The semantic role of the wh-element and subject position in Spanish and Catalan
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Aria Adli
Abstract
This work presents experimental results on the position of the subject in wh-questions of the Spanish variety of Catalonia and of Catalan. Gradient acceptability judgments have been collected with a sample of native speakers, which were fairly balanced bilinguals. It is attempted to account for the striking similarity between the judgment patterns of the Spanish variety of Catalonia and Catalan, and to model at the same time the nuanced, but systematic differences. The similarities are explained by assuming the same set of rules or constraints, regarding the left-peripheral order of a shift topic and a focal element, and regarding the positional restrictions of subjects co-occurring with an argumental wh-element. However, the violation of a rule provokes slightly different degrees of markedness in Spanish and Catalan. This gradient phenomenon is captured by the idea that the violation of a rule comes with a specific cost, which can differ between languages, and that the degree of acceptability of a construction is a function of cumulative violation costs.
© by Akademie Verlag, Berlin, Germany
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction
- The semantic role of the wh-element and subject position in Spanish and Catalan
- What has changed in Hiberno-English: constructions and their role in contact-induced change
- Contact-induced changes in cliticization and word order: the Cimbrian dialect of Luserna as a case study
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Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction
- The semantic role of the wh-element and subject position in Spanish and Catalan
- What has changed in Hiberno-English: constructions and their role in contact-induced change
- Contact-induced changes in cliticization and word order: the Cimbrian dialect of Luserna as a case study
- Gabriele H. Cablitz, Marquesan. A grammar of space, (Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs 169), Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2006. xx + 682 pp.&
- Denis Creissels, Syntaxe générale. Une introduction typologique. 1: Catégories et constructions. 2: La phrase, (Collection Langues et Syntaxe), Paris: Hermes Sciences Lavoisier, 2006. Vol. 1: xviii + 412 pp.,Vol. 2: 334 pp.
- Bernhard Hurch (Hg.) [unter editorischer Mitarbeit von Maria Jose Kerejeta, Dina El Zarka und Ralf Vollmann], Die baskischen Materialien aus dem Nachlass Wilhelm von Humboldts.Astarloa, Charpentier, Fréret,Aizpitarte und anderes, Paderborn:Ferdinand Schöningh, 2002. 291 pp.
- Yaron Matras & Jeanette Sakel (eds.), Grammatical borrowing in cross-linguistic perspective, (Empirical Approaches to Language Typology 38), Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2007. ix + 598 pp.
- Rafael Rodríguez-Ponga, Del español al Chamorro. Lenguas en contacto en el Pacífico, Madrid: Ediciones Gondo, 2009. 312 pp.
- Patrick O. Steinkrüger & Manfred Krifka (eds.), On inflection (Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs 184), Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2009. viii + 272 pp.
