ABSTRACT. Aspectual modifiers that have adverbial and adjectival counterparts are an important source of information for researching lexical aspect in the nominal domain. One class of such modifiers are adverbs of completeness (completamente 'completely', totalmente 'totally'), which are maximizers when modify adjectives, and their correspondent adjectives (completo 'complete', total 'total'). This paper addresses the inheritance of aspectual features and its relation to degree in event nominalizations of incremental theme verbs (traduccción 'translation', destrucción 'destruction') through the analysis of the modification performed by adjectives of completeness in Spanish. The proposal combines a syntactic account of deverbal nominalizations with a scalar approach to aspect. Adjectives of completeness are argued to be aspectual modifiers, with a contribution equivalent to that of their adverbial counterparts both in the verbal and in the adjectival domain, establishing thus a parallelism between degree modification of adjectives, verbs and nominals.Keywords. Adjectives of completeness; aspectual inheritance; nominalizations; incremental theme verbs; variable telicity; degree modification; maximizers.RESUMEN. Los modificadores aspectuales que tienen versiones adverbiales y adjetivales constituyen una importante fuente de información a la hora de investigar el aspecto léxico en el ámbito nominal. Los adverbios de completitud (completamente, totalmente), que son modificadores de maximalidad cuando modifican adjetivos, y sus correlatos adjetivales (completo, total) son modificadores de este tipo. Este artículo aborda la herencia de rasgos aspectuales y su relación con los grados en las nominalizaciones de evento de los verbos de tema incremental (traducción, destrucción) a través del análisis de la modificación por parte de los adjetivos de completitud en español. La propuesta combina un acercamiento constructivista a las nominalizaciones deverbales con un análisis escalar del aspecto. En concreto, se defiende que los adjetivos de completitud son modificadores aspectuales que tienen una contribución equivalente a la de sus correlatos adverbiales, tanto en el ámbito verbal como en el adjetival. Se establece así un paralelismo entre la modificación de grado de adjetivos, verbos y nombres.
Maximizers (completamente ‘completely’, totalmente ‘totally’) are degree modifiersrestricted to maximum standard adjectives. Spanish adjectives of completeness [ACs] (completo‘complete’, total ‘total’) display a behavior similar to that of their adverbial counterpartswhen they combine with nouns like idiot. This paper argues that ACs are maximality modifiersof idiot-like nouns, which are defended to be gradable and denote extreme degrees of properties.Establishing a parallelism between adverbs and adjectives of completeness allows us toexplore scalarity across categories and the relevance of scale structure in the nominal domain.Keywords: extreme nouns, maximizers, adjectives of completeness, scale structure, nominalgradability.
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