Chapter published in:
Focus Realization in Romance and BeyondEdited by Marco García García and Melanie Uth
[Studies in Language Companion Series 201] 2018
► pp. 33–70
Chapter 2Language variation at the prosody-syntax interface
Focus in European Spanish
Maria del Mar Vanrell | Universitat de les Illes Balears
Olga Fernández-Soriano | Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Spanish is generally considered a “word order language” with respect to focus marking, since the syntactic strategies used to alter the canonical order seem to depend on focus type. Thus, prosodically motivated movement is utilized for information narrow focus, and focus fronting, clefting, and focus in situ are used in contrastive focus cases. However, recent empirical studies do not fully support this assumption. This paper investigates the effect of focus type and syntactic function of the focused constituent on the syntactic and prosodic realization of focus in different varieties of European Spanish. Our data show that Spanish employs both word order and intonation to different degrees depending on the language variety, the nature of the focused constituent (subject or object), and the constituent’s informational vs. contrastive features.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Methodology
- 2.1Participants
- 2.2The corpus/data
- 2.3Procedure
- 2.4Analysis
- 3.Results
- 3.1Information focus
- 3.1.1Focus on the subject
- 3.1.2Focus on the direct object
- 3.2Contrastive focus
- 3.2.1Focus on the subject
- 3.2.2Focus on the direct object
- 3.1Information focus
- 4.A preliminary perception experiment
- 5.Discussion and conclusions
-
Acknowledgments -
Notes -
References
Published online: 28 November 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.201.02van
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.201.02van
References
Aguilar, Lourdes, de-la-Mota, Carme, Prieto, P.
Armstrong, Meghan E.
Boersma, Paul
Büring, Daniel & Gutiérrez-Bravo, Rodrigo
Büring, Daniel
Contreras, Heles
Cruttenden, Alan
Domínguez, Laura
2004b The effects of phonological cues on the syntax of focus constructions in Spanish. In Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2002: Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’ [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 256], Reineke Bok-Bennema, Bart Hollebrandse, Brigitte Kampers-Manhe & Petra Sleeman (eds), 69–81. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Dufter, Andreas
Estebas, Eva & Prieto, Pilar
Face, Timothy L. & D’Imperio, Mariapaola
Feldhausen, Ingo & Vanrell, Maria del Mar
Fiedler, Ines Hartmann, Katharina Reineke, Brigitte Schwarz, Anne & Zimmerman, Malte
Frascarelli, Mara
Frota, Sonia Arvaniti, Amalia & D’Imperio, Mariapaola
Gabriel, Christoph
Gabriel, Christoph, Feldhausen, Ingo & Pešková, Andrea
2009 Contrastive and neutral focus in porteño Spanish”. Paper presented at DGfS 2009, Osnabrück. http://www.ilg.uni-stuttgart.de/focus/Gabriel.pdf (23 July 2015).
Grice, Martine Savino, Michelina & Refice, Mario
Gussenhoven, Carlos
Gutiérrez-Bravo, Rodrigo
Hoot, Bradley
Hualde, José I. & Prieto, Pilar
Jiménez Fernández, Ángel L.
2015 When focus goes wild: Syntactic positions for information focus. Linguistics Beyond and Within 1: 119–133. http://lingbaw.com/2015/Ángel-L.-Jiménez-Fernández
Leal-Méndez, Tania & Shea, Christine
2012 L1 Mexican Spanish and L2 Spanish learners at the syntax-discourse interface: P-movement or in-situ prosody? Paper presented at the 42nd Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages, Cedar City, UT, 21 April.
Moreno Cabrera, Juan Carlos
Muntendam, Antje
Nadeu, Marianna & Hualde, José I.
Nadeu, Marianna & Vanrell, Maria del Mar
2015 Postfocal material in sentences with contrastive focus in Catalan and Spanish. Paper presented at the conference Phonetics and phonology in Europe, Cambridge, UK, 29–30 June.
Ordóñez, Francisco
Roseano, Paolo; Vanrell, Maria del Mar & Prieto, Pilar
Samek-Lodovici, Vieri
Sánchez Alvarado, Covadonga
Savino, Michelina
Swerts, Marc, Krahmer, Emiel & Avesani, Cinzia
Truckenbrodt, Hubert
Uth, Melanie
Vallduví, Enric
Vanrell, Maria del Mar & Fernández-Soriano, Olga
Vanrell, Maria del Mar, Ballone, Francesc, Schirru, Carlo & Prieto, Pilar
Cited by
Cited by 3 other publications
Cruschina, Silvio
Mendoza Vázquez, Érika , Rodrigo Gutiérrez-Bravo & Pedro Martín Butragueño
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 01 april 2022. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.