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      Generic and action-dependent abilities in Spanish ‘Be capable’

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          Abstract

          This paper is concerned with the semantics of Spanish ser capaz ‘be capable’ (henceforth SC). Specifically, it aims to account for the distribution SC displays and the range of meanings it expresses in the realm of abilities, viewed as kinds of dispositions. We put forth the following generalization: Whenever imperfective aspect interacts with SC, two possible readings arise, one that is purely abilitative and another one that expresses an accidental or unpredictable state of affairs. Our claim is that both interpretations derive from a circumstantial modal base that includes the subject’s inner circumstances, albeit with a different ordering source that is brought about via the interaction of imperfective aspect and the syntax-semantics of the modal. Thus, we propose that the purely abilitative SC contains an ordering source that ranks as better worlds those in which the subject appeals to her strength of the body, intellect or character; the accidental reading is the result of covert movement of the adjective capaz ‘capable’ over the imperfective-bearing copula ser ‘be’, which triggers a change of ordering source in the modal.

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          Most cited references39

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          Phrase structure and the lexicon

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            Adverbs and functional heads: A crosslinguistic perspective

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              On the event relativity of modal auxiliaries

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Journal
                2397-1835
                Glossa: a journal of general linguistics
                Ubiquity Press
                2397-1835
                06 December 2018
                2018
                : 3
                : 1
                : 131
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Ikerbasque and UPV/EHU, ES
                [2 ]Universitat Rovira i Virgili, ES
                Author information
                http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0371-1214
                http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2802-3856
                Article
                10.5334/gjgl.495
                8d8fe16b-4b8d-4a39-9794-91b755cdbc7e
                Copyright: © 2018 The Author(s)

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

                History
                : 28 July 2017
                : 08 May 2018
                Categories
                Research

                General linguistics,Linguistics & Semiotics
                circumstantial modality,epistemic modality,abilitative modality,actuality entailment,capacities,imperfective

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