Periphrastic Verb Phrases in Spanish:

explore. For now, lets look at the deep structure and surface structure of the V IP
phrases, with their lexical entries:
A. Lexical Entries and Sentence Structures
First we'll look at the lexical entries of our verbs. In sentence 21, we have andar
and melerse. In giving the entries for periphrastic verbs, we can either give lexical entries
for verbs when used periphrastically and non-periphrastically, or just when used
periphrastically. All that really interests us are the periphrastic uses when the verbs are
periphrastic. Thus, when periphrastic, we will only deal with them. This means we'll
ignore uses such as:
24. Este chico anda por la calle.
This boy walks the road.
Purposefully overlooking uses like these, andar takes only an IP. The verb of this
IP can be in either the progressive or the past participle fonn. No other fonn works.
Thus, the subcategorization frame for andar would be as given in 25:
25. Andar, V [_ IP [+ finJ]
The IP phrase it takes must be finite. As for melerse, in this instance, it takes a PP
sister where [con] is specified. So it's subcategorization frame is shown in 26:
26. meterse, V [_ PP [con]]
Melerse can also take a CP sister as a periphrastic phrase (meterse a), but the
periphrastic meterse is not the one used in sentence 21, nor subcategorized for in 26.
26