"OTRO": CONSIDERACIONES A FAVOR DE SU NO INCLUSIÓN EN LA CATEGORÍA DETERMINANTE

In modern Spanish otro shows complex properties. As is the case in other languages, the contribution of this element to the meaning of the noun phrase is related to the context. A noun phrase modified by otro denotes an entity which is either different from or additional to some other entity already mentioned or known about. In this paper, I study the interpretive and syntactic behaviour of this item in Spanish compared with the behaviour of the corresponding element in other Romance languages, in particular, Catalan, French and Italian. I argue that in modern Spanish otro cannot be analysed as a determiner but as an adjective with functional properties when it appears in referencial contexts and as a quantifier when it appears in existential contexts. This explains why otro is never preceded by an indefinite determiner. Following the cartographic approach and extending to modern Spanish Cinque’s (2015) proposal on “other” in Italian and other languages, I also show that in Spanish the two readings of otro, i.e. “a further token(s) of x” and “a further type(s)/kind(s) of x”, are associated with two different positions in the extended projection of the noun when this constituent is referencial. Furthermore, I show that when otro (and “other”) is a quantifier, it can combine with other existencial quantifiers, giving rise to complex quantifiers.