<OT> New Posting: ROA-565

[roa@equinox.rutgers.edu]

ROA 565-1202

Structural Markedness and Syntactic Structure: A Study of Word Order and
the Left Periphery in Mexican Spanish [Dissertation]

Rodrigo Gutiérrez-Bravo <gutierrz@juarez.ciesas.edu.mx>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=565


Abstract:
This dissertation investigates a number of word order 
phenomena attested in Spanish in general and in Mexican 
Spanish in particular, concentrating on the unmarked 
word order of this language and the perturbations of 
this order that result from two left-peripheral movement 
operations, topicalization and wh-movement. The core 
proposal developed here is that the unmarked word order 
in Spanish is not the result of some licensing condition 
related to the subject (i.e. Case, agreement, etc.),  
but rather results from the interaction between the 
Extended Projection Principle (EPP) and considerations 
regarding structural markedness. 

The analysis developed here argues that, in the unmarked 
case, the EPP in Spanish is satisfied in the specifier 
of the highest inflectional projection by the argument 
of the verb that ranks highest in the thematic 
hierarchy, which may but need not correspond to the 
grammatical subject. To disassociate the constituent 
that satisfies the EPP from any specific grammatical 
relation, I propose that it be referred to as the Pole 
of the clause.   

I propose that Spanish clauses with different 
constituents in the Pole position have different degrees 
of structural markedness, depending of their semantic 
role. Agents and experiencers constitute the least 
marked instance of a Pole. Other arguments and adjuncts 
which rank lower in the thematic hierarchy constitute 
more marked instances of a Pole. I argue that beyond a 
certain degree of structural markedness (when the 
constituent that would satisfy the EPP ranks low in the 
thematic hierarchy) it is better not to satisfy the EPP 
altogether. This explains a number of Spanish 
verb-initial constructions where the highest 
inflectional specifier is left empty. I argue that 
Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky 1993), where 
well-formedness conditions are interpreted as violable 
constraints, provides a straightforward analysis of this 
state of affairs.  

Finally, I show that the two fundamental properties of 
the Pole position, its sensitivity to the semantic role 
of the constituent that occupies it and being the 
position where the EPP is satisfied, allow us to explain 
a number of word order facts observed in two 
left-peripheral phenomena in Spanish, topicalization and 
the fronting of interrogative operators.

Keywords: Spanish, Word Order, Left Periphery, Harmonic Alignment, Topicalization,
Wh-movement

Areas: Spanish Syntax

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=565