Object focus marking in Spanish: An investigation using three tasks

Abstract

The literature on focus in Spanish contains a divide between theoretical claims and quantitative empirical evidence: While Spanish is often regarded as resorting to syntactic movement to mark focus, quantitative and/or experimental data often do not support this claim. Research focusing on non-final objects within the VP can provide valuable clarity to the empirical picture, especially when evidence is gathered using multiple methods, a practice known as triangulation. In this article, we use three different tasks (judgments, sentence processing, and production) to provide evidence of object focus marking in Spanish. We found that: (i) canonical orders (object in-situ) were preferred overall; (ii) marking object focus via movement strategies is possiblewe find a relationship between object-focus marking and non-canonical (S)VPPO order, as predicted by mainstream syntactic accounts; and (iii) Spanish focus is not marked asymmetrically by position (subjects vs. non-subjects). Overall, results show canonical orders (i.e., SVOPP) can be used to realize focus on any constituent, while their non-canonical counterparts are contextually restricted. This finding suggests mainstream syntactic accounts in which information structure triggers syntactic movement may need to be revised to include alternative focus-marking mechanisms.

Resilience and vulnerability of discourse-conditioned word order in heritage Spanish

“…In this context, it is worth noting the lack of apparent task effects. That is, we observe convergence on the more metalinguistic FCT and the less metalinguistic SPR task, and we have previously observed similar convergence on other judgment tasks (Hoot, 2017) and with production tasks (Hoot et al, 2020; Leal et al, 2018). Although we recognize that task effects may well modulate our interpretation of the extant data, in the case of focus in Spanish there is remarkable consistency across task type that supports the conclusion that this phenomenon is largely resilient.…”

“…Evidence from monolingual speakers supports the view that focus realizations are variable. In Spanish, monolingual speakers accept and produce multiple word orders to realize focus on subjects and objects (Hoot, 2016; Hoot et al, 2020; Hoot & Leal, 2020; Leal et al, 2018). Given the input’s variability, heritage speakers may acquire constructions that meet their communicative needs without acquiring the full range of possibilities.…”