Abstract

MUNOZ PEREZ, Carlos  and  VERDECCHIA, Matías. The Information Structure of Predicate Doubling. Lexis [online]. 2022, vol.46, n.2, pp.523-550.  Epub Dec 22, 2022. ISSN 0254-9239.  http://dx.doi.org/10.18800/lexis.202202.003.

In this paper we analyze the information structure of predicate doubling in Rioplatense Spanish (e.g., Leer, leyó ‘as for reading, she/he read’). We propose that in this construction the dislocated predicate functions as a contrastive topic in the sense of Büring (2003), that is, it evokes a set of alternative questions with which it contrasts. We argue that this characterization explains the “continuation effect” that predicate doubling exhibits, i.e., the fact that a predicate doubling sentence suggests a potential continuation that involves another predicate. Moreover, we show that this analysis correctly predicts the distribution of predicate doubling in embedding contexts.

Keywords : predicate doubling; informative structure; focus; contrastive topic.

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