Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The Syntax Of Direct Quotes With Special Reference To Spanish And English

  • Published:
Natural Language & Linguistic Theory Aims and scope Submit manuscript

An Erratum to this article was published on 01 August 2007

Abstract

This paper provides an in-depth study of the syntax of direct quotes in Spanish.It compares the results to those reported for English (Collins and Braniganl997, and Collins 1997), and reveals substantial differences between thelanguages. Not only do the two contrast with respect to the possibility fornull subjects, V raising to T and adverb positions, but when subject-verbinversion occurs in quotative expressions, English but not Spanish (nor French)obeys the complex verb and the transitivity constraints, and bans sententialnegation. It is argued here that the main differences arise from the overtpositions V occupies and the way in which the null object of the quotativeexpression moves. The object always raises to an A′-position in Spanish, whereas in English it lands in an A-position in the inversion variant and in anA′-position in the non-inverted one. Essentially, little specificto the syntax of direct quotes is needed to account for the facts in Spanishsince the constructionpartakes of well-established patterns of the language; in English, however,quotative inversion has a rather atypical constituent order that requiresconstruction-specific mechanisms, such as short V movement to 0 for example.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

REFERENCES

  • Alexiadou, Artemis and Elena Anagnostopoulou. 1998. ‘Parametrizing AGR: Word Order, V-Movement and EPP-checking’, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory l6, 491–539.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cheshire, Jenny. 1982. Variation in an English Dialect. A Sociolinguistic Study, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chomsky, Noam. 1981. Lectures on Government and Binding, Foris, Dordrecht.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chomsky, Noam. 1986. Barriers, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chomsky, Noam. 1993. ‘A Minimalist Program for Linguistic Theory’, in Kenneth Hale and Samuel K. Keyser (eds.), View from Building 20: Essays in Linguistics in Honor of Sylvain Bromberger, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 1–52.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chomsky, Noam. 1995. The Minimalist Program, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chomsky, Noam. 1998. ‘Minimal Inquiries: The Framework’, unpublished manuscript, MIT.

  • Chomsky, Noam and Howard Lasnik. 1993. ‘The Theory of Principles and Parameters’, in J. Jacobs, A. von Stechow, W. Sternefeld and T. Vennemann (eds.), Syntax: An International Handbook of Contemporary Research, de Gruyter, Berlin, pp. 506–569 (reprinted in Chomsky 1995).

    Google Scholar 

  • Collins, Chris. 1997. Local Economy, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Collins, Chris and Phil Branigan. 1997. ‘Quotative Inversion’, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 15, 1–41.

    Google Scholar 

  • Curme, George O. 1977[l931]. A Grammar of the English Language, Vol. 2, Verbatim, Essex, Connecticut.

    Google Scholar 

  • Demonte, Violeta. 1995. ‘Dative Alternation in Spanish’, Probus 7, 5–30.

    Google Scholar 

  • Diesing, Molly. 1992. Indefinites, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Diesing, Molly and Eloise Jelinek. 1995. ‘Distributing Arguments’, Natural Language Semantics 3, 123–176.

    Google Scholar 

  • Doeleman, Tobey. 1998. ‘Quotative Inversion in French’, in T. Doeleman and N. Adisamito-Smith (eds.), Papers in Syntactic Theory, Cornell Working Papers in Linguistics 16, 67–89.

  • Edwards, Viv. 1993. ‘The Grammar of Southern British English’, in James Milroy and Leslie Milroy (eds.), Real English: The Grammar of English Dialects in the British Isles, Longman, London and New York, pp. 214–238.

    Google Scholar 

  • Edwards, Viv, Peter Trudgill and Bert Weltens. 1984. The Grammar of English Dialect: A Survey of Research, Economic and Social Research Council, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Green, Georgia. 1980. ‘Some Wherefores of English Inversion’, Language 56, 586–601.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heim, Irene. 1982. The Semantics of Definite and Indefinite Noun Phrases, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

  • Holmberg, Anders. 1986. Word Order and Syntactic Features in the Scandinavian Languages, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Universitet Stockholm.

  • Hughes, Arthur and Peter Trudgill. 1996. English Accents and Dialects: An Introduction to Social and Regional Varieties of English in the British Isles, Arnold, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kayne, Richard. 1994. The Antisymmetry of Syntax, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kemenade, Ans van. 1997. ‘V2 and Embedded Topicalization in Old and Middle English’, in A. van Kemenade and N. Vincent (eds.), pp. 326-352.

  • Kemenade, Ans van and Nigel Vincent (eds.). 1997. Parameters of Morphosyntactic Change, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kroch, Anthony and Ann Taylor. 1997. ‘Verb Movement in Old and Middle English: Dialect Variation and Language Contact’, in A. van Kemenade and N. Vincent (eds.), pp. 297-325.

  • Larson, Richard. 1988. ‘On the Double Object Construction’, Linguistic Inquiry 19, 335–391.

    Google Scholar 

  • Manzini, Leonardo M. Savoia. Forthcoming. ‘Parameters of Subject Inflection in Italian Dia1ects’, in P. Svenonius (ed.), Subjects, Expletives and the EPP, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

  • Marantz, Alec. 1993. ‘Implications of Asymmetries in Double Object Constructions’, in S. Mochombo (ed.), Theoretical Aspects of Bantu Grammar, Stanford, CSLI, pp. 113–150.

    Google Scholar 

  • McCawley, James. 1982. ‘Parenthethicals and Discontinuous Constituent Structure’, Linguistic Inquiry 13, 91–106.

    Google Scholar 

  • Milsark, Gary. 1974. Existential Sentences in English, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.

  • Picallo, Carme. 1990. ‘Modal Verbs in Catalan’, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 8, 285–312.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pollock, Jean-Yves. 1989. ‘Verb Movement, Universal Grammar, and the Structure of IP’, Linguistic Inquiry 20, 365–423.

    Google Scholar 

  • Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech and Jan Starvik. 1972. A Grammar of Contempprary English, Seminar Press, New York and London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Raposo, Eduardo and Juan Uriagereka. 1996. ‘Indefinite SE’, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 14, 749–810.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rizzi, Luigi. 1978. ‘A Restructuring Rule in Italian Syntax’, in S. Keyser (ed.), Recent Transformational Studies in European Syntax, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 113–158.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rizzi, Luigi. 1982. Issues in Italian Syntax, Foris, Dordrecht.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rizzi, Luigi. 1994, ‘Early Null Subjects and Root Null Subjects’, in B. Lust, G. Hermon and J. Kornfilt (eds.), Binding, Dependencies and Learnability, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, New Jersey, pp. 249–272.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rizzi, Luigi. 1997. ‘The Fine Structure of the Left-Periphery’, in L. Haegeman (ed.), Elements of Grammar: Handbook of Generative Syntax, Kluwer, Dordrecht, pp. 63–90.

    Google Scholar 

  • Roberts, Ian. 1997. ‘Restructuring, Head Movement and Locality’, Linguistic Inquiry 28, 423–460.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ross, John R. 1967. Constraints on Variables in Syntax, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, MIT; published 1986 as Infinite Syntax!, Ab1ex, Norwood, New Jersey.

  • Sportiche, Dominique. 1998. ‘A Theory of Floating Quantifiers and its Corollaries for Constituent Structure’, Linguistic Inquiry 19, 425–449.

    Google Scholar 

  • Suñ er, Margarita. 1980. ‘Clitic Promotion in Spanish Revisited’, in F. H. Nuessel, Jr. (ed.), Contemporary Studies in Romance Languages, Indiana University Linguistic Club, Bloomington, pp. 300–330.

    Google Scholar 

  • Suñ er, Margarita. 1988. ‘The Role of Agreement in Clitic-Doubled Constructions’, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 6, 391–434.

    Google Scholar 

  • Suñ er, Margarita. 1991. ‘Indirect Questions and the Structure of CP: Some Consequences’, in H. Campos and F. Martí nez-Gil (ed.), Current Studies in Spanish Linguistics, Georgetown University Press, Washington, D.C., pp. 283–312.

    Google Scholar 

  • Suñ er, Margarita. 1994. ‘Verb-Movement and the Licensing of Argumental Wh-Phrases in Spanish’, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 12, 335–372.

    Google Scholar 

  • Suñ er, Margarita. 1998. ‘Resumptive Relative Clauses’, Language 74, 335–364.

    Google Scholar 

  • Suñ er, Margarita. In press. ‘Object-Shift: Comparing a Romance Language to Germanic’, forthcoming in Probus 12.2.

  • Suñ er, Margarita. 1999. ‘Clitic-Doubling of Strong Pronouns in Spanish: An Instance of Object-Shift’, in J. Franco, A. Landa and J. Martí n, Grammatical Analyses in Basque and Romance Linguistics, John Benjamins, Amsterdam, pp. 233–256.

    Google Scholar 

  • Suñ er, Margarita and Carmen Lizard. 1995. ‘Dialectal Variation in an Argumental/Non-Argumental Asymmetry in Spanish’, in J. Amastae, G. Goodall, M. Montalbetti, and M. Phinney (eds.), Contemporary Research in Romance Linguistics, John Benjamins, Amsterdam, pp. 187–203.

    Google Scholar 

  • Taraldsen, Knut. 1978. ‘On the NIC, Vacuous Application and the that-trace Filter’, unpublished manuscript, MIT; distributed by Indiana University Linguistics Club, Bloomington.

  • Torrego, Esther. 1984. ‘On Inversion in Spanish and Some of Its Effects’, Linguistic Inquiry 15, 103–129.

    Google Scholar 

  • Traugott, Elizabeth. 1972. The History of English Syntax, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vainikka, Anne and Yonata Levy. 1999. ‘Empty Subjects in Finnish and Hebrew’, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 17, 613–671.

    Google Scholar 

  • Valian, Virginia. 1991. ‘Syntactic Subjects in the Early Speech of American and Italian children’, Cognition 40, 21–81.

    Google Scholar 

  • Visser, F. Theodore. 1969. An Historical Syntax of the English Language, part 3.1, E. J. Brill, Leiden.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wakelin, Martyn F. 1972. English Dialects: An Introduction, The Athlone Press, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zubizarreta, Ma. Luisa. 1998. Prosody, Focus and Word Order, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Am: De Miguel, Ma. Esther. 1997. La amante del Restaurador, Planeta Argentina, Buenos Aires.

    Google Scholar 

  • EJ: Sánchez Ferlosio, Rafael. 1975, El Jarama, Destino, Barcelona.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nos: Serrano, Marcela. 1996. Nosotras que nos queremos tanto, Alfaguara, Santiago de Chile.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ros: Denevi, Marco. 1964. Rosaura a las diez, Scribner's Sons, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Son: Sampedro, JoséL. 1995. La sonrisa etrusca, Alfaguara, Madrid.

    Google Scholar 

  • NYT: NYT Magazine, Sept. 22, 1996, pp.63-67, 86-87, 104.

  • Fla: Fraser, George MacDonald. 1969. Flashman: From the Flashman Papers 1839-1842, World Publishing Co., New York.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors
  1. Margarita Sueñr
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Additional information

An erratum to this article is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11049-007-9022-0.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Sueñr, M. The Syntax Of Direct Quotes With Special Reference To Spanish And English. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 18, 525–578 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1006474231809

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1006474231809

Keywords

Search

Navigation