El cada silente y la distributividad a distancia en el español rural europeo

Abstract

Abstract The present study tackles agreement mismatches triggered by a distributive phrase with cada (‘each’) potentially functioning as syntactic subject in rural European Spanish. The study has two main and mutually compatible goals. First, it aims at linking this phenomenon with the vernacular tendency of “externalization of plurality” in Spanish. The second goal is to demonstrate that, on the basis of the most recent theories about the semantics of distributivity, mismatches evidence the existence of a covert distributivity operator (silent cada) in Spanish syntax. The information structure of rural varieties of Spanish and the connections between topics and subjects prompt the emergence of a preverbal distributive operator. The data support the idea that Spanish exhibits “distance distributivity” as an additional mechanism to “floated quantification”. Data are extracted from the Corpus Oral y Sonoro del Español Rural (COSER).