Here’s an example of (probably) overgeneration in the Spanish Grammar (note the agreement error between person and famous):
(1) *Mis abuelos son personas famosos.
My grandparents be.3PL.PRES.IND person.PL.FEM famous.PL.MASC
Intended: My grandparents are famous people [spa]; sounds really, really bad.
The reason the structure exists is illustrated in example (2) below:
(2) Ellas hacen musica juntas
They.PL.FEM do.3PL.PRES.IND music together.FEM.PL
`They play music together.' [spa]
Sentence (2) has a very similar structure—which is correct for it, probably.
Also:
(3) ?Mis abuelos son personas juntos
"My grandparents together are people".
is possible to say (though awkward).
And then:
(3) *Mis abuelos hacen musica famosos
Intended "My famous grandparents play music".
doesn’t seem to be possible.
Of course adjectives can mostly be predicative adjectives (the intended sentence (1)). So, famoso should be able to go through the AP->PP rule (which is called “predicative-phrase” in the grammar).
What shouldn’t happen then is: the resulting PP should not be modifying the VP “play music”?
So the difference is both between junto and famoso and between ser and hacer? Both between the two adjectives and the two verbs?
Are there existing analyses in other languages for this?
Carlos Gómez (not on the forum) notes that this amounts to the difference between the adjectives that can go with ser and the ones that can go with estar. Now, that is not implemented in the grammar, and I don’t know whether that is just a missing analysis or a decision…
It will be interesting if one can draw this precise correspondence for Spanish between ser' vs. estar’ adjectives, and their use or non-use as depictive VP modifiers. For English (lacking the ser/estar contrast and the overt number on adjectives), the acceptability of these post-VP depictive adjectives seems to be a pragmatic one: as in Spanish, “?They performed music famous” but better “They ended their film career famous (after an earlier unsuccessful stretch on TV).” For English it appears to be a question of whether the event being modified by the depictive adjective is of a suitable type, but maybe it’s a sharper (more lexicalized) contrast for Spanish.
I highly suspect that it is also possible to do the same in Spanish… But, something to look into, for sure. I wonder if “end the film career” is the same type of structure as “perform music”? Probably some differences in “telicity”?..
