La cartografía de las partículas temporales complejas antes y después

In this paper we focus on the syntactic behavior and interpretive properties of the complex temporal constructions headed by 'antes'/'después' (before/after) with the aim to offer an analysis for their syntactic internal structure. These constructions refer to a precise point in time that has to be deduced by the hearer through an inferential process, which involves a computational operation. Adopting the cartographic hypothesis (cf. Cinque, 1994, 1999), according to which in natural languages grammatical categories are active in syntax even when they are not phonologically expressed, we propose that 'antes' (before) and 'después' (‘after) are the morphological reflections of a series of features: the subtractive or additive feature respectively, given that both elements behave like lexical comparatives, and vectorial features (cf. the proposal suggested by Svenonius (2006, 2007) for prepositional phrases expressing spatial relations). Finally, we propose that the domain of the vectorial extentions of 'antes' and 'después' corresponds to a (phrasal) restrictive modifier of an unpronounced head TIME which is selected by a referential DP. This DP, in turn, is dominated by a non-pronounced stative preposition AT.