On the Nature of Verbal Non-Local Doubling in Patagonian Spanish

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper describes some properties related to verbal doubling in a particularly isolated Spanish variety in the Sumuncura Plateau (Argentina), (named as PatSp by the authors). The properties range from phonology to discourse, and are accounted for with different depth in a generative perspective. At the same time, it aims to give an account of “non-local doubling” as a two-clause phenomenon instead of the usual derivational explanation as an undeleted copy.

 As a result, the article attempts to accomplish two very different goals:  the description of an “understudied” variety, and a theoretical claim regarding how duplicates are accounted for in generative grammar. Neither of them is accomplished in the present version of the article.

 The descriptive issue (mainly section 3, Data description) provides new and very interesting grammatical data on a particularly isolated Spanish speaking community, connecting prosody to morphosyntax and discourse properties related to the phenomenon described as “non-local verbal doubling”. Three traits are identified: adjacency between the nuclear accent and the second verb, the non-locality between verbal duplicates, and the semantic value of mirativity associated with such structures.  

 The theoretical issue rejects the copy theory explanation for verbal doubling and suggests alternative explanations that relate doubling to semantic content. Certain similarities with focus movement and right dislocation are mentioned and a two-clause structure is posited to account for the three traits mentioned above.

Unfortunately, neither the descriptive nor the theoretical section are thoroughly contextualized with respect to previous and present research on either topic, and that is the main problem of the article.  My recommendation is for the author/s to split the paper up into two, one that addressed the duplication structure in the variety under study and another dealing with the theoretical background of “non-local doubling” in Spanish in general.  In its current form, the paper does not analyze the issues deeply enough.

 However, the value of this article is in the new data from Patagonian Spanish. It describes not only a group of properties not registered before but it will be -to my knowledge- the first detailed prosodic analysis of the variety to be published. And that is a significant contribution.  

 For the revised version (including only the description of the new data and its relation with previous studies on the area) I suggest the following:

·       Define language variety and relate the properties found in the new data with previous studies. It is mentioned that PatSp has never been formally described (line 49), which is wrong. (Cfr. Menegotto 2006 and Olate Vinet 2017)

·       Define “non-local doubling” more precisely (it is not clear which cases of duplication are not included)

·       Add in the Methodology section how ungrammaticality was proven. For example, one of the points of the article is that the duplicate is never preceded by a level 4 phonetic break, which is proven by the ungrammaticality of the same sentence with a level 4 break between them. While I believe it true, I wonder how it was proven: were the sentences recorded and played or just performed by one speaker? Was he or she a native PatSp speaker or not?  All native speakers considered them ungrammatical, or it was presented to only one?  When analyzing non-standard varieties, the grammatical judgement issue is critical and cannot rely on the consensus that is habitual in the field when talking about standard major languages.

·       Consider if the mirative value of verbal duplication can be explained by evidential features (Cfr. Hasler Sandoval, Olate Vinet and Soto, 2020 and Bermúdez 2023). If so, then the two-clause analysis would not be needed.

·       Elaborate why/if  the author/s depart/s from the tradition of most analysis of Patagonian Spanish (i.e. does this duplication appear  in Mapudungun or Günün a iajüch?)

Ref.

Bermúdez, F. (2023). Using prosody to express evidentiality. The case of the quotative. Journal of Pragmatics, 214(August), 127–143. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2023.06.009

Menegotto, A. C. (2006). Mapuche, español y castilla en la Patagonia argentina: de la lengua-i a la lengua-s. UniverSOS. Revista de Lenguas Indígenas y Universos Culturales, 3, 161–180.

Olate Vinet, A. (2017). Contacto lingüístico mapuzugun/castellano. Aspectos históricos, sociales y lingüísticos. Revisión bibliográfica y propuesta de análisis desde la dimensión morfosintáctica y tipológica. Onomazein, 36(3), 122–158. https://doi.org/10.7764/onomazein.36.07

Sandoval, F. H., Olate Vinet, A.., &  Soto Vergara, G. (2020). Origen y desarrollo del sistema evidencial del mapudungun. Circulo de Linguistica Aplicada a La Comunicacion, 81, 9–26. https://doi.org/10.5209/CLAC.67928

 

 

Author Response

Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. Most of your comments were taken into account. All changes were highlighted in red in the new version of the paper.

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript “On the nature of verbal non-local doubling in Patagonian Spanish” presents both relevant empirical data and a contribution to linguistic theory. The paper deals with a previously unexplored phenomenon identified in Patagonian Spanish varieties that involves the analysis of verbal non-local doubling. The data provided by the author(s) challenge previous analyses of similar phenomena, which assume that non-local doubling is the result of movement within the clause. As clearly argued throughout the paper, this type of analysis cannot be applied to non-local doubling in Patagonian Spanish, because of the possible lack of identity between the verbs involved. Interestingly, the differences that the verbs can show are limited by reference encoding and argument structure.

The paper is well organized. The Introduction contains the relevant examples of verbal non-local doubling in Patagonian Spanish and also in the varieties in which this phenomenon shows identity. The aims and the proposed structure are also present here. Section 2 provides a detailed description of the data collection methodology and the characteristics of the interviewed speakers. Section 3 describes the data according to their prosodic, morphosyntactic and semantic properties. The summary proposed in this section (3.4) is clear and useful for following the analysis developed in section 4. The first part of this section presents arguments against an analysis of the Patagonian Spanish data in terms of the Copy Theory of Movement. All the features described in section 3, lead the authors to recognize a biclausal construction behind the verbal non-local doubling in the variety under study. The proposal is robustly argued for and the references are clear throughout the argument.

In conclusion, the manuscript represents a great contribution to the description of a phenomenon identified in Spanish varieties and also to the theoretical analysis of non-local doubling. The alternative offered by the authors seems to be relevant to re-examine the data analyzed within the framework of the Copy theory, beyond the identity observed in these cases. All in all, the paper sheds light on the formal analysis for the Left Periphery.

Below, I mention some minor details that need to be revised:

Line 82: Somuncura without accent (see lines 286 and 1065)

It would be useful to introduce the abbreviation for intonational phrase (IP) and intermediate phrase (ip) in section 3.1. Both are mentioned in the introduction to section 3, but they are not used from the beginning in 3.1, and they suddenly appear in the middle of the section. See, for example, line 176 and line 185.

Line 300: add a translation for mejor dicho

Line 324: … if the information for 1PL appears on the right of V2… I recommend: … if the information for 1PL appears on the right, coded by the pronoun nosotros ‘we’, …

Line 334: Is there a mistake? Shouldn’t it be “/ahora está/ en RAMOS está/” instead of  “/ahora está en/ RAMOS está/”?

Line 346: counterexpection si is correct?

Line 394: by > through

Lines 426 and 430 unify (lindo-beautiful)

Line 448: nonexpectation > non-expectation

Line 449: to the the listener

Line 567: Similar findings can be found… (findings-found) > observed, identified…

Line 593: sourse > source

Paragraph under (79). The information in this paragraph should be reorganized. The argument is interrupted by the opening sentences. I recommend that the author(s) start by focusing on the idea that the incompleteness is apparent. And then, they can add the sentence mentioning the Projection Principle. Beyond the organization of this paragraph, I think that the proposal is not tied to assumption of the Projection Principle in a lexicalist way. In fact, following a neo-constructionist approach to argument structure, with a root as a unique syntactic object occupying a position in the structure, the explanation would follow from the existence of identical structures at the relevant level which can be externalized in different ways as far as the vocabulary items in the (post-syntactic) Lexicon are related in a particular discursive context, which is something that Syntax shouldn’t deal with. In short, Syntax only needs to construct two identical argument structures to motivate a particular derivation.

Line 676 beheviours > behaviours

Line 889: Shouldn’t it be phonetically instead of prosodically?

Line 991: My recommendation to avoid the demonstrative “that” and to specify the relevant constituent.

Author Response

Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. All the comments were taken into account. The changes were highlighted in red in the new version of the paper.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Unfortunately, the authors did not reply to my main concerns. They just added two short paragraphs with the same info I mentioned in my previous report. They gave no answer to the fact that the paper is addressing two different goals, and fail to give a thorough review of previous studies in either subject.  As a result, the article is publishable but fails to meet the appropriate audience.