When-clause Typology: prepositional and adverbial phrases in Portuguese and Spanish

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the morphosyntactic properties of the sentences from Portuguese and Spanish in which when is followed by an adjective/noun phrase (young, boy), as in quando jovem/ menino; cuando joven/niño [when young] and a determiner phrase (the rain, the war), as in quando da guerra; cuando la guerra [during the war]. In the first case, on the one hand, we will argue that there is depictive secondary predicate in both languages.

On the other hand, for the second structure, we hypothesize that when, in Portuguese, is an adverb and requires the presence of a dummy preposition to introduce the DP [when + of + DP]. Unlike, in Spanish, it has a prepositional character, introducing the DP directly (when + (*of) + DP). In this respect, we propose a contrast with respect to the treatment of when as an adverbial or a prepositional category in both languages.