Abstract
In Romance, Focus Fronting (FF) is generally related to a contrastive or corrective function. In this paper, I show that Spanish may resort to FF to express a special evaluative meaning, namely, a mirative (conventional) implicature of surprise and unexpectedness. Mirative FF is problematic for the traditional analyses of FF because it is not necessarily contrastive and does not guarantee the traditional articulation of the sentence into a new and a given part. The results of a syntactic experiment on the distribution and interpretation of FF in European Spanish show that speakers accept FF not only in the corrective but also in the mirative context. The acceptability of mirative FF thus proves that FF in Spanish is not exclusively limited to contrast or linked to information-structural requirements such as the new-old information distinction. FF may also be used to express a mirative implicature that requires a set of focal alternatives in order to be interpreted correctly.
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© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Original Article
- Not a fact: A synchronic analysis of el hecho de and o facto de
- Focus in Italian echo wh-questions: An analysis at syntax-prosody interface
- Gerunds become prepositional infinitives in Romance Small Clauses: The effects of later Merge to the syntactic spine
- Focus Fronting in Spanish: Mirative implicature and information structure
- Syllabically-driven stricture effects in Majorcan Catalan high vocoids
- Phases, labeling, antilocality and intonational phrases: recomplementation in Spanish
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Original Article
- Not a fact: A synchronic analysis of el hecho de and o facto de
- Focus in Italian echo wh-questions: An analysis at syntax-prosody interface
- Gerunds become prepositional infinitives in Romance Small Clauses: The effects of later Merge to the syntactic spine
- Focus Fronting in Spanish: Mirative implicature and information structure
- Syllabically-driven stricture effects in Majorcan Catalan high vocoids
- Phases, labeling, antilocality and intonational phrases: recomplementation in Spanish