Schmid, Svenja, Von Heusinger, Klaus and Kaiser, Georg A. (2021). ON WORD ORDER VARIATION AND INFORMATION STRUCTURE IN PENINSULAR SPANISH AND ITALIAN 'WHY'-INTERROGATIVES. Cad. Estud. Linguist., 63. CAMPINAS: UNIV ESTADUAL CAMPINAS, INST ESTUDOS LINGUAGEM. ISSN 2447-0686

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the effect of information structure on word order in Italian and Peninsular Spanish 'why '-interrogatives, and whether these two languages differ from each other. To this end, we conducted two empirical studies. In a parallel text corpus study, we compared the frequency of the word order patterns 'why 'SV and 'why 'VS, as well as the distribution of focal and non-focal subjects in the two languages. In order to get a deeper understanding of the impact of the information structural categories focus and givenness on word order in 'why '-interrogatives, we conducted a forced-choice experiment. The results indicate that word order is affected by focus in Italian, while it is not determined by any information structural category in Peninsular Spanish. We show that Italian and Peninsular Spanish 'why ' -interrogatives differ from each other in two ways. First, non-focal subjects occur preverbally in Italian, while they occupy the postverbal position in Peninsular Spanish. Second, Italian reveals a lower level of optionality with respect to word order patterns. Even though we find a high preference for the postverbal position in Peninsular Spanish, we argue that this limitation is related to a higher flexibility regarding word order in Peninsular Spanish than in Italian which does not allows for 'why 'VSO in contrast to Peninsular Spanish.

Item Type: Journal Article
Creators:
CreatorsEmailORCIDORCID Put Code
Schmid, SvenjaUNSPECIFIEDUNSPECIFIEDUNSPECIFIED
Von Heusinger, KlausUNSPECIFIEDUNSPECIFIEDUNSPECIFIED
Kaiser, Georg A.UNSPECIFIEDUNSPECIFIEDUNSPECIFIED
URN: urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-572467
DOI: 10.20396/cel.v63i00.8661251
Journal or Publication Title: Cad. Estud. Linguist.
Volume: 63
Date: 2021
Publisher: UNIV ESTADUAL CAMPINAS, INST ESTUDOS LINGUAGEM
Place of Publication: CAMPINAS
ISSN: 2447-0686
Language: English
Faculty: Unspecified
Divisions: Unspecified
Subjects: no entry
Uncontrolled Keywords:
KeywordsLanguage
INVERSIONMultiple languages
Language & LinguisticsMultiple languages
URI: http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/57246

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

Altmetric

Export

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item