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

Abstract

This article presents the main facts about how information structure is syntactically codified in Spanish, with particular attention to the syntax of topics and foci. These facts will be used to assess whether cartographic and minimalist approaches can, in their pure version, account precisely for this set of facts in a predictive way. We discuss the taxonomy of topics and foci, the evidence for their syntactic position, their A’-movement properties, the asymmetries between left- and right-dislocated elements, and the availability of information structure inside subordinate clauses.

Keywords

• topic
• focus
• information structure
• embedded contexts
• dislocation
• finiteness