Optionality and preferences in Spanish postverbal constituent order: An OT account without basic constituent order

Heidinger, Steffen

doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2015.05.003

Cited by 13 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Thus, our results echo previous production studies that found a predominance of in-situ focus marking for objects with few instances of movement resulting in the focus in final position (Gabriel 2010;Vanrell & Fernández Soriano 2013). Conversely, our results are unlike those studies that have found higher proportions of movement (Feldhausen & Vanrell 2014;Heidinger 2015).…”

Section: Production Tasksupporting

confidence: 88%

“…Feldhausen & Vanrell (2014;, on the other hand, found a higher rate of movement (roughly 50%), and their stimuli included a PP adjunct following the direct object. Finally, Heidinger (2015) found the largest rate of movement (64%) using stimuli that included a subject-oriented depictive adjective rather than a PP. (In the sentence Juanita pintó el armario descalza 'Juanita painted the armoire barefoot,' descalza 'barefoot' is a depictive.)…”

Section: Production Taskmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Furthermore, speakers rarely mark subject focus via VOS order in production tasks (Gabriel 2010;Vanrell & Fernández Soriano 2013;Feldhausen & Vanrell 2014;Feldhausen & Vanrell 2015;Kim 2016;Leal, Destruel & Hoot 2018;Vanrell & Fernández Soriano 2018). In contrast, word-order alterations within the VP-e.g., moving a non-focal PP to create VPPO order so that a focused, nonfinal direct object is in final position-are more acceptable (Leal Méndez & Slabakova 2011;Hoot 2012;Heidinger 2013;Hoot 2016) and more likely to be produced (Gabriel 2010;Feldhausen & Vanrell 2014;Feldhausen & Vanrell 2015;Heidinger 2015;Vanrell & Fernández Soriano 2018). The asymmetry (between subject-focus marking and object-focus marking) contrasts sharply with (a) syntactic approaches to Spanish focus movement, which generally propose a single mechanism motivating focus movement irrespective of constituent, and (b) the literature documenting asymmetries in focus-marking cross-linguistically, which generally finds that subjects tend to be marked explicitly more than objects.…”

Section: The Empirical Landscapementioning

confidence: 99%

“…A common method is to present the context via pictures and then present the question in writing, asking participants to answer aloud (Gabriel 2010;Vanrell & Fernández Soriano 2013;Feldhausen & Vanrell 2014;Uth 2014;Feldhausen & Vanrell 2015;Vanrell & Fernández Soriano 2018). Other studies elicit production orally, providing the context aurally or in pictures and asking the question aloud to prompt an oral response (Roggia 2011;Heidinger 2015;Muntendam & Torreira 2016;Sánchez-Alvarado 2020). Finally, a few use other methods, including written production (Hertel 2003) and repetition of an aurally-presented sentence (Kim 2016).…”

Section: Production Taskmentioning

confidence: 99%

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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: Production Tasksupporting

confidence: 88%

Section: Production Taskmentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: The Empirical Landscapementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Production Taskmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Object focus marking in Spanish: An investigation using three tasks

Hoot

Leal

Destruel

2020

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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“…First of all, it seems that some varieties such as Sicilian and Sardinian allow FF with (non-contrastive) information focus in congruent answers to wh-questions (Cruschina 2012;Jones 1993;. Secondly, different opinions are reported in experimental or quantitative studies, where it is in fact claimed that non-contrastive pre-verbal foci are indeed accepted by native speakers either in answers to wh-questions or in other contexts (see Gabriel 2010;Hoot 2012;Vanrell & Fernández-Soriano 2013;Feldhausen & Vanrell 2014;Uth 2014;Heidinger 2015;Jiménez-Fernández 2015a;b;Sánchez Alvarado 2018; see also Kato & Raposo 1996;Brunetti 2004;Cruschina 2012;Bianchi, Bocci & Cruschina 2015;Belletti & Rizzi 2017;Dal Farra 2018).…”

Section: Contrastive Vs Non-contrastive Focus: Problems and Challengesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The greater the contrast, the greater the potential: On the effects of focus in syntax

Cruschina

2021

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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The most debated syntactic reflex that is typically associated with contrast is the movement of a contrastive constituent to a dedicated, left-peripheral position. For Italian and Spanish, it has been claimed that focus fronting (FF) must be sanctioned by a contrastive interpretation of the focus, while non-contrastive focus generally occurs postverbally (see, e.g., Rizzi 1997;Zubizarreta 1998;Belletti 2004;López 2009). Only sentences with a postverbal focus are thus judged as pragmatically felicitous answers to the corresponding wh-questions. Some scholars, however, have recently reported different views and data, showing that non-contrastive preverbal foci are indeed accepted by native speakers in answers to wh-questions. In this paper, I argue that a solution to this problem can be found if the binary distinction between contrastive and non-contrastive focus is abandoned, and different 'degrees' or 'types' of contrastive focus are identified, depending on the way the set of alternatives is pragmatically exploited (Krifka 2007;Cruschina 2012). I show that languages are syntactically sensitive to specific types of focus with which special operations (e.g. FF) associate. Following Bianchi, Bocci & Cruschina (2015;, I then argue that FF is in fact triggered not by contrast per se, but by the conventional implicature that is associated with a specific type of focus.

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Focus affinity in Spanish. An experimental study

Heidinger

Onea

2021

Journal of Pragmatics

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Optionality and preferences in Spanish postverbal constituent order: An OT account without basic constituent order

Cited by 13 publications

References 21 publications

Object focus marking in Spanish: An investigation using three tasks

Object focus marking in Spanish: An investigation using three tasks

The greater the contrast, the greater the potential: On the effects of focus in syntax

Focus affinity in Spanish. An experimental study

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