Viewpointed morphology: A unified account of Spanish verb-complement compounds as fictive interaction structures

Spanish verb-complement (VC) compounds, one of the most common compound types in Spanish, raise interesting questions, because they are inflected, prototypically containing a verb third-person singular present indicative. This complexity seems paradoxical, given strong restrictions Romance languages on word compounding. Based self-compiled corpus over 1,400 VC we show that compound’s may display different persons and illocutionary forces. We claim all compounds can be parsimoniously accounted for as involving grammaticalized perspective-indexing structure, setting up non-actual enunciation. identify three subtypes nominal according to whether refer to: (i) fictive addresser enunciation it is composed (e.g. metomentodo [I+put+myself+into+everything], ‘meddler’), (ii) addressee tentetieso [hold+yourself+upright], ‘tilting doll’), or (iii) conversational topic pintalabios [paints+lips], ‘lipstick’). further argue that, despite undeniable morphological constraints, involve similarly complex semantic structure English multi-word like ‘ wanna-be (s)’, forget-me-not bring-and-buy sale’. reveals intersubjectivity central formation.