Sobre usos no convencionales de nombres propios y su interpretación en la sintaxis

Abstract

The following paper studies a set of constructions of the Spanish spoken in Argentina which involve non-conventional uses of proper names (PrNs). The structures under scrutiny comprise the pattern Los + PrNs (los Chomsky), hacer la gran PrN (hacer la gran Chomsky) and denominal verbs ending in –(e)ar with the marginal clitic la (chomskyarla). The three structures are used to describe events or entities which display a prototypical behaviour associated with the entity the PrN refers to and exhibit peculiar morphological properties, such as the non-obligatoriness of number morphology in the noun in los Chomsky(s) or the presence of the exponent /a/ in the other two patterns. We offer a description and morphosyntactic analysis of these constructions, which have not received much attention in the bibliography, in an attempt to explain their morphological behaviour and the meaning they share by focusing on their syntax. Moreover, building on a neoconstructionist framework like Distributed Morphology, we aim to contribute to the theoretical discussion on the role of roots in the architecture of grammar and the way in which they are interpreted not only according to their syntax but also to pragmatic and contextual factors.