focal particle they associate with. In negative contexts, minimizers associate with a negative even that forces the minimizer (i.e, the prejacent of even) to not satisfy the standard set for the scale, while in positive contexts the focal operator forces the minimizer to satisfy the standard to the highest degree available.

This account of minimizers offers an explicit analysis of their scalarity, one that goes beyond the undefined hierarchies of entailments – as is customary in the literature.