Adjectival complements of transitive verbs in Spanish

Abstract

This paper investigates verb-adjective constructions in Spanish in which the adjective appears in the complement position of a transitive verb: beber tinto, tocar Cubano, producir harto. It is shown that this construction is also possible in the case of strong transitive verbs (i.e. if the verb cannot appear without a complement). Based on Bartra – Suñer (1997), I argue that it is their semantic contribution that licenses these adjectives in this function. Furthermore, I also show that some adjectives are reanalyzed as an NP, or appear with an elliptical NP layer in syntax, whereas others fill the complement role directly as APs.

Keywords

• invariable adjectives
• complement
• transitive verbs
• strong and weak transitivity