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Chapter 3. The discourse particle es que in Spanish and in other Iberian languages

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Abstract

We examine the historical reanalysis of the Spanish sequence es que (lit. ‘is that’) as a discourse particle with justificatory and even purely emphatic functions. We argue that the diachronic process involved first the appearance of non-coindexed pro as subject of the copula es ‘is’ and, at a later stage, deletion of the empty pronoun and syntactic restructuring. The restructuring was triggered by the use of the construction in counter-argumentative and other contexts where the semantic content of the null category was not easily recoverable. We also consider parallel developments in Catalan and Portuguese, as well as the borrowing of the particle es que in colloquial Basque.

Abstract

We examine the historical reanalysis of the Spanish sequence es que (lit. ‘is that’) as a discourse particle with justificatory and even purely emphatic functions. We argue that the diachronic process involved first the appearance of non-coindexed pro as subject of the copula es ‘is’ and, at a later stage, deletion of the empty pronoun and syntactic restructuring. The restructuring was triggered by the use of the construction in counter-argumentative and other contexts where the semantic content of the null category was not easily recoverable. We also consider parallel developments in Catalan and Portuguese, as well as the borrowing of the particle es que in colloquial Basque.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Introduction 1
  4. Part I. Diachronic issues and the development of discourse particles
  5. Chapter 1. On the adverbial origin of German modal particles 13
  6. Chapter 2. A particle-like use of hwæþer Wisdom’s questions in Boethius 41
  7. Chapter 3. The discourse particle es que in Spanish and in other Iberian languages 65
  8. Part II. Syntactic analyses of discourse particles
  9. Chapter 4. Agreeing complementizers may just be moody 101
  10. Chapter 5. Outer particles vs tag particles 131
  11. Chapter 6. Anchoring primary and secondary interjections to the context 157
  12. Chapter 7. Sentence-final particles in Mandarin Chinese 179
  13. Part III. The semantic-pragmatics of discourse particles
  14. Chapter 8. Meaning and use of the Basque particle bide 209
  15. Chapter 9. Three German discourse particles as speech act modifiers 229
  16. Language index 255
  17. Subject index 257
Discourse Particles
This chapter is in the book Discourse Particles
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.276.03per

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Introduction 1
  4. Part I. Diachronic issues and the development of discourse particles
  5. Chapter 1. On the adverbial origin of German modal particles 13
  6. Chapter 2. A particle-like use of hwæþer Wisdom’s questions in Boethius 41
  7. Chapter 3. The discourse particle es que in Spanish and in other Iberian languages 65
  8. Part II. Syntactic analyses of discourse particles
  9. Chapter 4. Agreeing complementizers may just be moody 101
  10. Chapter 5. Outer particles vs tag particles 131
  11. Chapter 6. Anchoring primary and secondary interjections to the context 157
  12. Chapter 7. Sentence-final particles in Mandarin Chinese 179
  13. Part III. The semantic-pragmatics of discourse particles
  14. Chapter 8. Meaning and use of the Basque particle bide 209
  15. Chapter 9. Three German discourse particles as speech act modifiers 229
  16. Language index 255
  17. Subject index 257
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