Possessives and spatial expressions in Spanish

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze a type of Spanish (and Romance) complex locative non-directional prepositional expressions taking a genitive complement, like encima/cerca de (“on top/near of”). We will center our attention on an alternation that has gone unnoticed by most theoretical and descriptive grammars: this genitive complement may appear as an argument of the main predicate and show dative case (se sentó encima de Juan, “(S)he sat on top of Juan” > se le sentó encima, “Lit. (S)he DAT sat on top”). Most of these complex PPs may correspond to what has been called ‘Axial Parts’ (Svenonius 2006, 2008), but the paradigm extends to other cases. Based on work by Larson and Samiian (2021) on the typology of nominalization in prepositions in Iranian Persian, we show that the common property of these prepositional expressions is that they contain a nominal element: a relational noun or a nominalized preposition. Apart from the dative alternation, one of the properties shown by complex locative prepositions in Spanish is that a stressed postnominal possessive is allowed, which can be masculine or feminine, giving rise to dialectal variation: detrás mío/mía, Lit. “behind mine”, cerca mío/mía, Lit. “near mine”. We will show that what determines the gender of the possessive is the nominalizer and the level of grammaticalization of the nominal head.