This study reports an oral production experiment investigating the expression of existentiality in the Catalan of adult Catalan–Spanish early bilinguals (N = 58) with comparable proficiencies but different language dominance. The results show qualitative differences among the bilinguals in existential predicate selection and in their supply of partitive pronouns, modulated by language dominance. Balanced Bilinguals as well as Spanish-dominant bilinguals significantly produced more estar (in detriment of ser-hi and haver-hi) not only in locative contexts, where Catalan already presents optionality regulated by semantic differences, but also in existential constructions, where this optionality does not exist. We argue for indirect crosslinguistic influence (CLI), when the bilingual perceives certain structural overlap within constructions, mediating the influence from one structure to another one and expanding the limits of CLI. The qualitative differences found among bilinguals challenge the idea of a bilingualism continuum in Catalan–Spanish bilingualism with an identical mental representation.

Previous comprehension studies using Picture Matching Tasks (PMT) have shown that, by the age of four, Spanish-speaking children have acquired the semantics of estar being able to calculate the implicature that a property introduced with estar does not hold independent of time as well as displaying some ability to integrate discourse information about properties that change in the course of a story. This study extends that line of research to children under the age of four. Thirty-eight monolingual Spanish-speaking children were tested in two PMTs. The results show that at age three children differ from older children in their interpretation of the copulas suggesting that the distinction between ser and estar with adjectives emerges between the ages of three and four.

In this paper, I further develop Rodolfo Kusch's concept of ‘negation’. I argue that it is an affirmative tool that enables us to sense and feel the other sides or domains of what we call reality and allows us to approach a plateau negated as a horizon of possibilities for conviviality and coexistence. Kusch's concept of negation brings forth an image of the emotions as being intimately interconnected to the values and ethos that form the basis of our behaviours. This paper also argues that Kush's concept of negation must be considered together with Kusch's development of ‘estar’ as a philosophical concept which underpins ‘América profunda’ ways of being in the world (or the multiverse). Finally, I propose that this ‘estar’ requires a ‘corazonar’ of our ways of bringing forth ourselves and our territories to life.