PP Complements in Vernacular Spanish: Constituency Tests and Syntactic Variation of the complemento de régimen (CR).

As described in Modern Spanish (Cano 1999; de Santiago 2007; RAE/ASALE 2009), the PP known as Verbal Government Complement – henceforth, complemento de régimen (CR) – differs from other obliques in that it expresses a participant of the argument structure (1a) , just as direct and indirect objects are the formal expression of core arguments (1b-c).

(1) a. Creo que tuiter me odia, o se burla de mí [CR] (Twitter, Mexico, 10/17/19). < burlarse de alguien [to make fun of somebody]
b. Lo mejor es ir sonriendo por la calle. Así la gente piensa que tramas algo[DO] [Twitter, Spain, 07/18/13). < tramar algo [to plot something]
c. Achacaban a la bruja[IO] las epidemias reinantes y otros desaguisados (CdE, Cuba). < achacar algo a alguien [to blame something on somebody]

Despite being defined as core complements (Cano 1999), syntactic criteria are not sufficient alone to identify these PP arguments in a systematic way. The plethora of tests that have been proposed and contested (Alarcos 1968; Bosque 1983; Rojo 1990; Martínez 1986; Gutiérrez Araus 1987; Gutiérrez Ordóñez 1994; Serradilla-Castaño 1997-1998; Casanova 2021) rely on a precondition: argumenthood, a semantic feature that can only be assessed by following lexicographic criteria (RAE/ASALE 2009).
The identification of CRs is even more challenging when confronted to vernacular data. Common constituency tests – pronoun substitution of DPs (2a), non-adverbial coordination (2b), non-passivization (2c), ecuanditional structures (2d), indexical non-deletion (2e-f), etc. – are used to identify CRs in normative Spanish, but when applied to vernacular varieties the results may diverge.

(2) a. Si la Palabra de Dios se supone que sea la infalible palabra de Dios mismo, ¿cómo se supone que la confiemos [General Spanish: confiemos EN ella] lo suficiente como para vivir nuestras vidas 100 % de acuerdo a ella […]? (CdE, Paraguay).
b. La sociedad mundial se forma y obliga a personas provenientes del sur a ir a vivir al norte y recíprocamente [vivir a algún lugar ≠ vivir de algún modo] (CdE, República Dominicana).
c. Un tipo con el físico de Lincecum es dudado por las cosas que puede hacer. Un tipo con el físico de Kershaw es excusado por las cosas que no puede hacer [*dudar a alguien > alguien ser dudado] (CdE, Venezuela).
d. Mira si me voy a esmerar en hacer sentir bien a una flaca que la disfruto cualquiera. Si me esmero es en una flaca que sea solo mia [si en alguien me esmero es en una flaca] (Twitter, Argentina, 03/18/19).
e. Para la Mesa, el borrador no señala qué consisten esas dos circunstancias [consistir EN algo] (CdE, El Salvador).
f. Mis amigos me kieren por lo que soy, pero la gente que no conosco se burla mio [burlarse DE alguien] porque soy diferente a ellos (CdE, Argentina).

This study is an attempt to answer the following research questions: 1) How can a dialectal corpus help revisiting current criteria for CR identification? 2) Which tests pass and which ones appear to fail? 3) Is syntactic variation related to diatopic factors as well? Which grammatical features are relevant to describe these verb alternations? For this purpose, I have tested a selection of PPs representing the various syntactic schemes of the CR. In this work I claim that ‘test failures’, rather than questioning the categorial status of CRs, reflect the ongoing changes in Spanish, in congruence with historical processes of [±transitive] alternations from Medieval Spanish to present day (Cano 1977-1978; Rivas 2004). These findings (cf. Casanova 2021), in the light of dialectal syntax, call for a more nuanced description of PP arguments, which appear to be placed on a continuum of core/adverbial complementation (Hagège 2010).