Los participios adjetivales: Clasificación y análisis sintáctico

This paper argues that it is possible to establish a more fine-grained classification of adjectival participles than the standard ones. In particular, it is proposed that, at least in Spanish, adjectival participles can be split into four categories: (i) ‘eventive resultatives’, which express a state that is related to a syntactically present prior event (e.g., Este plato está cocinado a fuego lento por un experto ‘This dish is cooked slowly by an expert’); (ii) ‘non-eventive resultatives’, a hitherto unnoticed class of adjectival participles which, despite their resultative meaning, do not syntactically involve a previous event (e.g., El fenómeno está muy (in)explorado (*a conciencia) por la comunidad científica ‘The phenomenon is (*conscientiously) very (un)explored by the scientific community’); (iii) ‘purely statives’, which encode a pure state that lacks both resultative and eventive implications (e.g., Montse es admirada por todos ‘Montse is admired by all’); and (iv) so-called ‘perfective adjectives’, which involve a resultative meaning, lack eventivity and do not license ‘by’-phrases (e.g., El monedero está vacío (*por un ladrón) ‘The purse is empty (*by a thief)’). Besides, it is argued that the syntactic and semantic properties of each category depend on the presence or absence of certain functional projections in the structure, namely ‘Aspect’ (Asp), ‘Initiation’ (Init) and ‘Process’ (Proc).