Nominal predication with estar

Abstract

Abstract Spanish is a dual copula system — ser and estar. According to traditional interpretations of their distribution, estar does not take nominal complements. Instead, this type of complements appears with the copula ser. There are, however, some counterexamples to this rule. On the one hand, we have examples such as Pepe estuvo torero ayer ‘Pepe was like a bullfighter yesterday.’ In this example, the noun torero does not have its usual interpretation, but rather it refers to the prototypical qualities associated with bullfighters — bravery, unfazed by danger. In this manner, the restriction that Spanish imposes on the copula estar regarding NP complementation does not seem apply in cases where the NP does not provide an identificational interpretation, but rather one associated with the prototypical qualities associated with the noun. A second case in which estar can take nominal complements can be seen in examples such as Esta película está una masa ‘This movie is pretty cool.’ This type of estar predication has a different interpretation than the ones presented in the previous example. While the former provides a predication denoting the properties associated with the noun, the nouns in the latter are expressing a measure of quality regarding their subject. The subjects película ‘movie’ is not being identified with the prototypical qualities of a mass but rather are expressions of high quality. In this respect, the estar predication in this example can be ascribed to the evidential uses of estar. Not every dialect of Spanish can produce examples such as the ones found in the está una masa example, while data similar to está torero is common in all the dialectal continuum. The focus of this investigation is to examine these two types of nominal complements with estar and provide an analysis of the differences between them, as well as provide an explanation regarding their acceptability in estar predications.