Issues in Spanish Verbal Inflection: A Distributed Morphology Approach

This dissertation analyzes various issues in the morphology of Spanish’s seven simple verb forms in a syntax-centric morphological framework known as Distributed Morphology (DM). In the extant DM literature, scholars have primarily analyzed verbal inflection as a linear arrangement of morphemes (e.g., Madrid Servín, 2005; Oltra-Massuet and Arregi, 2005). However, failing to account for the interpretation of a given verbal form is problematic. A focus on the semantics of each verbal form is required to understand how several seemingly disparate forms, such as the future and the subjunctive or the conditional and the imperfect subjunctive, are related to each other and what this relationship reveals about their structure. Thus, a major claim made in this dissertation is that a fairly robust understanding of the semantics of each of the seven verbal forms considered is required to (i) link the structure of these verbal forms to their meanings, (ii) to account for contrasts that are not currently accounted for in the literature, and (iii) to make connections between forms that would not otherwise be obvious. Additionally, for the future and conditional forms, in particular, it is argued that the historical analysis, which consists of an infinitive followed by a form of the verb haber ’have’, is superior to proposed reanalysis-based approaches. This historically informed approach demonstrates that we cannot dismiss historical analyses wholesale. Throughout the dissertation, I also demonstrate that the morphosyntax of these seven simple Spanish verbal forms can be accounted for with less conceptual machinery than previously argued for in several DM analyses while covering more empirical ground. Specifically, it is argued that the employment of lexical diacritics and morphological readjustment rules, among other analytical devices, are unnecessary for the analysis of Spanish verbs. In addition to these broad concerns, the dissertation proposes several novel solutions to data that have proven recalcitrant in prior analyses thus making an important contribution to the theoretical literature on Spanish verbal morphology.