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On the structure and variation of ‘hace’ as a temporal expression
Abstract
The goal of this article is to analyse a case of variation in Spanish. In most varieties,
constructions of the form Hace dos días que (“it has been two days since”) reject nominal
expressions like todo el día (“all the day”), hence *Hace todo el día que (lit. “it has been
all the day that”). However, a particular variety of Argentinean Spanish allows it. This
article proposes that in the non-Argentinean varieties, hace (“make”) is the spell out of a
temporal relator placed in the extended projection of the verb; the nominal expression that
accompanies it is a measure phrase providing the length of the vector it projects. These
varieties build hace dos días que-constructions through movement of the temporal relator
to the CP area. However, the Argentinean variety builds hace dos días que-constructions
without movement, as a temporal verb that takes a durative argument. This explains the
different range of nominal expressions allowed in each variety.
Keywords: temporal expressions, prepositions, viewpoint aspect, movement
