DGfS-Jahrestagung 2012

During the last decade, several proposals were made for modeling focus-induced word order variation in Spanish. Furthermore, empirical studies were carried out in order to capture the prosodic correlates of focus, most of them couched in the Autosegmental-Metrical framework. Interestingly, phonologists generally assume that a narrowly focused XP can be tonally marked in situ (e.g. [F S]VO), while syntacticians usually predict movement of the presupposed material to a higher position, yielding prosodically unmarked structures with rightmost nuclear stress (VO[F S]). Formal approaches involving prosodically motivated movement (Zubizarreta 1998) correctly predict focus-induced word order variation, but run into problems when a given focus-background articulation corresponds to different possible output forms, i.e. when “true optionality” (Müller 2003) is at play. In this talk, I concentrate on the expression of focus in two Argentinean varieties (Buenos Aires; Patagonia/Neuquén), both differing from Peninsular Spanish regarding their prosodic shape (Gabriel et al. 2010) and the speakers’ preferences for certain syntactic constructions. The data stem from an elicited production task in which the participants were presented with picture stories and were subsequently asked questions targeting different information-structural readings. Both varieties pattern with peninsular Spanish concerning the tendency towards the clause-initial placement of focused subjects in constructions with full nominal objects ([_FS]VO), but exhibit more variability regarding the use of structures with preposed focal material ([_FO]V(S)). I argue that the optionality encountered in the data can be accounted for by combining Chomsky’s (2001) target/probe approach with the model of Stochastic OT (Boersma/Hayes 2001).

Boersma, Paul; Hayes, Bruce (2001): Empirical Tests of the Gradual Learning Algorithm. In: Linguistic Inquiry 32, 45–86.

Chomsky, Noam (2001): Derivation by phase. In: Kenstowicz, Michael (Hg.): Ken Hale. A Life in Language. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1–52.

Gabriel, Christoph; Feldhausen, Ingo; Pešková, Andrea; Colantoni, Laura; Lee, Su-Ah; Arana, Valeria; Labastía, Leopoldo (2010): Argentinian Spanish Intonation. In: Prieto, Pilar; Roseano, Paolo (Hg.): Transcription of Intonation of the Spanish Language. Munich: Lincom, 285–317.

Müller, Gereon (2003): Optionality in Optimality-theoretic Syntax. In: Cheng, Lisa; Sybesma, Rint (Hg.): The Second Glot International State-of-the-Article Book. The Latest in Linguistics. Berlin: De Gruyter, 289–321.

Zubizarreta, María Luisa (1998): Prosody, Focus, and Word Order. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.