El foco informativo y la posición sintáctica de los depictivos orientados al sujeto en español

Abstract

This paper is about the syntactic position of subject-oriented depictives (SOD) – such as cansado in Juan llegó cansado al partido – relative to other postverbal constituents (e.g. direct objects (dO) and locative adjuncts (LOC)). The empirical basis of our study is a production experiment in which information focus is controlled (36 participants, conducted in Córdoba/Spain, February 2012). The main results with respect to the relation between information focus and the syntactic position of SODs are the following: 1) The unmarked position of the SOD depends on the syntactic function of the second postverbal constituent: in the case of a dO, the unmarked order is ... –dO-SOD, while in the case of a LOC, the unmarked order is …-SOD-LOC. 2) All three constituents – SOD, LOC and dO - appear preferably in sentence final position when narrowly focused. 3) Many authors hold that in Spanish the information focus needs to appear in sentence final position. According to our data, the sentence final position is the preferred one for focused constituents, but focused constituents do not always appear in final position. 4) The syntactic position of SODs depends crucially on the focus-background partition of the respective sentence. As a consequence information focus needs to be taken into account in an analysis of postverbal word order and the syntactic position of SODs.