LAUSR

Abstract The aim of this paper is to analyze the hierarchy of genitive PP arguments within the Spanish DP and their replacement by a prenominal possessive in a process known as possessivization. Through the thematic proto-role approach, I propose a principle of argument projection valid for all DPs with argument structure in Spanish and I suggest two different hierarchies for the possessivization of arguments according to the type of head: deverbal and ‘picture’ nouns have an argument structure closer to verbs and follow the hierarchy {Possessor > Proto-Agent > Proto-Patient}, whereas deadjectival and relational nouns have a strictly nominal argument structure and, consequently, conform to the hierarchy {Proto-Whole > Proto-Part}. The conditions for the possessivization of an argument follow a similar pattern to that of the extraction movements through the different syntactic domains of the DP. The proposed system offers a more precise analysis of argument selection in the Spanish DP that extends beyond the standard cases of parallelism with the verb domain.