Chapter 11. Fronting and irony in Spanish
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M. Victoria Escandell-Vidal
Abstract
This paper aims at explaining why irony is particularly salient in a certain kind of Spanish sentences that involve fronting of a constituent. This fact should be totally unexpected if one assumes – as we do – that irony is mainly a contextual phenomenon (Wilson & Sperber 1992 et passim). An analysis of the syntactic pattern of the examples under consideration shows that it corresponds to a specific construction where a marked word order triggers a ‘verum focus’ interpretation (Leonetti & Escandell-Vidal 2009). Our proposal is quite simple: we argue that ‘verum focus’ gives rise to emphasis, and emphasis magnifies certain aspects of meaning. Together with other grammatical devices, the ‘verum focus’ construction highlights the inappropriateness of the utterance with respect to the context in which it occurs, thus making irony a very accessible interpretive solution. The more a representation is emphasized, the easier it is for it to receive an ironic reading. This approach provides evidence in favor both of Sperber and Wilson’s proposal for irony and of our analysis of Verum Focus-Inducing Fronting in Spanish: the connection of this construction with irony cannot be understood if this kind of fronting is taken as an instance of focalization.
Abstract
This paper aims at explaining why irony is particularly salient in a certain kind of Spanish sentences that involve fronting of a constituent. This fact should be totally unexpected if one assumes – as we do – that irony is mainly a contextual phenomenon (Wilson & Sperber 1992 et passim). An analysis of the syntactic pattern of the examples under consideration shows that it corresponds to a specific construction where a marked word order triggers a ‘verum focus’ interpretation (Leonetti & Escandell-Vidal 2009). Our proposal is quite simple: we argue that ‘verum focus’ gives rise to emphasis, and emphasis magnifies certain aspects of meaning. Together with other grammatical devices, the ‘verum focus’ construction highlights the inappropriateness of the utterance with respect to the context in which it occurs, thus making irony a very accessible interpretive solution. The more a representation is emphasized, the easier it is for it to receive an ironic reading. This approach provides evidence in favor both of Sperber and Wilson’s proposal for irony and of our analysis of Verum Focus-Inducing Fronting in Spanish: the connection of this construction with irony cannot be understood if this kind of fronting is taken as an instance of focalization.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Preface vii
- Introduction 1
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Section 1. Left Sentence Peripheries in Old Spanish
- Chapter 1. Left Dislocation phenomena in Old Spanish 23
- Chapter 2. Revisiting stylistic fronting in Old Spanish 53
- Chapter 3. Left forever 77
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Section 2. Syntactic variation in Modern Spanish
- Chapter 4. Spanish predicative verbless clauses and the left periphery 101
- Chapter 5. Fronting and contrastively focused secondary predicates in Spanish 125
- Chapter 6. The left periphery of Spanish comparative correlatives 155
- Chapter 7. The article at the left periphery 185
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Section 3. Syntax, semantics, and pragmatics
- Chapter 8. Evidentiality and illocutionary force 217
- Chapter 9. On the grammaticalization of the Assertion Structure 253
- Chapter 10. Informational status and the semantics of mood in Spanish preposed complement clauses 283
- Chapter 11. Fronting and irony in Spanish 309
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Section 4. Spanish among the Romance languages
- Chapter 12. Left periphery in discourse 345
- Chapter 13. A comparative look at Focus Fronting in Romance 383
- Index 419
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Preface vii
- Introduction 1
-
Section 1. Left Sentence Peripheries in Old Spanish
- Chapter 1. Left Dislocation phenomena in Old Spanish 23
- Chapter 2. Revisiting stylistic fronting in Old Spanish 53
- Chapter 3. Left forever 77
-
Section 2. Syntactic variation in Modern Spanish
- Chapter 4. Spanish predicative verbless clauses and the left periphery 101
- Chapter 5. Fronting and contrastively focused secondary predicates in Spanish 125
- Chapter 6. The left periphery of Spanish comparative correlatives 155
- Chapter 7. The article at the left periphery 185
-
Section 3. Syntax, semantics, and pragmatics
- Chapter 8. Evidentiality and illocutionary force 217
- Chapter 9. On the grammaticalization of the Assertion Structure 253
- Chapter 10. Informational status and the semantics of mood in Spanish preposed complement clauses 283
- Chapter 11. Fronting and irony in Spanish 309
-
Section 4. Spanish among the Romance languages
- Chapter 12. Left periphery in discourse 345
- Chapter 13. A comparative look at Focus Fronting in Romance 383
- Index 419
