The Syntax of Multiple-que Sentences in Spanish

Complementizers offer a window into the architecture of the left-periphery and further our understanding of the demarcation of the boundaries between the C(omplementizer) and T(ense) domains. Using the articulated left-periphery as a laboratory and Spanish constructions featuring more than one complementizer as a point of departure, the author delivers new insights into the syntactic positions and behavior of Spanish complementizer que along the left edge. These observations have far-reaching consequences to such fundamental linguistic concepts as the derivation of left dislocations, ellipsis, and locality of movement. Of great interest to syntax graduate students and researchers in general, this volume provides a stepping stone to cracking the code on several current syntactic questions, including the widely-contested position of preverbal subjects in null-subject languages like Spanish. In addition, it offers the linguist a bountiful toolbox for the cross-linguistic investigation of a number of left-peripheral and clausal phenomena.

Paula Kempchinsky, The University of Iowa:
This book provides a detailed and tightly argued analysis of a particular phenomenon in Spanish syntax — subordinate clauses with more than one instance of the complementizer que — and in so doing engages with various long-standing issues in Spanish generative studies, such as clitic left-dislocations, the nature of the left periphery, preverbal subjects, locality, and the mechanisms underlying ellipsis. It should be obligatory reading for linguists working on these issues in Spanish in particular and Romance languages more generally.