Information structure and its syntactic manifestation in Spanish: facts and proposals

Fábregas, Antonio

doi:10.7557/1.5.2.3850

Cited by 18 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…Although some researchers have argued that Spanish can realize focus through various linguistic means, including prosody (Casielles-Suárez 2004; Olarrea 2012), the general claim is that information focus is marked via syntactic movement of non-focal constituents that leaves the focus element in sentence-final position (Bolinger 1954;Contreras 1978;Zubizarreta 1998;1999;Büring & Gutiérrez-Bravo 2001;Costa 2001;Samek-Lodovici 2001;Gutiérrez-Bravo 2002;Domínguez 2004;Ortega-Santos 2006;Gutiérrez-Bravo 2008;Büring 2009;Leonetti 2014;Fábregas 2016;Escandell Vidal & Leonetti 2019). Under this view, which has largely been based on introspective judgments, (5b) is felicitous but (5a) is not.…”

Section: Focus Realization In Spanish: Theoretical Insightsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Object focus marking in Spanish: An investigation using three tasks

Hoot

Leal

Destruel

2020

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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The literature on focus in Spanish contains a divide between theoretical claims and quantitative empirical evidence: While Spanish is often regarded as resorting to syntactic movement to mark focus, quantitative and/or experimental data often do not support this claim. Research focusing on non-final objects within the VP can provide valuable clarity to the empirical picture, especially when evidence is gathered using multiple methods, a practice known as triangulation. In this article, we use three different tasks (judgments, sentence processing, and production) to provide evidence of object focus marking in Spanish. We found that: (i) canonical orders (object in-situ) were preferred overall; (ii) marking object focus via movement strategies is possiblewe find a relationship between object-focus marking and non-canonical (S)VPPO order, as predicted by mainstream syntactic accounts; and (iii) Spanish focus is not marked asymmetrically by position (subjects vs. non-subjects). Overall, results show canonical orders (i.e., SVOPP) can be used to realize focus on any constituent, while their non-canonical counterparts are contextually restricted. This finding suggests mainstream syntactic accounts in which information structure triggers syntactic movement may need to be revised to include alternative focus-marking mechanisms.

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Section: Focus Realization In Spanish: Theoretical Insightsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Object focus marking in Spanish: An investigation using three tasks

Hoot

Leal

Destruel

2020

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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“…In addition, with respect to the prosodic configuration of (81), XP NA and V2 cannot be separated by an interruption in phonation. This behaviour has been pointed out by Fábregas (2016) for cases of focalisation in general Spanish. As the minimal pair in (82) indicates, there cannot exist a prosodic break (as represented by comma in (82b)) between the focalised constituent and the verb.…”

Section: A' Movement In Cp2mentioning

confidence: 59%

On the Nature of Verbal Non-Local Doubling in Patagonian Spanish

Silva Garcés,

Espinosa

2023

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The main objective in this study is to describe and offer an account of verbal non-local doubling in Patagonian Spanish (PatSp), an understudied non-standard variety of Spanish in Argentina. We focus on data in which there are duplicated verbs surrounding an XP that bears the nuclear accent of the phrase (XPNA). First, our analysis describes the prosodic, semantic, and morphosyntactic behaviour of the data gathered. Second, we present the problems and challenges that doubling phenomena in PatSp pose for approaches that have tried to explain similar data in other Spanish varieties and other languages, such as the copy theory or prosodic cloning. Third, this work explores a biclausal analysis of verbal non-local doubling in PatSp in which each duplicate originates in a different clause, CP1 and CP2. In this approach, duplicated verbs (V1 and V2, according to their linear distribution) are not derivationally related. We also argue that the XPNA moves to the left periphery of CP2. This movement would account for the three typical traits of verbal duplication in PatSp: the mandatory adjacency between the nuclear accent and V2, the non-locality between verbal duplicates, and the semantic value of mirativity.

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“…What, then, are the additional or concomitant requirements that license FF and that inherently associates with this configuration? As mentioned, a long-standing view is that in Romance, FF marks contrastive or corrective focus, whereby the focus constituent clearly contrasts with a salient alternative, which can be expressed in a negative tag (see Benincà 1988, López 2009, Fábregas 2016 Una tigre abbiamo visto, non un leone. (It.)…”

Section: Focus Fronting (Ff)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Focus and Focus Structures in the Romance Languages

Cruschina¹

2022

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics

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Focus is key to understanding processes of syntactic and prosodic readjustments in the Romance languages. Since, prosodically, it must be the most prominent constituent in the sentence, focus associates with the nuclear pitch accent, which may be shifted from its default rightmost position when the syntactic position of the focus also changes. The application of specific syntactic operations depends both on the size and on the subtype of focus, although not always unambiguously. Subject inversion characterizes focus structures where the domain of focus covers either the whole sentence (broad-focus) or a single constituent (narrow-focus). Presentational constructions distinctively mark broad focus, avoiding potential ambiguity with an SVO structure where the predicate is the focus and the subject is interpreted as topic. In narrow-focus structures, the focus constituent typically occurs sentence-final (postverbal focalization), but it may also be fronted (focus fronting), depending on the specific interpretation associated with the focus. Semantically, focus indicates the presence of alternatives, and the different interpretations arise from the way the set of alternatives is pragmatically exploited, giving rise to a contextually open set (information focus), to contrast or correction (contrastive or corrective focus), or to surprise or unexpectedness (mirative focus). Whether a subtype of focus may undergo fronting in a Romance language is subject to variation. In most varieties it is indeed possible with contrastive or corrective focus, but it has been shown that focus fronting is also acceptable with noncontrastive focus in several languages, especially with mirative focus. Finally, certain focus-sensitive operators or particles directly interact with the narrow-focus constituent of the sentence and their association with focus has semantic effects on the interpretation of the sentence.

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Information structure and its syntactic manifestation in Spanish: facts and proposals

Cited by 18 publications

References 51 publications

Object focus marking in Spanish: An investigation using three tasks

Object focus marking in Spanish: An investigation using three tasks

On the Nature of Verbal Non-Local Doubling in Patagonian Spanish

Focus and Focus Structures in the Romance Languages

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