Covert exclamative indefinites in Rioplatense Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese

In this article, we focus on the analysis of what we will call covert exclamative indefinites in Rioplatense Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese, such as Hace un calor (‘It’s so hot’) and Tenho um medo (‘I am so scared’). Such indefinite phrases exist in both languages and have similar restrictions to covert exclamatives (as in Masullo 2017), which is why we propose that they are covert exclamative indefinites. Thus, from a syntactic point of view, we assume that exclamative indefinites are covert exclamatives that involve a Focus Phrase with a base-generated operator that has a phonologically null exclamative feature that binds the extreme degree feature “on the in situ phrase” (Masullo 2017: 116). And, from a semantic point of view, we assume that they involve, in addition to the at-issue content related with the extreme degree features, non-at-issue content which carries the subjective evaluation of the item (Israel 2000). Our proposal allows us to explain the distribution of indefinites with mass nouns, such as frio/calor in Rioplatense Spanish and BP, based on an omitted adjective which characterizes a general property of Romance languages that represent indefinite evaluative phrases (Dobrovie-Sorin & Laca 2003).