Left Dislocated Structures in Spanish: An Approach to Linguistic Interfaces

Abstract

This thesis explores the nature of left-dislocated constructions in Spanish. These constructions are characterized by the presence of a phrase in a peripheralposition connected with the clause by some anaphoric element (Olarrea, 2012). There are two different types of left-dislocated constructions in Spanish, which have been assumed to have different syntactic, prosodic, and pragmatic features. Whereas previous analyses have tended to focus on a single module within the grammar, the present thesis instead approaches left-dislocated constructions in Spanish from an interface-based perspective, i.e., from the interaction between different modules within the grammar. First, a detailed analysis of the syntactic features of the two types of left-dislocated constructions in Spanish, Hanging Topic Left Dislocation (HTLD) and Clitic Left Dislocation (CLLD), confirms that they are two different syntactic constructions. Then, the fruitless analyses of the notion of topic from a syntactic perspective and from a pragmatic perspective indicate that topic must be studied from a syntax-pragmatic interface-based approach. Finally, two corpus-inspired analyses explore the information and discourse features associated with left-dislocated constructions in Spanish. The first analysis studies the information status (the different degrees of assumed familiarity-related newness/oldness) of the referent denoted by the dislocated element, the topic, in both constructions. The second analysis analyzes the use of HTLD and CLLD constructions as discourse organization strategies to mark topic discontinuity and topic continuity. While in the existing syntactic literature (Zubizarreta, 1999; Bosque & Gutiérrez-Rexach, 2009) the discourse organization strategies associated with left dislocated constructions in Spanish have been assumed to be different, the results of this analysis do not show significant differences in the use of both constructions. In other words, this dissertation claims that two linguistic structures that show different features in one specific module within the grammar, such as syntax, may not have to show different features in another module, such as pragmatics.