Extraction out of adjectival secondary predicates in English and Spanish: A nanosyntactic account

Abstract

In this article, we explore the conditions under which prima facie adjectival adjuncts projected as depictive modifiers inside verbal phrases allow extraction. Building on the analysis of gerund clauses proposed in Fábregas and Jiménez-Fernández (in press), we argue that their empirical behaviour shows that, whenever these adjectival constituents license extraction, they are projections of PathP that form a verbal complex with the verb inside a single syntactic domain. This forces the conclusion that adjunct adjectives must be projected as PathPs, and in the last part of the paper we show that this proposal in fact explains two properties of these elements without further stipulations: they always receive a stage level interpretation, and cannot combine with pure stative verbs.