Inalienable possession in copulative contexts and the DP-structure

Abstract

Following the view in Kayne (1993) according to which possessive sentences involve a copulative head with a D/PP complement, this paper investigates possessive contexts in Spanish which involve, apart from a possessor and a possessum argument, adjectival modification. These contexts will be shown to give raise to a case of have/be alternation. The choice of the copulative head is associated to different word order in the post-copular material, as well as to different agreement on the adjectival head. I argue that this cluster of properties follows from two different syntactic derivations leading to the raising of the possessor argument to the nominative checking position of the copulative possessive sentence. Moreover, based on the observation that only scalar adjectives are allowed in inalienable possessive sentences with be copulas, whereas both scalar and intersective adjectives are possible in their have counterparts, I will develop an account of the syntactic conditions under which scalar and intersective readings arise. Finally, it will be argued that possessive sentences involving transitory possession structurally differ from those involving permanent possession. In particular, I will propose that the adjective and the possessum argument form a small clause in the former case, whereas in the latter, the projection containing the possessum is generated as a complement of the adjective. The set of proposals in this paper have interesting consequences not only for the syntax of possessive contexts, but also for the syntax of DP's. For instance, from the approach developed here it follows that adjectival modification can be licensed through overt movement of a projection containing the modified noun to the specifier of the projection headed by the adjective. Therefore, we should allow for DP-internal raising of the noun as part of a raising XP.