Emphatic Polarity and C in Spanish - Lear

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M. LLUÏSA HERNANZ (22) a. La habitación estaba bien sucia. The room was well dirty ‘The room was really dirty’ b. El jefe trató bien duramente a Pepito. The boss treated well harshly Pepito ‘The boss treated Pepito truly harshly’ c. Han comido bien poco. (They) have eaten well little ‘They have really eaten very little’ In (22) bien expresses a high-degree quantification over the properties denoted by either an adjective (22a) or an adverb (22b)-(22c). In spite of this, bien is by no means semantically and syntactically equivalent to its approximate counterpart, the degree modifier muy (“very”). 15 That is, the examples in (22) clearly differ from those in (23): (23) a. La habitación estaba muy sucia. ‘The room was very dirty’ b. El jefe trató muy duramente a Pepito. ‘The boss treated Pepito very harshly’ c. Han comido muy poco. They have eaten very little ‘They have eaten very little’ Unlike those in (23), the examples in (22) do not merely convey a neutral statement expressing a high degree property. They rather denote a high degree property from the perspective of the speaker’s attitude. In fact, they 15 It should be observed that the meaning of bien in (22) cannot be rendered by the class of adverbs that denote an extreme-degree quantification such as extremadamente (“extremely”) and the like. While the latter place the element they modify at the very top of a scale, bien reinforces the assertion made in the sentence with regard to the property denoted by the constituent (AP, AdvP) over which it takes scope. Relevant evidence that bien and extremedegree quantifiers do not pattern alike comes from the fact that the latter, contrary to bien, may be compatible with negation in certain contexts: (i) a. *Estoy cansada, – aunque no (estoy) bien cansada. I am tired – though (I am) not really tired b. Estoy cansada – aunque no (estoy) {extremadamente / enormemente} cansada. I am tired – though (I am) not {extremely/enormously tired For an extensive account of adjective modifiers in Spanish, see Bosque (1999), Rodríguez- Ramalle (2003), and González (2004), among other authors. 116
EMPHATIC POLARITY AND C IN SPANISH are usually interpreted by Peninsular Spanish speakers, 16 like the examples in (17), as emphatic sentences with a subjective flavor. Crucial evidence supporting the parallelism between preverbal bien in (17) and degree-bien in (22) is provided by the fact that the latter, like the former, is incompatible with both negative and positive markers: (24) a. *La habitación no estaba bien sucia. The room was not well dirty b. *El jefe sí trató bien duramente a Pepito. The boss yes treated well harshly Pepito It is worth noting, in this respect, that if it were the case that bien and muy patterned alike, we would expect the examples in (25) to be ill-formed alongside those in (24), contrary to what is the actual case: (25) a. La habitación no estaba muy sucia. ‘The room was not very dirty’ b. El jefe sí trató muy duramente a Pepito. The boss yes treated very rudely Pepito ‘The boss did treat Pepito very harshly’ Moreover, bien and muy also differ in that the former, as opposed to the latter, may trigger movement to CP. This property is mainly responsible for the contrast in (26): (26) a. ¡Y bien bonito que era el barco! 17 And well nice that was the ship! ‘But the ship was really nice!’ b. *¡Y muy bonito que era el barco! And very nice that was the ship! The example in (26a) shows that bien shares relevant properties with whwords. This pattern is reminiscent of the well-known behavior of exclamative pronouns like qué (“what”) and emphatic neuter article lo 18 in Spanish, as illustrated in (27): 16 In some varieties of American Spanish, bien has undergone a process of grammaticalization, as a consequence of which its original lexical meaning is lost. In these varieties, bien behaves as a degree-word nearly equivalent to muy (“very”). 17 This example is from Seco (1999), s.v. bien. 18 For a study of the emphatic uses of the neuter determiner lo in Spanish, see Bosque and Moreno (1990), Brucart (1993), and Gutiérrez-Rexach (1999). 117
Page 1 and 2: 1. Introduction * Emphatic Polarity
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