Hanging Topic Left Dislocations as extrasentential constituents: toward a paratactic account. Evidence from English and Spanish

Abstract

The paper argues for a bisentential, paratactic account of Hanging Topic Left Dislocations wherein the syntactically unconnected hanging topic phrase is the remnant of an elliptical copulative sentence which is linearly juxtaposed to the second, host sentence. This proposal represents a natural extension of Ott’s system for Clitic Left Dislocations and predicative non-restrictive nominal appositives. By assuming that the hanging topic is structurally disconnected from the host sentence, the analysis constitutes a radical departure from integrated/monosentential approaches within cartography, which analyze hanging topics as intrasentential, albeit peripheral, constituents in the left spine of the clause. Using data from English and Spanish as well as from other linguistic varieties, the paratactic approach provides a principled account of various issues facing monosentential analyses of hanging topics, including anti-connectivity, coreference with the resumptive/epithetic correlate, comma intonation/pause potential, case, insensitivity to locality constraints, islandhood, and potential presence of interjections between hanging topic and host sentence, amongst others. The account is also successful in capturing orphaned topics, which are not linked to any constituent in the sentence they occur with, alongside ‘interrogative’ and hyperdetached hanging topics.

Evidential Adverbs and Polarity: A Study from Spanish

“…The structure in (38) takes up the proposal of Villa-García and González Rodríguez (2020a, 2020b), but it has the idea that there is a hanging topic position located in the upper-left periphery; in other words, I assume, contrasting with the monoclausal analyses developed by Hernanz (2006) and Villa-García andGonzález Rodríguez (2020a, 2020b), this is a biclausal analysis, similar to Poletto and Zanuttini (2013) and Pujol i Campeny (2023), in which there is a higher structure linked to the common ground and connected to the lower clause introduced by the conjunction: According to (38), the previous discourse context is present in the structure of the new sentence introduced by evidential adverbs with que in the left-most periphery in a functional position related to hanging topics (Cinque 1997;Zubizarreta 1999;Villalba 2000;López 2009;Tizón-Couto 2008;Villa-García 2015;Stark 2022;among others). These kinds of topicalizations have a number of properties that make them special topicalizations: they can be associated with virtually any syntactic function in the sentence to which they are adjacent; they can be connected with a resumptive element or strong pro-noun/demonstrative, an epithetic, a quantifier, etc.…”

“…For example, Villa-García and González Rodríguez (2020a, 2020b) point out that sí que sits in a functional space that is higher than FocusP-where the affirmative sí is assumed to be located after moving to that position from ΣP-since it can select affirmative and negative adverbs as complements: Sí que sí (yes that yes), Sí que no (yes that no). Although Villa-García andGonzález Rodríguez (2020a, 2020b) do not specify the label of the projection, they argue for an assertive phrase. 7 Kocher (2017) associates sí que with a projection in the left periphery related to mood since it would host fronted constituents triggering a verum focus reading (see Section 3.1).…”

“…The optional second que is not extended in Latin American Spanish (Martínez Vera 2019). For recomplementation in Spanish, see Villa-García (2015). See Villa-García andGonzález Rodríguez (2020a, 2020b) for a discussion on the properties of this functional space.…”

“…With regard to evidentiality, Olbertz (2007), Fernández-Soriano (2020, 2022), De la Mora and Maldonado (2015), Saito (2019Saito ( , 2021, Martínez Vera (2019, 2023), and Sanromán Vilas (2020 analyze the interpretation and variation of dizque "to say that" and, especially in Demonte and Fernández-Soriano's (2013a, 2013b, 2014 papers, the reportative meaning of conjunction que in independent context. Finally, it is worth highlighting the previously mentioned study by Villa-García andGonzález Rodríguez (2020a, 2020b), which investigated dialectal microvariations across the Spanish-speaking world in terms of the presence or absence of the conjunction que "that" with the affirmative adverb sí "yes" in sí que contexts; according to Villa-García and González Rodríguez, the function is to signal the speaker's commitment to the truth of the proposition.…”

“…In various Romance languages, such as Spanish (Villa-García and González Rodríguez 2020a), Italian (Poletto and Zanuttini 2013;Cruschina 2015;Cruschina andRemberger 2017a, 2017b) or Romanian (Hill 2007), the so-called evidential adverbs (naturalmente, ciertamente, obviamente, and so on), as well as the polarity adverbs (sí and no), can be followed by the conjunction que in constructions, as in naturalmente que and sí que. Although the study of constructions with que has been the subject of much interest within the framework of extended functional sentence structure in recent years (Rodríguez Ramalle 2008;Poletto and Zanuttini 2013;Villa-García andGonzález Rodríguez 2020a, 2020b), research has not always been conducted on the basis of a comparative model within the same dialectal variety.…”