INTERACTIONS AMONG FOCUS, EXHAUSTIVITY, AND CONSTITUENT ORDER IN SPANISH AND BASQUE
DISSERTATION
Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University
By
Lorena Sainz-Maza Lecanda
Graduate Program in Spanish and Portuguese
The Ohio State University
2017
Dissertation Committee:
Professor Peter W. Culicover, Co-advisor
Professor Scott A. Schwenter, Co-advisor
Professor Rebeka Campos-Astorkiza
Copyrighted by
Lorena Sainz-Maza Lecanda
2017
ABSTRACT
The notion of exhaustivity has been traditionally discussed in relation to contrastive or identificational focus in proposing that this kind of focus performs the identification of the only or maximal entity satisfying a given predication (e.g. Kiss, 1998). Be this as it may, it has been recently suggested that this semantic-pragmatic property also plays a significant role in the differing structural configurations of information focus, specially as it pertains to paradigmatic cases of information focus represented through wh-question and answer pairs
(e.g. Kiss, 2007; Yasavul, 2013; Destruel et al., 2015). In Hungarian, for instance, it has been argued that the variable structural positioning between immediate preverbal focus and in-situ focus is conditioned by exhaustivity. Horvath (2007) defends that immediate preverbal focus, but not in-situ focus, expresses exhaustivity. While this may be true of Hungarian, it remains an open question whether exhaustivity conditions the structural configuration a language uses to express information focus. In contributing to this question, this dissertation provides an investigation of the interactions among information focus, exhaustivity and constituent order in two typologically unrelated languages, namely Basque and Spanish. In particular, it investigates the variable structural positioning of constituents conveying information focus and seeks to describe how linguistic and social factors, and specially exhaustivity, affect the syntactic configurations of these two languages.
Traditionally, it has been said that constituents conveying information focus take an immediate preverbal position in Basque and a postverbal, sentence-final position in Spanish.
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Therefore, in the context of a question such as who turns in homework late every day?, Basque speakers would place focus in immediate preverbal position as in [FOCUS Mikelek] [V entregatzen ditu] berandu egunero ‘[FOCUS Mike] always turns them in late’, while Spanish speakers would express it sentence-finally Los [V entrega] siempre tarde [FOCUS Miguel] ‘[FOCUS Mike] always turns them in late’, rendering in-situ variants such as [FOCUS Mikelek] egunero [V entregatzen ditu] berandu and [FOCUS Miguel] siempre los [V entrega] tarde unacceptable.
Yet, in my dissertation, I use experimental data from a series of forced-choice acceptability judgment tasks and interpretation tasks to show that in-situ counterparts are indeed acceptable, making the claim that there is variation between immediate preverbal and in-situ information focus in Basque and sentence-final and in-situ information focus in
Spanish. Crucially, my results from a series of mixed-effects logistic regression analyses reveal that this variation is not free and unconstrained in either language. Rather, in both languages, it is conditioned by the semantic-pragmatic notion of exhaustivity; that is, the implication that the element constituting information focus is the only or maximal entity satisfying the predication. For Basque, my data show that immediate preverbal information focus [FOCUS Mikelek] [V entregatzen ditu] berandu egunero implies exhaustivity, which suggests a translation along the lines of ‘it is Mike (and no one else) who turns in homework late every day’, while the in-situ variant [FOCUS Mikelek] egunero [Ventregatzen ditu] berandu takes a non- exhaustive interpretation such as ‘Mike, among others, turns in homework later every day’.
The same interpretive correspondence applies to Spanish: the sentence-final variant Los [V entrega] siempre tarde [FOCUS Miguel] receives an exhaustive reading, while its in-situ counterpart
[FOCUS Miguel] siempre los [V entrega] tarde does not. With this information, I implement a formal syntactic treatment of exhaustive information focus structures using the feature-driven
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approach couched within Minimalism, and I compare this with a constructional version following the Construction Grammar framework.
In light of the immediate preverbal vs. sentence-final alignment of information focus in
Basque and Spanish respectively, the last part of this dissertation explores contact effects between these two languages and, in particular, the linguistic and social factors that influence the acceptability and production patterns of a non-standard alternative preverbal exhaustive information focus variant (e.g. [FOCUS Miguel] (los) [V entrega] siempre tarde ‘It is Miguel who turns them in late every day’) documented among Basque Spanish speakers (e.g. Zarate,
1976). In pursuit of this second inquiry, I conduct a Likert-scale acceptability judgment task and submit the data to a series of ordinal logistic regression analyses in Rstudio in order to explore the correlations between this preverbal variant and various linguistic and social categories. Results suggest that participants’ likelihood to accept and/or produce the non- standard preverbal information focus in this contact variety is dependent on the type of focused phrase (i.e. NP, AdjP, AdvP, PP), the presence or absence of accusative clitics lo, la, los or las, as well as speakers’ origin (Basque vs. Non-Basque), their age, self-identification with Basque cultural ties, living environment and Basque proficiency. From a contact- linguistics standpoint, these findings indicate that this alternative variant results from the complementarity and interplay of both processes of imposition (source-language agentivity) and borrowing (recipient-language agentivity), wherein it is not only Basque-dominant bilinguals, but also Spanish-dominant bilinguals and older Spanish monolinguals from rural areas with strong Basque cultural ties that seem to be acting as primary agents in the emergence, diffusion and maintenance of this non-standard preverbal focus structure.
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DEDICATION
Dedico esta tesis a mis aitas y a mi hermana por su apoyo incondicional
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am beyond grateful to the three members of my committee: Peter Culicover, Scott
Schwenter and Rebeka Campos-Astorkiza, all of whom have exceedingly contributed to my academic and professional growth and success. First, thanks to my advisor, Peter Culicover, for believing in me, for always showing interest in my work and supporting my research, for meeting with me every week to talk over syntax, and for teaching me to always think about
Linguistics with a critical eye. Thanks for all the time you have invested reading the various drafts of this dissertation and for providing the most detailed feedback. Second, I would like to thank my co-advisor, Scott Schwenter, for introducing me to the world of variationist sociolinguistics and for recognizing my quality as a scholar. And, last but not least, I am deeply indebted to Rebeka Campos-Astorkiza. Gracias por tu dedicación y profesionalidad. A pesar de no ser mi co-advisor, te has comportado como tal y para mí, como bien sabes, has sido y serás un modelo a seguir tanto en lo académico y profesional, como en lo personal. To all three of you, thank you for your mentorship and unwavering support.
Besides my committee members, I have also tremendously learnt from other faculty members in the department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Linguistics department at
Ohio State. I am thankful for having had the opportunity to work with Javier Gutierrez-
Rexach (Allá donde estés, gracias por todos tus consejos y tu profesionalidad, y a la vez también por hacerme llorar de la risa en tus clases) and Donald Winford, who sparked my interest in contact linguistics and always offered valuable feedback that I have been able to put to good use in
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this dissertation. These opportunities would not have been possible without the financial, academic and professional support of the department of Spanish and Portuguese at OSU.
Thank you for the well-rounded education, teaching opportunities and financial assistance I have received during my time as a graduate student and graduate teaching associate at OSU.
Beyond Ohio State, I also want to express my gratitude to professor Jon Franco at the
University of Deusto for encouraging me to pursue graduate studies in Linguistics at Ohio
State in the first place. You were certainly right when you told me that this would be a life- changing experience. I also owe my deepest thanks to Itxaso Rodríguez, who has not only been a good friend, but also an amazing collaborator and colleague to work with. Mila esker por esas sesiones interminables de Skype, y por devolverme la cordura en muchos momentos. To my
Chicago girls, Lucía and Lina, mil gracias por acogerme en Chicago siempre que lo he necesitado, and to my Nebraska girl, Jenni, eskerrik asko por recordarme que a veces hay que pisar el freno.
During my six years at OSU, I have met wonderful people who have made this experience one to remember: Cate and Miguel, thanks for your love, support and kindness;
Ramón and Naisha, thanks for “janguear” conmigo when I first arrived in Columbus and enseñarme the beauty of el Spanglish puertorriqueño; and, my past and present SPPO colleagues (Meag, Sonia, Christy, Whitney, Mark, Eleni, Valerie, Héctor, John Cruz, and many more!), thanks for making the long days at Hagerty Hall, conference travelling, and dissertation writing more enjoyable and fun. Above all, I want to thank my very loud and crazy, yet loving and caring, Ohio family. Fernando, Oihane, Lauris, Elena, Palo, Melissa,
Sebas, Lee, you guys have been my support system at the most challenging times; a todos vosotros, muchísimas gracias por sacarme una sonrisa en los momentos más duros. Within this big family,
I am especially grateful to three people, whose support has been vital throughout the years and especially this past year as I was writing this dissertation: Miguel, Celia y Aintzane, gracias vii
por mantenerme a flote. Miguelito, my dissertation buddy, gracias por las caminatas, por las infinitas charlas y por los “popcorn overdose” en lo que finalmente se convirtió en nuestro particular “Wednesday tradition”.
Celia y Aintzane, my Columbus sisters, gracias por los consejos tanto a nivel académico y professional como personal y, sobre todo, por esos abrazos que nunca pedía en voz alta pero que vosotras mejor que nadie sabíais que necesitaba. Lastly, I would also like to thank PJ, for agreeing to that “stress-relief beer/coffee/tea”, for always listening, for caring, and for bringing so much joy to the final writing stages of this dissertation. To all of you, thanks for keeping me (sort of) sane!
Al otro lado del charco, en mi querido Bilbao y alrededores, agradecer a Ibane, Anetxu, Nere, San,
Nat, Dani, Hepi, Azuki, Yeray, y Pisci, que a pesar de los años y la distancia hayamos seguido siendo los mismos de siempre. Y, a Garazi, eskerrik asko por sacar ratitos para verme siempre que volvía. Todos vosotros sois el verdadero ejemplo de la amistad, gracias por todo y por tanto. No me quiero olvidar tampoco de todos aquellos que me habéis ayudado a llevar a cabo mi investigación, gracias por participar en mis encuestas y distribuirlas a amigos, familiares y conocidos.
Por último, quiero agradecer a mis padres y a mi hermana el haber estado ahí apoyándome cada día a pesar de la distancia y el recibirme con los brazos abiertos cada vez que volvía a casa. Gracias por todas las sesiones de Skype, por escucharme sin juzgar, por cuidarme, y por mimarme. Aina, gracias por hacer que
Ibaitxu no se olvide mí; y, aita y ama, que sé que habéis sufrido mucho teniéndome tan lejos, gracias por hacer que nunca me faltara de nada y, sobre todo, por hacer que nunca me faltara vuestro cariño. Sois el motor de mi vida y sin vuestro apoyo nunca lo habría conseguido.
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VITA
2011…………………………………B.A. English Philology, Universidad de Deusto
2013…………………………………M.A. Hispanic Linguistics, The Ohio State University
Publications
Sainzmaza-Lecanda, Lorena, & Scott A. Schwenter. Forthcoming. “Null Objects with and without Bilingualism in the Portuguese- and Spanish-Speaking World”. In K. Bellami, M. Child, P. González, A. Mutendam & M. C. Parafita Couto (Eds.), Multidisciplinary approaches to bilingualism in the Hispanic and Lusophone World. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Rodríguez-Ordoñez, Itxaso, & Sainzmaza-Lecanda, Lorena. In press. “Bilingualism effects in Basque Subject Pronoun Expression: Evidence across the Basque-Spanish bilingual continuum”. To appear in Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism.
Sainzmaza-Lecanda, Lorena, & Itxaso Rodríguez-Ordóñez. 2016. “Subject Pronoun Expression in Basque: Description and pedagogical implications”. In A. Iglesias, A. Romero & A. Ensunza, Linguistic Variation in the Basque language and Education – II (pp. 37-47). Leioa: University of the Basque Country.
Sainzmaza-Lecanda, Lorena. & Meagan E Horn. 2015. “The semantics and pragmatics of Andar and Venir + gerund”. In R. Klassen, J. M. Liceras & E. Valenzuela (Eds.), Hispanic Linguistics at the Crossroads: Theoretical linguistics, language acquisition and language contact (pp. 49-68). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Fields of Study
Major Field: Spanish and Portuguese
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Table of Contents
Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………....ii
Dedication………………………………………………………………………………...v
Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………..vi
Vita………………………………………………………………………………………..ix
Table of Contents………………………………………………………………………....x
List of Tables…………………………………………………………………………....xvi
List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………xviii
1. CHAPTER 1: Introduction……………………………………………….………….1
1.1. Introduction………………………………………………………………………..1
1.2. Defining ‘focus’…………………………………………………………………….1
1.3. Defining ‘exhaustivity’……………………………………………………………...7
1.4. Goals and claims…………………………………………………………………..11
1.5. Organization of this dissertation…………………………………………………..15
2. CHAPTER 2: Focus and Exhaustivity……………………………………………..18
2.1. Introduction………………………………………………………………………18
2.2. The notion of exhaustivity and its association with focus…………………………19
2.2.1. Szabolsci (1981): Exhaustive listing…………………………………………19
2.2.2. Kiss (1998): (Exhaustive) Identificational focus……………………………..20
2.2.2.1. Distributional restrictions: Universal quantifiers and even-phrases……...23
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2.2.2.2. Scope and Focus-position……………………………………………..24
2.2.3. Horvath (2007): EXH(austive) Identification operator………………………27
2.2.4. Summary……………………………………………………………………31
2.3. Information focus and the role of exhaustivity in Basque and Spanish…………….32
2.3.1. Basque word order and focus……………………………………………….32
2.3.2. Basque information focus…………………………………………………...36
2.3.2.1. Basque immediate preverbal information focus and exhaustivity:
observations, research questions and hypotheses………………………44
2.3.3. Spanish word order and focus………………………………………………49
2.3.4. Spanish information focus……………...…………………………………...52
2.3.4.1. Spanish sentence-final information focus and the role of exhaustivity:
observations, research questions and hypotheses………………………56
2.3.5. Summary……………………………………………………………………60
3. CHAPTER 3: Variable Positioning of Information Focus in Basque and
Spanish……………………………………………………………………………….62
3.1. Introduction………………………………………………………………………62
3.2. Basque experiment I: Forced-choice acceptability judgment task………………….63
3.2.1. Participants………………………………………………………………….63
3.2.2. Stimuli………………………………………………………………………64
3.2.3. Design and Procedure……………………………………………………….70
3.2.4. Data analysis………………………………………………………………...72
3.2.5. Results………………………………………………………………………73
3.2.6. Discussion…………………………………………………………………...79
3.3. Basque experiment II: Interpretation task…………………………………………84 xi
3.3.1. Participants………………………………………………………………….84
3.3.2. Stimuli………………………………………………………………………84
3.3.3. Design and Procedure……………………………………………………….90
3.3.4. Data analysis………………………………………………………………...93
3.3.5. Results………………………………………………………………………95
3.3.6. Discussion…………………………………………………………………...99
3.4. Spanish experiment I: Forced-choice acceptability judgment task………………..101
3.4.1. Participants………………………………………………………………....101
3.4.2. Stimuli……………………………………………………………………...102
3.4.3. Design and Procedure……………………………………………………...109
3.4.4. Data analysis………………………………………………………………..111
3.4.5. Results……………………………………………………………………...112
3.4.6. Discussion………………………………………………………………….117
3.5. Spanish experiment II: Interpretation task……………………………………….119
3.5.1. Participants………………………………………………………………...119
3.5.2. Stimuli……………………………………………………………………...120
3.5.3. Design and Procedure……………………………………………………...123
3.5.4. Data analysis………………………………………………………………..126
3.5.5. Results……………………………………………………………………...126
3.5.6. Discussion………………………………………………………………….129
3.6. Summary………………………………………………………………………....130
4. CHAPTER 4: A Syntactic Account of Basque Information Focus……………...132
4.1. Introduction……………………………………………………………………..132
4.2. Information focus: Previous formal syntactic accounts…………………………..133 xii
4.2.1. Early transformational accounts……………………………………………133
4.2.2. Ortiz de Urbina (1989, 1999) ……………………………………………...137
4.2.3. Elordieta (2001).…………………………………………………………...141
4.2.4. Arregi (2003) ……………………………………………………………...145
4.2.5. Summary…………………………………………………………………..148
4.3. The status of exhaustive information focus as a quantificational operator………..149
4.3.1. Weak Crossover (WCO) and Strong Crossover (SCO) effects in Basque
focalization…………………………………………………………………149
4.3.2. Information focus and exhaustivity………………………………………....153
4.4. Proposal: A formal syntactic characterization of Basque focus constructions…….154
4.4.1. Basque information focus: FOC[EXH] feature-driven movement account….156
4.4.2. Basque information focus: a constructional account………………………..165
4.4.3. Summary…………………………………………………………………...171
5. CHAPTER 5: A Syntactic Account of Spanish Information Focus……………..173
5.1. Introduction……………………………………………………………………..173
5.2. Spanish information focus: Previous formal accounts……………………………174
5.2.1. Stress-based focus and P(rosodically motivated)-movement………………..175
5.2.2. Focus movement and non-focal remnant movement………………………178
5.2.3. Rightward movement………………………………………………………185
5.2.4. Interim summary…………………………………………………………...194
5.3. Proposal: A formal syntactic characterization of Spanish focus constructions……196
5.3.1. Spanish information focus: FOC[EXH] feature-driven rightward movement..197
5.3.2. Spanish information focus: a constructional account……………………….203
5.3.3. Summary…………………………………………………………………...207 xiii
6. CHAPTER 6: Information Focus in the Contact Variety of Basque Spanish…..210
6.1. Introduction……………………………………………………………………..210
6.2. Background on Basque-Spanish contact…………………………………………212
6.2.1. Geographical situation of the Basque Country……………………………..212
6.2.2. Sociolinguistic situation of the Basque Country……………………………213
6.2.3. The contact variety: Basque Spanish……………………………………….223
6.2.3.1. Linguistic features of Basque Spanish………………………………..223
6.2.3.2. Attitudes towards Basque Spanish…………………………………....228
6.2.4. Summary…………………………………………………………………..233
6.3. Information focus in Basque Spanish……………………………………………233
6.3.1. Preverbal information focus: qualitative observations……………………...237
6.3.2. Motivation for study, goals and research questions………………………...241
6.3.3. The study: 7-point Likert scale acceptability judgment task………………...244
6.3.3.1. Participants…………………………………………………………..244
6.3.3.2. Stimuli……………………………………………………………….245
6.3.3.3. Design and procedures………………………………………………248
6.3.3.4. Statistical analysis…………………………………………………….250
6.3.3.5. Results……………………………………………………………….254
6.3.3.5.1. General descriptive results……………………………………..254
6.3.3.5.2. Mixed effects ordinal logistic regression model: Full data set…...260
6.3.3.5.3. Mixed effects ordinal logistic regression model: Basque
Spanish………………………………………………………….265
6.3.3.6. Summary & Discussion……………………………………………....270
6.4. The diffusion of preverbal Information focus in Basque Spanish………………...279 xiv
6.4.1. The framework: Van Coetsem (1988, 2000) ………………………………..281
6.4.2. Proposal: Preverbal (exhaustive) information focus as a case of
complementarity of borrowing and imposition…..….……………………...283
6.5. Summary and conclusions………...……………………………………………...286
7. CHAPTER 7: Conclusions………………………………………………………...289
7.1. Summary and contributions……………………………………………………...289
7.2. Limitations………………………………………………………………………293
7.3. Future directions………………………………………………………………...295
References……………………………………………………………………………...302
Appendix A: Basque socio-demographic questionnaire…………………………………312
Appendix B: Basque bilingualism assessment test……………………………...………..314
Appendix C: Basque grammar and vocabulary proficiency test……………………………323
Appendix D: Basque forced-choice acceptability judgment task stimuli…………………328
Appendix E: Basque interpretation task stimuli……………………………………...…..334
Appendix F: (Basque) Spanish socio-demographic questionnaire……………………….343
Appendix G: Spanish forced-choice acceptability judgment task stimuli………………....347
Appendix H: Spanish interpretation task stimuli….………………………………….….352
Appendix I: (Basque) Spanish bilingualism assessment test………………………………...355
Appendix J: Basque Spanish 7-point Likert scale acceptability judgment task stimuli……364
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List of Tables
Table 1: Defining characteristics of information focus and contrastive focus ...... 5
Table 2: Descriptive summary of immediate preverbal focus choice by trigger item ...... 74
Table 3: Mixed effects model of the factors contributing to the choice between immediate preverbal and in-situ narrow information focus in Basque (by target item, quantified expression separated) ...... 76
Table 4: Participant distribution by age of acquisition and Basque proficiency level ...... 81
Table 5: Participant distribution by age of acquisition and Basque frequency use ...... 82
Table 6: Mixed effects model of the factors contributing to the response choice between “Yes” and “No” ...... 97
Table 7: Summary of responses for quantifier scope (Interpretation question: Did every girl kiss the same boy?) ...... 98
Table 8: Contribution of exhaustivity to the meaning of preverbal information focus ...... 99
Table 9: Summary of participants' choice for each trigger ...... 112
Table 10: Mixed-effects model of the factors contributing to the choice between sentence- final and in-situ narrow information focus in Spanish ...... 114
Table 11: Conditional Inference Tree: Interaction between form of the direct object and exhaustivity ...... 116
Table 12: Summary of responses to the interpretation question: According to Susana’s response, do you believe that Ana could think that more people, besides María and Davinia, bought tickets?’...... 128
Table 13: Contribution of exhaustivity to the meaning of sentence-final information focus ...... 128
Table 14: Mixed effects ordinal logistic regression model of the factors conditioning the rates of acceptability and usage of preverbal information focus structures among Basque Spanish and non-Basque Spanish speakers (RL = Reference Level) ...... 262
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Table 15: Mixed effects model of the factors conditioning the acceptance and usage of preverbal information focus structures among Basque Spanish who report having at least some knowledge of Basque...... 268
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List of Figures
Figure 1: Syntactic structure of Hungarian identification focus ...... 26
Figure 2: Sample design of the Basque forced-choice acceptability judgment task ...... 71
Figure 3: Conditional Inference tree: Interaction between type of target item, age of acquisition of Basque and level of education ...... 79
Figure 4: Design sample of the acceptability rating ...... 91
Figure 5: Sample of the comprehension question and optional comment box ...... 92
Figure 6: Violin plot illustrating the distribution of acceptability ratings according to position and subcategorization (blue dot = median values; black dot = mean values)...... 95
Figure 7: Sample survey design of the Spanish forced-choice acceptability judgment task ..110
Figure 8: Conditional Inference Tree: Interaction between form of the direct object and exhaustivity ...... 115
Figure 9: Step 1: Acceptability judgment task ...... 124
Figure 10: Steps 2 and 3 including the comprehension question and comment box ...... 125
Figure 11: Violin plot illustrating the distribution of acceptability ratings according to position of the focused phrase (blue dot = median; black dot = mean) ...... 127
Figure 12: Rightward movement and fronting (adapted from Eguzkitza 1987) ...... 135
Figure 13: Basque clause structure (adapted from Ortiz de Urbina 1989: 217) ...... 137
Figure 14: Wh-movement (left) and Focus movement (right) ...... 138
Figure 15: Left-dislocated focus (Elordieta 2001: 150) ...... 144
Figure 16: Long distance dependencies via adjunction (Arregi 2003: 212) ...... 147
Figure 17: Rizzi's complementizer system...... 157
Figure 18: [+FOC] FOCUS feature ...... 158
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Figure 19: [+EXH] FOCUS feature ...... 159
Figure 20: Agree (left) and Move (right) ...... 160
Figure 21: Agree ...... 161
Figure 22: Move...... 162
Figure 23: Immediate preverbal exhaustive information focus ...... 163
Figure 24: Non-exhaustive information focus ...... 164
Figure 25: Constructional schema...... 166
Figure 26: [Kick the bucket] construction ...... 167
Figure 27: Basque exhaustive information focus construction ...... 168
Figure 28: Basque exhaustive information focus construction ...... 169
Figure 29: Right Adjunction ...... 185
Figure 30: Linear precedence and asymmetric c-command...... 186
Figure 31: X-bar schema ...... 187
Figure 32: Rightward focalization (Belleti & Shlonsky 1995: 504) ...... 192
Figure 33: Enriched X’-schema (Laenzlinger (1996: 109)) ...... 193
Figure 34: Right-branching of SPEC in FOCP ...... 198
Figure 35: [EXH] FOCUS feature ...... 199
Figure 36: Agree (left) and Move (right) ...... 200
Figure 37: Agree ...... 201
Figure 38: Move...... 202
Figure 39: Spanish in-situ non-exhaustive information focus ...... 203
Figure 40: Constructional schema...... 204
Figure 41: Abstract representation of Spanish sentence-final exhaustive information focus construction ...... 205
Figure 42: Spanish sentence-final exhaustive information focus construction ...... 206
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Figure 43: Map of the Basque Country illustrating all seven historical territories, divided into today’s current political administrations (Center for Basque Studies at University of Nevada, Reno, 2011) ...... 213
Figure 44: Evolution of linguistic competence in the BAC (1981-2011) adapted from EUSTAT...... 217
Figure 45: Evolution of bilingual population by age in the BAC, 1991-2011 adapted from V Encuesta Sociolingüística (2011) ...... 218
Figure 46: Evolution of bilingual population by language proficiency in the BAC, 1991-2011 adapted from V Encuesta Sociolingüística (2011) ...... 219
Figure 47: Bilingual population by language proficiency and age in the BAC, 2011 adapted from V Encuesta Sociolingüística (2011) ...... 220
Figure 48: Evolution of the number of speakers who report using Basque as much as or more than Spanish in the BAC, 1991-2011 adapted from V Encuesta Sociolingüística (2011)...... 221
Figure 49: Evolution of the number of speakers who report using Basque as much as or more than Spanish in the BAC according to age, 1991-2011 adapted from V Encuesta Sociolingüística (2011) ...... 222
Figure 50: Stimuli set-up consisting of a brief context, a wh-question and its corresponding auditory response ...... 249
Figure 51: Distribution of acceptability ratings according to participants’ place of origin (blue dot = median; black dot = mean) ...... 255
Figure 52: Distribution of acceptability ratings according to monolingual Basque Spanish vs. bilingual Basque Spanish speakers (blue dot = median; black dot = mean) ...... 257
Figure 53: Distribution of acceptability ratings according to place of origin and accusative clitics (blue dot = median; black dot = mean) ...... 258
Figure 54: Overall acceptability ratings according to place of origin and phrase type (blue dot = median; black dot = mean) ...... 259
Figure 55: Overall acceptability ratings according to place of origin and clause type (blue dot = median; black dot = mean) ...... 260
Figure 56: Conditional Inference Tree showing a significant interaction between Participants’ origin and Accusative Clitics ...... 263
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Figure 57: Conditional Inference Tree showing a significant interaction between Participants’ origin and Phrase Type ...... 265
Figure 58: Overall acceptability ratings of monolingual Basque Spanish speakers by age and environment (green bar = rural environment; orange bar = semi-urban environment; blue bar = urban environment) ...... 266
Figure 59: Conditional inference recursive partitioning tree showing an interaction between participants’ age and self-identification with the Basque culture ...... 270
Figure 60: Distribution of acceptability ratings according to participants’ level of Basque proficiency (blue dot = median; black dot = mean) ...... 275
Figure 61: Distribution of responses along the 7-point Likert acceptability scale by intermediate Basque learner (green bar = rural environment; orange bar = semi-urban environment; blue bar = urban environment) ...... 276
Figure 62: Conditional Inference Tree of the interactions between AGE, BASQUE CULTURAL TIES, BASQUE PROFICIENCY AND ENVIRONMENT ...... 278
Figure 63: Feature percolation of [+FOC] ...... 297
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CHAPTER 1: Introduction
1.1. Introduction
This dissertation looks at the interactions between focus, exhaustivity and constituent order in two typologically unrelated languages, namely Basque and Peninsular Spanish, as well as in the contact variety of Spanish spoken in the Basque Country, northern Spain. In order to make the goals and claims of this thesis clear, in this introductory chapter, I first lay out the definitions of ‘focus’ and ‘exhaustivity’ that will be adopted throughout the course of this dissertation. Subsequent to this, I introduce the goals and claims of the present work and, finally, I present a synthesized overview of the organization of this thesis.
1.2. Defining ‘focus’
Due to the abounding number of studies devoted to the exploration of focus, diverging views and definitions have emerged among scholars regarding its conceptualization. One of the very first definitions of focus was put forward by Halliday, who established that the focus of a message, or what he labeled ‘information focus’ is “that which is represented by the speaker as being new, textually (or situationally) non-derivable information” (1967: 205).
His understanding of focus was closely shared by Jackendoff, who posited that the focus of
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a sentence denotes “the information in the sentence that is assumed by the speaker not to be shared by him or the hearer”, which diverges from a “presupposition” or “the information of the sentence assumed by the speaker to be shared by him and the hearer” (1972: 230).
However, it was soon noted that a correlation between focus and “newness” of information in discourse was not always borne out and, consequently, distinct types of focus began to be established by various scholars. Rochemont (1986) pioneered the differentiation between ‘presentational focus’ and ‘contrastive focus’. In his view, a contrastive focus is that which “identifies from among a set of available alternatives the entity that makes a given proposition true, whether the entity is new to the discourse or not”, while a presentational focus “identifies a discourse entity that is simply discourse new, generally because it is not given”, where ‘given’ is understood as “previously mentioned in the local discourse” (2013:
199). Following this two-way distinction, Kiss (1998) also proposed two separate categories for focus. On the one hand, very much in line with Rochemont and classic notions of focus, she described what she termed ‘information focus’ as “new, non-presupposed information marked by one or more pitch accents” (1998: 246). The second type, known as
‘identificational focus’ within her taxonomy of focus, centered on identification via exhaustivity. Crucially, while the function of this latter kind was set to identify the exhaustive subset of a set of contextually or situationally given elements for which the predicate phrase could potential hold, ‘information focus’ was regarded as not expressing exhaustive identification on a set of contextually or situationally given element (1998: 245-246).
Rochemont’s definition of contrastive focus implicitly presupposes exhaustivity, but contrastiveness seems to be understood as a supplemental characteristic of the more general identificational focus under Kiss’ perspective. In fact, Kiss argues that while identificational focus is always exhaustive in Hungarian, it is not necessarily contrastive. Kiss stipulates that 2
identificational focus is only contrastive “if the domain of identification is a closed set of individuals known to participants in discourse” (Kiss 1998: 268). Yet, in more recent explorations of focus, it has been argued that this approach is empirically wrong. López
(2009) departs from the notion of identificational focus altogether and contends that contrastive foci do not necessarily denote a closed set. He adopts the terms ‘(regular) focus’ and ‘contrastive focus’ and argues that what makes these two different from each other is that, whereas (regular) focus provides new, non-presupposed information that resolves a variable left open in prior discourse (e.g. by the wh-interrogative in a question-answer pair), contrastive focus simultaneously opens a new variable and revolves it, but crucially there is no unresolved variable in the preceding local discourse. Under López’s framework, exhaustivity is not directly discussed in connection to contrastive focus; instead, he seems to interpret ‘exhaustive focus’ as a different kind of focus that unlike contrastive focus, which he claims does not answer a wh-question (2009: 25), may actually interact with question- answer pairs and provide a value to a pending variable.
The relation between focus and its representation in the environment of question-answer pairs is also important in Rochemont’s (2013) latest contributions to the study of focus.
Relying on his original contrastive vs. presentational focus distinction, he restricts the terms
‘FOCUS’ to the contrastive alternatives-based type and ‘NEW’ to focus phrases that are simply new to discourse, plainly exemplified by discourse initiating sentences (e.g. Guess what happened today!). Interestingly, Rochemont treats all foci involved in the response to wh- questions as instantiating FOCUS (e.g. the contrastive type), while more traditional approaches to focus view question-answer pairs as the paradigmatic scenario of new, non- presupposed information focus (e.g. Brody, 1995; Roberts, 1998; Zubizarreta, 1998; Drubig,
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2000; Elordieta, 2001; Arregi, 2003; Erteschik-Shir, 2006; Büring, 2006; López, 2009; to list a few).
As seen through this brief overview, in addition to several terminological differences, there are clear diverging views regarding the status of newness. Whereas new information is restricted exclusively to cases labeled as ‘information focus’ for some scholars (e.g. Kiss,
1998; López, 2009), others such as Rochemont (1986, 2013) assume that focal material conveying new information can also be contrastive. Likewise, these descriptions of focus fall short in clearly specifying the relation between new information and so-called discourse
‘alternatives’ and wh-questions. On the one hand, while most scholars assume a correlation between wh-questions and information focus, Rochemont’s interpretation of ‘NEW’ seems to be most plainly exemplified by discourse initiating sentences. On the other hand, discourse alternatives are generally discussed in the context of contrastive focus, but not information focus. However, if assuming that question-answer pairs are the primary locus of
(new) information focus, then, one could expect a set of alternatives to be implicitly made available through the wh-question.
In light of the manifold taxonomies of focus and their differing specifications, in this dissertation, I adopt the following preliminary view in order to avoid any vagueness and ambiguity in the pages that follow. I distinguish between two broad categories, responding to the names of INFORMATION FOCUS and CONTRASTIVE FOCUS. I take information focus to represent new, non-presupposed information much in the spirit of Halliday (1967) and
Jackendoff (1972), among others. I will assume that this type of focus is best captured by exemplary question-answer pairs, wherein the question projects a presupposition that opens up a variable seeking to be resolved, as suggested by López (2009). Within this type of focus, alternatives may be made available implicitly through the presence of a wh-question. 4
As for contrastive focus, following López (2009), I assume that its primary function is not to provide a value to an unresolved variable and, therefore, that this type of focus does not convey new information in the strict sense. Rather, it simply opens a new variable and immediately revolves it, serving the purpose of contrasting some information given in prior discourse. Contrary to López (2009) and in line with Kiss (1998) and others, I regard contrastive focus as performing exhaustive identification over a set of entities explicitly known to the participants of discourse and I presume that contrastive focus implies exhaustivity, but not the other way around. A summary of both kinds of focus is provided in table 1.
INFORMATION FOCUS CONTRASTIVE FOCUS
Function provide a value to an open a new variable and
unresolved variable immediately resolve it
Discourse alternatives (Implicit) Explicit
Exhaustivity ? Yes
Table 1: Defining characteristics of information focus and contrastive focus
The present dissertation is concerned with the first type of focus and its possible association to exhaustivity, which is rendered underspecified in table 1. Such indeterminacy stems from the apparent contradictions that arise when closely examining prior definitions provided to characterize focus and complementary supporting data. If assuming that wh- question and answer pairs are the optimal instantiation of information focus but not contrastive focus, then, one might be tempted to conclude that Kiss’ data, here revealed in
5
(1), exemplifies a scenario of information focus wherein the second preverbal alternative (1b) receives an exhaustive interpretation. Another solution in order to coherently account for the data would be to revise the definition of identificational focus as stated in Kiss (1998) to incorporate the notion of ‘newness’ of information.
(1) Hol jártál a nyaron?
Where went.you the summer.in
‘Where did you go in the summer?’
a) Jártam [InfF Olaszországban].
Went.I Italy.to
‘I went to Italy (among other places)’
b) [IdenF Olaszországban] jártam.
Italy.to went.I
‘It was Italy where I went.’ (Kiss 1998: 249-250)
In clarifying this matter, I follow my criteria of focus and take the data in (1) to be representative of information focus, directly challenging the claim that information focus lacks an association to exhaustivity. In fact, these observations may be on the right track given the existence of some speculative claims about the possible relation between information focus and exhaustivity in the languages under investigation in this dissertation
(i.e. Elordieta (2001) for Basque, and Suñer (1994) and Jiménez (1997) for Spanish). As such, following Kiss’ confounding data and these conjectural observations, this thesis seeks to empirically test the validity of such introspections in surveying the impact of exhaustivity onto Basque and Spanish focalization strategies. Before doing so, I proceed to clearly define the concept of ‘exhaustivity’.
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1.3. Defining ‘exhaustivity’
The role of exhaustivity in focus expression was first noted in Szabolsci’s (1981) description of Hungarian topic and focus articulation. In her study, Szabolsci argues that
‘exhaustive listing’ is the predominant semantic characteristic of contrastive focus (1981:
519). According to her, the Hungarian data in (2) presupposes that the set of those who
Peter saw is not empty and that Mary is contained in that set. In this respect, exhaustivity is related to the idea of uniqueness in the sense that the individual or element identified to be exhaustive with regards to some predicate requires that element to be the only one for which the predication is true.
(2) [F Mária] látta Pétert (Szabolsci 1981: 519)
Mary see.PST Peter.ACC
‘It is Mary who saw Peter’
Szabolsci’s observations were further developed by Kiss (1998), who views exhaustivity as the main semantic difference between information focus and identificational focus. Her understanding of exhaustivity could be captured in the following informal definition:
(3) Exhaustivity: Exhaustivity denotes a semantic property p, such that p holds iff,
from a set of contextually given elements A = {α1, α2, α3,… αn}, p identifies the
maximal subset of the set A = {α1, α2, α3,… αn}for which the relevant predicate is
true and excludes all other members of the set for which the predicate is false.
Her conception of exhaustivity is partly inspired by Kenesei (1986), who postulates that there must be at least one member of the contextually relevant set of alternatives that the 7
predicate does not apply to. In other words, the operation must crucially involve exclusion of a complementary subset; that is, “exclusion by identification” (Kenesei 1986, 2006). Such a strict understanding of exhaustivity makes the prediction that universal quantifiers, which according to Kiss perform “identification without exclusion” rather than “exclusion by identification” (1998: 252), will be barred from the preverbal focus position. This prediction seems to be met in Hungarian, where fronted focalized universal quantifiers are ill-formed according to Kiss’ judgments (e.g. (4)). It remains, however, to be determined whether such a rigid vision of exhaustivity in relation to focus holds for other languages, such as those explored in this thesis.
(4) * Mari [IdenF minden kalapot] nézett ki magának
Mary every hat.ACC picked out herself.ACC
‘It was every hat that Mary picked out for herself’ (Kiss 1998: 252)
The sense of exhaustivity adopted by these scholars follows a purely semantic rationale.
Yet, whether exhaustivity is actually a semantic or pragmatic component of focus-marking constructions has been subject to much scrutinized debate. Against the view that exhaustivity is a semantic component of language stands Horn’s interpretation of focus as a generalized conversational implicature (1981). Through his investigation of English it-clefts,
Horn argues that exhaustivity emerges as a generalized conversational implicature within focusing or exhaustive listing constructions (e.g. pseudo-clefts, focus shifting, contrastive intonation) in the absence of a specific contextual trigger. He maintains that the infelicity of it-cleft constructions such as (5a), as opposed to the felicitous status of the focus operator
‘only’ in (5b), rules out an analysis of exhaustivity as a truth conditional entailment of cleft sentences.
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(5) a. # I know that Mary ate a pizza but I just discovered that it was a pizza that she
ate.
b. I know Mary ate a pizza but I just discovered that it was only a pizza that she ate.
Similarly, more recent work on Hungarian focus-fronting structures has also suggested that the interpretation of Hungarian preverbal focus is a prime candidate for a pragmatic explanation. In line with Horn (1981), Wedgwood (2005, 2007) supports an inferential analysis of focus and contends that this exhaustive reading emerges as a quantity implicature; that is, hearers assume that the speaker has mentioned every relevant piece of information and, thusly, the exhaustive reading must be inferred from this general communicative principle.
Be this as it may, Horn’s and Wedgwood’s claims have been radically refuted by several scholars (Kiss, 2010; Velleman et al., 2010; Destruel et al., 2015). On the one hand, these scholars unanimously agree that the fact that the exhaustive content expressed by a cleft sentence or focus-fronting is not cancellable (e.g. (6)) is strong evidence against a pragmatic approach.
(6) # It was pizza that Mary ate; in fact, it was a pizza and a calzone.
(Velleman et al. 2012: 445)
In addition, Kiss (2010) provides evidence against a pragmatic treatment based on the interpretation of numerical modifiers, whose interpretation between an ‘at least n’ reading and an ‘exactly n’ reading is heavily constrained by context, and yet when appearing in focus position, it is interpreted to mean ‘exactly n’ regardless of the pragmatic conditions.
Besides arguing against a pragmatic approach, most recent research exploring the contribution of exhaustivity to focus-marking constructions has suggested that what seems to be at stake is not the traditional two-way ‘what is said’ (semantic) vs. ‘what is implicated’ 9
(pragmatic) distinction representative of the Gricean model, but the (not-)at-issueness of exhaustivity. Velleman and colleagues (2012) argue that exhaustivity is part of the meaning of cleft constructions without participating in truth-conditional semantics per se; they defend that it is not part of the asserted meaning of the sentence because the exhaustivity evoked by clefting constitutes not-at-issue content. In particular, Velleman et al. (2012) argue that this is the main difference between ‘only’ and focus-marking cleft constructions. This intuition has been empirically confirmed by Drestruel et al. (2015).
In the present dissertation, I take this to be essentially correct and I depart from a semantic vs. pragmatic characterization of exhaustivity. Instead, following Velleman et al.
(2012), Destruel et al. (2015) and Tonhauser and colleagues (2013), I adopt the term
‘implication’ in the course of this dissertation, as being “neutral between assertion, entailment, conversational implicature, etc.” (Tonhauser et al. 2013: 66) and assume that focus-marking constructions trigger an exhaustivity implication responding differently to properties such as at-issueness (e.g. ‘at-issue’ in the case of ‘only’, but ‘not-at-issue’ in the case of English clefts or Hungarian focus fronting).
In a nutshell, in light of all aspects of exhaustivity discussed in this section, I take the following modified stance:
(7) Exhaustivity: Exhaustivity denotes an at-issue or not-at-issue implication m, such
that m holds iff, from a set of contextually given elements A = {α1, α2, α3,… αn}, m
identifies the maximal sum of members of the set A = {α1, α2, α3,… αn}for which the
relevant predicate is true (and excludes all other members of the set for which the
predicate is false).
Conforming to this definition, this dissertation renders special attention to elucidating the (not-)at-issueness of exhaustivity regarding Basque and Spanish focalization strategies 10
and also tests the possible correlation between the identification of the maximal sum of members of set satisfying some predication and the exclusion of those who fail to do so.
1.4. Goals and claims
Because the investigation of the architecture of focus requires the clarification of the linguistic status of exhaustivity in relation to focus but, more specifically, information focus, the main goal of this dissertation is to investigate the interactions among focus, exhaustivity and constituent order in two typologically unrelated languages, namely Basque and Spanish, and understand what the contribution of exhaustivity is in shaping information structure.
To be more precise, this dissertation seeks to elucidate the syntactic and semantic-pragmatic properties of information focus in Basque and Spanish, which responds to different linearization patterns as seen in (8) and (9).
(8) Nork idatzi zuen Obabakoak?
who.ERG write.PRF aux.PST Obabakoak.ABS
‘Who wrote Obabakoak?’
a. [F Bernardo Atxagak] idatzi zuen eleberri hori.
Bernardo Atxaga.ERG write.PRF aux.PST novel that.ABS
‘It was Bernardo Atxaga who wrote that novel.’
(9) ¿Quién ha perdido la final (de tenis)?
Who.NOM have.PRS lose.PRT the final.ACC of tennis
‘Who has lost the (tennis) final?’
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a. La ha perdido [F Nadal].
It.ACC have.PRS lose.PRT Nadal.NOM
‘Nadal has lost it.’
As shown in the structural contrast in (8) and (9), information focus in Basque has been traditionally described to take an immediate preverbal position, while Spanish information focus has been customarily taken to fall in the rightmost, sentence-final site. Recent studies, however, have challenged these assumptions and made the observation that the alignment of focused phrases conveying new, non-presupposed information is variable. As for Spanish, a series of semi-spontaneous elicitation experiments have shown that speakers from a variety of Spanish dialects produce preverbal subject structures of the form [F S]OV, where the focalized subject appeared in its in-situ preverbal position (Gabriel, 2010; Vanrell & Soriano,
2013; and, others). Regarding the case of Basque, Elordieta’s (2001) work presupposes two kinds of focus, presumably of the informational kind, an immediate preverbal focus and an in-situ one.
This dissertation uses empirically-grounded data from a series of experiments involving forced-choice acceptability judgment tasks and sentence interpretation tests to show that constituents conveying new, information focus are in fact not always required to appear in one particular position either in Basque or in Spanish. It is argued that the nature of this syntactic variation is concomitant to the effects of exhaustivity, as suggested by Horvath
(2007) for Hungarian. Specifically, this thesis claims that the exhaustivity implication triggered by focus-marking constructions is not exclusively restricted to contrastive focus either in Basque or in Spanish as generally claimed in the literature, but to any focused phrase in need of expressing exhaustivity, including those focalized instances conveying new, non-presupposed information. Crucially, it will be shown that the exhaustive implication 12
triggered by Basque and Spanish focus constructions is not-at-issue content, in line with the contribution of exhaustivity to Hungarian structural focus. Yet, unlike Hungarian, it is shown that exhaustivity does not perform the exclusion of alternatives.
In Basque, to be more precise, I demonstrate that it is when an exhaustive specification is implied by focalization that foci must appear in a preverbal position within the left periphery providing a wide scope reading to the sentence; yet, if exhaustivity is not involved, focal material stays in its base-generated internal position, where a wide scope interpretation is not possible.
As for Spanish, it is shown that the positioning of constituent conveying information focus is indeed variable as noted qualitatively in earlier work. This focus placement variability, I argue, conforms to the exhaustive vs. non-exhaustive asymmetry found in
Basque and Hungarian. Importantly, it is revealed that together with exhaustivity, the form of the direct object, whether it is expressed by means an accusative clitic or a fully spelled- out NP, also has a bearing on the alignment of information focus. It is hypothesized that relevance of the form of the direct object in the ordering of focalized constituents responds to processing load and complexity effects. Yet, all other things being equal, the main claim will be that when the discourse or utterance context requires the need to provide an exhaustive answer, the new, non-presupposed information expressed in the focus phrase will occur in the rightmost, sentence-final position and take scope over the entire predication.
But if the context does not demand an exhaustive answer or the speaker is not committed to implying exhaustivity, the focalized constituent remains in-situ and, just like in Basque, does not receive a wide scope reading.
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In light of this dissertation’s empirical findings, I advocate in favor of a non-uniform treatment of focus and propose that there are two types of information focus in Spanish and
Basque: EXHAUSTIVE INFORMATION FOCUS and NON-EXHAUSTIVE INFORMATION FOCUS.
In formally depicting the generalizations and characteristic of exhaustive information focus in both languages, this dissertation entertains two possible routes of analysis, one that implements the formal derivational approach to syntax formulated within the minimalist framework (Chomsky, 1995; and, others) and a second one that presents a non-modular, usage-based constructional alternative following work by Goldberg (1995) and others.
Within a broader perspective, through the comparison of these two languages, it is concluded that Basque and Spanish focus systems resort to identical underlying mechanisms when it comes to the expression of focus constructions, be it through the lens of a generativist or constructionist standpoint, and that what is really subject to parametric variation is the positioning of exhaustive focus, which appears to the left of the verbal complex in Basque and to the right in Spanish.
Finally, given the opposing surface realization of focus constructions in Basque and
Spanish, the last component of this dissertation aims at investigating to what extent the existing contact between Basque and Spanish in the Basque Country has impacted the syntactic configuration of exhaustive information focus within the Spanish variety spoken in the Basque Country, where focus structures such as (10) or (11) have been attested.
(10) “[F Una moto nueva]NP dice que ha comprau.” (Zarate 1976: 56)
‘He/She says that he/she has bought [F a new motorcycle].’
(11) “[F Cebollas enteras]NP dice que le metían.” (Zarate 1976: 56)
‘He/she says that they would give him/her [F whole onions].’
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Using experimental evidence from a Likert scale acceptability judgment task, this dissertation shows and sustains that Basque influences the focalization strategies used by
Basque Spanish speakers. The influence of Basque, however, not only comes from a structural standpoint reflected in speakers’ level of Basque proficiency, but also speakers’ linguistic and cultural ideologies and attitudes towards Basque and the contact variety of
Basque Spanish. In other words, it is argued that while the immediate preverbal configuration of Basque has been transferred to Basque Spanish through processes of imposition (SL agentivity) and borrowing (RL agentivity), it is likewise proposed that its acceptance, use and maintenance represent an enactment of speakers’ ‘Basqueness’, local identity and sense of belonging to the Basque community.
1.5. Organization of the dissertation
The organization of this dissertation is as follows.
Chapter 2 presents an overview of the relation between focus and exhaustivity as discussed in earlier work and, subsequently, provides a description of Basque and Spanish word order and focus mechanisms, which ends by stating a series of research questions and hypothesis about the interactions among exhaustivity, focus and constituent order.
Chapter 3 introduces the experimental approach undertaken to empirically evaluate the variable positioning of information focus and the kinds of linguistic and extra-linguistic factors that condition such variability, among them exhaustivity. First, I lay out the methods and data analysis procedures implemented in the Basque forced-choice acceptability judgment task and the interpretation test, each followed up by a summary of the results and
15
a brief discussion; next, the same is done in describing the Spanish forced-choice acceptability judgment task and interpretation test.
Chapter 4 centers on a formal analysis of Basque exhaustive information focus. The chapter starts off with a comprehensive review of previous syntactic implementations and points out the limitations of such analyses in capturing the generalizations pertinent to
Basque focus facts. In light of these limitations, I formulate two alternative proposals. The first one entertains a feature-driven syntactic analysis of focus, as couched within the generativist tradition. The second one pursues a constructional analysis relying on the non- modular, holistic approach developed within the Construction Grammar framework. In the last section, I reflect on the advantages and disadvantages of each treatment. Chapter 5 presents a review of prior syntactic accounts on Spanish focalization and, subsequently, presents a formal characterization of Spanish exhaustive information focus following the same modus operandi implemented in chapter 4.
Chapter 6 is concerned with the contact variety of Basque Spanish and the realization of the documented non-standard preverbal (exhaustive) information focus construction. In gauging the effects of Basque onto Basque Spanish with regards to this particular phenomenon and in characterizing how and what linguistic and extra-linguistic factors condition people’s perception of this construction and its possible usage in vernacular speech, first, this chapter provides some background information regarding the socio- political situation of the Basque Country, in northern Spain, and then it introduces the
Basque Spanish contact variety. Section 6.3. provides a description of the phenomenon and motivates the goals, rationale and research questions of the study. After that, I sketch a detailed overview of the experimental design, including the profile of participants and the types of stimuli, and the statistical procedures. The chapter concludes with a summary of the 16
results and a critical commentary reflecting on the effects of language contact and the emergence, diffusion and current maintenance of this preverbal focus alternatives.
To finish, in chapter 7, I summarize the conclusions of this dissertation, its contributions and I pinpoint a few limitations. The last section is devoted to outlining the future directions of my research on this topic.
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CHAPTER 2: Exhaustivity and focus
2.1. Introduction
The relation between focus constructions and the so-called exhaustive listing or exhaustivity was first brought to light by Szabolsci (1981), who suggested that the individual or element constituting the focus of a sentence had to be understood as the only one to which the predication applied. In preparation to investigate the syntactic and semantic-pragmatic behavior of focalization mechanisms in Basque and Spanish, I start this chapter by lying out the basic foundations and reviewing the differing analytical routes taken to exploit the association between focus, exhaustivity and the variable syntactic distribution of focalized phrases between in-situ instantiations and ex-situ ones across languages, paying special attention to Hungarian focalization strategies. Subsequent to this, I describe and compare the linear order possibilities of Basque and Spanish in unmarked cases vs. marked, focused cases, and review the limited studies alluding to a possible connection between information focus and exhaustivity. To finish this chapter, given the stated interactions between focalization and exhaustivity across various languages and little attention paid to the role of exhaustivity with regard to Basque and Spanish, I propose an empirical investigation of the effects of exhaustivity in relation to focus strategies and constituent order in these two typologically different languages. And, in doing so, I coclude this chapter by listing the 18
research questions and corresponding hypotheses to be evaluated and discussed in the chapters that follow.
2.2. The notion of exhaustivity and its association with focus
2.2.1. Szabolsci (1981): Exhaustive listing
The relation between focus and exhaustivity was pioneered by Szabolsci (1981) in her description of Hungarian topic and focus articulation. Szabolsci claims that ‘exhaustive listing’ is the predominant semantic characteristic of preverbal focus in Hungarian (1981:
519). She regards the notion of exhaustivity to be tightly related to the idea of uniqueness in that the individual or element mentioned in focus position is the only one for which a given predicate is true. In her view, the Hungarian preverbal focus data in (12) would presuppose that the set of those who saw Peter is not empty and it would additionally assert that Mary and no one else is contained in that set.
(12) [F Mária] látta Pétert (Szabolsci 1981: 519)
Mary see.PST Peter.ACC
‘It is Mary who saw Peter’
In order to show that ‘exhaustive listing’ is part of the meaning of Hungarian preverbal focus, Szabolsci compares the meaning of the sentence in (12) to (13) and argues that, due to focus fronting, the statement in (12) is not a logical consequence of (13); in other words, she claims that if it is Mary and Eve and no one else that saw Peter, it does not logically follow that only Mary saw him. Instead of (12), she defends that a sentence like (14), where no constituent preposing is involved, could be inferred from (13); that is, (14) is a logical 19
consequence of (13) because that Mary and Eva are the only two individuals who saw Peter can felicitously entail that Mary saw him.
(13) [F Maria es Eva] latta Petert. (Szabolsci 1981: 519)
Mary and Eve see.PST Peter.ACC
‘It is Mary and Eve who saw Peter’
(14) [F e ] latta Petert Maria. (Szabolsci 1981: 519)
see.PST Peter.ACC Mary
‘Mary saw Peter.’
2.2.2. Kiss (1998): (Exhaustive) Identificational focus
Szabolsci’s preliminary observations were put to use by Kiss (1998), who takes the notion of exhaustivity to be the primary property differentiating information focus and identificational focus in Hungarian. Her conception of exhaustivity relies primarily on two core properties, namely identification and exclusion. For her, exhaustivity not only amounts to identifying the entity denoted by the focused expression as the only (or maximal) entity that satisfies the predication, but it also assumes that there must be other entities in the set that fail to satisfy the relevant predicate. This particular view, which invokes both identification and exclusion, was partly inspired by Kenesei (1986), who postulates that there must be at least one member of the contextually relevant set of alternatives that the predicate does not apply to.
In other words, the operation must crucially involve exclusion of a complementary subset and, therefore, “exclusion by identification” (Kenesei 1986, 2006).
Relying on this concept as the primary source of differentiation, Kiss defines information focus as the sentence part that conveys new, non-presupposed information without 20
expressing exhaustive identification on a set of contextually or situationally given entities.
Identificational focus is viewed as the opposite construct: it represents an operator that values some variable expressing exhaustive identification. The contrast between these two types of focus is shown in (15) and (16) respectively:
(15) Tenap este be mutattam Pétert [InfF Marinak].
Last night PERF introduced.PST Peter.ACC Mary.DAT
‘Last night I introduced Peter [F to Mary].’ (Kiss 1998: 247)
(16) Tenap este [IdenF Marinak]i mutattam be Pétert ti
Last night Mary.DAT introduced.PST PERF Peter.ACC
‘It was to Mary that I introduced Peter last night’ (Kiss 1998: 247)
Along with Kiss’ criterion, (15) constitutes an instantiation of information focus whose focused constituent, appearing in-situ, marks the non-presupposed nature of the information it carries, without suggesting that Mary was the only one of a set of relevant people that the speaker introduced Peter to last night. Its counterpart in (16), on the other hand, typifies an identificational focus expressing exhaustive identification, which is located in immediate preverbal position. Kiss contends that, unlike information focus, (5) asserts that from a set of individuals present in the domain of discourse, it was Mary and no other individual that the speaker introduced Peter to last night.
In order to bolster the interpretative contrast between information focus and identificational focus, Kiss implements the exhaustivity test devised by Szabolsci (1981), according to which focus is exhaustive iff a sentence containing two coordinated DPs in focus position does not logically entail a similar sentence containing only one of the focused
DPs. Kiss maintains that the identificational focus in (17b) is not a logical consequence of
(17a), but rather a contradiction; on the other hand, this entailment relation is compatible 21
between (18a) and (18b) since, by virtue of exemplifying cases of information focus, neither
(18a) nor (18b) express exhaustivity. Consequently, (18a) is interpreted to mean that Mary bought other items in addition to a hat and a dress.
(17) a. Mari [IdenF egy kalapot es egy kabatot] nezett ki maganak.
Mary a hat.ACC and a coat.ACC picked out herself.DAT
‘It was a hat and a coat that Mary picked out for herself.’
b. Mari [IdenF egy kalapot] nezett ki maganak.
Mary a hat.ACC picked out herself.DAT
‘It was a hat that Mary picked out for herself.’ (Kiss 1998: 250)
(18) a. Mari ki nezett maganak [InfF egy kalapot es egy kabatot].
Mary out picked herselt.DAT a hat.ACC and a coat.ACC
‘Mary picked [F a hat and a coat] for herself.’
b. Mari ki nezett maganak [InfF egy kalapot].
Mary out picked herselt.DAT a hat.ACC
‘Mary picked [F a hat] for herself.’ (Kiss 1998: 250)
It is noteworthy that, along her description of Hungarian focus, Kiss employs the
English cleft construction to translate Hungarian preverbal identificational focus and the non-cleft in-situ variant for VP-internal information focus. She points out that the semantic differences between the two types of Hungarian focus constructions also hold between the
English translations and states that this cross-linguistic correspondence is not an accident; in fact, she claims that the English realization of identificational focus is the cleft construction, while non-cleft constituents with a pitch accent do not express exhaustive identification.
22
2.2.2.1. Distributional restrictions: Universal quantifiers and even-phrases
The conceptualization of exhaustivity adopted by Kiss (1998) makes a series of predictions regarding the distributional properties of information focus and identificational focus in
Hungarian. Because exhaustivity is assumed to not only identify those individuals or entities that satisfy some predicate, but also exclude those that fail to do so, according to Kiss, this predicts that universally quantified expressions such as ‘every hat’ or ‘everybody’ will be barred from the preverbal focus position since these quantifiers perform, as put in Kiss’ words, “identification without exclusion” rather than “exclusion by identification” (1998:
252). The prediction made by her particular understanding of exhaustivity is met in
Hungarian, where fronted focalized universal quantifiers are granted an ill-formed status as shown in (19):
(19) * Mari [IdenF minden kalapot] nézett ki magának
Mary every hat.ACC picked out herself.ACC
‘It was every hat that Mary picked out for herself’ (Kiss 1998: 252)
Whereas universal quantifiers are barred from the designated position of Hungarian identificational focus, said restriction does not hold when universal quantifiers have the properties of information focus and, therefore, behave as carriers of new, non-presupposed and, importantly, non-exhaustive information.
(20) Kiket hívtál meg a születésnapodra?
Who.PL.ACC invited.you PERF your birthday.to
‘Who did you invite to your birthday?’
23
a) [InfF Minden kollégámat] meg hívtam.
Every colleague.my.ACC PERF invited.I
‘I invited [F every colleague of mine].’ (Kiss 1998: 254)
Kiss notes that a similar constraint applies to phrases c-commanded by focus sensitive operators such as even. According to this author, even-phrases identify an entity of the relevant set for which a given predicate or property is true without excluding any members for which it is false and, therefore, it cannot qualify as a constituent expressing identificational focus as shown in (21).
(21) * Mari még [IdenF egy kalapot] is nézett ki magának
Mary even a hat.ACC also picked out herself.DAT
‘It was even a hat that Mary picked out for herself.’ (Kiss 1998: 252)
2.2.2.2. Scope and Focus-position
The semantic differences attested between these two types of focus are further manifested at the syntactic level. Kiss’ exploration of focalization strategies in Hungarian shows that identificational focus, which takes an immediate preverbal position, behaves as an operator because it can enter into scope relations with other quantified expressions. This is seen in
(22), where Mary, out of all possible individuals in the ballroom, is understood to be the only one with whom every boy wanted to dance. In this case, exhaustive identificational focus acts as an operator taking scope over universal quantification [MaryFOC > every].
(22) [IdenF Marival] akart táncolni minden fiú
Mary.with wanted to.dance every boy
‘It was Mary that every boy wanted to dance with.’ (Kiss 1998: 254) 24
Information focus, on the other hand, cannot establish a scope relation with another operator due to its non-quantificational status. This is illustrated in (23), where the only available reading is one where the universal quantifier minder fiú ‘every boy’ takes scope over the whole sentence [every > the beauty queenFOC] (e.g. ‘for every x, x is a boy and x wanted to dance with someone, x wanted to dance with the beauty queen’), as opposed to a reading wherein the focused phrase takes scope over the predicate (e.g. [the beauty queenFOC > every]). Due to the impossibility of information focus to take wide scope, Kiss argues that
(23a) does not express exhaustive identification; that is, this statement could also be true in a situation where some or all of the boys wanted to dance with more than one person.
(23) Kikkel akartak táncolni a fiúk?
Who.PL.with wanted to.dance the boys
‘Who did the boys want to dance with?’
a) Minden fiú táncolni akart [F a szépsékirálynóvel].
Every boy to.dance wanted the beauty queen.with
‘Every boy wanted to dance [F with the beauty queen].’ (Kiss 1998: 254)
These observations prompt Kiss to propose an analysis of identificational focus in movement terms. Following Brody’s (1995) proposal, she posits that focused constituents denoting exhaustivity occur in the specifier position of a focus phrase (FOCP), located in the left periphery of the structural hierarchy (figure 1). Although she declares exhaustivity to be the main driving force distinguishing both focus representations, she assumes the presence of FOCP to be constrained by Brody’s focus criterion (1995), which requires that the specifier of the FOCP contain a [+FOC] phrase, and all [+FOC] phrases be in the specifier of the FOCP projection conforming to conditions on spec-head agreement. Since identificational focus must move to this position in the clause and it is mandatory that the verb follow it, she 25
stipulates a strong V feature in the head of FOCP triggering V-to-Foc movement, which
eventually yields the structure in figure 1.
Figure 1: Syntactic structure of Hungarian identification focus
Summing up, Kiss proposes a twofold analysis of focus constructions led by the concept
of exhaustivity. Exhaustivity being the primary exponent of what she labels as
identificational focus, Kiss assumes that information focus lacks this exhaustive component
and opts to define the latter as simply marking the new, non-presupposed part of the
message. This classification suggests that it is not the responsibility of identificational focus
to supply new information. But, interestingly, she points out that wh-questions such as (24),
which request information that is not presupposed or previously known to speakers, can be
answered using both information focus (e.g. (a)) or identificational focus (e.g. (b)).
(24) Hol jártál a nyaron?
Where went.you the summer.in
‘Where did you go in the summer?’
26
a) Jártam [InfF Olaszországban].
Went.I Italy.to
‘I went to Italy (among other places)’
b) [IdenF Olaszországban] jártam.
Italy.to went.I
‘It was Italy where I went.’ (Kiss 1998: 249-250)
Kiss alludes that the difference between (24a) and (24b) is marked by exhaustivity and claims that (24a) formulates a non-exhaustive answer through postverbal in-situ information focus, while preverbal identification focus in (24b) is exhaustive. Crucially, however, both information focus and identificational focus communicate new, non-presupposed information, revealing that identificational focus can also have an informational function.
Hence, contrary to what one might infer from her two-way categorization, it may seem, after all, that providing new, non-presupposed information to discourse is not necessarily exclusive of information focus.
2.2.3. Horvath (2007): EXH(austive) Identification operator
Horvath’s original work made the standard, widely-accepted proposal that Hungarian structural focus involves the active presence of a formal FOC(us) feature, which is on a par with WH-features proposed for wh-movement in the syntactic derivation (1986). However, in a more recent study, she revisits the association between Hungarian focus constructions and exhaustivity and, given the prominent role that the latter plays in the realization of focus constructions, she discards the traditional FOC-feature analysis and, instead, motivates the proposal that movement of focused constituents is the by-product of exhaustivity, rather 27
than focus per se. This revised hypothesis on movement rests on two primary observations: the split behavior of ‘even’ and ‘only’ focus sensitive operators and the in-situ vs. preposed nature of focalized constituents in the context of exhaustive and non-exhaustive wh- questions.
As for her first piece of evidence, it is well-known that both ‘even’ and ‘only’ are focus- sensitive operators requiring a focused constituent in their c-command domain. A focus- feature driven account would predict all constituents in the scope of these two operators to occur to the left of the verb in Hungarian. Yet, according to Horvath’s data in (25) and (26), only focused material in the c-command domain of csak ‘only’ undergoes focus fronting. In fact, the contrast between (25a) and (25b) indicates that this movement is compulsory for focus phrases embedded in the domain of csak ‘only’, as shown by the unacceptable quality granted to the in-situ version in (25b). As for még…is ‘even’, the opposite pattern emerges: focalization under még…is ‘even’ is only acceptable when it appears in-situ (e.g. (26a) vs.
(26b)).
(25) Csak ‘only’
a. Mari csak [F a fogadásról]i késset el ti.
Mary.NOM only the reception-from late-was away
‘Mary was late only [F for the reception].’ (Horvath 2007: 122)
b. * Mari elkésett csak [F a fogadásról]i
Mary.NOM away-late-was only the reception-from
‘Mary was late only [F for the reception].’ (Horvath 2007: 122)
28
(26) Még…is ‘even’
a) * Mari még [Faz esküvójéról]i is késset el ti.
Mary.NOM yet the wedding-her-from also late-was away.
‘Mary was late even [F for her wedding].’ (Horvath 2007: 122)
b) Mari elkésett még [Faz esküvójéról]i is.
Mary.NOM away-late-was yet the wedding-her-from also.
‘Mary was late even [F for her wedding].’ (Horvath 2007: 122)
This asymmetric patterning between Hungarian ‘only’ and ‘even’, she argues, cannot be accounted for by any theory that claims focus movement to be induced by the presence of a focus phrase hosting a formal FOC-feature. Since ‘even’ is also associated with focus, such a theory would anticipate movement of ‘even’-phrases to a fronted position. As an alternative,
Horvath postulates that the opposing behavior of these two particles is the result of the exhaustivity implied by cask ‘only’. In (25), csak ‘only’ selectively identifies the reception as the unique event where Mary arrived late. Such implication, on the other hand, does not arise with the particles még…is ‘even’ in (26), which conversely adds a member to the relevant set of events that Mary is usually late to (e.g. {work, daily fitness class, get-together with friends}). Put differently, Horvath argues that it is precisely the intrinsic non-exhaustive value of még…is ‘even’ what precludes the focus bearing constituent c-commanded by this particle from undergoing focus preposing.
Horvath finds additional supporting evidence for her proposal in the diverging behavior of exhaustive and non-exhaustive question-answer pairs. She shows that whereas the former trigger leftward movement of focalized constituent, no such permutations are necessary in the latter case. Horvath notes, as seen in (27), that the part of the answer that resolves the variable opened by the wh-word in the question standardly exhibits a preverbal position, 29
suggesting that the phrase interpreted as focus (i.e. new, non-presupposed information) has undergone focus-movement.
(27) Kinet mutattad be Jánost?
‘To whom did you introduce John?’
[F Az unokahúgomnak]i mutattam be Jánost ti
the niece-my-DAT showed-1SG in John-ACC
‘I introduced John [F to my niece].’ (Horvath 2007: 115)
Nevertheless, the answer to (27) contrasts with the syntactic distribution of (28), which is indicative that not every focus phrase in the answer to a wh-question has to obligatorily fall in the preverbal domain. In fact, as depicted in (28), despite the fact that the relevant constituent answering the question is understood as focus, it remains in-situ.
(28) Hol tudhatnám meg a vonatok menetrendjét?
where know-can.COND.1SG PERF.PRT the train schedule.POSS.ACC
‘Where could I find out about the train schedule?
Megtudhatod (például) [F az interneten] (vagy [F telefonon] is)
PERF.PRT-know-can.2SG for.example the internet.on or phone.on also
‘You could find out about it (for example) on the internet (or also by phone)
(Horvath 2007: 123)
Under Horvath’s theory of focus, this systematic variation between (27) and (28) is explained in terms of exhaustivity. She argues that what makes the question-answer pairing in (28) different from (27) is the speaker’s lack of commitment to provide an exhaustive answer either because there are too many places where one could find about the train schedule or because he simply lacks exhaustive knowledge of the full set needed for the answer. In other words, due to the pragmatics of the situation, in some question-answer 30
pairs (e.g. (28)), there is no explicit need or possibility to perform exhaustive identification, whereas other interrogatives are more prone to receiving an answer with an exhaustive listing
(e.g. (27)).
Altogether, Horvath’s data show that a focalized expression does not always involve movement, which directly challenges the idea that focus-fronting is triggered by FOC(us) features. Her data show that focalized constituents holding an exhaustive specification are the ones undergoing leftward movement in Hungarian, irrespective of whether these are of the informational kind or the identificational kind à la Kiss (1998).
Whereas for Kiss (1998) exhaustivity is only a core component of identificational focus,
Horvath shows that exhaustivity also extends to instantiations of focus conveying new, non- presupposed information, such as (27). This observation cues Horvath to disregard Kiss’ focus dichotomy between information focus and identificational focus and, conversely, retain focus as a unitary notion in the grammar without any further subdivisions. Following this unitary treatment of focus and evidence throughout the course of her narrative, she ultimately concludes that the alleged “focus” movement correlates with an exhaustive identification operation, and not focus per se.
2.2.4. Summary
The relation between focus and exhaustivity has been comprehensively exploited for
Hungarian, a classic example of structural, rather than prosodic focus. Early work on
Hungarian focus established a connection between focus in a fronted, preverbal position and
‘exhaustive listing’ (Szabolsci, 1981), which was later on refined in the form of an identificational kind of focus operator performing ‘exclusion by identification’ (Kenesei, 31
1986; Kiss, 1998). While exhaustivity has been identified to be the main property distinguishing in-situ vs. fronted focus cases, traditional theories insisted on the use of formal focus features in deriving the observed structural asymmetry (Brody, 1995; Kiss,
1998). Yet, more recent work suggests that focus movement is a direct consequence of exhaustivity, which has instead been argued to be the foremost driving force for constituent preposing (Horvath, 2007).
2.3. Information focus and the role of exhaustivity in Basque and Spanish
2.3.1. Basque word order and focus
Basque is described as a head-final language requiring the verb to follow all its arguments
(De Rijk, 1978; Hualde & Ortiz de Urbina, 2003). This syntactic parameter has been loosely captured by assigning a S(ubject)-O(bject)-V(erb) structure to Basque word order (i.e. De
Rijk, 1968). As such, in non-focal, out-of-the-blue neutral contexts, the absolutive case- marked object always precedes the verb as shown in (29), (30) and (31). If a dative case- marked object is also subcategorized by the verb, the latter is likely inserted immediately before the absolutive object (e.g. (30), (31)), rendering the subject a sentence-initial position
(e.g. (29), (31)).
(29) Mikelek egunkaria irakurri du.
Mikel.ERG newspaper.ABS read.PRF aux.PRS
‘Mike read the newspaper.’
32
(30) Mikeli gazta gustatzen zaio.
Mikel.DAT cheese.ABS like.PROG aux.PRS
‘Mike likes cheese.’
(31) Mikelek amari liburua eman dio.
Mikel.ERG mom.DAT book.ABS give.PRF aux.PRS
‘Mike gave a book to his mom.’
The position of non-argument constituents in Basque is far less understood. Sentential adverbs denoting temporal reference seem to enjoy a fairly flexible distribution, whereas manner adverbs or place adverbs do not (Elordieta, 2001). In neutral contexts, the former may appear either sentence initially, between arguments or in sentence final position as revealed in (32), but manner adverbs such as astiro ‘slowly’ in (33) seem to be restricted to an immediate preverbal position. On the other hand, locative adverbs marked through the locative pospositional morpheme –n appear to be more natural in postverbal, sentence final position (e.g. (34)).
(32) (Gaur goizean) Mikelek (gaur goizean) egunkaria irakurri du (gaur goizean).
‘(This morning) Mike (this morning) read the newspaper (this morning).’
(33) Mikelek egunkaria astiro irakurri du.
Mikel.ERG newspaper.ABS slowly read.PRF aux.PRS
‘Mike read the newspaper slowly.’
a. # Astiro Mikelek egunkaria irakurri du.
Slowly Mikel.ERG newspaper.ABS read.PRF aux.PRS
b. # Mikelek astiro egunkaria irakurri du.
Mikel.ERG slowly newspaper.ABS read.PRF aux.PRS
33
c. # Mikelek egunkaria irakurri du astiro.
Mikel.ERG newspaper.ABS read.PRF aux.PRS slowly
(34) Mikelek egunkaria irakurri du (tabernan) gaur goizean (tabernan).
Mike.ERG newspaper.ABS read.PRF aux.PRS at.the.bar today morning at.the.bat
‘Mikel read the newspaper (at the bar) this morning (at the bar).’
a. # Tabernan Mikelek egunkaria irakurri du gaur goizean
at.the.bar Mikel.ERG newspaper.ABS read.PRF aux.PRS today morning
b. # Mikelek tabernan egunkaria irakurri du gaur goizean
Mikel.ERG at.the.bar newspaper.ABS read.PRF aux.PRS today morning
These argument and non-argument linearizations represent well-formed structures in the so-called broad focus interpretation, where the domain of focus extends to the entire sentence. Nevertheless, when a given piece of information is selectively focused, a reordering of constituents must take place in Basque such that “whatever constituent is focus must immediately precede the verb” (De Rijk 1978: 196). Consider the reordering of constituents in (35), where it is the ergative subject rather than the object that immediately precedes the verb. Permutations such as this one generate a narrow focus interpretation in Basque, where the domain of focus is exclusive to the constituent that is immediately left-adjacent to the verb. As such, (35) would constitute a felicitous response to (36) which contains a variable ‘x’ generated by the interrogative operator nork ‘who’, that is attributed the value Mikelek ‘Mike’ through focus.
(35) Egunkaria [F Mikelek] irakurri du.
Newspaper.ABS Mikel.ERG read.PRF aux.PRS
‘it is Mike who read the newspaper.’
34
(36) Nork irakurri du egunkaria?
Who.ERG read.PRF aux.PRS newspaper.ABS
‘Who read the newspaper?’
One might also opt to place the ergative subject in postverbal position, separated from the verb by an intonational break, as in (37). This alternative focus placement has been categorized as contrastive or corrective focus, differing from information focus in its “heavy stress” (Elordieta 2001: 110) and its exhaustive interpretation within a contrast set of contextually given entities (Elordieta, 2001; Ortiz de Urbina, 2002). Under this interpretation of (37), the assertion that Aitor read the newspaper is corrected or contrasted by attributing the identity of the agent to a new individual. Crucially, due to its exhaustive interpretation, the presupposition that someone read the newspaper would only apply to the entity bearing focus and no one else.1
(37) Egunkaria irakurri du # [F Mikelek] (eta ez Aitorrek)
Newspaper.ABS read.PRF aux.PRS Mikel.ERG and not Aitor.ERG
‘It is Mike who read the newspaper (not Aitor).’
Basque word order is, hence, heavily constrained by information packaging and, in particular, the expression of focus. Whereas in neutral or broad focus configurations arguments are organized in an orderly fashion, if the speaker’s intention is to mark one part of the message as new information or as corrective/contrastive information, constituents are reorganized in order to satisfy these communicative needs. This dissertation centers on word
1 A contrastive reading may also be generated in immediate preverbal position in Basque. According to Elordieta (2001), this is so because the notion of ‘contrastivity’ plays no role in the syntactic analysis of focus. In his view, a focalized phrase in preverbal position will subsume a contrastive interpretation in case the discourse context provides a contrast set. The distinction between contrastive and non-contrastive (e.g. information) focus is therefore not a syntactic one in Basque; but, rather, a pragmatic one. 35
order permutations pertaining to purely informational reasons and it will have very little bearing on the structural or interpretative aspects of corrective/contrastive foci.
2.3.2. Basque information focus
Information focus is prosodically and syntactically constrained in Basque. In order to mark a given constituent as non-presupposed, new information, Basque has been traditionally claimed to host a prosodically prominent focus position immediately to the left of the verb
(De Rijk, 1978; Eguzkitza, 1986; Ortiz de Urbina, 1989; Elordieta, 2001; Arregi, 2003; inter alia). Therefore, focus-bearing phrases must appear in immediate preverbal position and contain nuclear stress as represented in (38a-b).
(38) Nork irakurri du egunkaria?
Who.ERG read.PRF aux.PRS newspaper.ABS
‘Who read the newspaper?’
a. [F MÍkelek] irakurri du (egunkaria).
Mikel.ERG read.ABS aux.PRS newspaper.ABS
‘It is Mikel who read the newspaper.’
b. Egunkaria, [F MÍkelek] irakurri du.
Newspaper.ABS Mikel.ERG read.PRF aux.PRS
‘The newspaper, it is Mikel who read it.’
c. * [F MÍkelek] egunkaria irakurri du.
Mikel.ERG newspaper.ABS read.PRF aux.PRS
‘Mikel read the newspaper.’
36
d. # Egunkaria irakurri du [F MÍkelek].
Newspaper.ABS read.PRF aux.PRS Mikel.ERG
‘Mikel read the newspaper’
e. * [F Mikelek] irakurri du eGÚNkaria.
Mikel.ERG read.ABS aux.PRS newspaper.ABS
‘Mikel read the newspaper’
Taking the answer to a wh‐question to be the paradigmatic example of information focus, only (38a) and (38b) represent well-formed structures expressing information focus;
(38c), (38d) and (38e), on the other hand, do not because they either fail to conform to the immediate left-adjacency condition or violate the obligatory one-to-one correspondence between focus and nuclear stress. First, the difference between (38a) and (38b) lies on the positioning of the absolutive object. By virtue of not being the focalized element and, therefore, having to be misplaced from its customary preverbal position, this constituent may appear either postverbally, sentence-initially (i.e. topicalized material) or get deleted altogether. Note that information focus does not demand a sentence-initial position since topicalized material, marked by a brief intonational break, may be placed to its left (e.g.
(38b)). In (38c), since the object egunkaria ‘newspaper’ intervenes between focus and the verb, the structure fails to conform to focus-V adjacency. As for (38d), while it is not ill- formed when interpreted contrastively, the latter does not felicitously provide a purely informational reading due to the postverbal location of focalized material. Lastly, in (38e), even though the intended focalized expression is in immediate preverbal position, if nuclear stress falls outside the domain of focus, this mismatch renders an undesirable outcome.
37
These constraints on focus placement extend to any constituent that is meant to be understood as the new piece of information in the message conveyed by the speaker.
Observe additional instantiations of the focus-V pattern in questions-answer pairs involving dative objects such as amari ‘to mom’ in (39).
(39) Nori eman dio Mikelek liburua?
Who.DAT give.PRF aux.PRS Mikel.ERG book.ABS
‘To whom did Mikel give the book?’
a. [F aMÁri] eman dio (Mikelek) (liburua).
mom.DAT give.PRF aux.PRS Mikel.ERG book.ABS
It is to mom that Mikel gave the book.’
b. Mikelek liburua [F aMÁri] eman dio.
Mikel.ERG book.ABS mom.DAT give.PRF aux.PRS
It is to mom that Mikel gave the book.’
c. Mikelek [F aMÁri] eman dio liburua.
Mikel.ERG mom.DAT give.PRF aux.PRS book.ABS
It is to mom that Mikel gave the book.’
d. * Mikelek [F aMÁri] liburua eman dio.
Mikel.ERG mom.DAT book.ABS give.PRF aux.PRS
e. # Mikelek liburua eman dio [F aMÁri].
Mikel.ERG book.ABS give.PRF aux.PRS mom.DAT
f. * [F Amari] eman dio (Mikelek) liBÚrua.
Ainara.DAT give.PRF aux.PRS Mikel.ERG book.ABS
The question in (39) generates the presupposition that an individual named Mikel gave the book to someone and, consequently, opens up a variable ‘x’ that seeks to resolve who 38
the recipient of the book is. (39a), (39b) and (39c) provide the value to this variable through the constituent that has been placed in immediate preverbal focus position, namely amari ‘to mom’; (39d) and (39e), on the other hand, are dismissed due to a violation of the immediate preverbal adjacency condition required by information focus, and (39f) reflects an incongruous relation between focus and nuclear stress, yielding an unsatisfactory outcome.
The same rationale applies to the non-argument focus sequences in (40) and (41) involving temporal and situational adverbs respectively.
(40) Noiz irakurri du Mikelek egunkaria?
When read.PRF aux.PRS Mikel.ERG newspaper.ABS
‘When has Mikel read the newspaper?’
a. [F GoiZÉan] irakurri du (Mikelek) (egunkaria).
In.the.morning read.PRF aux.PRS Mikel.ERG newspaper.ABS
‘It is in the morning that Mikel read the newspaper.’
b. Mikelek egunkaria [F goiZÉan] irakurri du.
Mikel.ERG newspaper.ABS in.the.morning read.PRF aux.PRS
‘It is in the morning that Mikel read the newspaper.’
c. Mikelek [F goiZÉan] irakurri du egunkaria.
Mikel.ERG in.the.morning read.PRF aux.PRS newspaper.ABS
‘It is in the morning that Mikel read the newspaper.’
d. * [F goiZÉan] Mikelek egunkaria irakurri du.
in.the.morning Mikel.ERG newspaper.ABS read.PRF aux.PRS
e. * Mikelek [F goiZÉan] egunkaria irakurri du.
Mikel.ERG in.the.morning newspaper.ABS read.PRF aux.PRS
39
f. # Mikelek egunkaria irakurri du [F goiZÉan].
Mikel.ERG newspaper.ABS read.PRF aux.PRS in.the.morning
g. * [F Goizean] irakurri du (Mikelek) eGÚNkaria.
In.the.morning read.PRF aux.PRS Mikel.ERG newspaper.ABS
(41) Non irakurri du Mikelek egunkaria?
Where read.PRF aux.PRS Mikel.ERG newspaper.ABS
‘Where has Mikel read the newspaper?’
b. [F TreNÉan] irakurri du (Mikelek) (egunkaria).
On.the.train read.PRF aux.PRS Mikel.ERG newspaper.ABS
‘It is on the train that Mikel read the newspaper.’
c. Mikelek egunkaria [F TreNÉan] irakurri du.
Mikel.ERG newspaper.ABS on.the.train read.PRF aux.PRS
‘It is on the train that Mikel read the newspaper.’
d. Mikelek [F TreNÉan] irakurri du egunkaria.
Mikel.ERG on.the.train read.PRF aux.PRS newspaper.ABS
‘It is on the train that Mikel read the newspaper.’
e. * [F TreNÉan] Mikelek egunkaria irakurri du.
on.the.train Mikel.ERG newspaper.ABS read.PRF aux.PRS
f. * Mikelek [F TreNÉan] egunkaria irakurri du.
Mikel.ERG on.the.train newspaper.ABS read.PRF aux.PRS
g. # Mikelek egunkaria irakurri du [F TreNÉan].
Mikel.ERG newspaper.ABS read.PRF aux.PRS on.the.train
h. * [F Trenean] irakurri du (Mikelek) eGÚNkaria.
on.the.train read.PRF aux.PRS Mikel.ERG newspaper.ABS 40
The temporal adverb goizean ‘in the morning’ in (40) and the locative adverbial trenean ‘on the train’ in (41) constitute non-presupposed, new information that replaces the variable ‘x’ in the presuppositions ‘Mikel read the newspaper at x time’ and ‘Mike read the newspaper at x location’ that arise in the formulation of the question. Accordingly, when these become the element that is inquired about, they must occupy the position designated for focus and be carriers of nuclear stress (e.g. (40a-c), (41a-c)).
The data in (38) through (41) indicate that the verb must immediately follow focus.
However, depending on the aspectual characteristics of the verb, Focus-V patterns may take a slightly different configuration. Basque verb morphology is primarily periphrastic; that is, it consists of a lexical verb that contributes the lexico-semantic and aspectual meaning of the sentence in addition to an auxiliary verb, which contains tense and mood information as well as case agreement markers resulting in a very rich and complex verbal system. To make this more precise, compare the V+Aux strings in (42) and (43). In (42), the lexical verb irakurri supplies the semantic meaning ‘to read’ and signals this verb form as perfective. In (43), imperfective aspect is coded by adding the morpheme –tzen to the radical. The auxiliaries dut and nuen, which originate from the transitive auxiliary edun ‘to have’, consist of various morphemes indicating case, tense, person and number. For instance, whereas –t is the ergative marker in the present, this ergative marking is marked through the affix n- in the past.
(42) (nik) [F egunkaria] irakurri d-u-t
I.ERG newspaper.ABS read.PRF ABS.3SG.PRS-have-ERG.1SG
‘I have read the newspaper.’
41
(43) (nik) [F egunkaria] irakur-tzen n-u-en
I.ERG newspaper.ABS read-IMPRF ERG.1SG-have-ABS. 3SG.PST
‘I used to read the newspaper.’
These complex V+Aux sequences have been commonly assumed to constitute one single morphological unit (Ortiz de Urbina, 1989; Elordieta, 2001; Hualde & Ortiz de
Urbina, 2003). As a result, focus cannot intervene between these two elements, as shown in
(44) and (45).
(44) * Irakurri [F nik] dut egunkaria.
Read.PRF I.ERG aux.PRS newspaper.ABS
‘[F I] have read the newspaper.’
(45) * Irakurtzen [F nik] nuen egunkaria.
Read.IMPRF I.ERG aux.PRS newspaper.ABS
‘[F I] used to read the newspaper.’
On the other hand, progressive aspect is encoded by means of the ari construction depicted in (46). This verb sequence consists of a lexical verb carrying the imperfective marker –tzen followed by the progressive marker ari and the auxiliary verb izan ‘to be’, yielding the form of the present continuous in Basque. This verb sequence has been analyzed as a biclausal structure, wherein ari constitutes its main verb meaning ‘to be engaged in’ followed by the auxiliary verb izan ‘to be’ that takes a nominalized complement
(Ortiz de Urbina, 1989; Laka, 2006). Following this analysis, I assume that ari takes a nominalized clause egunkaria irakurri ‘read the newspaper’ as its complement in (46) and that, due to its immediate adjacency to ari, the entire predicate also constitutes the information focus of the sentence.
42
(46) Ni [F egunkaria irakurtzen] ari naiz.
I.ABS newspaper.ABS read.IMPRF PROG aux.PRS
‘I am reading the newspaper.’
Adopting this reasoning, the difference between perfective verb phrases and the progressive marker ari has important consequences for the structural alignment of narrow information focus. In fact, if one aims at focusing either the subject or the object of the sentence in (46), due to the biclausal nature of this verb sequence, these focused constituents must appear immediately to the left of ari and not the lexical verb irakurri ‘to read’ as shown in (47) and (48), both of which comprise felicitous responses to the questions Nor ari da egunkaria irakurtzen? ‘Who is reading the newspaper?’ and Zer ari zara zu irakurtzen? ‘What are you reading?’ respectively.
(47) Egunkaria, [F ni] ari naiz irakurtzen.
newspaper.ABS I.ABS PROG aux.PRS read.IMPRF
‘It is me who is reading the newspaper.’
(48) Ni [F egunkaria] ari naiz irakurtzen.
I.ABS newspaper.ABS PROG aux.PRS read.IMPRF
‘It is the newspaper that I am reading.’
Finally, in addition to these analytic verb forms, a small group of synthetic verbs is also available in Basque. These synthetic verbs incorporate case-marking, tense, mood and aspectual information in their morphology.2 As for focalization, adjacency between focus and the verb is likewise required as shown by the grammaticality contrast between (49) and
(50).
2 Synthetic forms can only express those tenses involving imperfective aspect; other aspectual configurations are achieved through their periphrastic counterparts. 43
(49) Liburuak, [F nik] d-arama-tza-t.
Books.ABS I.ERG PRS-bring-ABS.PL-ERG.1SG
‘[F I] bring the books.’
(50) * [F Nik] liburuak d-arama-tza-t.
I.ERG books.ABS PRS-bring-ABS.PL-ERG.1SG
‘[F I] bring the books.’
In this dissertation, I employ periphrastic or analytic verb forms exclusively, and not synthetic ones. In the exposition of focus, it will be important to bear in mind the differences between verb forms involving perfective aspect and those expressing progressive meaning with ari. Whereas in the former case foci must precede the main verb and the auxiliary yielding the form [Focus + VPRF + Aux], verb sequences involving ari are analyzed as biclausal and, therefore, foci must appear immediately to the left of [ari + Aux] rather than [VIMPRF +ari+Aux] (e.g. (42)-(43) vs. (47)-(48)).
2.3.2.1. Basque immediate preverbal information focus and exhaustivity:
observations, research questions and hypotheses
While Basque focalization is possibly one of the most well-studied linguistic phenomena in the Basque linguistics tradition, little attention has been paid to its possible association with exhaustivity. In her analysis of focus, Elordieta (2001) uses Szabolsci’s (1981) exhaustivity tests as a diagnostic to evaluate the quantificational force of Basque immediate preverbal focus vs. in-situ focus, shown in (51) and (52) respectively, reminiscent of Hungarian focus mechanisms. Using her intuitive judgments, she argues that, unlike Hungarian preverbal focus, Basque focus does not change the truth condition of a sentence as far as exhaustivity 44
is concerned either in cases of apparent focus preposing (e.g. (51)) or when focus remains in- situ (e.g. (52)). Put simply, she posits that Basque information focus is not exhaustive because focused phrases do not identify the maximal subset of the set of contextually given elements with the property under discussion.
(51) a. [F Txoto bat eta soineko bat] erosi zituen Mirenek atzo.
Hat.ABS a.ABS and dress.ABS a.ABS buy.PRF aux.PST Mary.ERG yesterday
‘Mary bought [F a hat and a dress] yesterday.’ (Elordieta 2001: 159)
b. [F Txoto bat] erosi zuen Mirenek atzo.
Hat.ABS a.ABS buy.PRF aux.PST Mary.ERG yesterday
‘Mary bought [F a hat] yesterday.’ (Elordieta 2001: 159)
(52) a. Mirenek [F txoto bat eta soineko bat] erosi zituen atzo.
Mary.ERG hat.ABS a.ABS and dress.ABS a.ABS buy.PRF aux.PST yesterday
‘Mary bought [F a hat and a dress] yesterday.’ (Elordieta 2001: 159)
b. Mirenek [F txoto bat] erosi zuen atzo.
Mary.ERG hat.ABS a.ABS buy.PRF aux.PST yesterday
‘Mary bought [F a hat] yesterday.’ (Elordieta 2001: 159)
The sentences in (51) are intended to exemplify fronted preverbal information focus, whereas those in (52) represent examples of in-situ information focus. Szabolsci’s (1981) exhaustivity tests predict that if Basque were like Hungarian, the fronted focalized instances in (51) would have to represent the exhaustive variant, preventing a felicitous entailment relation between (51a) and (51b); that is, by virtue of being preposed and targeting an exhaustive reading, if Miren only bought a hat and a dress, it would not logically follow to say that she only bought a hat. However, in Elordieta’s view, (51a) felicitously entails (51b), suggesting that the immediate preverbal focus structures do not imply exhaustivity in 45
Basque. For her, the meaning of (51a) translates along the lines of ‘Miren bought a hat and a dress, among other things’, similar to the meaning of its in-situ, non-exhaustive equivalents in (52). The fact that no contradiction arises between (51a) and (51b) according to Elordieta leads her to conclude that Basque does not host an exhaustive immediate preverbal focus like Hungarian and, therefore, resolves that immediate preverbal focus is not an operator (i.e. it is non-quantificational) and discards an analysis of (51) on movement grounds in favor of an in-situ analysis (see chapter 4 for further details of her analysis).
Be this as it may, recent studies have hinted that these types of entailment-cancellation tests are methodologically unconvincing and outdated (Yasavul, 2013; Pollard & Yasavul,
2014) and, instead, researchers have advocated in favor of collecting first-hand native speaker judgments elicited in properly constructed contexts (Matthewson, 2004; Tonhauser et al., 2013; and, others). In his exploration of focus constructions in K’iche’, Yasavul (2013) reports original fieldwork data, in which a series of contexts triggering exhaustivity implications where manipulated to elicit native speakers’ judgments about K’iche’s focus mechanisms. This Mayan language exhibits two focus constructions, one involving a focus particle aree and another one containing no such particle. Yasavul (2013) tests the relation between the focus particle aree and exhaustivity through continuations such as those in (53a) and (53b), which imply the possibility that someone else other than Maria and Juan scored a
100% on the exam. Relying on elicited native speaker judgments, Yasavul reports (53b) to be unacceptable and concludes that K’iche’ speakers reject the continuation in (b) precisely because aree identifies the maximal plurality of individuals with the property of obtaining a
100% on the exam.
46
(53) Context: Raul and Roberto are talking about an exam that Raul had taken that has
just been graded. He says that the teacher gave a piece of candy to those who got
100%. Roberto asks the following question and Raul says:
Chin x-Ø-r-esaj juntir utz?
Who CMP-A3-E3-take.out all good
‘Who got a 100%?’
a. A Juan r-ichb’il al Maria. -w-eta’m taj we
CLF Juan E3-companion CLF Maria A3-E1-know NEG
k’o jun chik. Al Juana xuquje.
if exist one another CLF Juana too
‘Juan and Maria. I don’t know if anyone else did. / Juana did, too.’
b. Aree a Juan r-ichb’il al Maria. -w-eta’m taj
FOC CLF Juan E3-companion CLF Maria A3-E1-know
we k’o jun chik. Al Juana xuquje.
NEG if exist one another CLF Juana too
‘It was Juan and Maria. I don’t know if anyone else did. / Juana did, too.’
(adapted from Yasavul 2013: 616)
In testing Elordieta’s self-assessed observations regarding Basque focus and exhaustivity through empirically-grounded first-hand native speaker judgments embedded in appropriately constructed scenarios, the present dissertation reports the design, implementation and results of two experimental tasks, specifically a forced-choice acceptability judgment task and an interpretation task. In the first task, Basque speakers were asked to select whether they would produce an immediate preverbal focus constructions or
47
its in-situ counterpart given a series of exhaustive and non-exhaustive triggers. The second task asked Basque speakers about the interpretive import and scope properties of immediate preverbal vs. in-situ focus constructions. To be more precise, the purpose of this experimental approach sought to address the following research questions:
1) In expressing narrow information focus, do Basque speakers choose to produce both
immediate preverbal focus and in-situ focus structures?
2) Is the selection of immediate preverbal information focus conditioned by the need to
imply exhaustivity, indicating an association between exhaustivity and the structurally
designated Basque immediate preverbal focus?
a. If so, is the contribution of exhaustivity with regards to the meaning of these
Basque focus-marking constructions at-issue or not-at-issue?
b. And, does immediate preverbal ‘exhaustive’ information focus have wide or
narrow scope?
As for the first two primary questions, it is predicted that Basque speakers will indeed choose to produce both immediate preverbal and in-situ focus structures and that this variable selection will be constrained by the effects of exhaustivity. More specifically, contrary to Elordieta’s introspective judgments, it is anticipated that the immediate preverbal alignment of focus will be selected in the context of exhaustive questions or exhaustive triggers such as bakarrik ‘only’, while the selection of in-situ focus will be preferred in contexts where exhaustivity is not required. The association between immediate preverbal information focus and exhaustivity is further expected to be confirmed by Basque speakers’ interpretation of [Focus-Verb] sequences, which should correlate with a ‘maximal identification’ reading. However, following the behavior of Hungarian exhaustive preverbal focus and English it-clefts, its meaning contribution is not expected to be at-issue; in other 48
words, it is not expected to be the most relevant piece of information within the message.
And, lastly, the interpretion of focused phrases in immediate preverbal position is expected to take wide scope over the entire predication, granting this structure an operator-like quantificational force.
2.3.3. Spanish word order and focus
Unlike Basque, Spanish is generally described as a head-initial language, responding to a
Subject-Verb-Object configuration (Contreras, 1976; Hernanz and Brucart, 1987;
Zubizarreta, 1998; Costa, 2001; Domínguez, 2004; Gutiérrez-Bravo, 2008; inter alia). The subject, hence, unmarkedly precedes the verb and any argument subcategorized by the verb must follow it, as shown in (54) and (55) involving two-place and three-place predicates correspondingly. Note in (55) that the indirect object a Susana ‘to Susan’ follows the direct object flores ‘flowers’ in neutral contexts, forming a DOACC-IODAT sequence.
(54) Miguel perdió la cartera.
Mike.NOM lose.PST the wallet.ACC
‘Mike lost his wallet.’
(55) Miguel le compró flores a Susana.
Mike.NOM her.DAT buy.PST flowers.ACC to Susan
‘Mike bought flowers for Susan.’
These constituent order configurations correspond to broad-focus or sentence-focus instantiations and, therefore, comprise natural answers to out-of-the-blue interrogatives such as ¿Qué pasó? ‘what happened?’ or follow-up declaratives to statement such as ¡A qué no sabes que! ‘guess what’. 49
Besides broad focus, Spanish is well-known for its structural narrow focus system, wherein the position of constituents, by virtue of being narrowly focalized, is restricted to a particular designated location at the clausal level. In Spanish, this position has been commonly documented in postverbal, sentence-final position in correlation with the domain of Spanish nuclear stress (Zubizarreta 1998).3 Consider a slightly modified version of (54) in
(56).
(56) Perdió la cartera [F Miguel].
Lose.PRS the wallet.ACC Mike.NOM
‘It is Mike who lost his wallet.’
The subject appears in postverbal, sentence-final position and, consequently, takes a narrow focus reading that is only acceptable as an answer to (57), which inquiries about the identity of the individual who takes the property of having lost his or her wallet. Importantly, the VOS sequence shown in (56) is not possible in out-of-the-blue contexts as a continuation to ¿A qué no sabes qué? ‘guess what’ or ¿Qué pasó? ‘what happened’.
(57) ¿Quién perdió la cartera?
Who.NOM lose.PST the wallet.ACC
‘Who lost his/her wallet?’
What is more, narrow focus has also been attested in preverbal position and in-situ.4 Yet, this focalization mechanism has been primarily associated with contrastive or corrective
3 Recent qualitative and quantitative studies, primarily exploring the prosodic properties of focused phrases, have noted that Spanish speakers also seem to express constituent conveying new, non-presupposed information in-situ (Face, 2001; Hualde 2002, 2005; Gabriel, 2010; Vanrell & Soriano, 2013; and, others). I review these findings in §2.3.4. 4 Admittedly, Spanish enjoys a prolific focus system. Other focus mechanisms expressing contrastive or corrective focus, which are not discussed in the current dissertation, involve cleft (e.g. (1)) and pseudo-cleft constructions (e.g. (2)) as well as instances of ser focalizador ‘focalized to be’ (e.g. (3)), the latter being common only in certain Spanish varieties such as Caribbean dialects, Venezuelan Spanish or Colombian Spanish. For 50
readings such as those in (58) and (59) (Zubizarreta, 1998, 1999; Domínguez, 2004;
Gutiérrez-Brazo, 2008; Bosque & Gutiérrez-Rexach, 2009; López, 2009; among others).
(58) ¿Qué perdió Miguel, la cartera o el móvil?
What.ACC lose.PST Mike.NOM the wallet.ACC or the cell.phone.ACC
‘What did Mike lose, his wallet or his cell phone?’
a. [F La cartera] perdió Miguel.
The wallet.ACC lose.PST Mike.NOM
‘Mike lost his wallet.’
b. Miguel perdió [F la cartera].
Mike.NOM lose.PST the wallet.ACC
‘Mike lost his wallet.’
(59) Miguel perdió el móvil.
Mike.NOM lose.PST the cell.phone.ACC
‘Mike lost his cell phone.’
a. [F La cartera] perdió Miguel, no el móvil.
the wallet.ACC lose.PST Mike.NOM not the cell.phone.ACC
‘Mike lost his wallet, not his cell phone.’
details on these focus alternatives, see work by Sedano, 1988; Albor, 1986; Toribio, 2002; Camacho, 2006; Bosque & Gutiérrez-Rexach, 2008; Gabriel, 2010; inter alia. (1) Es el móvil lo que Juan perdió. Be.PRS the cell.phone.NOM it.ACC what John.NOM lose.PST ‘It is his cell phone what John lost.’ (2) Lo que Juan perdió es el móvil. It.ACC what John.NOM lose.PST be.PRS the cell.phone.NOM ‘What John lost is his cell phone.’ (3) Juan perdió fue el móvil. John.NOM lose.PRS be.PST the cell.phone.NOM ‘It was his cell phone what John lost.’ 51
b. Miguel perdió [F la cartera], no el móvil.
Mike.NOM lose.PST the wallet.ACC not the cell.phone.ACC
‘Mike lost his wallet, not his cell phone.’
In this regard, rather than responding to simple wh-questions, these preverbal and in-situ focus constructions can function as selectively identifying the entity that satisfies a given predication from a set of explicit alternatives (e.g. (58)) or simply correcting the information stated in the preceding utterance context (e.g. (59)). The difference between (a) and (b) sentences is purely structural. In (a), the focused direct objects do not appear in their canonical position following the verb; instead, these appear fronted in immediate preverbal position.
To summarize, while Basque and Spanish hold diverging constituent order configurations, word order alterations in both languages are heavily constrained by information structure and, in particular, by their corresponding focalization mechanisms.
While the SVO pattern is adopted in neutral, broad-focus environments in Spanish, narrow identification of a particular phrase as new, non-presupposed information prompts a rearrangement of such constituent, placing it at the right edge of the clause. In the remainder of this section, I concentrate on the distribution of the latter kind of focus.
2.3.4. Spanish information focus
As previewed in the preceding section, it has been noted that narrow information focus on a specific phrase is fulfilled through word order and prosodic prominence in Spanish. More specifically, it has been traditionally stated that constituents conveying narrow information focus obligatorily appear in the rightmost, sentence-final position in the clause on a par with 52
the domain of Spanish nuclear stress (Zubizarreta, 1998; Costa, 2001; Zagona, 2002;
Domínguez, 2004; Gutierrez-Bravo, 2008; Bosque & Gutiérrez-Rexach, 2009; Ortega-
Santos, 2016; inter alia).
(60) ¿Quién se comió un ratón?
Who.NOM eat.PST a mouse.ACC
‘Who ate a mouse?’
Se comió un ratón [F el GÁto].
Eat.PST a mouse.ACC the cat.NOM
‘The cat ate the mouse.’ (Zubizarreta 1999: 4232)
While the subject tends to precede the verb and all its arguments in neutral contexts, if the subject behaves as new information focus and aims at filling the gap of the presupposition (‘x ate a mouse’, and x = the cat), it must be somehow relocated in sentence- final position where it receives nuclear stress, as documented in (60). The same restrictions apply to focused direct and indirect objects, represented in (61) and (62) respectively.
Observe how the direct object in (61) is presented in the rightmost position, rather than its neutral VO configuration, in order to align with stress. In (62), the position of the focus bearing element, namely the indirect object, concurs with its unmarked position following the direct object (compare (55) with (62)).
(61) ¿Qué le compró Pedro a María?
What.ACC her.DAT buy.PST Peter.NOM for Mary
‘What did Peter buy for Mary?’
Pedro le compró a María [F un LÍbro].
Peter.NOM her.DAT buy.PST for Mary a book.ACC
‘Pedro bought [F a book] for Mary.’ (Ortega-Santos 2016: 36) 53
(62) ¿A quién le compró Pedro un libro?’
for whom CL.DAT buy.PST Peter.NOM a book.ACC
‘For whom did Peter buy a book?’
Pedro le compró un libro [F a MaRÍa].
Peter.NOM her.DAT buy.PST a book.ACC for Mary
‘Pedro bought a book [F for Mary].’ (Ortega-Santos 2016: 36)
This structural and prosodic imposition on focal material constituting new information has led many scholars to discard in-situ information focus as an alternative focus structure in purely informative contexts. Domínguez (2004), for instance, states that the focalized subject in (63) cannot be spelled-out to the left of the verb because nuclear stress does not fall in that position. Similar observations have also been appointed by Bosque and Gutierrez-
Rexach (2009), who supply an unacceptable status to sentence of the form in (64), due to the incompatibility of in-situ focused subject and nuclear stress, which falls in the rightmost element in the sentence (i.e. the most-embedded constituent at the syntactic level).
(63) ¿Quién bota la pelota?
Who.NOM throw.PRS the ball.ACC
‘Who throws the ball?’
* [F Los jugadores] botan la pelota.
The players.NOM throw.PRS the ball.ACC
‘The players throw the ball.’ (Domínguez 2004: 37)
(64) ¿Quién llegó tarde?
Who.NOM arrive.PST late
‘Who arrived late?’
54
* [F Pepín] llegó TARde.
Pepín.NOM arrive.PST late
‘Pepín arrived late.’ (Bosque & Gutiérrez-Rexach 2009: 682)
Be this as it may, while the [Verb…FocusNEW] order has figured prominently in the
Spanish syntax literature, recent empirically-grounded, data-driven research has evinced a preference for canonical word order at least when it comes to focalized subjects, yielding a
[F S]VO sequence. On the one hand, semi-spontaneous production data exploring the tonal realization of narrow information focus and its interaction with word order have reported structures exhibiting clause-initial in situ focalization of the subject constituent. In their cross-dialectal study, Vanrell & Fernández-Soriano (2013) told participants short stories using sentences of the form SVO1O2(adjunct) and, later on, asked participants to respond to a series of wh-questions using all the phrase constituents used by the storyteller. Their production data documented that Castilian Spanish and Canarian Spanish speakers used in- situ focus with rising intonational patterns more often than right-edge narrow focus structures.
Likewise, in a series of semi-spontaneous elicitation experiments, Gabriel (2010) also shows that in situ focus strategies are not restricted to contrastive scenarios in Argentinian
Spanish. In his study, participants were presented with short pictured stories and subsequently asked various questions targeting different information-structural readings (i.e.
¿Quién compra el diario en el kiosko? ‘who buys the newspaper at the kiosk?’). His findings revealed that preverbal subject structures of the form [F S]OV (i.e. [F María] compra el diario
‘Mary buys the newspaper) were produced more often than VO[F S] sequences (i.e. en el kiosko, compra el diario [F María] ‘at the kiosk, Mary buys the newspaper’). Interestingly, however, sentence-final information focus was more often used in the presence of direct 55
object clitics (i.e. el diario, lo compra [F María] ‘the newspaper, Mary buys it’).
In a similar fashion, using a slightly modified experimental design to that of Gabriel
(2010), Uth (2014) also found narrowly focused subjects in preverbal position, responding to a [F S]OV structure in Yucatecan Spanish. Her study reports more sentence-final information focus than Gabriel (2010), especially when participants responded using DO clitics (i.e. lo compró [F Aruma] ‘Aruma bought it’, me lo dio [F Aruma] ‘Aruma gave it to me’).
In a nutshell, recent studies suggest that there exists variation between in-situ information focus and sentence-final information focus in Spanish, at least when it comes to the focalization of subject constituents. In the paradigmatic context of question-answer pairs seeking to elicit narrow information focus structures, speakers from a variety of Spanish dialects have been shown to utter both in-situ and structural sentence-final focus mechanisms. Interestingly, the in-situ focus variant seems to be the preferred choice when speakers are asked to produce every constituent overtly. However, rightmost, sentence final focus of subject constituents seems to be preferred when direct object clitics are employed as opposed to full NPs.
2.3.4.1. Spanish sentence-final information focus and the role of exhaustivity:
Observations, research questions and hypotheses
While as shown in the preceding section opting for direct object clitics vs. full direct object constituents might be one possible factor defining the existing variation between rightmost, sentence-final information focus and in situ information focus, it is unclear whether other additional internal linguistic factors, such as exhaustivity, could be conditioning how this two-way focus system is operationalized by Spanish speakers. 56
In Spanish, the role of exhaustivity has been for the most part discussed in the context of contrastive focus. Gutierrez-Bravo (2008) describes contrastive focus as “un mecanimso de identificación exhaustiva sobre un conjunto de entidades o alternativas [a mechanism which involves exhaustive identification on a set of entities or alternatives]” (Gutiérrez-Bravo 2008: 377). In his characterization of Spanish focus, he notes that this type of exhaustive identification is typical of pseudo-clefting structures such as (65), which he claims not only provides information about the identity of the individual who holds the property of having voted for
Peter, but also expresses the information that, from every possible individual in the universal or utterance context, it is Luz and no one else who voted for Peter.
(65) La que votó por Pedro fue LÚZ.
The who vote.PST for Peter be.PST Luz.NOM
‘It was Luz who voted for Peter.’ (Gutiérrez-Bravo 2008: 377)
Nonetheless, as described in previous sections, it has already been attested for other languages (e.g. Hungarian, K’iche) that exhaustivity is not only restricted to contrastivity, but may also apply to linguistic structures or devices targeting newness of information, as is the case of information focus. In fact, if one pays careful attention to the experimental design used in Gabriel (2010) and Uth (2014), one must note that all stimuli involve exhaustive questions, requiring that the answer provide the identity of the only individual satisfying the property under discussion in each contextual scenario. To illustrate an example, in Gabriel
(2010), he gave participants a pictorial story where a woman named María buys the newspaper at the kiosk and, then, gives the newspaper to his brother. After hearing the story, participants were asked the following question: ¿Quién compra el diario en el kiosko? ‘who buys the newspaper in the kiosk?’. In the story that was told to participants, only one individual satisfied the property of buying the newspaper at the kiosk and, hence, the question had to 57
accordingly be understood exhaustively. In this regard, one might hypothesize that participants’ preference to produce [Clitic V…Focus] sequences could be concomitant to the effects of exhaustivity; that is, the need to supply an exhaustive kind of information focus that falls within a postverbal, sentence-final position from a structural standpoint.
In addition to that, the possible association between exhaustivity and subjects in sentence-final position has been mentioned in passing by Suñer (1994), who stated that
“Spanish allows for free inversion, i.e. the non-triggered process by which the subject is moved to the end of the VP” and continues by saying that “it causes the post-VP subject to be interpreted either as contrastive…, or as exhaustive listing” (1994: 339). This idea is further exploited by Jiménez (1997) in the context of information focus. She posits, following her own linguistic judgments, that the quién ‘who’ question in (66) can receive two possible responses, one involving a preverbal subject, represented in (66a) and one where the subjects appears sentence-finally as in (66b). Crucially, she makes the point that the subject in the (b) variant “gets an exhaustive listing reading, since asserting that Roberto called Julia negates that any other individual has the property called Julia” (1997: 134).
(66) ¿Quién llamó a Julia?
Who.NOM call.PST Julia.ACC
‘Who called Julia?’
a. [F Roberto] llamó a Julia.
a. Roberto.NOM call.PST Julia.ACC
‘Roberto called Julia’.
b. Llamó a Julia [F Roberto].
Call.PST Julia.ACC Roberto.NOM
‘It is Roberto who called Julia.’ 58
Given these speculative judgments and lack of experimental validation, in this dissertation these qualitative observations are taken a step further and tested experimentally through an elicited forced-choice acceptability judgment task administered to 74 Peninsular
Spanish speakers and an interpretation questionnaire given to another 115 speakers of this variety. These two studies were explicitly intended to address the following research questions:
1) Is the observed structural variability between sentence-final information focus and
in-situ information focus truly constrained by exhaustivity in Spanish, favoring an
association between sentence-final information focus and exhaustivity?
a. If so, is the contribution of exhaustivity with regards to the meaning of these
Basque focus-marking constructions at-issue or not-at-issue?
2) In focusing subject constituents, does the form of the direct object (clitic vs. non-
clitic) have any bearing on the positioning of narrow information focus in Spanish as
semi-spontaneous production data seem to suggest?
Following the observations made in earlier work, the answer to the first question is expected to be an affirmative one; that is, it is hypothesized that Peninsular Spanish speakers will choose to produce sentence-final information focus more often in the enrivonment of exhaustive triggers and that, in the absence of any contextual triggers, they will still interpret sentence-final information focus to imply exhaustivity albeit its anticipated not-at-issueness.
Crucially, however, the effects of exhaustivity are expected to be in competition with the clitic vs. non-clitic form of the direct object in the sense that while exhaustive contexts are generally expected to favor a sentence-final focus configuration, the fully-spelled out form of the direct object will push Peninsular Spanish speakers to choose the in-situ (preverbal) variant despite the communicative need to imply exhaustivity. 59
2.3.5. Summary
This section has sought to review research exploring the relation between focus and exhaustivity across various languages in presenting clear motivation for the need to empirically study the association between new, non-presupposed information focus and exhaustivity in two more structurally divergent and typologically unrelated languages as is the case of Basque and Spanish.
Given the shortage of applied research on this topic, the main research goal of this dissertation is to provide an empirical investigation of the interactions among information focus, exhaustivity and constituent order in Spanish and Basque in seeking to find validity to the hypothesis that there exists a connection between narrow information focus placement and exhaustivity. To be more specific, this dissertation is intended to show that there is indeed variation between immediate preverbal and in-situ information focus in Basque and sentence-final and in-situ information focus in Spanish and this variation is not free and unconstrained in neither language, but rather conditioned by the semantic-pragmatic notion of exhaustivity; or, in other words, an implication about the maximality of entities satisfying a given predication.
Within a broader perspective, the findings of this dissertation comparing both two languages will allow us to contribute to the study of focus from the perspective of language typologies and furthermore make the inference that Basque and Spanish focus systems, albeit corresponding to completely unrelated linguistic systems, resort to identical underlying mechanisms, namely exhaustivity, when it comes to the computability of focus constructions, and that the position of exhaustive focus is merely subject to parametric 60
variation in the overt syntax, which places foci to the left of the verbal complex in Basque and to the right in Spanish.
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CHAPTER 3: Variable positioning of Information Focus in Basque and Spanish
3.1. Introduction
Using wh-question and answer pairs as diagnostic for the identification of information focus, in this chapter, I provide empirical evidence to confirm that Basque narrow information focus and Spanish narrow information focus are not solely restricted to an immediate preverbal focus position and a postverbal, sentence-final focus position respectively. Instead, native speaker judgments obtained from two forced-choice acceptability judgment tasks and two interpretation tasks reveal two distinct ways of expressing information focus in these typologically unrelated languages. On the one hand, consistent with prior work, it is confirmed that Basque and Spanish mark information focus structurally by placing focused material in immediate preverbal position in Basque and in sentence-final position in Spanish.
Crucially, though, unlike previous studies, it is shown that these structurally designated foci carry an exhaustive implication in both languages. On the other hand, I demonstrate that there is a second focalization alternative, namely a non-exhaustive kind of information focus, that unlike the first kind, is associated neither with a fixed position at the structural level nor a conventional exhaustive implication.
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3.2. Basque experiment I: Forced-choice acceptability judgment task
3.2.1. Participants
60 subjects from the northwestern region of Bizkaia in the Basque Country, northern Spain, ranging between 19 and 62 years old (mean age = 32.3 years old), participated in the study.
Participants for this study were recruited online. A short message and link to the survey were posted in various social networks, asking Basque speakers to participate in the study and share the questionnaire with their friends, family members and acquaintances from the
Bizkaia region.
Every participant completed a general socio-demographic questionnaire that included questions about their age, gender, place of residence and level of education (Appendix A). A bilingualism assessment test was also administered, soliciting information about their linguistic background (i.e. age of acquisition, home language, parents’ language), self- reported linguistic competence in Basque and Spanish (i.e. reading, listening, writing, speaking), language dominance in different social environments (i.e. at home, at college/at work, with friends) and attitudes towards Basque and Spanish (Appendix B, adapted from the Bilingual Language Profile (BLP) (Birdsong, Gertken, Amengual, 2012)). All participants reported being bilingual speakers of Basque and Spanish. While self-reported proficiency measures were collected, in order to objectively measure participants’ Basque proficiency, a
23-item multiple-choice questionnaire was also included, containing questions selected from multiple levels of the standardized Basque test, EGA (Euskal Gaitasun Agiria, ‘Certificate of
Basque Literacy’), which allowed to allocate each participant within one of five proficiency subgroups: Basque native speakers, early-sequential bilinguals, advanced L2 learners, 63
intermediate L2 learners and beginner L2 learners (Appendix C, adapted from Rodríguez-
Ordoñez, 2016)).5
3.2.2. Stimuli
The forced-choice acceptability judgment task consisted of 10 target question-answer pairs and 20 distractors with the same format. The amount of distractors was purposefully intended to double the number of target items in order to prevent participants from detecting the target structure. These fillers included question-answer pairs that did not involve word order alterations or focalization and, instead, targeted variations in spelling, case-marking, lexical choices, etc. Each question-answer pair was preceded by a short context in order to make stimuli more natural to participants and all target sentences were recorded by the author, using a head mounted microphone Plantronics audio 400 DSP with a 44100Hz sampling rate, in order to control for any prosodic differences.6
Target items were constructed to directly address the research questions and, consequently, included linguistic environments testing participants’ choices concerning a) exhaustive vs. ambiguous questions, b) bakarrik ‘only’ vs. eta guzti ‘even’ focus operators and c) focalized expressions containing universal quantifiers.
5 Following previous studies on Critical Periods and Age effects (Johnson and Newport, 1989; Meisel, 2008; Montrul, 2008), speakers were considered native speakers if they began learning Basque since birth, whereas those who began learning Basque through immersion programs at the age of 2 or 3 were classified as early sequential bilinguals (Cenoz, 2009). 6 While prosody is not a center piece in this dissertation, I assume that immediate preverbal and in-situ focus variants are not only structurally and semantically different, but also intonationally different (i.e. possibly H*+L for immediate preverbal information focus as described in work on Basque intonation (Elordieta, 1997, 1998, 2008; Hualde et al., 2002; and, others), but not in-situ, non-immediate preverbal information focus). 64
a. Exhaustive questions vs. Non-exhaustive questions
In her investigation of Hungarian focus, Horvath (2007) notes that information focus must be expressed in immediate preverbal position when the question requires an exhaustive answer; that is, when the speaker needs to identify the maximal number of entities for which a predication is true. Following this premise, two types of questions were created for the present experiment: exhaustive questions and non-exhaustive/ambiguous questions.
Observe the difference between the wh-question in (67) and in (68):
(67) Nork idatzi zuen Obabakoak?
who.ERG write.PRF aux.PST Obabakoak.ABS
‘Who wrote Obabakoak?’
(68) Nork entregatzen ditu etxerako lanak berandu egunero?
who.ERG turn.in.PROG aux.PRS homework.ABS late every.day
‘Who turns in homework late every day?’
(67) represents an exhaustive question. It inquiries about the identity of the individual who wrote Obabakoak, a classic novel in the Basque literature. There is only one possible answer to this question given that this book has a unique author and, consequently, the answer that participants give to such question must be in and of itself exhaustive. On the contrary, in (68), the speaker may choose to provide an exhaustive or non-exhaustive response. For instance, if the speaker knows and is willing to reveal the identity of every student who turns in homework late, he or she might opt to exhaustively list who those students are. Yet, it might be the case that there are too many students who complete their homework late and, due to this circumstance, the speaker decides to name only a few. Since
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there is no imposition on the question to provide one or the other answer, this type of question is considered ambiguous or non-exhaustive in nature.
If the syntactic configuration of Basque focus were variable and there were indeed an association between immediate preverbal information focus and exhaustivity, Basque speakers should choose the immediate preverbal variant (e.g. (69a)) significantly more often than its in-situ counterpart (e.g. (69b)) when the question required an exhaustive answer than in the absence of such requirement.
(69) Q: Nork idatzi zuen Obabakoak?
Who.ERG write.PRF aux.PST Obabakoak.ABS
‘Who wrote Obabakoak?’
a. [F Bernardo Atxagak] idatzi zuen eleberri hori.
Bernardo Atxaga.ERG write.PRF aux.PST novel that.ABS
‘It is Bernardo Atxaga that wrote that novel.’
b. [F Bernardo Atxagak] eleberri hori idatzi zuen.
Bernardo Atxaga.ERG novel that.ABS write.PRF aux.PST
‘Bernardo Atxaga wrote that novel.’
Within ambiguous contexts, a higher degree of variation between immediate preverbal position (e.g. (70a)) and its in-situ counterpart (e.g. (70b)) is expected given that the choice between one or the other construction is entirely dependent on speakers’ desire to convey exhaustivity or lack thereof.
(70) Q: Nork entregatzen ditu etxerako lanak berandu egunero?
Who.ERG turn in.PROG aux.PRS homework.ABS late everyday
‘Who turns in homework late every day?’
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a. Peiok eta Jonek egunero entregatzen dituzte berandu.
Peio.ERG and John.ERG everyday turn in.PROG aux.PRS late
‘Peio and Jone turn them in late every day.’
b. Peiok eta Jonek entregatzen dituzte berandu egunero.
Peio.ERG and John.ERG turn in.PROG aux.PRS late everyday
‘It is Peio and Jone who turn them in late every day.’
b) Bakarrik ‘only’ vs. Eta guzti ‘even’ focus operators
In addition to the type of question, the characteristics of the focalized constituents themselves were also controlled for. While both ‘only’ and ‘even’ are focus-sensitive operators, Horvath (2007) points out that, in Hungarian, immediate left-adjacency to the verb is allotted to focus phrases involving ‘only’, whereas those co-occurring with ‘even’ tend to remain in-situ. In order to elucidate whether this prediction is borne out in Basque, focus phrases with bakarrik ‘only’ (e.g. (71a, 71b)) and eta guzti ‘even’ (e.g. (72a, 72b)) were tested.
(71) Zein telebistatan emango dute partidua?
Which TVstation.in broadcast.FUT aux.PRS game.ABS
‘In which TV station will they broadcast the game?’
a) [F ETB1en bakarrik]i emango dute partidua.
ETB1.in only broadcast.FUT aux.PRS game.ABS
‘It is only in ETB1 that they will broadcast the game.’
b) Partidua emango dute [F ETB1en bakarrik].
Game.ABS broadcast.FUT aux.PRS ETB1.in only
‘They will broadcast the game only in ETB1.’ 67
(72) Non ospatzen dituzte Aste Santuko prozesioak gaur egun?
Where celebrate.PROG aux.PRS Easter parades.ABS nowadays
‘Where do they celebrate Easter parades nowadays?’
a) [F Bilbon eta guzti] ospatzen dituzte horrek gaur egun.
Bilbo.in even celebrate.PROG aux.PRS those.ABS nowaways
‘It is even in Bilbo that they celebrate those nowadays.’
b) Horrek ospatzen dituzte [F Bilbon eta guzti] gaur egun.
Those.ABS celebrate.PROG aux.PRS Bilbo.in even nowadays
‘They celebrate those even in Bilbo nowadays.’
Note that the question in both scenarios is ambiguous so as to avoid a response bias; participants were required to pay attention to the position of the focalized element in the answer to the wh-question. If it were indeed the case that immediate preverbal focus was linked to exhaustive inferences, responses should favor the immediate preverbal information focus choice with bakarrik ‘only’ (e.g. (71a)) due to the inherent exhaustive meaning rather than bakarrik ‘only’ phrases appearing in-situ (e.g. (71b)). In the case of eta guzti ‘even’, if
Horvath were on the right track, an in-situ configuration should be preferred (e.g. (72b)).
Importantly, these stimuli differ with respect to (69) and (70) in that exhaustivity is not implied by means of the wh-question, but rather the focus operator accompanying the focused constituent in the answer.
c) Focalized universal quantifiers
Kiss’ (1998) account of exhaustive identification focus assumes that exhaustivity not only involves the identification of those individuals or entities that satisfy some predication, but 68
also the exclusion of those who fail to do so. These observations led her to predict that universal quantifiers should be barred from the immediate preverbal focus position because they do not perform exclusion. In order to test the determining role of exhaustivity and its possible relation to exclusion, target stimuli also included universal quantifiers in focus position such as denek ‘everyone’ in (73a, 73b).
(73) Nortzuk egingo dute EGA Martxoan zure klasean?
Who.ERG take.FUT aux.PRS EGA.ABS March.in your class.in
‘Who is taking the EGA exam in your class in March?’
a) [F Denek] egingo dute azterketa Martxoan.
Everyone.ERG take.FUT aux.PRS exam.ABS March.in
‘Everyone will take the exam in March.’
b) [F Denek] azterketa egingo dute Martxoan.
Everyone.ERG exam.ABS take.FUT aux.PRS March.in
‘Everyone will take the test in March.’
If providing an exhaustive response also entailed exclusion, Basque speakers should disallow universal quantifiers in immediate preverbal position (e.g. (73a)). However, if exhaustivity and exclusion were independently motivated and in effect there existed a one- to-one correspondence between immediate preverbal information focus and exhaustivity, universal quantifiers should be significantly more often preferred in immediate left-adjacency to the verb than in-situ.
Lastly, one other aspect that the present experiment sought to tackle was the possible difference in the focal distribution of arguments (i.e. focalized subjects) and adjuncts (i.e. focalized locative postpositions), which are differently linearized in their in-situ representations (for a review, see §2.3.1.). In this regard, both argument and adjunct variants 69
for each of the above mentioned scenarios were constructed, yielding a total of 10 target items.
3.2.3. Design and Procedure
Once the stimuli were ready, an online survey was designed and implemented on the web survey platform SurveyGizmo (Vanek and McDaniel, 2006). Each question-answer pair was separately uploaded into a different page in the survey, allowing participants to see each test item one at a time. All 30 items, target sentences and fillers, were semi-randomized in order to avoid automated response strategies and the survey was designed as a forward-only survey to prevent participants from changing their responses. In addition, because the syntactic configuration of immediate preverbal focus parallels that of wh-questions, the order of presentation for each pair of responses always showed the in-situ alternative first followed by the fronted variant in order to avoid any structural priming effects in participants’ responses between the question and the answer.
After accepting the consent form, an instructions page instructed subjects to 1) read a short context and its corresponding question, 2) listen to two possible answers and 3) choose the option they considered was the most suitable response. They were also reminded that there were no good or bad responses and that what truly mattered was how they would actually answer the questions. Before starting the actual experiment, a practice test was administered to ensure that everyone was following the instructions correctly as well as to familiarize them with the format of the experiment. Subsequent to this, participants were led to the forced-choice acceptability judgment task. The screen showed a short context, followed by a wh-question and two audio files accommodating each of the alternative 70
variants. This is represented in figure 2. Participants did not see the answers in writing in order to avoid the association of the responses with formal written registers, but they could listen to the recordings as many times as needed.
Figure 2: Sample design of the Basque forced-choice acceptability judgment task
Before submitting their responses, everyone received the socio-demographic questionnaire, followed by the bilingualism assessment test and the 23-question multiple- choice quiz to measure their Basque proficiency (Appendices A, B, C). The entire procedure was estimated to last about 30 minutes.
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3.2.4. Data analysis
In order to resolve whether exhaustivity served as a significant predictor regarding variability in focus placement, a series of generalized mixed-effects logistic regression models were created in RStudio, the integrated development environment for R, using the glmer function in the ‘lme4’ package (Bates et al., 2016). Given the nature of the task, the dependent variable constituted a discrete factor, namely FOCUS POSITION CHOICE, distinguishing two levels: immediate preverbal position vs. in-situ position. The first inferential analysis considered the effects of EXHAUSTIVITY as a binary factor differentiating exhaustive vs. non- exhaustive/ambiguous triggers. Subsequent inferential analyses layered exhaustivity by
‘trigger type’ (i.e. exhaustive Q, non-exhaustive Q, bakarrik ‘only’, eta guzti ‘even’, universal denek ‘everyone’, universal guzti ‘every’) in order to pinpoint differences across test items.
Together with this independent variable, a total of 8 independent variables were added to the model as fixed effects: SUBCATEGORIZATION (argument vs. adjunct), AGE (continuous variable), GENDER (female vs. male), LEVEL OF EDUCATION (low vs. middle vs. high, which was subsequently collapsed as a binary factor simply distinguishing low/middle education from high education), BASQUE AGE OF ACQUISITION (since birth vs. +2 years old),
LANGUAGE DOMINANCE/FREQUENCY (ordered factor comprising values from 1 to 10),
BASQUE PROFICIENCY (beginner, intermediate, advanced, early-sequential, native) and SELF-
IDENTIFICATION WITH THE BASQUE CULTURE (ordered set of values from 1 to 5). In addition, PARTICIPANT was included in the model as a random effect in order to neutralize the possibility of undue influence (i.e. extreme outliers) of particular individual speakers on the overall data-set.
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All independent variables were added to the model following a stepwise procedure, using the step function in R, which performs variable selection and considers all possible subsets of the pool of explanatory variables and finds the model that best fits the data according to
AIC values. Once the nested mixed models were computed, they were compared using
ANOVA in order to verify which model made the best predictions in accounting for variable focus placement within the current data.
Before turning to the results of all the analyses performed, a note about BASQUE AGE OF
ACQUISITION and BASQUE PROFICIENCY is in order here. While these two factors were kept separate, an overlap occurred between native Basque speakers and those who reported having acquired Basque since birth, given that the criterion to classify participants as native speakers as opposed to early-sequential bilinguals relied precisely on their age of acquisition; that is, all native speakers of Basque had to have acquired the language since birth. Due to this orthogonal effect, these independent variables were not added to the same model in the step function. Different models were created for each variable and the model with the lowest
AIC value was chosen as best accounting for participants’ choice between immediate preverbal and in-situ focus.
3.2.5. Results
General response patterns obtained in the forced-choice acceptability judgment task confirm the hypothesis that Basque information focus does not categorically respond to a [Focus-V] structural configuration, debunking traditional assumptions made in previous work. Results suggest that Basque speakers not only express narrow information focus in immediate
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preverbal position, but also in-situ. A descriptive summary showing the percentage of selection for each scenario is provided in table 2.
Triggers % of immediate preverbal focusINFO Total N
Bakarrik ‘only’
Argument 95% 57/60
Adjunct 98.3% 59/60
Exhaustive Q
Argument 93.3% 56/60
Adjunct 93.3% 56/60
Universal QTF
Argument‘Denek’ 98.3% 59/60
Adjunct‘Denda guztietan’ 86.6% 52/60
Eta guzti ‘even’
Argument 78.3% 47/60
Adjunct 83.3% 50/60
Ambiguous Q
Argument 65% 39/60
Adjunct 71.6% 43/60
Table 2: Descriptive summary of immediate preverbal focus choice by trigger item
As hypothesized, the response patterns revealed in table 2 show much more categorical responses in immediate preverbal position for exhaustive triggers than scenarios leading to ambiguity between an exhaustive and non-exhaustive reading. Participants’ response patterns
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reveal that focused constituents embedded under bakarrik ‘only’ are most frequently chosen in immediate preverbal position, followed by focused phrases responding to exhaustive questions and universal quantifiers. Within universal quantifiers, the argument denek
‘everyone’ displays almost a categorical preference towards the immediate preverbal variant, whilst focus placement choice seems to be more variable for the non-argument universally quantified expression denda guztietan ‘every store’. With the exception of universal quantifiers and exhaustive questions, adjuncts, which take a sentence-final position in their base- generated structure, seem to be selected more often than subject arguments immediately to the left of the verb when behaving as new information focus. In addition, the non- exhaustive/ambiguous test items show, as predicted, much more variability between immediate preverbal and in-situ focus realizations.
The tendencies and differences observed in table 2 are confirmed in the best fitted mixed effects logistic regression model, which indicates that the position of focus is indeed constrained by EXHAUSTIVITY and, therefore, that variable focus placement is not free and unconstrained in Basque. According to the model in table 3, exhaustivity is what most strongly influences participants’ choice between immediate preverbal information focus and in-situ information focus. Together with exhaustivity, participants’ AGE OF ACQUISITION OF
BASQUE and LEVEL OF EDUCATION were also chosen as significant predictors of variable focus positioning.
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% of preverbal Estimate Std. Error z value p value
Intercept -0.4943 0.5172 -0.956 n.s.
Exhaustivity (RL: Ambiguous question, % of preverbal = 68.3%)
Denek ‘everyone’ 98.3% 3.5859 1.0474 3.424 p < .001
Bakarrik ‘only’ 96.7% 2.8561 0.5705 5.006 p < .001
ExhaustiveQ 93.3% 2.0916 0.4431 4.720 p < .001
UniversalQTF 86.7% 1.2590 0.4570 2.755 p < .01
Eta guzti ‘even’ 80.8% 0.7740 0.3285 2.356 p < .05
Age of Acquisition of Basque (RL: +2 years old)
Birth 88.8% 0.8888 0.3626 2.451 p < .05
Education (RL: Low/Middle)
High 87.6% 0.8970 0.4432 2.024 p < .05
Table 3: Mixed effects model of the factors contributing to the choice between immediate preverbal and in-situ narrow information focus in Basque (by target item, quantified expression separated)
With positive estimates indicating preference for immediate preverbal focus and negative estimates leading towards the in-situ focus choice, response patterns confirm that the odds of choosing the immediate preverbal focus variant were significantly higher when the focalized constituents themselves was inherently exhaustive (i.e. denek ‘everyone’, bakarrik
‘only’) or the target sentences required an exhaustive response when compared to ambiguous scenarios. This was likewise the case for the universally quantified expression denda guztietan
‘in every store’ and the non-exhaustive focus operator eta guzti ‘even’ when compared to ambiguous questions, but the magnitude of the effect in these last two triggers is slightly
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smaller as shown by their corresponding estimates and p values. When switching the reference level to one of any three exhaustive triggers (i.e. bakarrik ‘only’, denek ‘everyone’ or exhaustive questions), the model revealed a negative estimate for non-exhaustive eta guzti
‘even’ and ambiguousQ, suggesting the disassociation between non-exhaustive/ambiguous triggers and immediate preverbal focus and yet proving the association between exhaustive triggers and Focus-V immediate adjacency (i.e. when the RL was bakarrik ‘only’, estimate for eta guzti ‘even’ = -2.0823, p value < .001; ambiguousQ = -2.8562, p value < .001).
Interestingly, according to all analyses performed, no main effect of subcategorization was found in the data. No differences were found between argument and adjunct focused phrases with the exception of the universal quantifier denek ‘everyone’ and denda guztietan
‘every story’, which suggests that the diverging behavior across universal quantifiers is not due to their subcategorization. In fact, a comparison of denek ‘everyone’ and denda guztietan
‘every store’ exhibited a significant difference between them, displaying a negative estimate for the latter (i.e. when the RL was denek ‘everyone’, estimate for denda guztietan ‘every store’ = -2.3264, p value = 0.033), which indicates that the probability of placing the non- inherent exhaustive quantified expression in immediate preverbal position is lower than that of the inherently exhaustive quantifier denek ‘everyone’.
The second strongest constraint documented to condition the variation between immediate preverbal information focus and in-situ information focus was participants’ reported AGE OF ACQUISITION OF BASQUE. Results suggest that it is those participants who reported having acquired Basque since birth, rather than those who acquired it after the age of 2 at school or through language immersion programs, that chose the immediate preverbal variant significantly more often. The last and third strongest predictor was subjects’ LEVEL
OF EDUCATION. Findings reveal that the immediate preverbal variant is the preferred choice 77
among those who have achieved a high level of education (i.e. undergraduate or graduate degree), as opposed to participants who reported having a lower degree of education.
Importantly, an analysis of interactions among all three significant predictors registered that differences across participants’ age of acquisition of Basque and level of education were dependent on exhaustivity. As shown in figure 3, in contexts evocative of exhaustivity, namely, exhaustive questions, bakarrik ‘only’ phrases and universal quantifiers, it is those who acquired Basque since birth that tend to choose the [Focus-V] variant more often (node
7). In ambiguous or non-exhaustive contexts, participants who report a higher level of education seem to favor the immediate preverbal alternative, while the in-situ focus choice is more popular among those participants who received little or some education (i.e. primary school, secondary school, associate degree). A follow-up analysis of interactions within the mixed effects model itself revealed only the interaction between participants’ Basque age of acquisition and exhaustivity to be a significant one at the .05 level: the odds of selecting immediate preverbal focus in the context of exhaustive triggers is significantly higher among participants who reported having acquired Basque since birth (estimate = 1.3412; Std. error
= 0.6977; z value = 1.922; p = .05) than those who learnt it after the age of 2. As for the missing interaction effect between exhaustivity and level of education within the statistical model, I hypothesize that this is likely due to the small size effect of the interaction (p =
0.045), which may not be robust enough to be significant in the inferential analysis.
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Figure 3: Conditional Inference tree: Interaction between type of target item, age of acquisition of Basque and level of education
3.2.6. Discussion
The present experiment has provided compelling empirical evidence countering traditional descriptions of Basque information focus, which claim Basque to have a unique designated structural position in order to express information focus. Data from a total of 60 Basque speakers has revealed that both immediate preverbal and in-situ alternatives are available to express new, non-presupposed information in Basque. More specifically, results from various logistic regression analyses have shown that variable focus positioning is constrained by exhaustivity as it is the intrisically exhaustive universal quantifier denek ‘everyone’, focused phrases carrying bakarrik ‘only’ and exhaustive questions that report the highest probability of being realized immediately to the left of the verbal complex.
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The data further indicate that both focalized argument and adjuncts behave in a similar manner. However, deeper evaluation of each exhaustive scenario uncovered different response patterns between the focalized subject denek ‘everyone’ and the locative adjunct denda guztietan ‘every store’. In addition to the argument-adjunct distinction, these two quantified expressions differ in one more aspect, namely, the inherent exhaustive meaning featured by denek ‘everyone’ as opposed to denda guztietan ‘every store’. In the latter case, participants could have interpreted denda guztietan ‘in every store’ to be selected from a set of alternatives involving other locations (e.g. {every store, every restaurant, every coffee shop,
…}). This appears in opposition to denek ‘everyone’, which does not contemplate the possibility of any alternatives. Given this difference, one might hypothesize that the diverging judgments about these two quantified expressions are not due to the argument vs. adjunct distinction, but the fact that the exhaustivity implicated by denda guztietan ‘every store’ is entirely concomitant to participants’ commitment to providing an exhaustive answer.
These findings suggest that not every universally quantified expression behaves in the same fashion; in fact, while a quantifier like denek ‘everyone’ is intrinsically exhaustive, this is not so for quantified NPs such as denda guztietan ‘every store’, which can adopt a non-exhaustive reading. In this regard, the fact that denek ‘everyone’ is almost categorically chosen in immediate preverbal position rejects Kiss’ (1998) prediction that universal quantifiers will be banned from immediate preverbal focus positions due to their inability to perform exclusion.
These data show, contra Kiss (1998) and Kenesei (1986, 2006), that exhaustivity does not necessarily involve the exclusion of alternatives at least when it comes to Basque.
In addition to exhaustivity, the choice between immediate preverbal and in-situ focalization was affected by participants’ age of acquisition of Basque and their level of education. As for their age of acquisition, those who acquired Basque since birth chose 80
immediate preverbal focus significantly more often in exhaustive contexts than those who acquired it at a later stage. This difference may be due to a possible correlation between those who have spoken the language for longer durations being at the same time more proficient and more frequent users. The data suggest this to be the case: those who acquired the language since birth are overall more proficient and also report using Basque more often at home and in casual interactions with friends (tables 4 and 5). This trend does not hold in more formal and professional environments; yet, the frequency of use in this environment is not dependent on the speaker itself, but the demands of the occupation or major of study.
Therefore, it is possible that those who acquired and learnt Basque at a later time actually use it more frequently than native speakers in such environment.7
Since Birth +2 years old
% Total N % Total N
Native Basque speakers 48.3% 29/60 0% 0/60
Early sequential bilinguals 0% 0/60 10% 6/60
Advanced L2 speakers 20% 12/60 18.3% 11/60
Intermediate L2 speakers 1.6% 1/60 0% 0/60
Beginner L2 speakers 1.6% 1/60 0% 0/60
Table 4: Participant distribution by age of acquisition and Basque proficiency level
7 Two participants who reported having acquired Basque since birth were placed in the intermediate and beginner groups according to the language proficiency test. The multiple-choice quiz used in the present experiment comes from the Basque standardized test EGA, and while these kinds of tests are recurrently used to officially measure language proficiency, there is certainly a tenuous connection between the content of these languages tests and individuals’ real linguistic competence as they tend to measure only one part of language knowledge, namely the part that is privileged by academic institutions (Blommaert & Backus, 2011). Therefore, while these two speakers may have been exposed to Basque since birth, they might not necessarily reflect a high level of proficiency in this particular language test due to its degree of formality and standardization. 81
Since Birth +2 years old
Frequency: at home 5.41/10 4.23/10
Frequency: in college/at work 5.96/10 6.58/10
Frequency: with friends 5.9/10 4.88/10
Table 5: Participant distribution by age of acquisition and Basque frequency use
It seems possible that the more proficient and dominant group could have stronger linguistic intuitions about the association between immediate preverbal information focus and exhaustivity leading to a more frequent selection of this ex-situ variant in the context of exhaustive questions, bakarrik ‘only’, and especially, the universal quantifier denek ‘everyone’.
On the other hand, those who acquired Basque at the age of two or later could possibly have weaker linguistic intuitions about this relation between immediate preverbal focus and exhaustivity in Basque given that they are not as proficient and fluent. Resultantly, they could be relying more heavily on focus alignment patterns of their more dominant language (i.e.
Spanish), which does not employ an immediate preverbal position for focused expressions.
In fact, this cohort of speakers chose the in-situ focus variant more frequently than those who were exposed to the language since birth when the in-situ configuration of the focused element was sentence-final, typifying a Spanish-like focus configuration. An example of such scenario is shown in (74). Despite displaying an exhaustive question, the in-situ choice depicted in (74a) was selected more often among those who acquired the language at the age of 2 or later than participants who reported having learnt Basque since birth, and it is likely that such choice is due to the overt structural similarity with its Spanish counterpart (e.g.
(75)), where information focus falls sentence-finally.
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(74) Noiz amaitzen dute ikasturtea umeek aurten?
When finish.PROG aux.PRS school.year.ABS kids.ERG this.year
‘When do kids finish the school year this year?’
a) Ikasturtea amaitzen dute [F Ekainak 23an].
School.year.ABS finish.PROG aux.PRS June 23.in
‘They finish the school year in June 23rd.’
b) [F Ekainak 23an] amaitzen dute ikasturtea.
June 23.in finish.PROG aux.PRS school.year.ABS
‘It is in June 23rd that they finish the school year.’
(75) Terminan el curso [F el 23 de junio]
Finish.PRS the school.year.ACC the 23 of June
‘It is in June 23rd that they finish the school year.’
To conclude, findings also indicated that participants holding a higher degree of education (i.e. undergraduate and graduate degrees) overall chose the preverbal variant more often in non-exhaustive contexts (i.e. ambiguous questions and eta guzti ‘even’). While the magnitude of this effect did not reach significance in the regression model itself, one possible explanation is that highly educated participants could have been more aware of the prescriptive rules of the language, which often cite the need to position the inquired element in immediate preverbal position regardless of the exhaustive vs. non-exhaustive character of the situation.
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3.3. Basque experiment II: Interpretation task
3.3.1. Participants
49 subjects from the northwestern region of Bizkaia in the Basque Country, northern Spain, ranging between 19 and 55 years old (mean age = 29.3 years old), participated in this second study. For this second task, participants were recruited in person through the researcher’s personal contacts and help provided by administrators and workers at the Gabriel Aresti
Euskaltegia in Bilbao, Spain.
As in experiment I, every participant completed a socio-demographic questionnaire
(Appendix A), as well as the bilingualism assessment test and the 23-item multiple-choice
Basque proficiency test used with participants in experiment I (Appendices B and C). Every participant acknowledged knowing Spanish and, therefore, no monolingual Basque speakers were recruited in the sampled data.
3.3.2. Stimuli
The interpretation task consisted of a total of 18 test items: 6 target items and 12 distractors.
Following the methodology used in experiment I, the amount of distractors was purposefully doubled in order to prevent participants from detecting the target structure. Fillers included mostly comprehension questions about presupposition triggers such as the aspectual verbs utzi ‘stop’, the additive particle ere ‘too’, the evidential omen ‘it is reported that…’, etc.
Observe the distractor in (76). Given speaker B’s answer to the question, participants were asked to evaluate whether Mary used to smoke in the past or not. 84
(76) Context: Izaskun has been talking to Ane on the phone for an hour. As soon as
they hang up the phone, Izankun’s husband asks her:
Speaker A: Zer kontatu dizu Anek?
What.ABS tell.PRF aux.PRS Ane.ERG
‘What did Ane tell you?’
Speaker B: Mirenek erretzeari utzi dio-la esan dit.
Miren.ERG smoke.DAT stop.PRF aux.PRS-COMP say.PRF aux.PRS
‘She told me that Miren stopped smoking.’
Target sentences were constructed to further validate the association between immediate preverbal information focus constructions and exhaustivity. In addition, they were also intended to, on the one hand, elucidate whether exhaustivity denotes not-at-issue content of
[FocusINFO-V] constructions and, on the other hand, to evaluate whether exhaustive foci take a quantifier-like behavior and, therefore, have wide scope over the predication. Following this line of inquiry, participants were asked about the acceptability and interpretation of sentences containing a) immediate preverbal vs. in-situ response variants, b) universal quantifiers in immediate preverbal position vs. existential quantifiers in immediate preverbal position, and c) the (not-)at-issueness of sentences involving immediate preverbal focus.
a. Immediate preverbal information focus vs. in-situ information focus
In this second study, participants were first asked to rate how acceptable they thought immediate preverbal information focus and an in-situ information focus were as an answer to non-exhaustive/ambiguous questions (i.e. (77)) in a 7-point Likert scale, wherein 1 meant
“completely unacceptable/I would never say a sentence like that or similar to that one” and 85
7 meant “completely acceptable/I would say a sentence like that or similar to that one”.
Within this scale, only if given a rating between 2 and 7, participants were prompted to answer a comprehension question that directly asked about the exhaustive nature of each focus structure. An example of the interpretation question is shown in (78).
(77) Nork entregatzen ditu etxerako lanak berandu egunero?
who.ERG turn.in.PROG aux.PRS homework.ABS late every.day
‘Who turns in homework late every day?’
a. [F Xabik eta Jonek] entregatzen dituzte berandu egunero.
Xabi.erg and John.erg turn.in.prog aux.prs late every.day
’It is Xabi and John that turn (them) in late every day.’
b. [F Xabik eta Jonek] egunero entregatzen dituzte berandu.
Xabi.erg and John.erg every.day turn.in.prog aux.prs late
‘Xabi and John turn (them) in late every day.’
(78) Entzun duzun erantzunaren arabera, Xabi eta Jonez gain, etxerako lanak berandu entregatzen
dituen beste inor dagoela pentsa lezake institutuko zuzendariak? ‘Based on what you heard,
do you believe that the principal could think there could be other students who also
turn in homework late besides Xabi and Jon?’
The expected response patterns were as follows: when asked whether more individuals, in addition to those named within the focused constituent, satisfied the predication, it was expected that participants would respond “No” if presented with the immediate preverbal focus variant (e.g. (77a)). The selection of “No” would indicate that turning in homework late is a property that only applies to Xabi and Jon and, hence, that this Focus-V construction implicates exhaustivity. On the other hand, assuming that the in-situ variant
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results in a non-exhaustive reading, subjects were expected to choose “Yes” upon hearing
(77b).
For each focus variant, two target stimuli were created; one where the focalized element was the grammatical subject of the verb and another one where focus was put on a locative adjunct. Importantly, the question that preceded each target sentence was ambiguous in order for the interpretation of each variant to rely solely on the position of the focused element itself. As with experiment I, a possible difference between arguments and adjuncts was expected given their distinct linearization patterns in the overt syntax and, therefore, this aspect was additionally controlled for.
b. Quantifier scope in immediate preverbal focus position
Kiss (1998) proposed that immediate preverbal focus in Hungarian takes wide scope over the whole sentence, while the in-situ alternative features narrow scope. Were Kiss’ proposal on the right track, the expectation is that, if foci that are associated with exhaustivity demand a wide scope reading, a one-to-one correspondence should arise between Basque immediate preverbal ‘exhaustive’ focus and wide scope, on the one hand, and in-situ ‘non-exhaustive’ focus and narrow scope, on the other.
In addressing this question, the interpretation of the universal quantifier guzti ‘every’ vs. existential quantifier bat ‘a’ in immediate preverbal focus position was compared. Observe the data in (79a) and (79b).
(79) Norbait besarkatu zuten neskek?
Someone.ABS hug.PRF aux.PST girls.ERG
‘Did the girls hug someone?’ 87
a. Bai, [F neska guztiek] besarkatu zuten mutil bat.
Yes girl every.ERG hug.PRF aux.PST boy a.ABS
‘Yes, it is every girl that hugged a boy.’
b. Bai, [F mutil bat] besarkatu zuten neska guztiek.
Yes boy a.ABS hug.PRF aux.PST girl every.ERG
Yes, it is a boy that every girl hugged.’
In (79a), the universally quantified expression neska guztiek ‘every girl’ is placed in immediate preverbal position. In (79b), it is the existential expression mutil bat ‘a boy’ that is positioned left-adjacent to the verb. If elements in immediate preverbal position take a wide scope reading, an interpretative difference should arise between (a) and (b). On the one hand, in the former case, the universal quantifier should scope over the existential one, rendering a meaning where every girl kissed a different boy. But, in (79b), where the existential quantifier is in ‘exhaustive’ focus position, if wide scope applies, then, such structure should be understood along the lines of “there is one boy and every girl kissed that same boy”.
The comprehension question that participants received asked whether every girl kissed the same boy. If there were indeed a correlation between immediate preverbal ‘exhaustive’ focus and wide scope, Basque speakers would respond “No” when the universal quantifier targeted this position and “Yes” when the existential quantifier did.
c. (Not-)at-issueness: dissent diagnostic
Recent work investigating differences between cleft-sentences and Hungarian preverbal focus, on the one hand, and only-phrases, on the other, has suggested that the main property 88
distinguishing the two lies on at-issueness. More specifically, recent research indicates that the exhaustivity inference associated to these focus-marking constructions is not-at-issue in the case of clefting and focus fronting, but it is part of the asserted meaning of only-phrases
(Velleman et al., 2012; Destruel et al., 2015). In exploring what the contribution of exhaustivity is in relation to immediate preverbal information focus in Basque, the dissent diagnostic proposed in Tonhauser (2011) was implemented in this study. The relevant target item is illustrated in (80):
(80) Context: You had a Physics exam yesterday and you got your grades today. You’re
talking to Ekaitz and Amaia about the exam. You want to know who got an A and
Amaia just told you:
Speaker A: [F Naiak eta Oihanek] atera dute bikaina.
Naia.ERG and Oihane.ERG obtain.PRF aux.PRS A
‘It is Naia and Oihane that got an A.’
Speaker B: Ez, hori ez da egia.
No that not be.PRS true
‘No, that’s not true.’
Participants read the context in (80), followed by the short dialogue between two people.
Speaker A produced an utterance involving immediate preverbal information focus and speaker B dissented with such statement. The comprehension question addressed the content of the negated statement produced by speaker B; that is, is speaker B negating that
Naia and Oihane didn’t obtain an A or is he negating that they were not the only ones who did not obtain an A? Participants were asked to choose one of two options and only if they chose the former interpretation, which underscored the identity rather than the maximal
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number of people getting an A, would their choice be an indication that the contribution of exhaustivity is not-at-issue.
3.3.3. Design and Procedure
Target tokens and filler items were designed and implemented on the web survey platform
SurveyGizmo (Vanek and McDaniel, 2006). Unlike in the first experiment, the questionnaire was administered in-situ through one-on-one encounters with the researcher. Participants used the researcher’s personal laptop to complete the task.
Following the experimental design used in the forced-choice acceptability judgment task, each test item was separately uploaded into a different page to the survey, allowing participants to see each test item at a time. The experiment was likewise designed as a forward-only survey in order to prevent participants from changing their responses and all test items were semi-randomized in order to avoid response strategies.
The format of the target stimuli differed with respect to experiment 1. Unlike the forced- choice task, which included two alternative responses to a wh-question, the structure of each test item in this task contained a short context, followed by a wh-question and one unique aural response for each interrogative. Subjects were asked to first rate how acceptable they thought the response was and, then, answer the comprehension question. Following the methodology in experiment I, the responses to each wh-question were recorded by the author using a head mounted microphone Plantronics audio 400 DSP with a 44100Hz sampling rate, in order to control for prosodic differences.
The experimental design and procedures ran as follows: Participants received a consent form first and, subsequent to this, an instructions page described the task procedure. 90
Subjects were asked to judge the sentence they heard in a scale from 1 to 7, where 1 meant
“completely unacceptable/I would never say a sentence like that or similar to that one” and
7 meant “completely acceptable/I would say a sentence like that or similar to that one”. This is shown figure 4.
Figure 4: Design sample of the acceptability rating
After rating the acceptability of the sentence, they answered a comprehension question about the content of the sentence. The answer constituted a binary choice between “yes” or
“no”. Participants were not asked to type a response; rather, the interpretation question was phrased so that participants reflected on the notion of exhaustivity. After clicking either
“yes” or “no”, they were encouraged to optionally add any comments about the sentences they heard (i.e. a different way of communicating the message, a particular aspect they
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disliked, etc.). This was not a required step for participants and participants could choose to leave the comment box blank (Figure 5).
Figure 5: Sample of the comprehension question and optional comment box
Before initiating the actual task, a practice test was included in order to familiarize participants with the experimental procedures. After obtaining confirmation that participants understood the task, the first test item appeared in the computer screen. If participants rated the target stimuli with values between 2 and 7, then, the comprehension question popped-up in the computer screen. However, if participants completely disliked the sentence, they were directly taken to the next test item and did not see the comprehension question. This filter made sure that everyone responding the comprehension question liked the target structure to a certain degree. To finish, prior to submitting their responses, everyone completed the aforementioned socio-demographic questionnaire, the bilingualism assessment test and the
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multiple-choice quiz to measure their Basque proficiency (Appendices A, B, C). The entire procedure lasted approximately 30 to 45 minutes.
Importantly, for this experiment, two versions of the survey were created. The purpose of creating two parallel versions was to avoid having the same participants rate and interpret identical target sentences that solely differed with respect to their word order configuration.
A total of four target stimuli were created in a 2x2 design that targeted position of the focused element (preverbal vs. in-situ) and subcategorization (argument vs. adjunct). On the one hand, version A contained a target token involving focalization of an argument in immediate preverbal position and focalization of a non-argument constituent in immediate preverbal position, as well as an in-situ variant using an argument and a different in-situ focus variant holding an adjunct phrase. On the other hand, Version B included the in-situ counterparts of the immediate preverbal and in-situ variants used in version A. Together with these, version A included a target item containing the focalized existential quantifier mutil bat ‘a boy’ in preverbal position and version B held the universal quantifier neska guztiek
‘every girl’ in that same position. Lastly, both questionnaire versions incorporated the at- issueness (dissent) diagnostic, yielding a total of 6 target stimuli in each questionnaire
(Appendix E).
3.3.4. Data analysis
In order to compare participants’ acceptability ratings and their probability density, violin plots were first created using the ‘ggplot’ package available in RStudio. Possible differences across mean ratings for immediate preverbal vs. in-situ focus variants were statistically computed through a series of Wilcoxon Signed-Rank tests using the wilcoxsign_test command 93
available through ‘MASS’ (Ripley, 2017) and ‘coin’ packages (Hothorn et al, 2016) in R. In evaluating differential acceptability ratings between immediate preverbal universal quantifiers vs. immediate preverbal existential quantifiers, Mann Whitney U tests were used instead, because such comparison operated on ordinal measurements provided by independent groups.
In addition, in pursuing confirmation that Basque speakers were more likely to associate immediate preverbal information focus with an exhaustive reading and in-situ focus with a non-exhaustive one, a mixed-effects binomial logistic regression analysis was modeled in
RStudio, with COMPREHENSION RESPONSE (i.e. Yes vs. No) as the discrete dependent variable. Independent variables, including FOCUS POSITION (immediate preverbal position vs. in-situ position), SUBCATEGORIZATION (argument vs. non-argument), AGE (continuous variable), GENDER (male vs. female), LEVEL OF EDUCATION (low vs. middle vs. high, which was subsequently collapsed as a binary factor distinguishing low and middle education from high education), BASQUE AGE OF ACQUISITION (since birth vs. +2 years old), LANGUAGE
DOMINANCE/FREQUENCY (ordered factor comprising values from 1 to 10), BASQUE
PROFICIENCY (native vs. early-sequential bilingual vs. advanced learner vs. intermediate learner vs. beginner) and SELF-IDENTIFICATION WITH THE BASQUE CULTURE (ordered set of values from 1 to 5), were incorporated one at a time to each new model following the variable selection computation available through the stepwise regression approach via step function. Along with all dependent and independent variables, PARTICIPANT was added as a random effect in order to control for individual differences in the data. Ultimately, in detecting the best fitted model, all nested models were compared using the function
ANOVA in order to determine which linguistic and extra-linguistic factors affected participants’ interpretation of these focus-marking constructions. 94
3.3.5. Results
First, regarding acceptability ratings given to both structural variants, participants’ responses reveal highly acceptable scores for all target items. A summary is given in figure 6 using violin plots.
Figure 6: Violin plot illustrating the distribution of acceptability ratings according to position and subcategorization (blue dot = median values; black dot = mean values)
On the one hand, focalized argument subjects in immediate preverbal position received the most acceptable scores, followed by its in-situ counterpart (blue bars). The mean
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acceptability rating for immediate preverbal arguments, however, was not revealed to be significantly greater than the mean acceptability rating given to its in-situ counterpart
(Wilcoxon Signed-Rank, p = 0.4702). As indicated by the wider section at the higher end of the violin plot, there was a higher probability that participants would evaluate these focus- marking structures fairly positively in both cases rather than negatively.
On average, locative adjuncts immediately to the left of the VP complex obtained the third highest scores (x ̅ = 6.102). The violin plot shows that the distribution of participants’ responses was also more frequent towards the higher end of the bar, and while its width is smaller than that of subject arguments, results from a Wilcoxon Signed-Rank test indicated that the overall acceptability ratings assigned to locative adjuncts in immediate preverbal focus position were not significantly lower than ratings given to subject arguments in this same position (p = 0.1245). Lastly, locative adjuncts appearing in its base-generated position
(i.e. sentence-finally) received the lowest ratings and the shape of the distribution suggests that participants’ ratings are not as highly concentrated towards the more positive values in the acceptability scale. Wilcoxon Signed-Rank test results pinpointed significantly higher acceptance rates for in-situ focused subjects than in-situ locative adjuncts (p = 0.0137); yet, differences on the mean acceptability ratings between the latter and its immediate preverbal variant were not found in the non-parametric test (immediate preverbal adjunct vs. in-situ adjunct, p = 0.1993).
The argument vs. adjunct distinction does seem to play a role when it comes to acceptability ratings of in-situ focalization, most likely due to the preverbal nature of focused subjects. Despite this difference, altogether, the moderately high acceptability ratings
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provided to all four structures does evince that both Focus-V and in-situ focalization strategies are available in Basque speakers’ linguistic repertoire.
As for the comprehension question, the purpose of comparing the interpretive import of immediate preverbal and base-generated focus structures was to validate the association between immediate preverbal information focus and exhaustivity found in experiment I. A negative response to the question asking whether more entities in addition to those named in the target sentences could be involved in satisfying the predication would be indicative of exhaustivity, while an affirmative one would favor a non-exhaustive reading.
Findings reported in the mixed effects logistic regression model confirm that the response choice between “yes” or “no” to the comprehension question is conditioned by the position of the focalized constituent. More specifically, as results in table 6 certify, the odds of responding “no” when the focused expression falls in immediate preverbal position were significantly higher than when focus-marked phrases remain in base-generated position, which receive more affirmative responses (“yes” responses = 59.2%), indicative of a non- exhaustive interpretation. Interestingly, none of the extra-linguistic factors included in the analysis were reported to have an effect on the response choice.
% of “No” Estimate Std. Error z value p value
Intercept -0.3610 0.2258 -1.599 n.s.
Position (RL: In-situ, % of “no” responses = 40.8%)
Preverbal 73.5% 1.3450 0.3302 4.073 p < .001
Table 6: Mixed effects model of the factors contributing to the response choice between “Yes” and “No”
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A secondary objective of the present task was to explore in greater detail the scope properties of focus phrases in immediate preverbal position. In this regard, it was predicted that if focused elements in immediate preverbal position took wide scope, then, the focalized existential quantifier mutil bat ‘a boy’ would trigger more “yes” responses when asked whether every girl kissed the same boy, while the universally quantified expression neska guztiek ‘every girl’ in immediate preverbal focus position would prompt the selection of “no”.
Acceptability % of “Yes” N of participant
Existential quantifierFOCUS 6.2 80% 20/25 (Version A)
(mutil bat > neska guztiek)
Universal quantifierFOCUS 6.375 41.7% 10/24 (Version B)
(neska guztiek > mutil bat)
Table 7: Summary of responses for quantifier scope (Interpretation question: Did every girl kiss the same boy?)
As displayed in table 7, participants completing versions A and B of the experiment rated the sentences containing these quantified NPs in immediate preverbal position positively and a comparison of these acceptability ratings revealed no significant differences (Mann
Whitney test; p = 0.7048). With respect to the comprehension question, a higher number of
Basque speakers selected “Yes” when the existential quantifier mutil bat ‘a boy’ was in immediate preverbal focus position (i.e. there was a boy and every girl kissed that boy) and
“No” for universal quantifier neska guztiek ‘every girl’ (i.e. every girl kissed some boy/a different boy). These response tendencies ratify that elements in immediate preverbal focus position indeed have wide scope over the entire predicate.
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The last target item included in the questionnaire sought to investigate whether the meaning contribution made by exhaustivity to immediate preverbal information focus in
Basque was at-issue or not-at-issue. Participants had to evaluate whether the dissented response given to the utterance containing immediate preverbal information focus Mirenek eta Oihanek atera dute bikaina azterketan ‘it is Miren and Oihane who got an A on the test’ targeted the identity of the individuals or the exhaustive content of the sentence, namely, the number of individuals for which the predication was true. As shown in participants’ response patterns in table 8, identity, rather than exhaustivity, was almost categorically chosen as the relevant content of the message being negated by the speaker, suggesting that while there is an association between immediate preverbal focus and exhaustivity, the latter is not-at-issue and, therefore, it is not what the speaker is going on record as contributing to the discourse.
% of response choice N of responses
Identity implication 95.9% 47/49
Exhaustivity implication 4.1% 2/49
Table 8: Contribution of exhaustivity to the meaning of preverbal information focus
3.3.6. Discussion
Findings from this second experiment confirm, on the one hand, that the information material conveyed by immediate preverbal focus does not only contribute new and non- presupposed information, but that it does so exhaustively. Crucially, the dissent diagnostic
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used in the questionnaire shows that exhaustivity constitutes not-at-issue content and, therefore, it is not contemplated as part of the asserted meaning of this focus construction.
As for in-situ information focus, Basque speakers also value its usage rather positively receiving high acceptability ratings. The interpretation task has likewise confirmed that this alternative focus construction is more often interpreted non-exhaustively. The interpretive import associated to each focus structure seems to be stable and generalizable to all participants and not affected by their Basque proficiency level, age of acquisition of Basque, or level of education.
In addition, interactions between focus and quantifier scope have provided evidence in support of a wide scope interpretation of immediate preverbal foci. Admittedly, however,
Basque speakers seem to be more confident about assigning a wide scope reading to the existential quantifier than to the universal quantifier: while 80% of the responses favored an affirmative answer when the existential quantifier was in a Focus-V configuration (i.e. ‘yes, every girl kissed the same boy), indicating strong intuitions about this quantifier’s wide scope reading, Basque speakers showed weaker linguistic intuitions for the universal quantifier
(58.3% for ‘no, every girl did not kiss the same boy’). A closer look at participants’ responses shows that those who acquired the language since birth and have native-like command of the language chose the wide scope reading of the universal quantifier more often (69.2% “no” responses) than those who acquired the language at the age of 2 or later (45.4% “no” responses). One possibility that might account for this inter-speaker variation is the dual function of the determiner bat ‘a/one’ in Basque, which may behave as the existential quantifier “some” or a numeral determiner “one”. Less proficient speakers might be tempted to associate bat ‘a/one’ with a numeral interpretation more easily than with the existential quantifier, preventing them from obtaining the wide scope reading of the universal quantifier 100
in focus position (e.g. (neska guztiek > mutil bat)) that each girl kissed some boy.
Conversely, more dominant and proficient speakers might be more aware of this quantifier’s two possible readings and interpret it as an indefinite determiner more often, and therefore interpret the scope of the universal quantifier correctly. Be this as it may, I will simply note this tentative explanation here and leave this question open for future research.
On a final note, unlike in the forced-choice task, acceptability ratings did reveal a significant different between in-situ arguments and in-situ adjuncts. The latter were reported to be significantly less preferred in-situ than focalized subjects. Yet, considering participants’ overt commentary about the stimuli, I suspect that this difference is not due to the argument-adjunct distinction, but the presence of a demonstrative subject horrek ‘those’ in the in-situ adjunct variant. Some participants commented that the response to the wh- question, shown in (81), sounded odd because of the demonstrative horrek ‘those’ and suggested the alternative standard variant horiek ‘those’ in its place, but never commented overtly or attributed lower ratings to the position of the locative adjunct itself.
(81) Horrek ospatu egiten dira Andalusian.
Those.ERG celebrate.INF do.PROG aux.PRS Andalusia.in
‘Those are celebrated in Andalusia.’
3.4. Spanish experiment I: Forced-choice acceptability judgment task
3.4.1. Participants
74 Peninsular Spanish speakers, ranging between 18 and 58 years old (mean age = 31.4 years old), participated in the forced-choice acceptability judgment task. In the recruitment 101
process, a short message and link to the survey were posted online in various social networks, asking Spanish speakers from Spain to participate in the study and share the questionnaire with their friends, family members and acquaintances.
In order to track socio-demographic differences among participants, everyone completed a short socio-demographic questionnaire, which gathered information about their place of origin, age, gender, education and the number and self-assessed proficiency of languages spoken besides Spanish (Appendix F). Participants who reported being born and raised in regions of the BAC were excluded from the study in order to keep it consistent to non-
Basque, Peninsular Spanish speakers only.
3.4.2. Stimuli
This task included 10 target items and 24 distractors.8 The number of distractors outnumbered the number of target sentences in order to inhibit participants from discovering what the purpose of the task was while simultaneously preventing them from developing automated response strategies.
All target sentences involved the focalization of a subject constituent, responding to the wh-operator quién ‘who’. The reason for choosing subject constituents as opposed to direct objects or adjuncts (i.e. adverbs) was the ease of clearly differentiating in-situ vs. sentence- final foci in the case of the former type. The suitability of employing subjects rather than
8 The original experiment consisted of a total of 12 target items. In the current thesis, however, only 10 of these will be considered and discussed. The remaining 2 will be excluded from the analysis and subsequent discussion. These last two items sought to entertain the possibility that rightward information foci must not necessarily always fall in sentence-final position if additional new information is added to the answer. Preliminary results suggest this hypothesis to be on the right track; however, more research is necessary to understand the implications of such findings and, therefore, will not be further discussed in this dissertation.
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objects or adverbial expression in the experimental task allowed the current investigation to not only empirically test whether variability between sentence-final vs. in-situ positioning of focalized subjects was influenced by exhaustivity, but also to assess whether the use of accusative clitics lo, la, los or las as opposed to fully spelled out object NPs affected the positioning of focused phrases as suggested in various production studies (see section 3.2.1.).
a. Use of accusative clitics vs. full accusative NPs
Recent semi-spontaneous production studies have shown that Argentinian Spanish speakers and Yucatecan Spanish speakers tend to place focus-marked subject arguments in sentence- final position more often when they co-occur with accusative clitics in their response to a wh-question than when they express the full direct object NP (e.g. Gabriel 2010, Uth 2014).
In order to test whether focus placement was indeed dependent on the occurrence of accusative clitics as opposed to full accusative NPs, a cliticDO vs. NPDO distinction was made across the stimuli. A relevant comparative example is given in (82) and (83).
(82) ¿Quién ha ganado la final de la Eurocopa?
Who.NOM have.PRS win.PRT the final.ACC of the Euro.cup
‘Who has won the final match in the Euro Cup?’
a. Ha ganado la final [F Portugal].
Have.PRS win.PRT the final.ACC Portugal.NOM
‘It is Portugal that has won the final.’
b. [F Portugal] ha ganado la final.
Portugal.NOM have.PRS win.PRT the final.ACC
‘It is Portugal that has won the final.’ 103
(83) ¿Quién ha perdido la final?
Who.NOM have.PRS lose.PRT the final
‘Who has lost the final?’
a. La ha perdido [F Nadal].
It.ACC have.PRS lose.PRT Nadal.NOM
‘It is Nadal who has lost it.’
b. [F Nadal] la ha perdido.
Nadal.NOM it.ACC have.PRS lose.PRT
‘It is Nadal who has lost it.’
Both the interrogatives in (82) and (83) constitute so-called exhaustive questions; that is, since there is only one possible winner of the Euro cup competition and one possible loser in a final tennis match, the entity satisfying the presuppositions that ‘x won the final’ and ‘x lost the final’ in (82) and (83) respectively must in itself be exhaustive. Given the exhaustive nature of these two questions, if there were indeed an association between sentence-final focus and exhaustivity, focus placement would be expected to be favored in sentence-final position in both scenarios.
Nevertheless, if the form of the direct object (i.e. cliticDO vs. NPDO) were more important than the property of exhaustivity and indeed fully spelled-out direct object NPs prompted focused subjects to appear more often in-situ in Peninsular Spanish on a par with the production patterns collected for other varieties of Spanish, participants would exhibit a preference for the in-situ variant (e.g. (82b)). If, on the other hand, exhaustivity outranked the possible effect of sentences involving full accusative NPs, responses would be expected to lean towards the sentence-final focus variants in (a) both in the context of (82) and (83).
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b. Universally quantified expressions
In assessing the effects not only of exhaustivity but also clitic usage, participants were also asked to evaluate the positioning of focused phrases involving universal quantifiers such as todo el mundo ‘everyone’ in combination with accusative clitics (e.g. (84)), on the one hand, and full accusative NPs (e.g. (85)), on the other. If exhaustivity were indeed the most important predictor of the variation, the position of [F todo el mundo] ‘everyone’ would be more often selected in sentence-final position due to its inherent exhaustive meaning (i.e. it exhausts all possible entities satisfying a given predication and does not perform an exclusion of alternatives), exemplified in (84a) and (85a). Yet, if focus placement were significantly more sensitive to the form of the direct object, the in-situ focus variant could be the preferred choice when the full accusative NP was utilized (e.g. (85b)).
(84) ¿Quién ha completado el cuestionario?
Who.NOM have.PRS complete.PRT the questionnaire.ACC
‘Who has completed the questionnaire?’
a. Lo ha completado [F todo el mundo].
It.ACC have.PRS complete.PRT everyone.NOM
‘Everyone has completed it.’
b. [F Todo el mundo] lo ha completado.
Everyone.NOM it.ACC have.PRS complete.PRT
‘Everyone has completed it.’
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(85) ¿Quién ha pagado la inscripción?
Who.NOM have.PRS pay.PRT the registration.ACC
‘Who has paid the registration fee?’
a. Ha pagado la inscripción [F todo el mundo].
Have.PRS pay.PRT the regitration.ACC everyone.NOM
‘Everyone has paid the registration fee.’
b. [F Todo el mundo] ha pagado la inscripción.
Everyone.NOM have.PRS pay.PRT the registration.ACC
‘Everyone has paid the registration fee.’
c. Focus operators solamente ‘only’ vs. hasta ‘even’
To further investigate the possible connection between sentence-final focus and exhaustivity,
I followed Horvath’s (2007) description of Hungarian focus (see §2.3.) and asked Peninsular
Spanish speakers to select whether focused elements embedded under solamente ‘only’ should be placed sentence-finally or in-situ (e.g. (86)). It was predicted that if exhaustivity had any bearing on the sentence-final position of Spanish information focus, participants would select (86a) as the most appropriate response to the question in (86).
(86) ¿Quiénes habéis terminado el proyecto?
Who.NOM have.PRS finish.PRT the project.ACC
‘Who has finished the project?’
a. Lo han terminado [F solamente Pilar y Mario].
It.ACC have.PRS finish.PRF only Pilar.NOM and Mario.NOM
‘Only Pilar and Mario have finished it.’ 106
b. [F Solamente Pilar y Mario] lo han terminado.
Only Pilar.NOM and Mario.NOM it.ACC have.PRS finish.PRT
‘Only Pilar and Mario have finished it.’
In addition, in order to confirm that the preference for rightmost focus is triggered by exhaustivity and not focus itself, I tested the positioning of focalized constituents under the
Spanish focus operator hasta ‘even’, which has been suggested to prefer an in-situ position in
Hungarian precisely because of its non-exhaustive interpretive import.9 Unlike in (86), focus phrases embedded under hasta ‘even’ were expected to show much more variability due to the non-inherent exhaustive value.
(87) ¿Quienes habéis probado el sushi del Miu?
Who.NOM have.PRS try.PRT the sushi.ACC from Miu
‘Who has tried sushi from Miu?’
a. [F Hasta Paula y Susana] lo han probado.
Even Paula.NOM and Susana.NOM it.ACC have.PRS try.PRT
‘Even Paula and Susana have tried it.’
b. Lo han probado [F hasta Paula y Susana].
It.ACC have.PRS try.PRT even Paula.NOM and Susana.NOM
‘Even Paular and Susana have tried it.’
9 It should be noted that the stimuli targeting the effects of these focus-sensitive operators only used accusative clitics; no fully spelled-out direct object NPs were tested under this condition. This was purposefully intended in order to reduce the number of target stimuli as much as possible and, consequently, reduce the possible effects of fatigue in participants’ responses.
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d. Inherently exhaustive entities vs. non-exhaustive entities
Further empirical evidence in favor of an association between sentence-final focus and exhaustivity was sought through the contrasting of inherently exhaustive entities such as el sol
‘the sun’ (e.g. (88)) and not necessarily exhaustive focused entities such as regular proper names (e.g. (89)). Crucially, target structures were constructed together with so-called out-of- the blue scenarios, which are usually represented through questions like ¿qué pasa? ‘what’s up?’. Resultantly, any disparities regarding focus placement choice in (88) and (89) would be entirely due to the exhaustive vs. non-exhaustive quality of the focal material involved.
In adopting this line of reasoning, being the sun a unique element in the universe, if
Spanish speakers preferred [F el sol] ‘the sun’ to appear sentence-finally (e.g. (88a)) rather than in-situ (e.g. (88b)), such response trends would be a strong indication of the interaction between sentence-final focus and an exhaustive implication. Similarly, the effects of exhaustivity would be further validated if non-exhaustive predicates such as those in (89), which merely involve the proper name of two individuals, were favored in its canonical base- generated position (e.g. (89b)), owing to its non-exhaustive character.
(88) ¿Qué pasa?
‘What’s up?’
a. ¡Que por fin ha salido el sol!
That finally have.PRS rise.PRT the sun.NOM
‘That the sun is finally out!’
b. ¡Que por fin el sol ha salido!
That finally the sun.NOM have.PRS rise.PRT
‘That the sun is finally out!’ 108
(89) ¿Qué pasa?
‘What’s up?’
a. Que lo han dejado Alejandro y Patricia.
That it.ACC have.PRS break.up.PRT Alejandro.NOM and Patricia.NOM
‘That Alejandro and Patricia have broken up.’
b. Que Alejandro y Patricia lo han dejado.
That Alejandro.NOM and Patricia.NOM it.ACC have.PRS break.up.PRT
‘That Alejandro and Patricia have broken up.’
3.4.3. Design and procedure
The experiment was designed using an online survey administered through the web survey platform SurveyGizmo (Vanek and McDaniel, 2006). Each contextualized question-answer pair was separately uploaded into a different page in the survey, allowing participants to judge each test item at a time. The context and wh-question pertinent to each stimulus was presented in written form, but all sentences instantiating narrow information focus were recorded by the author using the head mounted microphone Plantronics audio 400 DSP with a 44100Hz sampling rate, in order to control for intonational alterations. Test items, including targets and fillers, were semi-randomized in order to avoid response strategies and the survey was designed as a forward-only survey to bypass any changes in participants’ responses. A sample of the survey design is reproduced in figure 7.
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Figure 7: Sample survey design of the Spanish forced-choice acceptability judgment task
The experimental procedures were organized as follows: after accepting the consent form, an instructions page guided subjects to, first, read a short context and its corresponding question, then, listen to two possible answers and, ultimately, choose only the one they considered to be the most suitable response. Participants were reminded that what truly mattered was how they would actually answer those questions. After reading the instructions, a practice test was administered to familiarize participants with the format of the experiment and ensure that everyone understood the task. Once the practice test was completed, participants were led to the forced-choice acceptability judgment task and, before submitting their responses, everyone was asked to fill out a short socio-demographic questionnaire. The entire procedure was estimated to last between 30 to 40 minutes.
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3.4.4. Data analysis
In order to evaluate the role of exhaustivity and the co-occurrence of accusative clitics vs. fully spelled out form of the direct object with regard to the variable realization of Spanish narrow information focus, a series of mixed-effects logistic regression models were created using RStudio. The first inferential analysis considered the effects of 5 independent variables, namely EXHAUSTIVITY (exhaustive vs. non-exhaustive/ambiguous), FORM OF THE DIRECT
OBJECT (cliticDO vs. NPDO), AGE (continuous variable), GENDER (female vs. male) and LEVEL
OF EDUCATION (high level vs. low/middle level), in reference to FOCUS POSITION CHOICE
(e.g. sentence-final vs. in-situ), which constituted the dependent variable of the analysis. In addition, PARTICIPANT was included in the model as a random effect in order to neutralize the possibility of undue influence (i.e. extreme outliers) of particular individual speakers on the overall data-set. All independent variables were added to the model following a stepwise procedure through the step function in RStudio and, in identifying the best fitted model for the current data, all nested models were compared using the function ANOVA.
A second generalized linear regression model was operationalized, which sought to determine the magnitude of effect of exhaustive and non-exhaustive triggers in the data. For this second complementary model, FORM OF THE DIRECT OBJECT was removed from the inferential analysis. EXHAUSTIVITY, AGE, GENDER and LEVEL OF EDUCATION were entered one at a time, modeling a stepwise regression approach, and PARTICIPANT was kept in the analysis as a random effect.
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3.4.5. Results
To start, the elicited judgments collected in this task strongly corroborate that Spanish narrow information focus is not restricted to a rightmost, sentence-final position. A summary of participants’ response choices is provided in table 9.
% of sentence-final focusINFO Total N
NP[+EXH]: el sol ‘the sun’ 98.6% 73/74
ExhautiveQ
Accusative clitic 77% 57/74
Accusative NP 39.2% 29/74
Solamente ‘only’ 74.3% 55/74
UniversalQTF
Accusative clitic 71.6% 53/74
Accusative NP 17.5% 13/74
AmbiguousQ
Accusative clitic 59.4% 44/74
Accusative NP 18.9% 14/74
Hasta ‘even’ 43.2% 32/74
NP[-EXH] 9.4% 7/74
Table 9: Summary of participants' choice for each trigger
Participants’ overall response patterns suggest, very much in line with word order patterns observed in production data elicited for other Spanish varieties, that both in-situ
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and sentence-final information focus are available strategies in Peninsular Spanish speakers’ linguistic repertoire when it comes to the expression of information focus. Likewise, the observed tendency to produce information focus in preverbal, in-situ prosition when co- occurring with direct object NPs seems to be confirmed by Peninsular Spanish speakers, who seem to overwhelmingly prefer the in-situ variant when the accusative NP is expressed even in the context of exhaustive triggers. Yet, the picture is slightly different once narrow information focus occurs in interaction with accusative clitics. In those cases, exhaustivity seems to play a significant role in the positioning of information focus sentence-finally.
Overall response patterns show that exhaustive triggers seem to lead to the selection of sentence-final information focus more often than ambiguous or non-exhaustive scenarios.
The significant effect of EXHAUSTIVITY and FORM OF THE DIRECT OBJECT (clitic vs. fully spelled-out NP) is confirmed in the mixed effects logistic regression model developed to determine which factors contribute to the choice between sentence-final and in-situ narrow information focus in Spanish. As expected given the descriptive statistics reported in table 9, the data and corresponding findings show that it is not exhaustivity but the form of the accusative object what most strongly constrains the choice between in-situ and sentence- final information focus, relegating the effects of exhaustivity to the second strongest predictor of the variation (table 10).
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% of sentence-final Estimate Std. Error z value p value
Intercept 0.5183 0.2532 2.047 p < .05
Form of the Direct Object (RL: Accusative clitic)
Full NPDO 25.2% -2.3348 0.2678 -8.718 p < .001
Exhaustivity (RL: Non-exhaustive/Ambiguous)
Exhaustive 51.3% 0.7265 0.2521 2.882 p < .01
Table 10: Mixed-effects model of the factors contributing to the choice between sentence- final and in-situ narrow information focus in Spanish
With positive estimates signaling a preference for the sentence-final focus variant and negative estimates leaning towards the in-situ alternative, table 10 reports that the odds of choosing to place focalized subjects in the rightmost position is significantly higher when the direct object takes the form of a clitic as opposed to a fully realized NP. Likewise, according to the inferential analysis, the probability of placing focused subjects in sentence-final position is higher in the context of exhaustive triggers including exhaustive questions, focused phrases embedded under solamente ‘only’, inherently exhaustive entities such as el sol
‘the sun’ and the universal quantifier todo el mundo ‘everyone’.
In order to examine in greater detail the impact that the form of the direct object could have on the effects of exhaustivity and vice versa, an analysis of interactions was modeled using Conditional Inference trees. Figure 8 suggests that the effects of exhaustivity only seem to be at work when the direct object is expressed via pronominal clitics (node 4). If the direct object is fully realized, Spanish speakers prefer to leave the focused subject constituent in-situ. Be this as it may, the size effect of this interaction was revealed to be relatively small
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(p = 0.047) and, in fact, did not reach significance in the mixed-effects logistic regression
model.
Figure 8: Conditional Inference Tree: Interaction between form of the direct object and exhaustivity
In order to find out whether the effect of exhaustivity was equally strong for exhaustive
questions, focalized constituents with solamente ‘only’, the universal quantifier todo el mundo
‘everyone’ and the inherently exhaustive entity el sol ‘the sun’, a second logistic regression
analysis was carried out, where each exhaustive trigger was independently considered and the
form of the DO was an accusative clitic or it was simply absent. As detailed in table 11, the
sentence-final variant was more often picked out when the focus-marked element was in
itself exhaustive (i.e. el sol ‘the sun’) if compared to focalized constituents embedded under
the non-exhaustive focus operator hasta ‘even’. The second strongest environment showing
the highest probability of using the sentence-final variant were exhaustive wh-questions,
followed by focused phrases embedded under solamente ‘only’ and the universal quantifier todo
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el mundo ‘everyone’. When changing the reference level to any of the exhaustive triggers
(NP[+EXH] el sol ‘the sun’, exhaustive Q, solamente ‘only’, and universalQTF), significant differences emerged between these and ambiguous/non-exhaustive ones with the latter target items revealing negative estimates representative of a higher probability of selecting the in-situ focus alternative (i.e. RL = Exhaustive Q, estimate for hasta ‘even’ = -1.6455, p value < .001; AmbiguousQ = -0.9116, p value = .01; and NP[-EXH] = -3.7867, p value < .001).
% of sentence-final Estimate Std. Error z value p value
Intercept -0.3071 0.2619 -1.173 n.s.
Exhaustivity (RL: Hasta ‘even’)
El sol ‘the sun’ 98.6% 4.8295 1.0450 4.622 p < .001
ExhaustiveQ 77% 1.6452 0.3880 4.241 p < .001
Solamente ‘only’ 74.3% 1.4853 0.3795 3.914 p < .001
UniversalQTF 71.6% 1.3352 0.3726 3.584 p < .001
AmbiguousQ 59.4% 0.7335 0.3543 2.070 p < .05
NP[-EXH] 9.4% -2.1416 0.4824 -4.440 p < .001
Table 11: Conditional Inference Tree: Interaction between form of the direct object and exhaustivity
Especially remarkable are the highly negative estimates manifested by the [-exhaustive]
NP as opposed to the [+exhaustive] el sol ‘the sun’. The diverging response choices between the inherently exhaustive element el sol ‘the sun’, which is almost categorically placed sentence-finally, and non-exhaustive predicates like Alejandro y Patricia as a response to
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neutral questions such as qué pasa ‘what’s up’ further suggest that this rightmost position is linked to exhaustivity.
Finally, the data demonstrate that wh-questions which are ambiguous between an exhaustive or non-exhaustive response show the greatest variability among participants’ responses. The mixed-effects logistic regression analysis reports a slight preference towards sentence-final focus under this condition.
3.4.6. Discussion
Results from this forced-choice acceptability judgment task have compellingly proved that
Spanish narrow information focus is not strictly confined to a rightmost, sentence-final position at the structural level. Responses gathered from 74 Peninsular Spanish speakers have revealed that constituents conveying new, non-presupposed information may be expressed both sentence-finally and in-situ. This variability in narrow focus placement, however, does not come for free. Results from various logistic regression analyses have shown that variable focus positioning of subject constituents is constrained by exhaustivity, but more so by the form taken by the accusative direct object. Peninsular Spanish speakers prefer to put focused phrases sentence-finally when the direct object is manifested via accusative pronominal clitics, producing the structure [DOCLITIC V…SUBJECTFOCUS] more often than [V DONP …SUBJECTFOCUS]. Interestingly, a mild interaction between form of the
DO and exhaustivity suggests that exhaustivity seems to be only at play in the context of accusative clitics lo, la, los or las; otherwise, if the direct object is fully spelled-out, Peninsular
Spanish speakers prefer the in-situ variant producing [SUBJECTFOCUS V DO] patterns.
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It is possible that the difference between DO clitics and full direct object NPs regarding the position of focalized subjects may be due to processing effects, the hypothesis being that placing the focused subject in situ is preferable because it allows the speaker to retrieve new information faster, while placing it sentence-finally with an intervening full NP would require the speaker to retain more linguistic material before retrieving the information, which would amount to higher processing load. Be this as it may, further research would be necessary to confirm such a hypothesis.
As for exhaustivity, the latter has been shown to play a significant role with regard to focus, but more specifically with respect to focalized subject of transitive verbs involving accusative clitics and intransitive verbs such as salir ‘rise’. On the one hand, the fact that exhaustive predicates like el sol ‘the sun’ are almost categorically chosen in sentence-final position in out of the blue scenarios, in clear opposition to non-exhaustive proper names, yields a clear indication of the association between sentence-final narrow information focus and exhaustivity. Supporting evidence is additionally provided by the distribution of responses given to the focus sensitive operator solamente ‘only’, questions demanding an obligatory exhaustive response and the exhaustive universal quantifier todo el mundo
‘everyone’. All these exhaustive triggers have in fact been reported to favor focus placement sentence-finally when compared to the non-exhaustive focus operator hasta ‘even’. The differences found between these exhaustive markers and hasta ‘even’ is supportive of
Horvath’s analysis of Hungarian focalization mechanisms, where exhaustivity rather than focus per se is established as the main driving force prompting immediate preverbal focus sequences.
Lastly, as expected, a high degree of variability has been observed when questions did not enforce an obligatory exhaustive response. Here, participants exhibited a more variable 118
behavior with a slight predilection for the sentence-final ‘exhaustive’ variant. It seems reasonable to suggest that this modest preference may indeed be reflective of participants’ desire to commit to the Gricean conversational maxims of manner and quantity in an effort to conform to the conversational cooperative principle.
3.5. Spanish experiment II: Interpretation task
3.5.1. Participants
115 Peninsular Spanish speakers, ranging between 18 and 72 years old (mean age = 38.8 years old), participated in the Spanish interpretation task. In recruiting Spanish speakers who had been born and raised in Spain, three online resources were employed: social networks,
LINGUIST List and INFOLING.10,11 As for the first of this three, a short message and link to the survey were posted on Facebook asking Spanish speakers from Spain to participate in the study and share the questionnaire with their friends, family members and acquaintances.
On the other hand, LINGUIST List is a free online International Linguistic Community dedicated to providing information on language and language analysis, as well as the infrastructure necessary to function in the digital world. Through this website, an email was sent to this website’s moderators explaining the nature of the project and the need to recruit
Peninsular Spanish speakers for the completion of the current study. Once the request was approved, the link to the survey was made available and distributed via email to LINGUIST
List users. The third resource, INFOLING, is a moderated mailing list for sharing
10 LINGUIST List: http://linguistlist.org/indexfd.cfm 11 INFOLING: http://infoling.org/english/home.php 119
announcements and information related to Spanish linguistics. Through their website, an email was also sent to the moderators explaining the nature of the project and the objectives of the experiment. A link to the survey was included asking the moderators to forward the survey to other INFOLING users.
Participants had to be born and raised in Spanish regions in Spain. However, similar to the recruitment criteria pursued in the first Spanish experiment, those who reported having been born and raised in the BAC were excluded from the study in order to keep it exclusive to non-Basque, Peninsular Spanish speakers. In filtering out and classifying participants according to their socio-demographic characteristics, everyone was asked to complete a short questionnaire, gathering information about their place of origin, age, gender, education and the number and self-assessed proficiency of languages spoken besides Spanish
(Appendix F).
3.5.2. Stimuli
The interpretation task sought to determine the interpretive import of sentence-final vs. in- situ focus variant, on the one hand, and the (not-)at-issueness of the contribution made by exhaustivity. To this end, 2 test items and 2 fillers were included in the survey. This survey only consisted of two distractors because the target constructions diverged with regard to their form and function significantly. Fillers consisted of an evaluation of the interpretation of presupposition triggers involving dejar ‘to quit’ and conseguir ‘manage’. An example of one of these two fillers is given in (90). Based on speaker B’s answer to the question in (90), participants were asked to evaluate whether Isabel used to smoke in the past or not.
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(90) Context: Vero has been talking to Leyre on the phone for an hour. As soon as they
hang up the phone, Vero’s husband asks her:
Speaker A: ¿Pero qué te ha contado Leyre?
But what you have told Leyre
‘But what has Leyre been telling you?’
Speaker B (recording): Que Isabel ha dejado de fumar.
That Isabel have quit smoking
‘That Isabel has quit smoking.’
Together with filler items, participants were asked about the acceptability and interpretation of sentences containing a) immediate preverbal vs. in-situ response variants, and b) the (not-)at-issueness of sentences involving sentence-final focus.
a. Sentence final information focus vs. In-situ information focus
In compiling further evidence for the claim that there is indeed an association between sentence-final focus and exhaustivity, such that focal material appearing sentence-finally obtain an exhaustive reading, but in-situ focus does not, the interpretation of these two variants was compared. First, in order to ensure that both structures were equally acceptable among Peninsular Spanish speakers, participants were asked to rate the stimuli within a 7- point Likert scale, where 1 meant “completely unacceptable/I would never say a sentence like that or similar to that one” and 7 meant “completely acceptable/I would say a sentence like that or similar to that one”. If given a rating between 2 and 7, participants were prompted to respond a comprehension question that directly asked about the exhaustive nature of each focus structure. The relevant example is given in (91) and the interpretation 121
question is shown in (92). Note here that the target sentence involved narrow information focus of a subject co-occurring with a direct object pronoun as opposed to a fully spelled- out direct object.
(91) ¿Quiénes habéis pillado las entradas?
Who have bought the tickets
‘Who has bought the tickets?’
a. Las han comprado María y Davinia.
Them have bought María and Davinia
‘It it María and Davinia who have bought them.’
b. María y Davinia las han comprado.
María and Davinia them have bought
‘María and Davinia have bought them.’
(92) De acuerdo con la respuesta de Susana, ¿crees que Ana podría pensar que más personas, además
de María y Davinia, han comprado las entradas? ‘According to Susana’s response, do you
believe that Ana could think that more people, besides María and Davinia, bought
tickets?’
It was expected that, upon hearing the sentence-final focus variant in (91a), participants would choose “no” more often, owing to the exhaustive interpretation that no other individuals, besides María and Davinia, had bought their tickets yet. On the other hand, more affirmative responses were anticipated for the in-situ variant, granting the interpretation that other individuals, besides María and Davinia, could have purchased their tickets for the show.
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b. (Not-)at-issueness: dissent diagnostic
In order to test the contribution of exhaustivity in relation to sentence-final information focus in Spanish, I adopted the dissent diagnostic originally proposed in Tonhauser (2011).
The target item was the Spanish equivalent of the Basque diagnostic (see §3.2.2.). Peninsular
Spanish speakers read the statement in (93), which positions information focus sentence- finally, and then heard a recording that disagreed with that statement (i.e. Eso no es verdad ‘that is not true’). Upon hearing the negated statement, participants were asked to assess whether the negated statement referred to the identity of the individuals or the number of individuals who obtained an A on the test.
(93) Han sacado sobresaliente Mónica y Sergio.
Have obtained excellent Monica and Sergio
‘It is Mónica and Sergio who have obtained an A.’
It was hypothesized that if exhaustivity represented not-at-issue content, mirroring the results found across languages (i.e. Hungarian, English clefting, Basque in the current dissertation, etc.), then, participants would link the negated statement more often with the identity of the individuals, rather than the maximal number of people that received an A on the exam.
3.5.3. Design and procedure
All test items were built in the web survey platform SurveyGizmo (Vanek and McDaniel
2006). The entire experimental task proceeded online and, unlike the Basque interpretation task (see §3.3. for details), it was not administered in person. 123
Each question-answer pair was uploaded in a separate page so that participants could only see one test item at a time. The survey was designed as a forward-only survey and target and filler items were semi-randomized in order to inhibit mechanical responses and misguide participants’ attention from the focus structures. Each test item was implemented into the survey as follows: each stimulus contained a written short context, a wh-question and a response to that wh-question that was presented auditorily in order to control for prosodic differences between the two focus variants. Participants were first asked to rate how acceptable they thought the answer to the wh-question was using a 7-point Likert scale, where 1 meant “completely unacceptable/I would never say a sentence like that or similar to that one” and 7 meant “completely acceptable/I would say a sentence like that or similar to that one” (Figure 9).
Figure 9: Step 1: Acceptability judgment task
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Subsequently, the relevant interpretation question appeared in participants’ computer screen and, as shown in figure 10, informants were presented with a binary Yes-No response that was followed up with a comment box, where they could optionally express diffent means to express the meaning of the recorded stimuli.
Figure 10: Steps 2 and 3 including the comprehension question and comment box
The entire procedure was intended to be short and lasted approximately 10 minutes. The relevant target sentences and distractors were preceded by a consent form, an instruction page and a practice item to ensure that everyone complied with the requirements of the task and understood the setup of the experiment. The short socio-demographic questionnaire was built-in at the end of the survey.
Following the implemented methodology used in the Basque interpretation task, two versions of the survey were formulated. Participants in version A were asked to evaluate the interpretation of in-situ focus and version B only saw the sentence-final variant. The purpose of creating two different surveys was to avoid exposing participants to the potential
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confusion of having to interpret sentences that were seemingly only different with respect to their syntactic outputs. All other items (i.e. dissent diagnostic and fillers) were kept identical.
3.5.4. Data analysis
After visually assessing the overall distribution of acceptability response patterns using violin plots available through the ‘ggplot’ package available in RStudio, mean acceptability ratings of sentence-final focus and in-situ focus were compared using Mann U Whitney, the non- parametric test used to compare the means that come from the two unrelated samples. On the other hand, the interpretive import contributed by each focus construction was compared descriptively using chi-square tests, suitable to counts of categorical responses (i.e.
Yes vs. No responses) between two or more groups.
3.5.5. Results
On the whole, Spanish speakers showed higher preference for sentence-final information focus structures. As revealed in the violin plot in figure 11, a higher proportion of responses is condensed towards the positive end of the acceptability scale. Both mean (black dot) and median (blue dot) calculations are close to the highest numeric values in the scale. With respect to the in-situ variant, the width of the density plot shows a narrower distribution and both mean and median scores suggest that this alternative variant received lower ratings. Yet, results from a Mann Whitney U test indicated that Spanish speakers do not find sentence- final focus significantly more acceptable than its in-situ counterpart (Mann-Whitney U test =
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Z = 1.4409; p = 0.1516), further adding to the claim that information focus can felicitously be expressed in-situ, too.
Figure 11: Violin plot illustrating the distribution of acceptability ratings according to position of the focused phrase (blue dot = median; black dot = mean)
With regard to the interpretations assigned to each of these focus variants, Spanish speakers tend to interpret sentence-final focus exhaustively more often (77.8% “no” responses) than its in-situ counterpart (71.4% “no” responses). Yet, a pairwise comparison of “no” counts across these two focus structures did not reach significance. The relatively high number of “no” responses given to the in-situ alternative suggests that it is perhaps not
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so clear that in-situ focus cannot receive such interpretation. I return to this finding in the discussion section.
% of “No” N of participant
Sentence-final focus 77.8% 70/90
In-situ focus 71.4% 15/21
X2 sentence-final focus vs. in-situ focus: chi-square = 0.3827; degrees of freedom = 1; p = n.s.
Table 12: Summary of responses to the interpretation question: According to Susana’s response, do you believe that Ana could think that more people, besides María and Davinia, bought tickets?’
One last objective of this survey was to uncover whether the exhaustive content linked to sentence-final focus was at-issue or not-at-issue. As shown in table 13, Peninsular Spanish speakers related the dissenting statement with the identity of the individuals more often than with the maximality of individuals involved in the predication.
% of response choice N of responses
Identity implication 71% 64/90
Exhaustivity implication 29% 27/90
Table 13: Contribution of exhaustivity to the meaning of sentence-final information focus
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3.5.6. Discussion
In this study, participants were asked to rate the acceptability of sentence-final and in-situ focus variants constructed under ambiguous or neutral contexts. While their responses attributed higher acceptability scores to sentence-final focus than in-situ focus, both structures were granted highly positive ratings suggesting the general acceptance of both constructions in Peninsular Spanish.
The preference towards the sentence-final variant might have been due to a variety of reasons. As revealed in the forced-choice judgment task, the odds of choosing sentence-final focus constructions was significantly higher when the form of the direct object took the shape of an accusative clitic. The test items employed in this experimental task were in fact created using the pronominal forms of the direct object as opposed to its fully spelled-out counterpart. It is therefore possible that sentence-final focus structures were supplied higher ratings essentially because of the presence of these accusative pronouns.
Another possible factor influencing the goodness of sentence-final focus vs. in-situ focus could have been informants’ willingness to commit and provide an exhaustive response in an effort to conform to the cooperative principle and the Gricean conversational maxims of manner and quantity. In effect, results from the interpretation task have shown that sentence-final focus tends to be interpreted exhaustively by the majority of Spanish speakers.
That being the case, it is conceivable that participants would regard sentence-final focus instantiations to be more discourse appropriate as an answer to an information-seeking question in their intent to be as informative as possible and avoid any hints of obscurity and ambiguity. By the same token, this could also explain the moderately high percentage of
“No” responses selected by Spanish speakers when listening to the in-situ focus variant, who 129
might have been coerced towards the exhaustive interpretation simply because it is perceived as the more logical choice within such discourse context.
Although findings report highly acceptable scores for both focus constructions and a slight preference for an exhaustive interpretation when it comes to [CLITICDO
V…SUBJECTFOCUS] structures in Spanish, the robustness of these effects has not been as compelling as that reported for the Basque focus data. In fact, while an association between sentence-final information focus and exhaustivity has been observed in participants’ responses, a disassociation between in-situ focus and exhaustivity has not been clearly found within the current experiment. This, I suspect, might have resulted from the method of recruitment and implementation used in each case. While the Basque interpretation task was administered in person, this was not the case in Spanish. Administering the Basque interpretation task in person facilitated and reassured that participants were paying attention to the target items, understood the interpretation question correctly and reflected thoroughly on the interpretive import of these focus variants. This was, however, an impending limitation in the Spanish data and, therefore, I will opt to take these results as tentative and preliminary hoping to complete a more controlled experiment in the future.
3.6. Summary
Recapitulating, results from these four experiments, two for each language, have shown that there are two operative information focus constructions in Basque and Spanish, which I proceed to label as EXHAUSTIVE INFORMATION FOCUS and NON-EXHAUSTIVE INFORMATION
FOCUS. The former is representative of the traditional information focus described in earlier work, which advocates for a fixed designated structural positioning of focalized constituents 130
conveying new, non-presupposed information, taking wide scope over the whole predication. However, unlike these other studies, given the results from both the forced- choice and interpretation tasks I take the position that this structural variant carries an exhaustivity implication. On the other hand, as a novel contribution to the study of Basque and Spanish focalization processes, I make the proposition that Basque and Spanish hold a second type of information focus. While also expressing new, non-presupposed information,
I sustain that this complementary focus type is by default non-exhaustive in both languages, which I argue is the reason why it does not require an immediate preverbal or sentence-final placement of focus at the syntactic level neither in Basque nor in Spanish respectively.
Taking the information supplied by these experimental data altogether, in the next two chapters of this dissertation, I resolve a formal syntactic characterization of exhaustive information focus constructions in Basque and Spanish through operations pertaining to both generative minimalist accounts as well as functional, usage-based construction grammar models. These analyses will crucially show that, while Basque and Spanish focalization patterns are overtly distinct, the underlying mechanisms accounting for the formation of these structural sequences is identical.
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CHAPTER 4: A syntactic account of Basque Information focus
4.1. Introduction
This chapter presents a formal representation of the relation between Basque information focus and exhaustivity. While traditional Basque grammars have posited that constituents conveying information focus must fall immediately to the left of the verb, in chapter 3 of this dissertation, it has been shown that focal material denoting new, non-presupposed information can not only be realized in immediate preverbal position, but also remain in-situ and, therefore, not necessarily appear to the immediate left of the verb. My own native judgments as well as those collected experimentally have revealed that this newly-attested variable focus positioning is conditioned by the semantic-pragmatic notion of exhaustivity.
More specifically, data from two experimental tasks indicate that whereas widely-accepted immediate preverbal information focus is associated with an exhaustive implication, no such implication is tied to its in-situ counterpart (see chapter 3 for additional details).
This chapter is organized as follows: in §2, I review past studies seeking to formally account for the widely-accepted immediate preverbal positioning of Basque information focus. Yet, given the insufficient explanatory power of past analyses in accommodating the determining role of exhaustivity into variable focus positioning, in §3, I propose two formal characterizations of Basque focus that aim at capturing the generalizations pertinent to 132
exhaustive information focus by comparing the efficiency of the generative approach developed within the Minimalist program with that of non-derivational usage-based models such as Construction Grammar (CxG).
4.2. Basque information focus: Formal syntactic accounts
From a formal perspective, focus is perhaps one of the most studied phenomena in Basque linguistics. In accounting for the observed FOCUS-V adjacency effect in Basque, there are two major paths that scholars have pursued in its characterization: focus-movement approaches, where the focalized constituent itself is the element undergoing a series of structural permutations, and non-focus movement accounts, wherein the focus phrase remains in-situ and it is non-focal material that undergoes scrambling and dislocation in order for focus to achieve left-adjacency with the verbal complex.
4.2.1. Early transformational accounts
In seeking a formal treatment of the observed FOCUS-V adjacency in Basque, one of the very first formal approaches proposed to derive focus assignment through a focus semantic interpretation rule at the surface structure level (Donzeaud, 1972). Donzeaud defines Basque as a scrambling language, making its constituent order not determined by any phrase structure rule (1972: 38). Yet, he observes that, while the order is relatively free, the constituent bearing focus must always immediately precede the verb in affirmative sentences.
In the absence of syntactic phrase structure rules of focus, Donzeaud proposes a rule of
F(ocus) semantic interpretation that “will mark the portion of semantic reading in the 133
sentence which corresponds to a focused constituent in the syntactic surface structure”
(1972: 43). He assumes this to be a post-cyclic rule that applies at the structural level after all transformations, including scrambling. Put simply, under this account, a focus value is assigned to the constituent falling in preverbal position after scrambling.
In line with a transformational grammar approach, De Rijk (1978) takes the stance that noun phrases constituting the non-presupposed part of the message are marked by a syntactic, rather than semantic, ‘focus’ feature in underlying structures. He assumes that a movement rule, called Focus Positioning, triggers rightward movement and places the constituent marked [+focus] in front of the verb, creating a VP cluster. According to de Rijk, this VP clustering is generated as a result of a Verb Phrase formation rule, which precludes insertion of material between a focused expression and the following verb, as shown in the transformations in (94b).
(94) a. Aitak bihar[+FOCUS] amari gona berria [V [V ekarriko [Aux dio]]
Dad.ERG tomorrow mom.DAT skirt.ABS new.ABS bring.FUT aux.PRS
‘Dad will bring the new skirt for mom [F tomorrow].’
b. Aitak ti amari gona berria [VP [[+FOCUS] bihar]i [V [V ekarriko [Aux dio]]]
Dad.ERG mom.DAT skirt.ABS new.ABS tomorrow bring.FUT aux.PRS
‘Dad will bring the new skirt for mom [F tomorrow].’
(adapted from de Rijk 1978: 200)
Eguzkitza (1987) entertains a similar account involving focus rightward movement. He proposes that, in order to derive the structure in (95), where the focus phrase is in sentence initial, preverbal position, the lexical category V contains an inherent focus feature which, by means of the rule ‘move α’, attracts focus elements to the immediate preverbal position and 134
adjoins them to V at S-structure. In addition to rightward movement, this analysis further presupposes that the focus phrase and verbal complex, encompassed within INFL’, undergo fronting to sentence initial position, as shown in figure 12, accounting for the possibility of non-focal material to follow the verb.
(95) [F liburua] bidali dio gizonak Peruri.
book.ABS send.PRF aux.PRS man.ERG Peru.DAT
‘The man sent [F the book] to Peru’. (Elordieta 1987: 97)
S (=INFL’’)
INFLj’ NP NP tj VP INFL gizonak Peruri h V’ Aux
NP NP V dio
th ti NP V
liburuai bidali
Figure 12: Rightward movement and fronting (adapted from Eguzkitza 1987)
Crucial to Eguzkitza’s analysis is the fact that he defines the position of focus as an A- bar position adjoined to V due to the similarities he encounters between wh-words and foci.
He notes that when questioning a given focalized constituent with a wh-question, the wh- word is placed in the exact same position as focus. To take the example at hand in (95), he shows that its wh-counterpart, here in (96), also hosts the wh-word in immediate preverbal position.
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(96) Zer bidali dio gizonak Peruri?
What.ABS send.PRF aux.PRS man.ERG Peru.DAT
‘What did the man send to Peru?’ (Eguzkitza 1987: 112)
In light of this symmetrical behavior, he proposes that wh-words and foci both occupy a non-argument position (e.g. focus as adjoined to V) immediately to left of V, which endows them with a [+focus] specification. As a result of this focus feature assignment, Eguzkitza proposes to use the feature as a kind of operator that allows interrogative and focus elements to adjoin high to the S node within the hierarchical representation so that their scope is defined in their logical representation. And, thusly, he establishes the logical form represented in (97) to the sentence in (95) above:
(97) [S liburuai [S gizonak Peruri ti [INFL’ [V ei [V bidali ]] dio]]]
Book.ABS man.ERG Peru.DAT send.PRF aux.PRS
‘It is the book that the man sent to Peru.’ (Eguzkitza 1987: 116)
These very first proposals sought to structurally capture the word order possibilities of focal and non-focal material within a main sentence. With the exception of Donzeaud, both de Rijk and Eguzkitza adopt a focus movement approach, where the focus bearing element is attracted to a V-adjacent position. Yet, common to all three accounts is the fact that these rely on the same focus feature mechanism in order to achieve the desired linguistic output. 12
12 Besides attributing movement to focus, other problematic aspects of these proposals involve lowering of the focus phrase, which is not supported by current generative syntactic theories as well as violations of ECP (Chomsky 1981, 1986). For a detailed discussion, see Elordieta (2001). 136
4.2.2. Ortiz de Urbina (1989, 1999)
With the proliferation of functional projections and the left-periphery (Chomsky, 1986),
Ortiz de Urbina (1989) puts forward a more refined clausal structure for Basque, as figure 13 shows:
CP Spec C’
C IP
Spec I’
VP I
Figure 13: Basque clause structure (adapted from Ortiz de Urbina 1989: 217)
His adaptation of this structure for Basque was originally aimed at accounting for subordination facts and wh-question formation. Regarding the latter, the immediate preverbal position characteristic of wh-words in Basque led Ortiz de Urbina to establish that wh-operators move to [SPEC, CP], much in the spirit of other well-known languages such as
English, allowing the interrogative operator in this A’-position to bind its trace and scope over the whole clause.
(98) [CP [Nork]i [C’ irakurri du [TP ti egunkaria]]]?
Who.ERG read.PRF aux.PRS newspaper.ABS
‘Who read the newspaper?’
In extending his analysis to additional constructions, he pointed out, in line with de Rijk
(1978) and Eguzkitza (1987), that focalized elements shared the same distributional
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properties with wh-words: foci are also operators that bind a variable from their immediate preverbal position, as revealed in (99).
(99) [F Mikelek]i irakurri du ti egunkaria.
Mikel.ERG read.PRF aux.PRS newspaper.ABS
‘It is Mikel who read the newspaper.’
On the face of this parallel patterning, Ortiz de Urbina proposes to extend his analysis of wh-questions to focus structure and posits that both wh-words and focalized constituents are operators moving to the specifier of CP, or what he more generally labels FOCUS, in order to scope over the clause and, consequently, drag the verb to the head of the CP projection in line with Verb-second phenomena attested in German and Dutch root clauses.13 In Basque, according to Ortiz de Urbina (1989), head-to-head movement (e.g. (V- to-I-to-C movement) of the inflected verb is obligatory when any of these two operators, either wh- or focus, move to the specifier position yielding the structures in figure 14.
Figure 14: Wh-movement (left) and Focus movement (right)
13 An earlier version of his analysis of focus assumed, following Horvath (1981), the existence of an A-bar position left sister to the verb inside VP, which solicited downward movement to a FOC(us) node, preventing the gap from being properly c-commanded by the focus operator. 138
His proposal assumes that wh-movement is a sub-phenomenon of the more general focus movement, which is compatible with the traditional view advocated originally by
Horvath (1986) and Rochemont (1986) that wh-words are inherently focused. In a more refined version of his analysis, Ortiz de Urbina (1999) provides further evidence in favor of a unitary wh-/focus-movement treatment. On the one hand, focus phrases like wh-words can undergo successive-cyclic movement from a subordinate clause to the matrix clause, where they are placed as operators scoping over the whole predicate (e.g. (100)).
(100) [F Jonek]i uste dut [ ti esan duela Mikelek [ ti idatzi
Jon.ERG think.PRF aux.PRS say.PRF aux.PRS-COMP Mikel.ERG write.PRF
duela ti eskutitza]]
aux.PRS-COMP letter.ABS
‘It is Jon that I think Mikel has said has written the letter.’
(Ortiz de Urbina 1999: 313)
Furthermore, in addition to extraction, Ortiz de Urbina (1999) illustrates occurrences of pied-piping structures involving focus, such as those in (101) and (102). In (101), the genitive modifier is the target of focus, but the entire DP structure is left adjacent to the verb as extraction of focalized material from the DP subject would incur a violation of the Left-
Branch condition. In (102), analogous to its wh-counterpart in (103), the focalized subject appears in immediate preverbal position in the embedded clause and the clause where focus is contained is likewise to the left of the matrix verb esan ‘say’. Crucially, as Ortiz de Urbina notes, while both operator types are internal to the clause, they have scope over the entire structure which, according to this scholar, is accomplished by postulating a feature- percolation mechanism that passes the operator feature from the specifier to its mother node
(i.e. the entire embedded CP projection). 139
(101) [[F Jonen] etxe-ko teilatuak]i izan ditu itoginak ti.
Jon.GEN house-of roof.ERG have.PRF aux.PRS leaks.ABS
‘The roof of [F Jon’s] house has leaks.’ (Ortiz de Urbina 1999: 317)
(102) [[F Jonek] idatzi duela liburua]i esan du Peiok ti.
Jon.ERG write.PRF aux.PRS-COMP book.ABS say.PRF aux.PRS Peio.ERG
‘Peio said that [F Jon] wrote the book.’ (Ortiz de Urbina 1999: 317)
(103) [[Nork] idatzi duela liburua]i esan du Peiok ti?
who.ERG write.PRF aux.PRS-COMP book.ABS say.PRF aux.PRS Peio.ERG
Lit. ‘Who wrote the book has Peio said?’ (Ortiz de Urbina 1999: 317)
Whereas their overt configuration is analogous, Ortiz de Urbina further shows that wh- and focus elements cannot simultaneously land in the same position, as shown in (104) where the wh-word is in immediate preverbal position, presumably in [SPEC, CP], and is ungrammatical either preceding or following the subject, suggesting the availability of one unique landing site in the left-edge.
(104) Galdetu didate (*[F Jonek]) zer (*[F Jonek]) erosi duen.
Ask.PRF aux.PRS Jon.ERG what.ABS Jon.ERG buy.PRF aux.PRS-COMP
‘They have asked me what [F John] bought.’ (Ortiz de Urbina 1999: 315)
In light of these data, Ortiz de Urbina (1999) concludes that focus expressions are elements bearing a focus operator feature that move to the same left-peripheral position
[SPEC, CP] as wh-operators, via “a strong [+focus] feature to be checked by some functional head” (1999: 316). Under this analysis, the complementizer head possesses the feature to agree with the element residing in the specifier, be it FOC(us) or WH-expression.
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4.2.3. Elordieta (2001)
Elordieta (2001) challenges Ortiz de Urbina’s (1989, 1999) proposal and argues that wh- words and foci cannot be treated as a uniform phenomenon that occupies the same structural position because they do not display a symmetric behavior with regards to Weak and Strong crossover effects (see section 4.3.1. for a detailed discussion). By virtue of these purported asymmetries between wh-constructions and foci, Elordieta (2001) rejects an analysis on focus movement grounds à la Ortiz de Urbina and, instead, proposes two alternative strategies to accommodate interactions between Basque word order and focus.
On the one hand, her work appeals to an in-situ characterization of focus, wherein neither foci nor the verbal complex move. Under this approach, focus is interpreted through default sentential stress, which is computed following Zubizarreta’s Nuclear Stress Rule (1998) according to which nuclear stress falls in the rightmost constituent to the left or to the right of the verb, depending on the recursion pattern of the language. Since the recursion pattern applies to the left in Basque, main stress would align with the rightmost constituent in front of the verb. This stress-driven analysis would be aimed at accommodating neutral contexts wherein the V+Aux complex is sentence final (see §2.3.1.). In order to illustrate this first scenario, Elordieta considers cases involving direct object focus. As shown in (105), in neutral contexts, the object is placed in its default immediate preverbal position and, by
Zubizarreta’s stress assignment rule, it also receives the main sentence stress. Following this rationale, Elordieta concludes that abesti berri bi ‘two new songs’ constitutes in-situ
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information focus, yielding an appropriate answer to a question such as zer abestu dute umeek gaur? ‘what did children sing today?’.14
(105) Gaur umeek [F abesti berri bi] abestu dituzte.
today children.ERG song.ABS new two sing.PERF aux.PRS
‘Today the children sang two new songs.’ (Elordieta 2001: 131)
On the other hand, in order to derive foci that are not immediately preverbal by default and lack nuclear stress, as is the case of (106) where focus assignment is intended on the dative object, Elordieta proposes a marked scrambling operation of non-focal material.15 In essence, since stress-shifting is not an option in Basque, stress is still assigned to the first element to the left of the verb and, thus, it is any non-focal materials intervening between the intended focus and the verb that must undergo movement to the left in order to ensure that the intended focus bearing expression is located in front of the verb. Crucially, while movement operations are involved, the focus phrase receives prosodic prominence in-situ.
This process is exemplified in (106a) in simplified terms.
(106) * Mikelek [F umeei] gozoki batzuk ekarri dizkie.
Mike.ERG children.DAT candy.ABS some.ABS bring.PRF aux.PRS
‘Mike bought some candy [F for the children]’. (Elordieta 2001: 139)
a) Mikelek [gozoki batzuk]i [F umeei] ti ekarri dizkie.
Mike.ERG candy.ABS some.ABS children.DAT bring.PRF aux.PRS
‘Mike bought some candy [F for the children]’. (Elordieta 2001: 139)
14 In this context, focus can project and extend to VP and IP domain and, hence, both abesti berri bi abestu dituzte ‘sang two new songs’ and the entire sentence can be asserted as new information. 15 Elordieta adopts the notion of markedness in order to express the intuition that any syntactic operation involving movement is costlier than non-movement. Uneconomical operations, such as scrambling, are regarded as last resort under her proposal and, in this particular case, are only allowed to satisfy a focus interpretation that cannot be obtained in neutral word order and stress assignment. 142
The second alternative computation regards information focus as a constituent that is base-generated in a left-dislocated position, targeting a sentence-initial focus configuration.
Unlike Ortiz de Urbina’s analysis, rather than remerging foci as the specifiers of the CP projection from an IP internal position, focal material is left-adjoined to CP and the verb moves to C in order to achieve FOCUS-V adjacency. Under Elodieta’s account, since focus is not regarded as an operator (i.e. it has no quantificational force), it follows that sentence- initial preverbal foci do not bear a wide scope interpretation and, resultantly, must be interpreted internal to the sentence. In order to achieve this interpretation, Elordieta posits that the association between the focus phrase adjoined to CP and the clause-internal position where the dislocated phrase is interpreted is not mediated through direct movement of the focus constituent, but through the movement of a null operator, which is co-referential with the focused phrase. Observe the proposed syntactic representation of (107) in figure 15.
(107) [F Sofa gainean] utzi ditu Edurnek liburuak.
Couch on leave.PRF aux.PRS Edurne.ERG books.ABS
‘Edurne left the book [F on the couch].’
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Figure 15: Left-dislocated focus (Elordieta 2001: 150)
The operator is originally generated as the sister of the complement and moves to [SPEC,
CP], producing a chain between the gap (represented by ti), the left-adjoined focus and the operator itself. Elordieta defends that the presence of this null operator makes a series of accurate predictions about the structural configuration of focus. First, it ensures that no phrase can intervene between the dislocated phrase and the verb, conforming to the
FOCUS-V immediacy effect attested in Basque. Second, it accounts for the fact that wh- phrases and foci cannot co-occur simultaneously in the left edge given that the null operator is already filling the [SPEC, CP] position. And, additionally, it explains the impossibility of encountering sentence-initial focus in the context of syntactic islands, namely because movement of the null operator is also constrained by locality conditions and, therefore, it cannot be extracted from a deeply embedded position to a higher projection, as is the case of the adjunct island in (108).
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(108) * [F Alkondarako botoia]i atera zinen [ ti josi aurretik].
Shirt.of button.ABS leave.PRF aux.PST sew.INF before
‘You left before you sewed the button of your shirt.’ (Elordieta 2001: 152)
Whereas focus movement does not emerge in the strict sense, that is, the focalized constituent per se is not fronted, Elordieta’s focus-dislocation treatment anticipates movement of the verb and auxiliary. In fact, a focus structure where the intended focus expression was base-generated in the SPEC of CP, but the verb remained in its IP internal domain would be ruled out since stress would be incorrectly assigned to the element that precedes it rather than the adjoined focus phrase as shown schematically in (109), where stress is assigned to the underlined object liburuak ‘books’.
(109) * [CP [F Sofa gainean]i [CP Opi [IP Edurnek liburuak utzi ditu ti]]]
Couch on Edurne.ERG books.ABS leave.PRF aux.PRS
‘Edurne left the book [F on the couch].’
In order to capture the required adjacency, Elordieta adopts Horvath’s (1986) Focus
Parameter which supplies V with a [+focus] feature. Under such analysis, when the focus is adjoined to CP, the verb raises to COMP in order to be adjacent to the focused element.
4.2.4. Arregi (2003)
An in-situ treatment of focus is also entertained by Arregi (2003a). More specifically, he offers a prosody-based account in order to implement an analysis of focus constructions. In his analysis, the fact that foci have to be left-adjacent to the verb is seen as a consequence of their need to bear sentence stress, which falls in the “rightmost constituent to the left of the verb” (2003: 128) as predicted by his modified version of Cinque’s Nuclear Stress Rule 145
(NSR). Application of the NSR proposed in Arregi (2003) imposes the restriction that focalized constituent must remain internal to vP, otherwise focus falls on the verb itself.
Following this constraint of stress assignment, his analysis predicts that intervening material between the focal element and the verb will have to undergo either left dislocation or right dislocation, resulting in adjunction to TP, in order to grant the focalized constituent its desired preverbal position. (110a) illustrates a case of left-dislocation. According to Arregi
(2003), when unfocused material moves to the left, they become topics. Arregi follows
Buring’s (1997) theory of the semantics of topic and assumes that the topic value of a (110a) is a set of sets of propositions of the form ‘x saw y’. By marking the left-dislocated constituent Jon ‘John’ as topic, (110a) represents a partial answer to the question ‘who saw
John?’, hence implying that other people besides John may have been seen by x. Conversely, when non-focal phrases move to the right, as in (110b), the latter are understood as given information (i.e. its denotation has been mentioned previously in the discourse).
(110) * [F Mirenek] Jon ikusi rau.
Mary.ERG John.ABS see.PRF aux.PRS
‘[F Mary] saw John.’
a. Joni [F Mirenek] ti ikusi rau. [Left-dislocation, topic]
John.ABS Mary.ERG see.PRF aux.PRS
‘[F Mary] saw John.’ (Arregi 2003: 132)
b. [F Mirenek] ti ikusi rau Joni. [Right dislocation, given]
Mary.ERG see.PRF aux.PRS John.ABS
‘[F Mary] saw John.’ (Arregi 2003: 142) 146
In line with Elordieta (2001), Arregi’s account rejects an analysis on focus-movement
grounds and takes FOCUS-V adjacency effects to follow straightforwardly from the
demands of prosody. However, unlike Elordieta’s approach, Arregi departs from a null
operator analysis and, instead, in order to account for sentence-initial preverbal focus, he
assumes that non-focal material move to the right and adjoin to TP. This analysis is also
extended to wh-question formation in his work. Following Zubizarreta (1998), Arregi
assumes that wh-phrases are F-marked constituents containing sentence-stress and,
therefore, proposes that wh-words stay in-situ while non-F-marked constituents undergo
movement either to the right or to the left, depending on their status as topics à la Buring
(1997) or given information. Long distance dependencies are captured much in the same
fashion under this account. Instead of focus/wh-fronting and subsequent [V+Aux]
movement to the left periphery, the embedded clause adjoins to the right of TP. Right-
dislocation would, however, drag the wh- or focus phrase to a postverbal position, resulting
in an undesired outcome. In overcoming this limitation, Arregi assumes that, before
rightward movement takes place, the wh-word or the focused constituent must adjoin to the
matrix vP for prosodic reasons, yielding the structure in figure 16.
TP
TP CP
Asp T …tXP...
vP Asp
XPF/WH vP Vi Aux
VP tv
tCP ti
Figure 16: Long distance dependencies via adjunction (Arregi 2003: 212) 147
In the resulting structure, wh-words and foci would be located in a position where they could receive sentence stress by the NSR. Yet, in order to achieve this focus-prosody alignment, the subject of the matrix clause must first undergo left- or right-dislocation; otherwise, the subject would be the element receiving stress.
4.2.5. Summary
To summarize, albeit through different syntactic implementations, Basque information focus has been unanimously claimed to have a designated position to the immediate left of the verb. Early proposals assume that information focus is assigned a preverbal position via movement of the focus constituent itself, which is proposed to be triggered through the presence of some inherent focus feature (de Rijk, 1978; Eguzkitza, 1986; Ortiz de Urbina,
1989, 1999). Elordieta’s and Arregi’s proposals differ significantly from accounts on focus movement and feature specifications; rather, they implement a non-movement treatment of focus, which relies on prosodic cues, rather than syntactic ones. While both analyses resort to scrambling and dislocation strategies, these are regarded as indirect consequences of the demands of prosody and focus, rather than the need for focused phrases to achieve a given structural position by virtue of being a syntactic operator scoping over the entire predicate.
In fact, Elordieta’s null operator hypothesis attempts to capture the structural surface similarities between wh-operators and focus expressions while rejecting to endorse focus with a quantificational operator status.
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4.3. The status of exhaustive information focus as a quantificational operator
Using my own native speaker judgments in addition to experimental validation (see chapter 3 for details), the notion of exhaustivity has proven to play a significant role in the characterization of Basque focus. These findings, however, are confronted by Elordieta’s
(2001) theory of focus. She refutes an association between Basque information focus and exhaustivity in her non-quantificational formulation of Basque focus. Her argument rests on two observations: 1) unlike wh-words, which hold an operator-like behavior, Basque focus is not sensitive to Weak and Strong Crossover effects and 2) Basque information focus, in contrast to Hungarian preverbal focus, does not change the truth condition of a sentence regarding exhaustivity.
In this section, I review Elordieta’s (2001) arguments against a quantificational proposal and suggest that her account is only partially correct. Following the empirically attested patterns of focus and their corresponding interpretations, I propose that the non-exhaustive in-situ type of focus is indeed not quantificational; yet, the exhaustive kind behaves as an operator that must take scope over the entire predicate.
4.3.1. Weak Crossover (WCO) and Strong Crossover (SCO) effects in Basque
focalization
Her first argument against a quantificational analysis of focus rests on the lack of Weak
Crossover (WCO) and Strong Crossover (SCO) effects. Following Lasnik and Stowell
(1991), Elordieta anticipates that if focus expressions were quantificational and behaved like
Hungarian preverbal focus, they would pattern like wh-phrases, which are widely known to 149
be subject to constraints on c-command and binding relations. Yet, what seem to be primarily Elordieta’s introspective judgments indicate that Basque immediate preverbal information focus does not respond to such restrictions, as shown by the contrast in (111) and (112) exemplifying wh-extraction and focus-movement respectively.
(111) * Nori agurtu du berei aitak ti?
Who.ABS greet.PRF aux.PRS his father.ERG
‘Who has his father greeted?’ (Elordieta 2001: 146)
(112) [F Jon]i agurtu du berei aitak ti.
Jon.ABS greet.PRF aux.PRS his father.ERG
‘His father has greeted [F Jon].’ (Elordieta 2001: 146)
In (111), the wh-word, which has moved across the pronoun bere ‘his/her’, binds the pronoun in subject position as well as its own trace but the trace fails to c-command the pronoun yielding an impossible bound construal. If focus movement involved an operator with quantificational force, focus-fronting would have to be subject to the same effects, but the seemingly acceptable condition of (112) suggests the latter to be invisible to WCO, which leads Elordieta to the claim that focus in Basque is not a genuine quantifier performing a quantification operation.
In a similar vein, she points out that Strong Crossover (SCO) effects only target wh- movement to an A’ position due to their quantificational operator-like behavior, while focus movement remains blind to these effects. Consider her data in (113) and (114).
(113) * Norii pentsatu zuen beraki [ ti emango ziotela sari bat]?
Who.DAT think.PRF aux.PST he.ERG give.FUT aux.PST-COMP prize.ABS a.DET
‘Whom did he think that they would give a prize to?’ (Elordieta 2001: 148)
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(114) ? [F Berari]i pentsatu zuen beraki [ ti emango ziotela sari bat].
Him.DAT think.PRF aux.PST he.ERG give.FUT aux.PST-COMP prize.ABS a.DET
‘He thought that they would give the prize [F to him].’ (Elordieta 2001: 148)
Whereas the pronoun fails to bind a wh-chain it c-commands in (113), according to
Elordieta, the same does not hold true of focalized constituents such as (114), where the focus phrase seems to possibly c-command the pronoun and the pronoun c-commands the trace as well. Yet, as Elordieta herself notes, if the fronted focus contains a referential expression, SCO effects arise, preventing the pronoun from c-commanding the trace as indicated in (115). In this regard, failure of the pronoun in (115) to c-command the trace and be correferential with the preposed dative object, on the one hand, and the dubious acceptability of (114), on the other, admittedly cast doubt on her contention for a non- quantificational treatment.
(115) * [F Joni]i pentsatu du beraki [ ti emango diotela sari bat].
Jon.DAT think.PRF aux.PRS he.ERG give.FUT aux.PRS-COMP prize.ABS a.DET
‘Hei thinks that they will give the prize [F to Jon]i.’ (Elordieta 2001: 148)
Further indication challenging her proposal rests on the low acceptability ratings and difficulty of interpretation bestowed to WCO by Basque speakers. Observe the answer to
(116), which was included as a filler item in the interpretation task.
(116) Zer esan dizu Patxik?
What.ABS say.PRF aux.PRS Patxi.ERG
‘What did Patxi tell you?’
? [F Iñigo]i hil duela berei aitak ti.
Iñigo.ABS kill.PRF aux.PRS-COMP his father.ERG
‘That hisi father killed [F Iñigo]i.’ 151
While the average acceptability ratings for exhaustive information foci reached approximately the 6-point range in the scale, overall acceptance rates for (116) only reached
4.5 points in the Likert-scale. In the comprehension portion, participants were asked whether the killer was Iñigo’s father or someone else’s father. By and large, participants reported the answer to (116) to be ambiguous and word order to be confusing. In fact, at first, most participants took “Iñigo” to be the agent of the killing, even though no subject ergative-marking was present in the noun phrase. After explaining that the subject-agent of the action was the NP bere aitak “his father”, some participants did conclude that it had to be someone else’s father, others said that both readings could be possible and the great majority chose “Iñigo’s father” as an option, but expressed alternative constituent orders and deletion of the possessive determiner bere ‘his’.
While these judgments do not categorically reject the association between the pronoun bere ‘his/her’ and the referential expression, the differing acceptability patterns between focus structures involving WCO and structures who lack it, on the one hand, and the generalized sentiment of confusion among Basque speakers regarding (116) do, to a certain extent, challenge the categorical felicity of WCO effects. These findings, if anything, suggest that the alleged asymmetry between wh- and focus constructions pointed out in Elordieta (2001) is not a clear-cut one. In addition, the fact that SCO effects arise when referential expressions occupy the immediate preverbal position further questions Elordieta’s reluctance to treat immediate preverbal focus as an A’-dependency. In light of these observations, I argue in favor of quantificational analysis that grants an operator-like status to foci in immediate preverbal position (see §4.4.).
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4.3.2. Information focus and exhaustivity
Elordieta (2001) provides a second piece of evidence against a quantificational approach to focus concerning the notion of exhaustivity. In showing that immediate preverbal focus in
Basque does not pattern like Hungarian preposed focus, Elordieta uses Szabolsci’s (1981) exhaustivity tests and, following her intuitive judgments, argues that Basque information focus is non-exhaustive because it does not identify the subset of the set of contextually given elements for which a given predicate is true in its full capacity. From a theoretical standpoint, lack of exhaustivity has led researchers to categorize focalized constituents as non-quantificational, lacking movement to the periphery (Szabolsci 1981, Kenesei 1986, Kiss
1998). Put differently, those focus expressions not implying exhaustivity have been analyzed as constituents residing in-situ and not taking wide scope over the whole predicate.
Elordieta’s proposal follows this line of research and treats Basque information focus as in- situ material whose verb adjacency is achieved either by scrambling computations of non- focal material to the left or by adjoining focus directly to TP (see §4.2.3.).
Nevertheless, the methodological toolkit and experimental design implemented in this dissertation, purposely modeled to obtain first-hand, empirically-grounded native speaker judgments, has firmly established the existence of two types of information focus in Basque.
More specifically, Basque speakers’ judgments have proven successful in showing that immediate preverbal focus is significantly more often perceived to be used under exhaustive scenarios than non-exhaustive or ambiguous ones and that it is also interpreted exhaustively significantly more often, whereas this is not the case for the in-situ focus variant.
I will take the ample experimental evidence presented throughout the course of this dissertation to be compelling enough to make the argument that exhaustivity plays a 153
significant role in the characterization of Basque focalization alternatives, particularly in those focus instantiations targeting a FOCUS-V configuration. What is more, on the basis of empirical findings suggesting that focused elements in immediate preverbal position lean towards a wide scope interpretation and the fact that this might indeed be sensitive to Weak and Strong Crossover effects, I will take a quantificational formulation of Basque immediate preverbal information focus to be essentially on the right track and propose a formal syntactic implementation that fundamentally relies on exhaustivity as the main force of all underlying computations.
4.4. Proposal: A formal syntactic characterization of Basque focus constructions
Although prior studies have consistently attributed an immediate preverbal position to
Basque information focus, empirical evidence obtained from two experimental tasks distributed among Basque speakers has confirmed the existence of not one, but two focalization strategies in Basque, which I have proposed to classify as EXHAUSTIVE
INFORMATION FOCUS and NON-EXHAUSTIVE INFORMATION FOCUS (see §3.2. and §3.3.). The former represents the traditional immediate preverbal information focus; however, unlike previous studies, this first type of focus has been shown to be associated with an exhaustive implication holding an operator-like quantificational force. The second type of focus, I propose, represents a non-quantificational, in-situ focus variant, whose goal is to convey new, non-presupposed and non-exhaustive information.
In formulating a formal theory of focus, I depart from prosody-based analyses requiring foci to appear left-adjacent to the verb due to the demands of the NSR and, I argue that the 154
immediate preverbal location of focus is the result of its association with an exhaustive implication. I present two alternative formal syntactic analyses that seek to accommodate the properties of Basque information focus. On the one hand, in order to formally capture the determining role that exhaustivity plays in Basque focus, I apply the feature-driven approach couched within the Minimalist program (Chomsky, 1995; and, subsequent work). Following this generative framework, I analyze the differing linearization patterns of exhaustive information focus and non-exhaustive information focus, reproduced in (117a) and (117b), in terms of movement and I set forth that while the former case features movement to an
A’-position due to its association with exhaustivity, allowing foci to widely scope over the whole sentence, the latter represents a case of in-situ focus as a consequence of its lack of exhaustivity. Unlike traditional focus movement mechanisms, which have unanimously relied on [+FOC] feature specifications, I envision movement to the left-periphery to be the result of a FOCUS feature, that is crucially valued as [+EXH]austive.
(117) Nork entregatzen ditu etxerako lanak berandu egunero?
Who.ERG turn.in.PROG aux.PRS homework.ABS late every.day
‘Who turns in homework late every day?’
a) EXHAUSTIVE INFORMATION FOCUS
[F Mikelek eta Jonek] entregatzen dituzte berandu egunero.
Mike.ERG and John.ERG turn.in.PROG aux.PRS late every.day
‘It is Mike and John who turn (them) in late every day.’
b) NON-EXHAUSTIVE INFORMATION FOCUS
[F Mikelek eta Jonek] egunero entregatzen dituzte berandu.
Mike.ERG and John.ERG every.day turn.in.PROG aux.PRS late
‘Mike and John turn them in late every day.’ 155
Together with this transformational proposal, I evaluate a non-movement alternative from a purely constructional perspective following the basic tenets of the Construction
Grammar framework (Goldberg, 1995; and, others). I show that this type of analysis also povides the tools to parametrize overt structural asymmetries, to account for the role of exhaustivity and to integrate scope properties of exhaustively focused phrases with a simpler machinery that dispenses with costly, last resort movement operations.
4.4.1. Basque information focus: FOC[EXH] feature-driven movement account
In adopting the formal generativist approach to syntax, I implement Rizzi’s (1997) expansion of the complementizer scheme, which was originally proposed to integrate topic-focus systems into syntax. In addition to IP, his cartographic design included FIN(iteness)P,
TOP(ip)P, FOC(us)P and FORCEP projections, hierarchically arranged as represented in figure
17:
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Figure 17: Rizzi's complementizer system
Rizzi’s theory presupposes no free preposing or adjunction to IP; instead, he postulates that every dislocation to the left periphery must be motivated by the satisfaction of some criterion; therefore, he adopts the convention that there must be a head entering into a Spec- head relation with the fronted phrase located in SPEC.
With regards to focus, traditional analyses adopting this model of representation have stipulated that movement of focal elements to SPEC is achieved through agreement between a FOCUS feature typifying [+FOC] value, which resides in the head of the FOCP projection, and a focused phrase that also holds a [+FOC] specification. This is sketched in figure 18:
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FocP
XP[+FOC] Foc’
Foc YP
FOC:[+FOC]
Figure 18: [+FOC] FOCUS feature
Yet, findings from the current dissertation suggest that it is not the [+FOC]us value of
focalized constituent that motivates focus fronting. In light of such revelation, in place of a
[+FOC]us specification, the present analysis argues in favor of a formal FOCUS feature that
must obligatorily be saturated with an [+EXH]austive value instead. This analysis is only
partly reminiscent of Horvath’s (2007) account for Hungarian focus in that both Horvath’s
and the present proposal depict exhaustivity as the primary movement force. Yet, unlike
Horvath’s focus theory which dispenses with FOCUS features altogether, the current
derivation retains the existence of a formal FOCUS feature and contends that such feature
must be specified exhaustively and not via [+FOC].
FOCP must accordingly accommodate the exhaustive import associated with focalized
constituents in immediate preverbal position. Formally, this will be manifested in the form
of an [+EXH] FOCUS feature in the head of FOCP, which in order to conform to the spec-
head requirement and the extended projection principle (EPP), solicits elements providing
such exhaustive interpretive import, namely focused phrases denoting exhaustivity, to
position in the specifier of this projection. The proposed structure is shown in figure 19.
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FocP
XP[+EXH] Foc′
Foc YP
FOC:[+EXH] Figure 19: [+EXH] FOCUS feature
Importantly, in accounting for both structural and semantic characteristics of Basque focalization through the presence of an [+EXH] FOCUS feature, I follow Pesetsky and
Torrego’s (2007) redefined feature systematization, leaning towards a distinction between valued/unvalued and interpretable/uninterpretable instances, which produces four different kinds of feature specifications, as revealed in (118):
(118) a. Uninterpretable, valued uF val c. Uninterpretable, unvalued uF [ ]
a. Interpretable, valued iF val d. Interpretable, unvalued iF [ ]
I assume, conforming to this classification, that the head of FOCP hosts an unvalued, interpretable iFOC[ ] feature, whose interpretable quality ensures that exhaustive information focus is correctly interpreted in the specifier of that projection, granting a wide scope reading to the focal element. On the other hand, the unvalued categorization assigned to the formal
FOCUS feature will have to find a valued matching instance in order for the derivation to converge.
The feature valuation procedure between unvalued and valued instances will be operationalized through probe-goal AGREEment, one of the three primitive combinatorial and recursive operations used in Minimalism, together with MERGE and MOVE (Chomsky
2000, 2001). Here, AGREE is defined as follows: 159
(119) AGREE: Let α be a probe and β a matching goal in Σ. Then, α and β can establish an
agreement relation iff:
i. α carries an unvalued feature
ii. α c-commands β
iii. β is the closest goal to α
iv. β is an active goal carrying a matching valued feature.
Agreement is understood as a precondition for movement and semantic interpretability.
It is only under satisfactory valuation that the EPP property responsible for movement gets
activated (Chomsky, 2000). Unvalued instances of features acting as probes need to match
with another valued goal hosting the same feature specification. The goal, in addition to
carrying a valued instance, must also be uninterpretable in order for it to be active for
agreement with a probe, as stated in Chomsky’s (2000) Activation condition.
Following these constraints on AGREE, focalized constituents, which behave as
purported goals, host a valued, uninterpretable uFOC[+EXH] feature, granting AGREE and MOVE
devices to function effectively, as depicted in figure 20.
v. FOCP FOCP
vi. FOC’ XPuFOC[EXH]i FOC’
vii. FOC TP FOC TP
iFOC:[EXH] viii. iFOC :[ ] Agree …XP … …ti … ix. uFOC[EXH]
Figure 20: Agree (left) and Move (right)
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Complying with Brody’s (1997) thesis of Radical Interpretability, which states that each feature must receive a semantic interpretation in some syntactic location, it is assumed that uninterpretable occurrences of a feature must undergo AGREE with an interpretable counterpart at some point in the syntactic derivation. Thus, as represented in figure 20, the probe carrying an interpretable, unvalued iFOC[ ] feature agrees with an active goal hosting an uninterpretable, valued uFOC[+EXH] matching instance of that feature, which results not only in movement of focal material to the highest SPEC, but also enables wide scope of the exhaustively focalized DP.
Having laid out all critical machinery, let’s illustrate how the derivation for (117a), here repeated in (120) for ease of exposition, would proceed.
(120) [F Mikelek eta Jonek] entregatzen dituzte berandu egunero
Mike.ERG and John.ERG turn.in.PROG aux.PRS late every.day
‘It is Mike and John who turn (them) in late every day.’
Essentially, the probe, which contains an unvalued, interpretable iFOC[ ] feature, has to look for a matching goal that hosts a valued, uninterpretable uFOC[EXH] instance. Following constraints on AGREE, the probe must c-command the goal and the goal must be the closest element holding the common feature:
Figure 21: Agree
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The unvalued FOCUS feature in FOCP finds a valued FOC[+EXH] instance in the SPEC of IP, which supplies a [+EXH] specification to the head. Once satisfactory valuation takes place, EPP is activated, prompting leftward movement of the exhaustively marked focus expression to [SPEC, FOCP]:
FocP
[Mikelek eta Jonek][+EXH]i Foc’
Foc IP
iFOC[+EXH] ti I’
I VP
[entregatzen dituzte]j ti … tj … berandu egunero
Figure 22: Move
The output of this syntactic operations yields a structure where the focused phrase achieves its exhaustive interpretation. Note, however, that action has to be taken in order to satisfy the FOCUS-V adjacency requirement characteristic of this focus construction.
Following Ortiz de Urbina’s (1989) original proposition, I will assume that verb movement, or head-to-head movement, is an epiphenomenal consequence triggered by exhaustive-focus movement. The verbal complex, treated here as a unitary element, is subject to movement in case focus fronting emerges, yielding the final structure in figure 23.
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FocP
[Mikelek eta Jonek]uFOC[+EXH]i Foc’
FociFOC[+EXH] IP
[entregatzen dituzte]j ti I’
I VP
tj ti … tj … berandu egunero
Figure 23: Immediate preverbal exhaustive information focus
In a nutshell, the present proposal assumes that it is exhaustivity that licenses fronting of the focused expression to an A’-peripheral position, supplying focus its quantificational force and exhaustive interpretive import. This feature-driven approach comes about via agreement between an unvalued, interpretable FOCUS feature in the head of the functional projection,
FOCP, and an exhaustively valued, uninterpretable FOCUS feature hosted by the focused phrase.
Satisfactory valuation between the probe and the goal deletes all unvalued/uninterpretable instances of the feature, propelling movement of the relevant focal element, while simultaneously endowing the focused phrase with its corresponding exhaustive interpretation.
The non-exhaustive information focus attested in this dissertation differs from its exhaustive counterpart both in syntactic and semantic terms. This second alternative is represented in-situ and lacks quantificational force. Consequently, in resolving this asymmetric behavior, these focused constituents will not be defined with a valued, uninterpretable uFOC[+EXH] specification, but a valued and interpretable iFOC[+FOC] 163
specification, indicating that the unmarked status of focus is oblivious to exhaustivity, wide
scope demands and syntactic permutations. The feature is marked as an interpretable
instance, denoting that it is ready to be interpreted as a focus constituent in its base-
generated position. The structure of (117b), repeated here in (121), is therefore as follows:
(121) [F Mikelek eta Jonek] egunero entregatzen dituzte berandu.
Mike.ERG and John.ERG every.day turn.in.PROG aux.PRS late
‘Mike and John turn them in late every day.’
IP
[Mikelek eta Jonek]iFOC[+FOC]i I’
AdvP I’
egunero I VP
[entregatzen dituzte]j ti tj berandu
Figure 24: Non-exhaustive information focus
To conclude, the syntactic treatment adopted to accommodate Basque focalization
strategies utilizes the traditional formal FOCUS feature, capturing the differences between
exhaustive information focus and non-exhaustive information focus by means of concrete
specifications assigned to this feature. While in the former type of information focus,
FOCUS takes a [+EXH]austive import that assures its immediate preverbal position via
movement to the left-periphery and association with an exhaustive implication, in the latter
case the FOCUS feature assigned to focal material receives a [+FOC]us specification, that
merely marks its value as new, non-presupposed informative material in the sentence.
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4.5. Basque information focus: a constructional account
As an alternative to this movement account framed within the mainstream generative theory, one might opt to take the position that Basque exhaustive information focus is an independent construction responding to a fixed linearization pattern of the syntactic objects that comprise it and its corresponding semantic-pragmatic function. This is in effect the analytical path pursued within the non-derivational Construction Grammar framework
(CxG), which regards constructions as “learned pairings of form and function, including words and idioms as well as phrasal linguistic patterns” (Goldberg & Suttle 2010: 469).
The constructionist approach shares certain foundational ideas with the mainstream generative theory. Within both approaches, language is considered a cognitive system that uses combinatorial mechanisms to create novel structures. However, the generativist framework holds the view that the complexity of language cannot be learned inductively by general cognitive mechanisms and, hence, stipulates that learners must be ‘hard-wired’ with language-specific universals (i.e. ‘universal grammar’). CxG deviates from this perspective and assumes that linguistic constructions are learned through input and aided by general cognitive, pragmatic and processing constraints. These usage-based model assumes that memory accrues frequency information about utterances and phrases, which give rise to generalizations over input, ultimately producing an interrelated network of constructions, known as the “construct-i-con” (Goldberg & Suttle, 2010). Therefore, this approach emphasizes that speakers’ knowledge of language consists of systematic collections of form– function pairings, at varying levels of generality and complexity.
In order to capture generalizations in a given language, this model assumes that constructions are related via an inheritance hierarchy. In other words, broad linguistic 165
generalizations are captured by constructions that are inherited by many other constructions.
For instance, the idiomatic expression What’s X doing Y?, which has a fixed form and implies unexpectedness, inherits the properties of several other constructions such as subject-aux inversion, verb phrase construction, and so on. In this sense, it represents a combinatorial system as much as the generativist approach does. Yet, unlike the latter, Construction
Grammar adheres to the “what you see is what you get” principle, where neither movement nor invisible elements are presumed.
CxG is a non-modular system and, in following this premise, constructions are viewed as holistic objects, wherein no one level of grammar (i.e. phonology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, etc.) is core and can be studied separately. Here, I follow the Parallel
Architecture of Jackendoff (2002) and subsequent work by Culicover (2011) and Barlew and
Culicover (2015), and I assume a system where there is a component of the grammar that generates well-formed phonological strings, called PHON, another component that compiles all syntactic categories contributing to the construction, named SYN, and a component of the grammar that maps these syntactic categories and their surface linearization with its corresponding meaning, labelled ‘conceptual structure’ or CS. Formally, constructions will be schematized using Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar’s (HPSG) (Pollard & Sag, 1994)
Attribute Value Matrix (AVM) representations shown in figure 25.
PHON
SYN
CS Figure 25: Constructional schema
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Culicover (2011, and subsequent work) proposes that constructions are licensed if and only if every term within each component or tier of the construction is properly indexed.
For ease of concreteness, let’s unpack how the idiomatic construction kick the bucket, meaning ‘to die’, would be devised within this account. The correspondences between the lexical items, syntactic structures and conceptual mappings are formally captured in figure
26.
PHON < [kick1 -[[the]2 -[bucket]3]4]5 >
SYN [VP V1 , [NP ART2 , N3]4]5
CS x.die5’[THEME: x]
Figure 26: [Kick the bucket] construction
On the one hand, the PHON tier expresses the word order configuration of all lexemes involved, represented here through orthographic characters and indexes 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 for simplicity. These indexes are properly matches with the syntactic categories in SYN. The first lexical item in the phonological string corresponds to the V(erb), which is followed by the
ART(icle) ‘the’ and, lastly, the N(oun) ‘bucket’. ART+N make up the entire NP, which is indexed as 4 and, finally, the whole contruction, forming a VP, takes the index 5. As such, the meaning of the entire syntactic phrase is specified as ‘die’ in CS, marked through the numerical index 5, which additionally specifies that some entity x undergoes the event of dying, characterized through the semantic role of the PATIENT.
As for Basque focalization, this chapter has shown that there is a form-meaning correspondence between a FOCUS-V adjacent structure and the exhaustive implication
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attached to focused terms. In pursuit of a constructional analysis for Basque exhaustive information focus, I propose that the requirement that exhaustively focalized constituents must appear in immediate preverbal position is captured in the PHON(ological) string. The syntactic category of the focal element (i.e. noun, adjective, adverb, etc.) and the specification that any element following focus must be a verb is represented at the level of
SYN. Note, here, that the proposed formal representation inherits a V-final construction, which stipulates the lexeme holding the syntactic categiory V to appear in final position as a property of its correspondence with PHON. Finally, the quantifier-like behavior of focus
holding an exhaustive interpretation is mapped into CS via an abstract FOCEXH that takes the formal logic characterization in figure 27, resulting in the following construction:
PHON < [1 -[ 2, …]]3 >
SYN [ XP1 , [VP … V2 … ]]3
CS FOCEXH < 1, A, 3 >
y A [(x.P2(x))(y) y = 1]3 (lambda reduction)
y A [(P2(y)) y = 1]3
Figure 27: Basque exhaustive information focus construction
In order to express the exhaustive implication attached to this focus construction, I adopt Krifka’s (2006) analysis of the focus operator only. Following this scholar, the presence of an abstract exhaustive-focus operator is assumed, which must be able to access the meaning of the focused element, the alternatives of the focus and a function that maps the meaning of the focus to the meaning of scope. In figure 27, these intuitions are roughly
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captured in the first line of CS, wherein FOCEXH accesses the focused element, represented through the index 1, its alternatives A and the function which is represented through the numerical index 3. This is formally spelled out in line 2, which expresses that for every y in the domain of alternatives A, where y equals the focused term XP1 located in immediate preverbal position, a given predication P applies to y and y is that focused element.
Let’s now illustrate the workings of the proposed construction in figure 27 through the concrete construct in figure 28, which instantiates the exhaustive information focus of the question-answer pair in (122):
(122) Nork erosi ditu larrosak?
Who.ERG buy.PRF aux.PRS roses.ABS
‘Who bought the roses?’
[F Mikelek] erosi ditu (larrosak).
Mike.ERG buy.PRF aux.PRS roses.ABS
‘It is Mike who bought (the roses).’
PHON < [[Mikelek]1 -[[erosi ditu]2 -[arrosak]3]4]5 >
SYN [ NP1 , [VP NP3 , V2]4]5
CS FOCEXH < 1, A, 5 >
[y A (x.EROSI’2(x, larrosak3))(y) y = Mikelek1]5 (lambda reduction)
[y A (EROSI’2(y, larrosak3)) y = Mikelek1]5
Figure 28: Basque exhaustive information focus construction
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PHON states the word order of the lexical entries comprising the answer to the question in (122). Because detailing a phonological analysis of this construct is not the purpose of the present proposal, I leave the phonological properties of the string unspecified and also treat the complex VP as a single morphological unit (see §2.1.). The SYN tier labels the syntactic categories of each lexical item in PHON and marks the correspondences through numerical indexes. Mikelek ‘Mike’ takes the category NP, erosi ditu ‘bought’ is specified as the V and the object arrosak ‘roses’ is represented as another NP. The combination of [VP erosi ditu] ‘has bought’ and [NP arrosak] ‘flowers’ make up the VP constituent marked through the index 4; and, finally, the whole grammatical structure takes the index 5. In the spirit of Krifka (2006), the conceptual level expresses that exhaustive-focus applies to the focused element, its possible alternatives and the predication where focus is embedded. Ultimately, the meaning rule applied to the exhaustive information focus structure in (122) reads as follows: for every y in the domain of alternatives, it holds that y bought roses, and y must be Mike.
Within this ‘what you see is what you get’ approach, no movement operations are undertaken to the so-called left-periphery; focus does not move to SPEC of FOCP and no head-to-head movement of the complex VP has to be posited in order to achieve the desired constituent order. Similarly, since no hierarchical structure is generated, focal elements are not merged high in the structure in order to capture the generalization that focus must take wide scope. Instead, the interpretive import and scope properties of focused phrases are
mapped into CS through the presence of an abstract FOCUSEXH operator, ultimately granting a unified, non-modular system of grammar.
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4.6. Summary
The two formalized proposals laid out in this chapter have been shown to satisfactorily account for Basque focus configurations. While the generativist analysis assumes leftward movement of exhaustively-marked focused constituents to an A’-position through a series of feature-matching stipulations, the usage-based model formulated within Construction
Grammar assumes a non-movement account of Basque focalization, wherein constraints on word order, scope and interpretation are all captured in a compositional system that brings together phonological, syntactic and semantic characteristics.
When comparing both approaches with regards to the study of focalization strategies, given the amount of machinery employed under each analysis, one might dare to conclude that the computations, stipulations and necessary devices assumed within a constructional approach are seemingly more elementary and simpler than those assumed in mainstream generative grammar. On the one hand, Construction Grammar avoids the feature complexification that Minimalism resorts to. Since this approach does not need to account for movement, it can dispense with notions such as valued vs. unvalued, interpretable vs. uninterpretable or arbitrary feature activations such as EPP. Likewise, it need not make any ad hoc stipulations about feature deletion after valuation and movement have been computed. One additional positive aspect of a non-movement account such as the present one is that no VP movement has to be posited, which under minimalist assumptions undergoes fronting to the left as a secondary movement operation only to satisfy constraints on linear order.
The potential benefits of a constructional approach over a generativist one will be further exploited in the next chapter through an exploration of Spanish information focus 171
which, given its postverbal, sentence-final configuration, presents itself as a favorable candidate for a rather undesirable rightward movement account under the standard generative theory.
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CHAPTER 5: A SYNTACTIC ACCOUNT OF SPANISH INFORMATION FOCUS
5.1. Introduction
This chapter elaborates a formal characterization of Spanish information focus and its association to exhaustivity. While traditional accounts of Spanish focus have insisted on the postverbal, sentence-final placement of constituents conveying new, non-presupposed information, the experiments reported in chapter 3 have shown that native Peninsular
Spanish speakers also find in-situ information focus acceptable as an answer to wh-questions involving quién ‘who’. The choice between sentence-final and in-situ focus alternatives has been further confirmed to be driven by specific linguistic factors having to do with the form of the accusative argument (accusative clitic vs. fully spelled-out NP) and exhaustivity
(exhaustive vs. non-exhaustive triggers). More specifically, it has been shown that it is when the direct object takes the form of a DO clitic lo, la, los or las and narrow information focus has to or is sought to be interpreted exhaustively that the sentence-final focus variant is the preferred choice among native Peninsular Spanish speakers. In light of these findings, I have proposed that sentence-final focus constructions involving accusative clitics conventionally carry an exhaustive implication. As for in-situ subject information focus, Peninsular Spanish speakers tended to choose the latter more often in the context of non-exhaustive or ambiguous scenarios and, resultantly, it has been proposed that this second in-situ 173
focalization alternative is not conventionally associated with an exhaustive implication (see chapters 2 and 3 for additional details).
In formally accounting for these distributional generalizations and asymmetries, this chapter is organized as follows: in §2, I review past syntactic treatments adopted for Spanish sentence-final information focus, which primarily rely on leftward movement and scrambling operations, and I discuss the limitations of such analyses in accommodating the role of exhaustivity and its scope properties. On the face of these observed limitations, in §3, I propose two alternative analyses that satisfactorily accommodate all the properties of
Spanish information focus: the first syntactic implementation entertains a movement analysis to the right periphery at the expense of traditional generativist constraints such as the Linear
Correspondence Axiom (LCA); the second analysis takes a constructional approach that dispenses with movement and, instead, brings together the form, function and meaning of exhaustive information focus constructions in a non-modular, holistic manner sans last resort, costly operations. Within the broader perspective, a comparison between the present formal implementation and that provided for Basque focalization in chapter 4 will reveal that, while focus alignment patterns in Basque and Spanish are different on the surface, the same internal mechanisms, namely exhaustivity, are indeed responsible for the generation of their diverging syntactic outputs.
5.2. Spanish information focus: Previous formal accounts
Despite the fact that information focus appears in the rightmost, sentence-final position at the surface structural level, formal syntactic theories accounting for such linearization patterns have generally rejected right peripheral movement approaches in favor of so-called 174
p(rosodic)-movement or non-focal remnant movement accounts. Before turning to my proposal, in this section, I review the inner workings of these two routes of analysis as proposed by various scholars, who regard rightward movement operations as ineligible, and then discuss their limitations. Subsequent to this, I review a series of formal syntactic proposals favoring rightward movement in a variety of cross-linguistic phenomena across languages, including Spanish Clitic Right Dislocation (CLRD).
5.2.1. Stress-based focus and P(rosodically motivated)-movement
In her seminal work, Zubizarreta (1998) proposes a stress-based theory of Spanish focus.
Following pioneering work on the relation between focus and prosody in English (Chomsky,
1971, Jackendoff, 1972), she establishes the Focus Prosody Correspondence Principle in (123):
(123) The focus constituent (or F-marked constituent) of a phrase must contain the
intonational nucleus of that phrase. (Zubizarreta 1998: 38)
Under the assumption that narrow information focus must always receive prosodic prominence, she posits that focal material locates sentence-finally due to stress assignment via the Nuclear Stress Rule (NSR), which in Spanish assigns stress to the rightmost constituent as a result of being lower in the syntactic tree. Her account assumes that the
NSR, which was first formulated by Chomsky and Halle (1968), is an algorithm that is responsible for locating the intonationally most prominent word within the phrase. The claim is that since information focus must hold nuclear stress, it will always follow that its position will be sentence-final. Observe the prosodic contrast between (124) and (125):
(124) El gato se comió un ratón. (= Nuclear stress) (Zubizarreta 1999: 4229)
‘The cat ate a mouse.’ 175
(125) EL GATO se comió un ratón. (= Emphatic stress) (Zubizarreta 1999: 4229)
‘THE CAT ate a mouse (not the dog).’
According to Zubizarreta, the NSR would assign main prosodic prominence to ratón
‘mouse’ because it is lower in the syntactic asymmetric c-command ordering with respect to its metrical sister comió ‘ate’. Following this rationale, she argues that any other stress pattern, such as that in (125) where stress is given to the first constituent in the string, must be the result of emphatic stress giving rise to a contrastive interpretation. Due to such constraints on stress assignment, she posits that (125) would not constitute a felicitous answer to a question like (126) because the most prosodically prominent constituent representing information focus has to appear in the right edge. As an alternative, she provides the utterance in (127) as an answer to (126), where the subject is rendered a sentence-final position and, hence, constitutes narrow information focus, which satisfactorily fills the gap of the presupposition ‘x ate the mouse’ generated by the wh-question.
(126) ¿Quién se comió un ratón? (Zubizarreta 1999: 4229)
‘Who ate a mouse?’
(127) Se comió un ratón [F el gato]. (Zubizarreta 1999: 4232)
‘It was the cat that ate a mouse.’
In her view, the word order configuration VO[F S] in (127), which deviates from the canonical word order SVO, has two important properties. First, within such ordering, the subject is unambiguously characterized as the sole focused constituent; and, second, because of its rightmost location in the sentence, it is also unambiguously the most intonationally prominent element in the string.
This word order, however, does not come for free. Zubizarreta claims that, in order to achieve the desired structural configuration, a reordering of constituents must take place. 176
This reordering, she stipulates, is motivated for purely prosodic reasons and not by feature- checking considerations as is usually the case in contemporary syntax; instead, movement is solely intended to have the focalized element appear in the rightmost edge of the sentence in correspondence with nuclear stress, which is precisely why she calls this mechanism prosodically motivated movement, more commonly known as p-movement. Crucially, there are two important properties of this type of scrambling operation: 1) any movement must occur to the left of the structure and 2) movement operations apply exclusively to defocalized material. Therefore, in order to generate a well-formed and felicitous structure such as (127), everything but the subject may undergo leftward movement. To be more precise, she suggests that the reordering of constituents would either consist of scrambling of the [VO] sequence to the left if the underlying structure were SVO, or simply [O] if one were to assume that the base-generated word order is VSO. In either case, the focused subject would not undergo movement to an A’-position.
In a nutshell, Zubizarreta’s model establishes that sentence-final information focus in
Spanish is purely prosodically-driven and constrained by the demands of the NSR algorithm, according to which main prosodic prominence falls within the most embedded constituent to the right of the syntactic tree. This theory predicts that since nuclear stress is always on the right edge of the structure, narrow information focus will always reside in such position too. When a mismatch occurs between the intended focus constituent conveying new, non- presupposed information and prosodic prominence, a reordering of non-focal material emerges in order to render the focused phrase its designated sentence-final position.
While there is no doubt that prosody plays a major role in the realization of focus patterns in Spanish, this dissertation has shown that narrow information focus is not always expressed sentence-finally, which suggests that a proposal specifying a one-to-one 177
correspondence between nuclear stress and information focus might not entirely be on the right track. Instead, based on findings from this dissertation, it might be more accurate to claim that it is not information focus, but EXHAUSTIVE information focus that locates sentence-finally in accordance with the domain of Spanish nuclear stress. Critically, a formal characterization of Spanish focus that relies exclusively on prosodic considerations such as
Zubizarreta’s lacks explanatory power to describe the exhaustive vs. non-exhaustive contrast.
In addition, one could also contend that p-movement is nothing but an ad hoc mechanism that is only stipulated to satisfy the generativist assumption that movement must always occur to the left following Kayne’s (1994) Linear Correspondence Axiom (LCA), which states that the specifier must precede and c-command the head and its complements. Yet, if one were to take LCA as a soft constraint or reject such a hypothesis altogether (e.g.
Laenzlinger, 1996; López, 2009), a rightward movement account of exhaustively focused elements could be very appealing in accommodating the postverbal, sentence-final positioning of exhaustive information focus in Spanish. I return to this possibility and discuss rightward movement procedures in 5.2.3.
5.2.2. Focus movement and non-focal remnant movement
The second most popular proposal in order to account for focus facts in Spanish relies less heavily on prosodic considerations and pursues a feature-checking approach, wherein both focal and non-focal material undergo movement to the left periphery. Ordoñez (1997, 2000), for instance, proposes that in affirmative sentences involving narrow information focus of the form VO[F S], the focused subject undergoes leftward movement to FOCP that is located above TP on a par with Rizzi’s expansion of the CP projection. According to Ordoñez 178
(2000), this movement derives from the need to check a formal FOCUS feature in the head of the FOCUS projection. Assuming that neutral sentences take an unmarked SVO word order, raising of the focalized subject from [SPEC, TP] to [SPEC, FOCP] would still not accord with a sentence-final configuration. As such, Ordoñez postulates that additional syntactic manipulations are necessary in order to achieve a syntactic output of the form VO[F S]. In doing so, his proposal rests on the so-called ‘scrambling hypothesis’, which stipulates leftward raising of the object to the SPEC of a higher inflectional projection, where the verb resides once tense features have been checked. After adjunction to the right of the verb under T, the entire TP projection holding both the verb and its object moves to the left of a projection that is above FOCP.
A similar account is undertaken by Etxepare and Uribe-Etxebarria (2008) for negative sentences involving (corrective) focus in the right edge. These authors distinguish two focus construals, one where negation takes scope over the element in sentence-final focus position, represented in (128), which they label ‘bound focus’, and a second type called ‘free focus’ where the focus in final position is out of the scope of negation (e.g. (129)).
(128) No ha comprado el pan [F Pedro], sino María.
‘It is not Pedro who bought the bread, but María.’
a. [(e): C(e) & Buy(e) & Past(e) & theme(the bread,e)] Agent(Pedro, e) & Buy(e)
& Past(e) & Theme(the bread, e)
(Etxepare & Uribe-Etxebarria 2008: 293)
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(129) No ha comprado el pan [F Pedro], y no María.
‘It is Pedro who didn’t buy the bread, not María.’
a. [(e): C(e) & Buy(e) & Past(e) & Theme(the bread,e)] Agent(Pedro, e) &
Buy(e) & Past(e) & Theme(the bread, e)
(Etxepare & Uribe-Etxebarria 2008: 293)
In accounting for these scope asymmetries, they propose that the relevant syntactic relation that determines the different scopes of free and bound foci with regard to negation is syntactic c-command: while the FOCUS projection locates between NEGP and VP in a bound reading, in the second reading focus gets computed above NEGP. Unlike Ordoñez
(2000), this analysis assumes movement of the subject to a clause internal FOCUS projection, but what is really crucial about these two derivations is that they take Ordoñez’s account to be essentially correct in that focal material first moves to FOCP and, then, remnant movement takes place to the specifier of a functional projection (TOPP) higher than FOCP in order to achieve the desired linear order. This is schematically sketched in (130) and (131), respectively. Importantly, whereas in the derivation in (130b) negation c-commands the subject in [SPEC, FOCP], this is not the case in (131b) because the NEG node does not dominate the subject in FOCUS position.
(130) Bound reading of (corrective) focus (Etxepare & Uribe-Etxebarria 2008: 295)
a. [ Neg V [ O [FocP [ S V O ]]]
b. [NegP Neg V [ O [FocP S [ tS tV tO ]]]
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(131) Free reading of (corrective) focus (Etxepare & Uribe-Etxebarria 2008: 296)
a. [TopP NegP [FocP S [NegP Neg V [ S tV O]
b. [[NegP …Neg V O…] [FocP S [ tNegP ] ] ] ]
Ortega-Santos (2016) takes the behavior of sentence-final (corrective) focused subjects in relation to parasitic gaps and scope of negation to provide further evidence in support of focus fronting to FOCP and subsequent non-focal remnant movement to TOPP. On the one hand, it is well-known that wh-movement and focus movement to the left periphery license parasitic gaps, as shown in (132) and (133) respectively. In both constructions, the second gap (t2) is dependent on the first gap (t1) that results from fronting.
(132) ¿[WH Qué facturas] dijiste que fueron tiradas t1 sin estudiar t2 ?
what bills said that were thrown-away without studying
‘Which bills did you say were thrown away without having been studied?’
(133) [F ESAS FACTURAS] djiste que fueron tiradas t1 sin estudiar t2.
Those bills said that were thrown-away without studying
‘Those bills are the ones you said were thrown away without having been studied.’
(Ortega-Santos 2016: 108)
Ortega-Santos (2016) predicts that if it is true that sentence-final (contrastive) information focus undergoes focus movement, and more specifically focus fronting, then, parasitic gaps will have to be licensed. This prediction is borne out according to his data, shown in (134).
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(134) Dijiste que fueron tiradas t1 sin estudiar t2 [F ESAS FACTURAS], no…
Said that were thrown-away without studying those bills not
(Ortega-Santos 2016: 108)
The fact that rightmost focus is felicitous and well-formed in the environment of parasitic gaps, just like wh-movement and contrastive focus preposing are, allows Ortega-
Santos to claim that focused XP surfacing at the right edge undergoes movement to the left periphery first. In addition, following Etxepare and Uribe-Etxebarria (2008), Ortega-Santos
(2016) shows that (corrective) focus can additionally be outside the scope of negation, or in other words have wide scope over negation, in the context of subject control structures
(135), causative (136), ECM constructions (137), and small clause ECM cases (138) (Ortega-
Santos 2016: 113-114):
(135) PQD. Ayer no lamentó haber perdido [F PEDRO], (y) no María.
Yesterday not regretted have lost Pedro and not Maria
‘What are you saying? Yesterday, it was Pedro who regretted not having lost, not
María.’
(136) PQD. Ayer no le ordenó perder [F PEDRO], (y) no María.
Yesterday not CL ordered to-lose Pedro and not María
‘What are you saying? Yesterday, it was Pedro who did not order him to lose, not
María.’
(137) PQD. Ayer no le vio perder [F PEDRO], (y) no María.
Yesterday not CL saw to-lose Pedro and not María
‘What are you saying? Yesterday, Pedro was the one who did not see him lose, not
María.’
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(138) PQD. No le consideró inteligente [F PEDRO], (y) no María.
Not CL considered intelligent Pedro and not María
‘What are you saying? PEDRO did not consider him intelligent, not María.’
Recall that Etxepare and Uribe-Etxebarria’s free reading analysis located FOCP above
NEGP and stipulated foci to move to such position, enabling the focused subject to be outside the c-command domain of negation. For Ortega-Santos (2016), the well-formedness of these structures (135-138) suggests that focused subjects in the right edge are higher than linear order indicates, lending support to an analysis in which focused elements undergo movement to the left, rather than staying in-situ.
Be this as it may, one might object that these data provide somewhat dubious evidence in favor of leftward focus movement in the first place. On the one hand, the positioning of focused constituent sentence-finally in the context of parasitic gaps indicates that focus takes a quantifier-like behavior that binds a variable, but says little about the directionality of movement itself. By the same token, the wide scope interpretation of (contrastive) focus over negation simply suggests that focus moves to a position higher than negation, but this is not necessarily a determining factor conditioning the leftward or rightward nature of the movement per se.
Together with these observations, it could also be argued that an analysis dependent on multiple movement operations is severely costly and unconstrained, especially in the case of scrambling, whose purpose seems to rest solely on the intent to produce the desired structure given pragmatic considerations, but lack specificity regarding its optionality; in other words, it is unclear when scrambling is a possible operation and when it is not. And, yet, even if one were to define under what conditions scrambling is licensed in deriving the appropriate word order configurations, these analyses would still fall short in accounting for 183
the conventionalized exhaustive meaning of sentence-final information focus and lack thereof of in-situ/preverbal focus instantiations given that, as discussed in chapters 2 and 3, it is not the property of being focused that instigates these structural asymmetries, but rather exhaustivity.
Admittedly, while Jiménez (1997) impressionistically acknowledges the variation between preverbal focused subjects and sentence-final focused subjects to be sensitive to a difference in interpretation having to do with ‘exhaustive listing’, her syntactic account also fails to capture such meaning differences. Her model is simpler than Ordoñez (2000) and others in that it proposes raising of the object and dispenses with any focus movement operations to
FOCP. Following Cinque’s (1993) stress assignment rule, which dictates that the most embedded constituent is assigned prominence and that such a constituent must be focus- marked, Jiménez concludes that the focused subject remains in its canonical position, namely
[SPEC, vmax] and the object undergoes raising to the outer specifier position of little v in order to obtain a VO[F S] configuration and check its CASE feature, while ultimately prompting the subject to get a focus interpretation with an exhaustive reading by virtue of merely appearing sentence-finally. Besides not incorporating the role of exhaustivity to the core analysis itself, another problematic aspect of this implementation is that the deeply embedded configuration of focused subjects in-situ, as proposed by Jiménez (1997), would fail to supply a wide scope interpretation of exhaustive focus constructions if one assumes that scope corresponds to the height of the operator in the syntactic structure.
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5.2.3. Rightward movement
The aforementioned analyses arise as an alternative to avoid rightward movement or so- called ‘Right Adjunction Hypothesis’ originally due to Rizzi (1982), and adapted for Spanish by Torrego (1984) and Suñer (1994). Under this analysis, sentence-final subjects are presumed to right-adjoin to the VP in Spanish, as represented in figure 29.
VP
V’ Subject
V NP
Verb Object
Figure 29: Right Adjunction
While such an analysis predicts the right word order configuration, this free inversion hypothesis has been rejected in remaining faithful to Kayne’s (1994) Linear Correspondence
Axiom (LCA) principle, which predicts that there is a direct mapping between syntactic structure and linear order. This prediction follows from linear precedence and asymmetric c- command relations. Within this theory of syntactic linearization, it is claimed that if a nonterminal category A asymmetrically c-commands another nonterminal category B, all the terminal nodes dominated by A must precede all of the terminal nodes dominated by B. This is represented in figure 30.
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K
J L
j M N
m P
p
Figure 30: Linear precedence and asymmetric c-command
In figure 30,
An immediate consequence of such constraint as well as the universal spec-head- complement ordering assumed by Kayne (figure 31) is that the only configuration allowed by
Universal Grammar takes the complement YP to be the right sister of the head of the projection (Xo), and the specifier is left-adjoined to the maximal projection XP. That being the case, this principle predicts that any syntactic permutations must occur to the left of the syntactic hierarchy. Within a rightward movement or adjunction analysis (e.g. figure 29), the subject would violate linear precedence as well as the spec-head-comp configuration.
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Figure 31: X-bar schema
Beyond constituting a violation of Kayne’s LCA, it has also been noted that rightward movement analyses seem to a priori run into problems regarding binding relations, especially with respect to Condition C (Chomsky, 1981; Ordoñez, 2000; Ortega-Santos, 2016). Ortega-
Santos (2016) argues that rightward movement analyses are untenable precisely because they constitute a violation of Principle C, which states that an R-expression cannot have an antecedent that c-commands it. Based on data such as (139), he posits that sentence-final
(corrective) focused subjects can be correferential with an R-expression, which under a rightward movement account would presuppose that the referential noun ‘Pedro’ would be in the c-command domain of its antecedent el pedazo de bastardo ese ‘the big bastard’ in violation of condition C.
(139) (Ayer) lamentó haber visto la foto de Pedrok/i [F el pedazo bastardo ese]i
Yesterday regretted have seen the picture of Pedro the big bastard that
‘(Yesterday), Pedro, THE BIG BASTARD, regretted having seen his picture.’
(Ortega-Santos 2016: 121)
While this might be true in cases of corrective or contrastive focus, the same judgments and intuitions do not seem to hold in the context of information focus such as the question- answer pair in (140). According to my own judgments, ‘that big bastard’ cannot be
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correferential with the referential expression ‘Pedro’. In confirming my intuitions, a few native Peninsular Spanish speakers were informally consulted about the interpretation of the question-answer pair in (140) and they all agreed that ‘the big bastard’ could not refer back to
‘Pedro’. If that is the case, then, lack of correferentiality between the focused element and another referential expression would make an analysis on rightward movement grounds a legitimate option.
(140) ¿Quién lamentó haber visto la foto de Pedro?
Who regretted have seen the picture of Pedro
‘Who regretted having seen the picture of Pedro?
Lamentó haber visto la foto de Pedrok/i [F el pedazo bastardo ese]*i.
regretted have seen the picture of Pedro the big bastard that
‘It is that big bastard who regretted having seen the picture of Pedro.’
To summarize, the counterarguments presented against a rightward movement analysis do not seem to make a strong case at first blush. On the one hand, native Peninsular Spanish speakers’ intuitions about the correferentiality between a focused subject and another referential expression lend support to the view that ‘the big bastard’ is not the antecedent of the referent ‘Pedro’ when alluding to information focus contexts. What is more, as shown in the previous section, the evidence provided by Ortega-Ordoñez (2016) in favor of leftward focus movement is only sustainable if assuming Kayne’s LCA. Yet, once one dispenses with or relaxes the LCA constraint, his evidence falls short in predicting the directionality of movement. This is the route of analysis undertaken by López (2009), who relegates the role of LCA and takes the view that structures such as (141) result from rightward dislocation to a midfield position.
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(141) No loi quiso comprar, [DP el reloj]i.
Not CL wanted to-buy the watch
‘He/She didn’t want to buy the watch.’ (López 2009: 241)
The example in (141) represents a well-known case of Clitic Right Dislocation (CLRD), where a clitic is correferential with a dislocated constituent appearing in the rightmost position. According to López (2009), CLRD involves movement to a midfield position
(internal to TP). Earlier approaches treated CLRD as corollary of remnant movement; that is, the antecedent of the clitic would first undergo raising to the left of the syntactic tree and, subsequently, the remaining constituents would move further up to the left (see López 2009,
§4.5. for details). As pointed out in López (2009), these analyses share the implicit assumption that syntax controls the directionality of movement. Yet, López takes the stance that syntax is organized around hierarchical notions (i.e. dominance and c-command), and that linear order becomes an issue in the mapping from syntax to Phonological Form (PF).
Put differently, he dismisses the idea that leftward or rightward movement occur in narrow syntax; instead, he believes that whether some constituent is spelled-out to the right or to the left is determined by pragmatic and prosodic requirements. As such, he postulates that, in order to account for CLRD in Spanish, prosodic or pragmatic factors may override the LCA constraint on rightward movement. To be more precise, his analysis states that dislocated objects occupy the specifier of little v. The object reaches this position by an interpretive module that assigns information structure features called ‘pragmatics’, which in this case assigns a [+a(naphoric)] value to the object in SPEC.
Crucially, linearization parameters take place from the mapping of narrow syntax to PF; hence, López (2009) proposes that the overt rightward orientation of constituents involved in CLRD is handled by a P(rosodic)-L(inearization) computation, and in following an 189
optimality-theoretic model, concludes that this PL-computation is ranked superior to the
LCA constraint, allowing for antecedents in CLRD constituents to surface in the right edge.
While López’s (2009) optimality-theoretic approach does not compute movement at the level of syntax and likewise does not completely eliminate LCA, other scholars have disregarded LCA altogether in favor of rightward movement in narrow syntax. This is the case of Belleti and Shlonsky (1995) and Laenzlinger (1996) in accommodating Italian NP postposing and French adverb extraposition, respectively. The former propose a process of rightward focalization in resolving the structural asymmetries between the Italian base order
NP PP, exemplified in (142), and its counterpart PP NP, shown in (143).
(142) Ho imparato molte cose da mio fratello.
Have learnt many things from my brother
‘I learnt many things from my brother.’
(143) Ho imparato da mio fratello molte cose.
Have learnt from my brother many things
‘I learnt many things from my brother.’
(Belleti & Shlonsky 1995: 490)
These scholars assume that Italian follows a [SNP V ONP PP] order, and they argue that the sentence-final positioning of the NP is achieved either through leftward movement of the PP (e.g. ‘PP scrambling’) or or rightward movement of the NP (i.e. ‘NP postposing’) when the object constitutes a ‘heavy’ constituent. As for the latter kind of analysis, Belleti and Shlonsky observe that elements appearing sentence-finally after PP constitutes a focalized phrase granting a felicitous answer to question-answer pairs such as (144).
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(144) Che cosa hai restituito a Maria?
What thing have give-back to Maria
‘What did you give back to Maria?’
a. Ho restituito a Maria [F le chiave].
Have give-back to Maria the keys
‘It is the keys that I gave back to Maria.’
b. # Ho restituito le chiave a Maria.
Have give-back the keys to Maria
‘I gave the keys back to Maria.’
(Belleti & Shlonsky 1995: 504)
In light of these observations, they designate the specifier of FOCP as the landing site but, contrary to the universal ordering imposition established by LCA, they stipulate this specifier to be on the right edge side of FOC’ in Italian. The relevant structure is shown in figure 32.
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Figure 32: Rightward focalization (Belleti & Shlonsky 1995: 504)
In a similar vein, Laenzlinger (1996) builds on a theory of adverb distribution and assumes that adverbs occupy the A’-specifier position of the projection over which they have scope. In reproducing a formal characterization of the rightmost position filled by adverbs in French (e.g. (145)), he favors a right-branching of the specifier in order to obtain a successful treatment of the extraposition of adverbs which matchestheir scope properties.
(145) Jean a regardé Marie discrètement/hier.
Jean has looked-at Marie discretely/yesterday
‘Jean looked at Marie discretely/yesterday.’
Laenzlinger (1996) proposes a syntax of adverbs that adheres to the model in figure 33.
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Figure 33: Enriched X’-schema (Laenzlinger (1996: 109))
His phrasal architecture proposes a model of the X’-schema which allows at most two specifiers per projection, namely an A-specifier and an A’-specifier. On the one hand, he assumes that the A’-specifier is licensed by A’- or operator-like features such as [WH], [FOC],
[NEG], etc. On the other hand, A-specifier is accredited by the presence of -features and - features on the head. Interestingly, his phrase structure supports placement of A’-specifiers to the right, which goes against Kayne’s (1994) linear ordering constraint or LCA.
Laenzlinger (1996) concludes that, given data such as that in (145), “Kayne’s argument should be revised, or set aside, because empirical evidence supports the need for a final non- complement XP position” (1996: 111). His proposal follows closely Belleti and Shlonsky’s
(1995), who defend that adverbs occupy the right specifier of a FOCP that immediately dominates VP. Laenzlinger’s theory of adverbs, however, analyzes rightward movement as an A’-movement rather than an A-movement in order to account for the scope of adverbs.
Ultimately, the relevant configuration for adverb licensing is a Spec-head configuration, wherein the adverb fills the A’-specifier of the projection whose head is endowed with the appropriate semantic features and whose directionality might appear to the right or to the
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left of the tree structure (Laenzlinger (1996)).
5.2.4. Interim summary
While stress-based focus accounts, on the one hand, and feature-based leftward focus movement approaches, on the other, have been very popular in providing a formal representation of Spanish focus facts, a review of such formal characterization has shown that, as they currently stand, they lack explanatory power not only to accommodate the interpretive import of sentence-final information focus constructions, but also their scope properties. Zubizarreta’s p-movement, for example, does not take into consideration the fact that constituents conveying new, non-presupposed information focus are not always located sentence-finally. While prosody surely is an important factor in the characterization of focus, so are its semantic-pragmatic implications, and more specifically exhaustivity.
Feature-based syntactic approaches pay more attention to the semantic-pragmatic properties of focus by establishing the presence of a formal FOCUS feature in the head of the
FOC phrase (i.e. Ordoñez, 2000; Etxepare & Uribe-Etxebarria, 2008; Ortega-Santos, 2016).
Yet, as already pointed out by Horvath in her analysis of Hungarian focalization strategies as well as the empirical investigation carried out in this dissertation for Basque and Spanish, it is not focus but exhaustivity that acts as a determining factor in the manipulation of word order in all these typologically unrelated languages.
Another somewhat problematic aspect of these analyses on leftward focus movement is that these tend to be complemented with remnant movement of non-focal material, which could be thought of complex and uneconomical from a generativist perspective. Likewise, the limited and rather dubious evidence provided in favor of leftward movement (e.g. 194
Ortega-Santos, 2016) suggest nothing but the wide scope, operator-like distribution of sentence-final focus (e.g. parasitic gaps).
As an alternative, an analysis of focus in terms of rightward movement (e.g. right- branching of specifiers) could possibly render more cost-effective and account for the scope properties of focus. However, in adopting such an implementation, one would have to do it at the expense of Kayne’s LCA and universal linear ordering principles, which rejects rightward adjunction or movement in the first place.
In overcoming this formal analytical drawbacks, the present dissertation entertains two possible analyses of Spanish exhaustive information focus structures. As will be fully disclosed in the next section, first, a feature-checking analysis will be developed. This proposal rests on two primary assumptions:
1) The head of the FOCP phrase hosts an unvalued, uninterpretable formal FOCUS
feature that must crucially be checked with [+EXH](austive) value, as opposed to
[+FOC](us), leading to an exhaustively-marked focus constituent.
2) After feature-checking, the EPP feature responsible for movement (Chomsky 2001)
will prompt movement to the right-branching specifier of FOCP. Here, I follow
Lopez (2009) and assume that LCA is a soft constraint that, in this case, is
overridden by semantic-pragmatic considerations. I argue that linearization patterns
are subject to parametric variation and, therefore, I cast aside any models of syntactic
theory superimposing universal linear orderings (i.e. Kayne 1994).
The second proposal, also used to account for Basque exhaustive information focus in chapter 4, takes a constructional stance where phonology, syntax, and semantics act within a holistic, non-modular system. Under this approach, no movement operations are assumed.
Word order is mapped at the phonological level; syntax specifies the grammatical categories 195
involved in the construction; and, semantics or conceptual structure is responsible for accommodating the interpretive value as well as scope domain of exhaustive information focus structures.
5.3. A formal syntactic characterization of Spanish focus constructions
In this section, I lay out a new syntactic proposal of Spanish information focus, which entertains two different theoretical frameworks much in the spirit of chapter 4. The first proposal adopts the formal machinery couched within mainstream generativist grammars and, therefore, pursues a feature-driven movement analysis; the second one rejects to regard syntax and movement as the core analytic elements and, instead, formalizes the properties of
Spanish information focus within a usage-based constructional model.
Unlike earlier accounts, these analyses incorporate exhaustivity as the hallmark conditioning the syntactic variation between in-situ/preverbal non-exhaustive information focus and sentence-final exhaustive information focus. The relevant examples are depicted in
(146) and (147) accordingly.
(146) ¿Quién ha perdido la final?
Who.NOM have.PRS lose.PRT the final
‘Who has lost the final?’
La ha perdido [F Nadal].
It.ACC have.PRS lose.PRT Nadal.NOM
‘It is Nadal who has lost it.’
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(147) ¿Quiénes habéis pillado ya las entradas?
Who.NOM have.PRS get.PRF already the tickets
‘Who has already gotten their tickets?’
Ana y Davinia ya las han pillado.
Ana and Davinia already them-ACC have.PRS get.PRF
‘Ana and Davinia already got them.’
As reported in chapter 3, the empirical findings suggested that sentence-final information focus is likely associated with an exhaustive implication (e.g. (24a)). Nevertheless, the form of the direct object condition native Spanish speakers’ choices more strongly than exhaustivity. In fact, when the direct object is expressed via full NPs, native Peninsular
Spanish speakers overwhelmingly prefer the in-situ/preverbal positioning of the focused subject, possibly as a result of their willingness to reduce the burden of severe processing load (see §3.4.6. for a brief discussion). Crucially, the claim I seek to justify is that all other things being equal sentence-final information focus carries an exhaustive implication and as such, in what follows, I account for such property in formal terms.
5.3.1. Spanish information focus: FOC[EXH] feature-driven rightward movement
The first of these two analyses adopts a mainstream generativist stance and provides a feature-driven treatment of sentence-final information focus. Following the architecture implemented in chapter 4 for immediate preverbal information focus in Basque, I use Rizzi’s enriched CP scheme (see §4.5.1.). In deriving movement of the focused constituent to [SPEC,
FOCP], I assume that the head of the FOCUS projection must enter into a spec-head relation with the focused constituent through satisfactory valuation of a formal FOCUS feature. Yet, 197
as previewed in the last section, I depart from restrictive principles such as LCA (Kayne,
1994), which constrain the directionality of movement to always occur to the left due to the need of the specifier to precede the head and its complements. Instead, I propose the following template of the FOCP projection for Spanish, in which the specifier is located to the right of the hierarchical structure (figure 34).
FocP
Foc’ XP
Foc YP
FOC:[ ]
Figure 34: Right-branching of SPEC in FOCP
Importantly, because it is the exhaustive value of focused constituents, rather than focus, that is paramount to the reorganization of linear ordering, I also diverge from conventional analyses of focus wherein movement of focal elements to SPEC is obtained by means of agreement between a FOCUS feature typifying [+FOC] value and a focused phrase that also holds a [+FOC] specification. Alternatively, I argue that this interface FOCUS feature must be assigned exhaustive specification in order to be properly saturated. Thus, only focal material holding an exhaustive status will be able to check the focus feature in complying to the spec-head requirement and EPP property inherited by the FOCUS feature (figure 35).
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FocP
Foc’ XP[+EXH]
Foc YP
FOC:[+EXH]
Figure 35: [EXH] FOCUS feature
The feature-checking computation leading to the formation of sentence-final exhaustive information focus structure is implemented using Pesetsky and Torrego’s dual feature system, distinguishing between valued/unvalued and interpretable/uninterpretable occurrences of a feature. I assume, conforming to their taxonomy, that the head of FOCP accommodates an unvalued, interpretable iFOC[ ] feature, whose interpretable quality ensures that exhaustive information focus is correctly interpreted in the right-branching specifier, while simultaneously granting a wide scope reading. In addition, the unvalued character of the formal FOCUS feature will have to find a valued [+EXH] instance and agree with it in order for the derivation to converge (for details on AGREE, see 4.5.1.).
My proposal can be outlined as follows: the probe, which is the head of the FOCP projection, contains an unvalued, interpretable iFOC[ ] feature that is looking down for a goal hosting an exhaustively valued, yet uninterpretable matching instance of the FOCUS feature
(uFOC[EXH]), to agree with. Once agreement between the unvalued iFOC[ ] feature and its valued matching instance holding [+EXH]austive specification is achieved, the EPP licenser responsible for movement becomes activated (Chomsky, 2000) and the focused element
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undergoes rightward movement to SPEC in order to capture the linearization, interpretation and scope properties of Spanish sentence-final information focus (figure 36).
Figure 36: Agree (left) and Move (right)
Through agree and move operations, the focused subject achieves a high, rightmost position in the structure that enables exhaustive focus to scope over the entire predication.
The unintepretable characterization of exhaustivity within the focused XP gets interpreted in that position too, due to the interpretable quality of the formal FOCUS feature in the head of the FOCUS projection.
In the remainder of this section, I proceed to derive the sentence-final exhaustive information focus in (146a), here repeated in (148), using this feature-based model.
(148) La ha perdido [F Nadal].
It.ACC have.PRS lose.PRT Nadal.NOM
‘It is Nadal who has lost it.’
I start off the derivation by depicting the unmarked [SEXH CL-V] structure. Note that I use the clitic version of the direct object in this derivation. In this regard, I take Zagona’s
(2002) approach to be substantially correct and assume that the clitic adjoins to V, producing 200
the CL-V chunk that subsequently undergoes movement to T to check tense features. At this point in the derivation, the focused subject is merged in [SPEC, TP] after checking the D- feature in T which triggers movement to the specifier (Chomsky, 1995).
Once the baseline structure [SEXH CL-V] is generated under TP, the next primitive operation taking place in the syntax is AGREE. In order for the intended focused subject to linearize in the high, right peripheral edge of the structure, the head of the FOCUS projection containing an unvalued, interpretable FOCUS feature agrees with the [EXH]austively valued, uninterpretable instance held by the subject constituent in [SPEC, TP], as depicted in figure 37.
Figure 37: Agree
Upon probe-goal agreement, the unvalued nature of the FOCUS feature in FOC0 is saturated and is assigned EXH(austive) specification. Consequently, in complying with the spec-head configuration which requires the specifier to be filled with a phrase holding the same feature specification, movement to the right periphery takes place and, resultantly, the
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whole derivation succeeds in accounting for Spanish linearization, interpretation and scope properties (figure 38).
Figure 38: Move
In short, the present analysis presupposes that sentence-final information focus is triggered via exhaustivity as opposed to focus. The current proposal assumes no directionality restrictions and takes the view that movement to a rightward A’-position is possible in Spanish. In reaching such position, the exhaustively-marked focus constituent not only achieves its needed interpretation and linear ordering, but also predicts that this focal material has wide scope over the entire predication.
Unlike exhaustive information focus, when the focused subjects remain in preverbal position, I argue that these do not undergo any movement due to their disassociation with exhaustivity. Resultantly, this second alternative is formally represented as staying in-situ and lacking quantificational force. In line with the analysis proposed for Basque non-exhaustive information focus, I also assume that the focused constituent holds a valued and interpretable 202
iFOC[+FOC] specification in Spanish, indicating that subjects typifying their unmarked [F
S]VO order lack any associations with exhaustivity, wide scope demands and syntactic permutations. The interpretable occurrence of the [+FOC] endowed to the XP establishes that such constituent is already interpreted as a focused instance in its original position. A formalized version of (147a), repeated in (149), is reproduced in figure 39.
(149) Ana y Davinia (ya) las han pillado.
Ana and Davinia already them-ACC have.PRS get.PRF
‘Ana and Davinia already got them.’
Figure 39: Spanish in-situ non-exhaustive information focus
5.3.2. Spanish information focus: a constructional account
The alternative proposal considers an analysis of sentence-final exhaustive information focus in constructional terms. Unlike generativist feature-driven accounts, this non-derivational framework does not view syntax as the conduit of word order formation. By definition, CxG understands grammar to consist of learned form-meaning pairings that speakers of a given language learn through repeated exposure to input and general cognitive, pragmatic and
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processing constraints. Therefore, different from mainstream generative theories, it departs from a modular division of grammar (i.e. phonology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, etc.) and, instead, seeks at integrating all components within a unitary representational system. As such, no arbitrary feature stipulations are imposed at the syntactic level in order to generate the desired word order configurations and semantic interpretation before the Spell-Out point between the syntax and the interface with PF and LF.
In pursuing this non-modular, usage-based treatment of grammar, I assume the ‘all-in- one’ grammatical system devised in chapter 4 (figure 40 below), wherein PHON (phonology) lays out the desired linearized output, SYN (syntax) delineates all syntactic categories contributing to the construction, and CS (conceptual structure) maps these syntactic categories and their surface linearization with its corresponding interpretation.
Figure 40: Constructional schema
Following this model of grammar and, therefore, departing from any generativist derivational accounts, this second analysis discards merge and move as licit syntactic operations, and simply linearizes focus sentence-finally in the PHON(ological) tier of the construction at one fell swoop. The specification of the syntactic categories conforming the content of the construction are handled at the SYN(tactic) tier. Crucially, syntax does not impose any hierarchical or ordering constraints and simply inherits a head-initial
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construction that details the primitive categories of the relevant terms involved (e.g. V, NP,
AdvP, AdjP, etc.). The present construction does not make any further stipulations about the form of the direct object (clitic vs. non-clitic). Under this account, wherein language is understood to form a network of interrelated constructions, the particular form of the accusative object would be inherited from a different construction targeting the form and positioning of clitics. Lastly, the exhaustive focus value is endowed to the NP appearing sentence-finally through an EXH(austive) operator at the CS tier of the construction. An abstraction of the relevant construction holistically representing all three tiers and their interrelations via numerical indexes is shown in figure 41 using Attribute Value Matrices
(AVMs).
Figure 41: Abstract representation of Spanish sentence-final exhaustive information focus construction
The formal semantic implementation of this exhaustive operator is the same as that used for Basque exhaustive information focus constructions. It adopts Krifka’s (2006) analysis of the exhaustive operator ‘only’ and expresses the generalization that for every y in the domain of alternatives A, where y equals the focused term XP1 (SYN) located in sentence-final
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position (PHON), a given predication P applies to y and y is that focused element and nothing else. A concrete construct of this construction is schematized in figure 42 for the individual expression in (146) La ha perdido Nadal ‘It is Nadal who has lost it’ (La ‘it’ = la final ‘the finale’).
PHON < [la1 [[ha perdido]2]4 [Nadal]3]5 >
SYN [NP3 , [CL1 V2]4]5
CS FOCEXH < 3, A, 5 >
y A [(x.PERDER’2 (x, la final1))(y) y = Nadal3]5 (-reduction)
y A [(PERDER’2 (y, la final1)) y = Nadal3]5
Figure 42: Spanish sentence-final exhaustive information focus construction
The combinatorial nature of the proposed construction is read as follows: each lexical item is orderly entered into the PHON(ological) tier and is assigned a numerical index that serves the purpose of interrelating all three layers together.16 The syntactic category of each lexical entry is specified under SYN: the intended focused constituent Nadal is characterized as a NP, marked through the index 3, while ha perdido ‘has lost’ receives the syntactic category
V and la ‘it’ is represented as a clitic. Unlike the abstract representation in figure 41, the constructional schema offered in figure 42 inherits a [CL-V] construction, merely defining the order and syntactic specification of the pronominal object. Ultimately, the form and syntactic categorization of the construct obtains its interpretation at CS, which determines that the construction takes an exhaustive-focus value applicable to the focused element, all
16 Here, for ease of exposition, I abstract away from providing a detailed phonological representation. 206
its potential alternatives and the predication where focal material is embedded; that is, it resolves that for every y in the domain of alternatives, y lost the finale and y must be the tennis player Nadal.
In all, this integrated representation of sentence-final exhaustive information focus as a construction shows the form-meaning correspondence between [V…Focus] sequences and exhaustivity in Spanish. In doing so, the current approach takes a ‘what you see is what you get’ perspective on the representation of grammar and assumes learners and speakers of
Spanish to assimilate and ‘grammaticalize’ the alignment of focus and its corresponding meaning as a whole without making syntax the core level of grammar dictating the phonological and logical form of language. Unlike the machinery implemented in generative grammar, these alternative analysis allows us to depict the discourse-structuring of focus elements without resorting to feature specifications and ad hoc devices seeking to trigger movement.
5.3.3. Summary
In order to account for word order, scope and meaning correspondences of Spanish information focus, the first formal proposal implements a rightward movement analysis led by the presence of an interface FOCUS feature to be assigned [+EXH]austive specification that, upon satisfactory valuation, activates an EPP device guaranteeing the movement of the exhaustively-marked focus phrase to a high, peripheral position. While following contemporary generativist assumptions, in order to register the correct alignment of focus and its scope properties, this derivational version disregards any directionality constraints on movement such as Kayne’s LCA and proposes that constituents conveying exhaustive 207
information focus undergo rightward movement to [SPEC, FOCP]. On the other hand, the alternative proposal to the minimalist framework is exempt from feature-driven movement accounts, wherein syntax is regarded as the main force of analysis. Instead, the construction grammar approach takes phonological form, syntax and semantics to work in tandem in order to capture the generalizations of Spanish focus in a holistic, non-modular manner.
Under standard generativist approaches, the analysis of focus presented here renders itself slightly unappealing given the stipulation that movement occurs to the right edge.
However, such an analysis not only accommodates the linearization patterns of focus but it does so in a more frugal way than previous formal analyses relying on multiple leftward movement operations. One can therefore opt to formally describe Spanish focalization strategies in more economical ways at the expense of purported universal restrictions on movement or stand by the existence of such universal constraints and theorize a more convoluted account that is faithful to traditional assumptions. In this regard, a constructional approach does not need to sacrifice economy for so-called language universals or vice versa.
It understands grammar as a systematic collection of form-function pairings at varying degrees of generality and complexity, allowing us to capture parametric variations within and across languages more straightforwardly without making arbitrary and unconstrained decisions about the mechanisms and computations involved within individuals’ grammars.
The empirical study and hierarchy of constraints analysis reported in chapter 3 have revealed that, besides exhaustivity, Peninsular Spanish speakers’ choice with regards to the structural placement of focused subjects is dependent on the form of the accusative argument of the verb. In fact, results from the present investigation have shown that exhaustivity plays a role primarily when the accusative direct object is realized as a clitic, producing a [Clitic – Verb … FocusINFO] constructional effect. Under the current minimalist 208
proposal, it is presumed that exhaustive information focus will always be generated in sentence-final position due to the preconditions established by FOC: [EXH] feature, and lacks the means to accommodate the constraint imposed by the form of the DO. The constructional approach, on the other hand, provides the tools to state the generalization that if a given element falls in final position in the presence of an accusative clitic (i.e. lo, la, los, las), it gets an exhaustive interpretation, allowing for the possibility of other linguistic factors to interact with the final configuration of this exhaustive information focus construction. In light of these observation, I therefore conclude that the constructional approach renders more effective and advantageous in capturing the characteristics of
Spanish information focus.
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CHAPTER 6: Information Focus in the contact variety of Basque Spanish
6.1. Introduction
After exploring the syntactic and semantic-pragmatic characteristics of information focus in
Basque and Spanish, I now turn to the contact variety of Basque Spanish and the expression of information focus in this specific dialect of Spanish spoken in the Basque Country region, in northern Spain. More specifically, in this chapter, I provide an empirical investigation into an alternative preverbal (exhaustive) information focus construction that had been previously documented to be used in variation with the standard, sentence-final exhaustive information focus structure described in chapters 2, 3 and 5.
My hypothesis is that this non-standard preverbal (exhaustive) information focus construction has emerged and diffused in this community, unlike others, as a result of the influence of Basque’s immediate preverbal exhaustive information focus construction on
Spanish. In order to gauge the effects of Basque syntax onto Basque Spanish with regards to this alternative preverbal (exhaustive) focus variant and to also obtain a better understanding of what linguistic and extra-linguistic factors condition people’s perception of this construction and its possible usage in vernacular speech, I conducted a 7-point Likert-scale acceptability judgment task, whose results are reported and discussed in the remainder of this dissertation. 210
This chapter is organized as follows: in §6.2, I provide a brief overview of the location and socio-political situation of the Basque Country, and I introduce the contact variety of
Basque Spanish, paying special attention to its linguistic features and the general attitudes held towards them; next, in §6.3, I describe the linguistic phenomenon under investigation following qualitative observations made in previous work and, on the face of these observations, I motivate the present study, its goals and research questions. §6.3.3. details the experimental approach taken to explore these research questions and reports on the results obtained in the study. These results suggest that the use and acceptance of this preverbal alternative is dependent on complex interactions involving Basque Spanish speakers’ age, self-identification with the Basque culture, their living environment and their level of Basque proficiency. Finally, given these results and following Van Coetsem’s framework on language contact phenomena, in §6.4., I propose that this alternative variant results from the interplay and complementarity of processes of imposition (source-language agentivity) and borrowing
(recipient-language agentivity), which are driven by both social dominance and linguistic/cultural attitudes towards Basque and the contact variety of Basque Spanish. It is not only Basque- dominant or highly proficient bilinguals, but also Spanish-dominant bilinguals and Spanish monolinguals from the Basque Country who strongly identify with the Basque culture that act as primary agents in the emergence, diffusion and maintenance of this preverbal focus structure. Within a broader picture, the present study demonstrates that in explicating the processes involved in the emergence, diffusion and maintenance of any contact-induced phenomena, any theory of language contact should not only entertain the effects of linguistic competence, but also the impact of linguistic and cultural attitudes and ideologies.
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6.2. Background on Basque-Spanish contact
6.2.1. Geographical situation of the Basque Country
Basque or Euskara and Spanish have been in contact in the southern region of the Basque
Country for hundreds of years. The Basque Country or Euskal Herria extends throughout the border between France and Spain on the Atlantic Ocean. This region is geographically divided into the Southern Basque Country within the Spanish border, where both Spanish and Basque hold legal status as official languages, and the Northern Basque Country within the French territory, where French and Basque are spoken. As shown in figure 43, the
Southern Basque Country is comprised by the historical provinces of Bizkaia ‘Biscay’, Araba
‘Álava’ and Gipuzkoa, which together constitute the Basque Autonomous Community
(hereinafter referred to as BAC) and the Community of Navarre also known as Nafarroa. On the other hand, the Northern Basque Country, more commonly known as Iparralde, extends through the southern part of France in Lapurdi ‘Labourd’, Behe Nafarroa ‘Lower Navarre’ and
Zuberoa ‘Soule’.
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Figure 43: Map of the Basque Country illustrating all seven historical territories, divided into today’s current political administrations (Center for Basque Studies at University of Nevada, Reno, 2011) 17
In this chapter, I focus on the southern region of the Basque Country and, in particular, on the northwestern region of Bizkaia ‘Biscay’, where Spanish and Basque have cohabited in intense contact giving rise to the contact variety of Basque Spanish, a variety of Spanish that is spoken by both bilingual and monolingual speakers (Landa, 1995).
6.2.2. Sociolinguistic situation of the Basque Country
Basque and Spanish have coexisted with each other for centuries in the southern territories of Basque Country, giving rise to today’s bilingual society. Yet, unlike Spanish, the presence
17 http://www.basque.unr.edu/conferences/2011/languages.html 213
and survival of Basque has been seen as threatened for many centuries. In fact, it is generally claimed that the contact situation between Basque and other Romance languages has been one of diglossia. Euskara was the minority language; its knowledge and use were geographically unevenly distributed and completely restricted from institutional life at least until the proclamation of the Spanish constitution in 1978. For the most part, its use was linked to the family environment and rural society, and the language itself was generally associated with agriculture, illiteracy and ‘backwardness’ (Trask, 1997; Zuazo, 2005).
This instability of the language worsened during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and the Franco regime (1936-1975), which led to the linguistic oppression of minority languages, among them Basque, and the imposition of Spanish as the only official language of Spain.
During Francoist Spain, the use of Basque was completely banned, and propagation and celebration of any cultural activities that were not aligned with Spanish nationalistic ideologies were heavily punished. In addition, due to the industrialization process that the
Basque Country had already undergone and the economic boom in the 1960s, high immigration rates from other Spanish regions to the Basque area occurred (Azurmendi et al.
2008). As a consequence, the number of Spanish monolingual speakers grew rapidly, mainly in the greater Bilbao area in Bizkaia and in the industrial towns in Gipuzkoa, which significantly boosted the presence of Spanish-only speakers.
But, after Franco’s death in 1975, a period of revitalization of Basque commenced. It must be noted that efforts in the defense, maintenance and standardization of Basque had already been timidly initiated in 1918 with the foundation of Euskaltzaindia (literally, “group of keepers of the Basque language”) or the Basque Academy of Language. During Franco’s dictatorship, the academy's original initiatives to watch over the Basque language, both philologically and socially, were reduced to silence, but they were able to resume their 214
activities back in 1945 and, in 1968, they established what is known as Euskara Batua,
‘Standardized Basque’ or ‘Standard Basque’.
The greatest period for the revival of Basque followed the enactment of the Spanish constitution in 1978 and the Statute of Autonomy for the BAC in 1979. On the one hand, the Spanish constitution granted regional languages, such as Basque, official status. On the other hand, the passing of the Statute of Autonomy recognized the legal status of the Basque language as the official language of the BAC, together with Spanish.
The official legalization of Basque led to the establishment of a generalized system of official bilingualism. The decision to give Basque its own official status was primarily linked to the Basque political and nationalist ideology of making Euskara the language of the
Basques, but it also alluded to protecting minority speakers while simultaneously paving the way for the promotion of the language beyond its already existing community of speakers
(López-Besaguren, 2012). At this time, the newly established Basque government started a program of language revitalization in attempting to reverse the diglossic situation that had characterized this region for hundreds of years. The impact of this “Basquization” process was most notable in the education system (Azurmendi et al. 2008). In 1982, the Basque government approved a linguistic normalization law that granted the implementation of
Basque as a language of instruction at the academic level, creating three models of education.
On the one hand, a model where Spanish was the dominant language of instruction and
Basque was only a subject was created (model A). A bilingual category was also modeled, where both Basque and Spanish became the medium of instruction. Within this model, called model B, half of the subjects were taught in Spanish and the other half were taught in
Basque. Lastly, a Basque-dominant version, known as model D, was put into action. Within this model, Basque became the main language of instruction and Spanish was taught only as 215
a separate subject.
In addition, Basque teaching centers geared towards adults, known as Euskaltegiak, were created in order to advertise and encourage the study and learning of Basque among older generation who had not had the chance to receive any schooling in Basque. In 1982, together with the formalization of bilingual and Basque-only educational systems, the first
Basque radio station, Euskadi Irratia, and TV channel, Euskal Telebista, were launched. And, what is more, numerous festivals such as Ibilaldia (1978-present), Nafarroa Oinez (1981- present), Araba Euskaraz (1981-present) or Euskararen Nazioarteko Eguna (1995-present) began to be annually organized by schools and social organizations in order to promote the use of Euskara among both young and adult populations (Azurmendi et al. 2008).
These initiatives remarkably helped to promote and expand the use of Basque in an effort to build up a strong Basque and bilingual society. Before any of these actions were taken, the number of Spanish speakers outweighed that of Basque speakers, most likely aided by the linguistic oppression and migratory movements under Franco’s dictatorship.
According to the Basque Institute of Statistics, EUSTAT, around 66% of the population in the BAC was Spanish monolingual before the linguistic normalization law was passed in
1982. Basque speakers were primarily found in rural areas. According to Amorrortu (2003), at the beginning of the 1980s, about half of the population in rural areas in Bizkaia and in
Gipuzkoa were Basque speakers, but only 10% of the population spoke Basque in the city of
Bilbao, in industrial areas of western Bizkaia and in most of Araba. Over time, however, there has been a gradual change in the number of bilingual speakers (i.e. those whose mother tongues are both Spanish and Basque), which has increased by almost 15 percent in the last
30 years as shown in figure 44. An increase has also been observed among passive bilinguals,
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defined as those who understand Spanish and Basque well, but whose primary language of communication at home is Spanish (from 12.21% in 1981 to 19.3% in 2011).
Figure 44: Evolution of linguistic competence in the BAC (1981-2011) adapted from EUSTAT.
Interestingly, the evolution of the bilingual population in the BAC has been reported to take different directions once age is taken into consideration. In fact, an increase in the proportion of bilingual speakers has only been observed among younger generations not exceeding 50 years of age (Gobierno Vasco-Eusko Jaurlaritza, 2013). As shown in figure 45, in the last 20 years, the number of bilinguals has increased by almost 20% among young people ranging between 16 and 24 years old. A considerable boost in the number of bilinguals is also observable for individuals between the ages of 25-34 and 35-49 years old.
Nevertheless, over time, a slight reduction of bilingual speakers has occurred in the oldest groups (i.e. 50 years old or older). These data suggest that the ‘Basquization’ process is
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slowly taking place among the younger generations, most likely due to their Basque schooling.
Figure 45: Evolution of bilingual population by age in the BAC, 1991-2011 adapted from V Encuesta Sociolingüística (2011)
A closer look at the population’s different degrees of language proficiency shows that, while the number of bilinguals has increased considerably in the BAC, Spanish-dominant bilinguals are more numerous. In fact, as shown in figure 46, the number of L1 Basque-L2
Spanish bilinguals was slightly higher in 1991 than it is nowadays (35.4% vs. 27.1%).
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Figure 46: Evolution of bilingual population by language proficiency in the BAC, 1991-2011 adapted from V Encuesta Sociolingüística (2011)
At present, the number of L1 Spanish-L2 Basque bilinguals is higher almost in all age groups, especially in the youngest cluster where more than 50% report being more fluent in
Spanish. Yet, within the oldest cohort, L1 Basque bilinguals surpass the number of L1
Spanish bilinguals (figure 47). Therefore, while there are currently more young bilingual speakers in the BAC, it is the older bilinguals that appear to be more dominant in Basque.
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Figure 47: Bilingual population by language proficiency and age in the BAC, 2011 adapted from V Encuesta Sociolingüística (2011)
As far as language frequency of use is concerned, there has been a small increase in the number of speakers who report using Basque as much as or more than Spanish since 1991.
While the majority of active Basque speakers is concentrated in the region of Gipuzkoa, this positive increase is generalizable to all three territories in the BAC. Be this as it may, it is important to note that most of the population still prefers to use Spanish (figure 48).
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Figure 48: Evolution of the number of speakers who report using Basque as much as or more than Spanish in the BAC, 1991-2011 adapted from V Encuesta Sociolingüística (2011)
The distribution of the use of Basque differs once again across age groups. As sketched in figure 49, the number of speakers who report using Basque has noticeably decreased within the oldest generation most likely because this group of speakers now consists essentially of the offspring of immigrants who arrived to the community in the 1960s and who presumably have not received any instruction in Basque.
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Figure 49: Evolution of the number of speakers who report using Basque as much as or more than Spanish in the BAC according to age, 1991-2011 adapted from V Encuesta Sociolingüística (2011)
In a nutshell, the initiatives carried out by the Basque government and administration as well as cultural associations and social media to revitalize and promote the use of Basque seem to be pointing in a positive direction in the BAC. In the last 30 years, the BAC has experienced a change from a predominantly monolingual society to a bilingual one. This revitalization and ‘Basquization’ process has been particularly prominent among the youngest population, where the proportion of bilingual speakers has grown remarkably in the last 30 years. There are, however, some substantial differences regarding language proficiency and language use. While bilingualism seems to the norm in the BAC at the moment, the majority of bilinguals are still more proficient in Spanish and report speaking more Spanish than Basque. As for the oldest cohort within the Basque Spanish community, the number of bilinguals and Basque users has diminished, most likely resulting from the arrival of non-Basque immigrants to the community in the middle of the 20th century.
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6.2.3. The contact variety: Basque Spanish
The bilingual situation that flourished as a result of the official status of Basque gave way to the development of a ‘Basquisized’ type of Spanish, ‘Basque-influenced Spanish’ or what is nowadays more commonly known as the contact variety of ‘Basque Spanish’. In the course of this chapter, I adopt the latter as a term representation of both bilingual and monolingual
Spanish speakers of the Southern Basque Country region. The next section offers a brief description of the linguistic features and attitudes towards this contact variety.
6.2.3.1. Linguistic features of Basque Spanish
Basque Spanish has been argued to have developed its own linguistic repertoire as a result of intense contact with Basque, making it prominently distinct from other forms of Spanish spoken in the Spanish territory of the Peninsula. In her description of this variety of Spanish,
Fernández-Ulloa (1996) documents several linguistic features as salient characteristics of this contact variety. Among the most prominent phonetic features, she mentions the use of the sibilant [s] in place of the standard voiceless interdental fricative [θ] among speakers of an advanced age (e.g. zapatero [sapateɾo] ‘shoemaker’, dicen [disen] ‘they say’), deletion of intervocalic /d/ in word final –ado sequences or the realization of alveolar taps [ɾ] as trills [r], especially in coda position cantar [kantar]̪ and consonant clusters involving stops as in creo
[kreo] ‘I think’.
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Together with these phonetic traits, various non-standard morpho-syntactic features have also been attested among Basque Spanish speakers. Among the most popular ones, scholars list the use of conditional as opposed to imperfect subjunctive verb forms in the protasis of a conditional sentence and in nominal subordinate clauses (e.g. (150), (151)), an increased use of the present perfect tense in place of the preterit (e.g. (152)), the extensive use of leísmo with masculine and feminine referents and the reduplication of accusative arguments (e.g. (153)) as well as preverbal information focus structures as opposed to standard sentence-final foci (e.g. (154)).
(150) Si tendría dinero lo haría. (Urrutia-Cárdenas 1988: 36)
‘If I had money, I would do it.’
(151) Me dijo que le avisaría. (Urrutia-Cárdenas 1988: 36)
‘He/She told me that that I let him/her know.’
(152) Cuando ha habido la huelga aquella. (Fernández-Ulloa 1997: 205)
‘When that strike happened’
(153) A la niña le vi en la piscina. (Fernández-Ulloa 1997: 201)
‘I saw the girl at the pool.’
(154) [F Un coche nuevo] dice que ha comprado. (Urrutia-Cárdenas 1988: 36)
‘He/she said that he/she bought a new car.’
The emergence of these grammatical features has been proposed to be, if not directly, at least indirectly favored by the influence of Basque.18 In most cases, however, proposals
18 Fernández-Ulloa (1997), for example, notes that present perfect forms have propagated in the community due to Basque-dominant speakers’ inability to retain more complex preterit verb forms as a result of their extensive use and contact with Basque. Following this language-influence rationale, she further attributes high rates of leísmo and direct object reduplication to the influence of Basque. In this regard, she proposes that leísmo is used to accommodate both masculine and feminine human referents because a gender 224
relying on Basque-Spanish contact as the source of explanation have been essentially speculative. There is yet one exception pertaining to the study of null 3rd person anaphoric direct objects, which is one of the most recurrently cited and studied phenomena in this contact variety from a language contact standpoint (Zarate 1976, Urrutia-Cárdenas, 1988;
Korkostegi, 1992; Landa 1993, 1995; Urrutia-Cárdenas & Fernández-Ulloa, 1997; Zinkunegi,
2010; Gomez-Seibane, 2011, 2013; Sainzmaza-Lecanda, 2014; inter alia). Also known as ‘null objects’, these are commonly understood as the non-standard variants of Spanish accusative pronouns lo, la, los, las or leísta le, les (e.g. (155), (156)).
(155) …tuvo que pedir un préstamo. En la Ipar Kutxa ∅ pidió.
…he had to ask for a loan. He asked for (it) in Ipar Kutxa.
(Sainzmaza-Lecanda, 2014)
(156) No conozco a la novia de Txetxu. ¿Tú ∅ conoces?
‘I haven’t met Txetxu’s girlfriend. Have you met (her)?’
(Gómez-Seibane, 2011: 198)
Unlike in non-contact varieties of Spanish, these empty categories have been documented to occur not only with indefinite, inanimate, non-specific referents, but also definite, human/animate, specific entities (e.g. (156)). In fact, Gómez Seibane (2011) observes that object omission occurs with both animate and human referents in her data.
Furthermore, she points out that 3rd person direct objects are seemingly more often null not only with inanimate, but also definite and specific referents. Beyond animacy, definiteness
distinction is irrelevant in the Basque morphology. She proposes that le, les is used to mark the difference between animate-human and inanimate entities.
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and specificity effects, other studies have also shown that object omission is likely in the presence of dative clitics le, les (e.g. (157)) and left-dislocated antecedents (e.g. (158)).
(157) …tenemos una iglesia hermosa, os ∅ voy a enseñar ahora.
‘…We have a beautiful church, I am going to show (it) to you now.’
(COSER: Aulesti (4501)) (Sainzmaza-Lecanda 2014: 17)
(158) Los perros no ∅ podemos llevar nosotros a la playa.
‘Dogs we cannot take (them) to the beach.’ (Landa 1993: 139)
These observations have been supported by Sainzmaza-Lecanda (2014), whose quantitative variationist exploration of this morpho-syntactic variable confirmed that in
Basque Spanish, but not in Castilian Spanish, animacy of the referent, presence of dative pronominals and left-dislocated antecedents favor the omission of 3rd person direct objects as opposed to the overt retention of standard overt pronominals.
While the distributional properties of these so-called null objects have been shown to be more relaxed in Basque Spanish than other Peninsular varieties, whether Basque is truly the source of this change has been subject to much scrutiny. Zarate (1976) and Urrutia-Cárdenas
(1988) pioneered the proposal that omission of accusative clitics lo, la, los, las and leísta le is due to the direct influence and agglutinative nature of Basque, which encodes morphological information in its verb inflection and, resultantly, lacks overt independent Spanish-like clitics. Landa (1995), on the other hand, offers a more cautious conclusion and maintains that higher frequency or wider distribution of the null object construction in Basque Spanish is not the result of direct, but rather indirect influence from Basque into Spanish. Her argument is that the influence of Basque is indirect because Basque is simply relaxing the restrictions by making the diffusion of null objects possible in Basque Spanish, but not in
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other varieties.
Many researchers have taken language dominance and/or language proficiency (i.e. differing degrees of bilingualism) to be the most reliable measure in validating the effects of language contact under the assumption that, if Basque were indeed acting as a propelling force in changing the configuration of the Basque Spanish accusative clitic system, Basque- dominant Spanish speakers or highly proficient Basque-Spanish bilinguals would produce significantly more null forms than Spanish-dominant or less proficient Basque-Spanish bilinguals. Nevertheless, this prediction has not been entirely supported. While Eguia (2002),
Gómez Seibane (2011, 2013) and Sainzmaza-Lecanda & Schwenter (2017) have consistently reported a higher proportion of the null object variant among Basque-dominant bilinguals than Spanish-dominant bilinguals, Basque Spanish monolinguals and Castilian Spanish monolinguals, in Zinkunegi’s (2010) data, it is Spanish-dominant bilinguals who learned
Basque in adulthood and Basque Spanish monolinguals who used significantly more null objects than Basque-dominant bilinguals, who were born and raised in Basque monolingual households and conducted their education primarily in Basque. Therefore, while it seems fair to say that null objects are trademarks of the Basque Spanish community, it seems that language dominance and/or language proficiency are not sufficient explanations in accounting for the increased use and propagation of this marked morpho-syntactic feature.
In summary, there are several non-standard linguistic features characteristic of Basque
Spanish that do not occur in other non-contact Spanish varieties, which make a Basque-
Spanish contact explanation an attractive one. However, in elucidating in what ways language contact has contributed to the emergence, diffusion and maintenance of these linguistic features, research has been rather inconclusive. While speakers’ language dominance and proficiency seem to serve a determining role according to most studies, Zinkunegi’s findings 227
suggest that speakers’ linguistic competence in Basque might not be the main and only factor triggering the higher rates of occurrence of these non-standard forms of language in the contact variety of Basque Spanish.
In light of this unresolved matter, in this chapter, I evaluate the effects of Basque onto
Spanish by looking at a new linguistic variable and in particular one of its variants, namely preverbal (exhaustive) information focus (e.g. (154)). While its occurrence has been reported in passing by various scholars (i.e. Zarate, 1976; Urrutia-Cárdenas, 1988; Fernández-Ulloa,
2005; Camus-Bergareche, 2010; Gómez Seibane, 2010), very little attention has been paid to the linguistic and extra-linguistic factors that led its emergence, patterns of use, diffusion, and current maintenance. Therefore, the purpose of this chapter will be to offer a first empirical and quantitative approximation to the study of this attested, yet up until this point poorly characterized, contact phenomenon.
6.2.3.2. Attitudes towards Basque Spanish
Research on attitudes towards Basque Spanish has been scarce and the limited number of studies devoted to surveying this contact variety suggest that its usage does not generally enjoy a positive image in the BAC. This sentiment, in fact, goes back as early as the 16th century when the Spanish spoken by Basque speakers was used as a means of mockery by theater comedians, who used the role of the vizcaíno (i.e. a male character from the Basque region of Bizkaia) to depict linguistic incompetence in Spanish (Cuadernos Cervantes, 2010).
Later on, it was the Basques themselves who used their speech as a means of entertainment in the so-called arlotada, a journalistic genre that sought to mock the Spanish of rural Basque speakers through a series of Basque-Spanish contact linguistic trademarks 228
(Ciriza, 2009). In fact, linguistic traits such as ‘difficulty’ of pronouncing the interdental fricative [θ] or deletion of intervocalic [ð] in –ado sequences became stereotypes of the arlote, the character that represented a rural uneducated Basque speaker. It seems, therefore, that the use of Basque Spanish tends to index a series of pejorative meanings having to do with rural environments, illiteracy or lack of education. In addition, pressures to follow the prescriptive and normative forms of the language at the educational level have also played a significant role in promoting the stigma associated with any Spanish varieties that deviated from the so-called “standard”. Hence, considering the strict ideologies on language
‘correctedness’ imposed at schools and its usage as an instrument of mockery and entertainment due to associations with rural, uneducated and illiterate people, the general negative attitude towards this variety may come as no surprise.
In her exploration of people’s social evaluation of Basque and Basque Spanish,
Fernández-Ulloa (1997) used a questionnaire to directly ask Basque Spanish speakers whether they considered the Spanish spoken in the Basque Country to be different from the
Spanish spoken in other Spanish regions in Spain. In case of obtaining an affirmative response, she further asked her informants to comment on those differences and define whether they liked them or not. In her results, Fernández-Ulloa (1997) notes that most participants claimed Basque Spanish to be different from other Spanish varieties and that this differentiation was mostly perceived in intonation, word order configurations, code- switching and other lexical variations. Interestingly, about 25% of her respondents agreed that the most notable feature of the Spanish in the Basque Country was that it was simply badly spoken, “se habla mal” (1997: 212). When asking participants about their attitudes towards those distinct features that they themselves described, she reports that 40% of them exhibited annoyance, another 40% remained agnostic or did not note any differences, and 229
only 20% showed a positive attitude towards these features. According to her study, the sentiment of discontent towards Basque Spanish was generalizable among both the young and the elderly, but it was stronger among those with a higher level of education. In addition, she states women to be more conscious about these dialectal differences than men (90% of women as opposed to 50% of men) and also to be the ones who censure the use of Basque
Spanish features more strongly (60% of the women vs. 20% of the men). This contrast between women and men is one of the clearest and most consistent sociolinguistic principles
(Labov 1990). As early as 1969, Wolfram pointed out that “females show a greater sensitivity to socially evaluative linguistic forms than do males” (1969: 78) and “show more awareness of prestige norms in both their actual speech and attitudes towards speech” (Wolfram &
Fasold 1974: 93). This being a ubiquitous observation across languages and diverse linguistic phenomena, it is not surprising that the same attitudinal trends were found in Fernández-
Ulloa’s study among Basque women and men.
In a fairly recent study, Ciriza (2009) explores the linguistic behavior and attitudes towards contact features in Basque Spanish among three different social networks. In this study, the first network (network A) consisted of 9 members from an urban setting in the
Bilbao city area, who did not participate in any Basque cultural, political or linguistic associations in their neighborhood. While they all reported feeling Basque, their identification with a Basque national identity was moderate. All members were Spanish- dominant, but four of them had received education in Basque. The second network
(network B) was also based on an urban setting; however, unlike network A, this group was actively involved in Basque leftist politics and was characterized as an abertzale (literally “fond of the fatherland”) community. This network was comprised of 2 men and 6 women whose preferred language of communication was Basque. Two of the members did not speak 230
Basque, but had tried to learn it in the past or were trying to learn it at euskaltegis (‘Basque language centers for adult education’). The last network (network C) came from the rural town of Bermeo, in the region of Bizkaia. Basque was their dominant language and it was transmitted intergenerationally. All the members participated in a cultural association favoring the promotion of Basque; they were proud of their Basque heritage and conscious about Basque’s history of linguistic oppression; and, they considered that the preservation of
Basque was crucial for the survival of Basque cultural practices.
Ciriza (2009) analyzes the linguistic behavior of these groups with regard to four linguistic variables linked to the Spanish of the Basque Country: deletion of intervocalic /d/ in word final –ado sequences, multiple vibrant /r/, the use of Basque borrowings and production of dental /tz/. Her quantitative and qualitative results indicate that Basque
Spanish features function as markers of ethnic identity, especially when it comes to the use of Basque borrowings and the realization of the dental /tz/. The first two variables were reported to be used more often among Basque-dominant bilinguals, followed by Spanish- dominant bilinguals and, finally, Spanish monolinguals. Yet, Basque borrowings (i.e. Basque performatives and Basque toponyms) and dental /tz/ were more often used by the abertzale community in network B and especially by those whose L1 was Spanish. These speakers not only produced the /tz/ variant more often in Basque borrowings, but they also tended to hypercorrect. In her view, these production trends are indicative of “structural interference”, where the agent of change is “the neo-Basque speaker whose L1 is Spanish but who is also bilingual in Basque and whose ‘basquisized’ speech is progressively causing an effect on the
Spanish spoken in the Basque Country” (2009: 208). She further notes that, in her interviews with members of the more Spanish-oriented network A, participants linked the use of
Basque borrowings as symbols of local identity. Similar attitudes hold among speakers of the 231
nationalistic community (network B), who even consider Basque greetings almost mandatory. From these quantitative and qualitative data, Ciriza (2009) concludes that at least some Basque Spanish features “help create a type of Basque urban ethnic identity in which
“speaking Basque” is not the only way “to be Basque” (2009: 207). This, however, contrasts with the opinions of more rural, Basque-dominant speakers in Bermeo who, despite employing contact features in their Spanish, are fairly reluctant to their usage and also to the use of Basque borrowings and code-switching.
In sum, attitudes towards Basque Spanish seem to be heavily constrained by several extra-linguistic categories such as speakers’ area of residence, their level of linguistic competence in Basque, their contact with Basque and their level of education. On the one hand, Fernández-Ulloa’s study shows that negative attitudes prevail among Basque Spanish women and also those reporting a higher level of education. Yet, in Ciriza’s social network analysis, it is shown that while rural, Basque-dominant speakers are aware of the marginalization of the Basque Spanish dialect and feel reluctant to its usage, the Spanish- dominant cohort uses Basque Spanish as a marker of “Basqueness” and their desire to embrace a Basque identity.
Basque Spanish linguistic trademarks are seen as handy resources to supply the inability or impossibility to signal ethnic identity through the use of Basque at least for part of the
Basque Spanish community. In light of these observations, it may seem safe to articulate that, beyond traditional factors such as language dominance and/or language proficiency, linguistic and cultural attitudes also function and serve as crucial forces in explaining the use, diffusion and maintenance of non-standard linguistic phenomena pertaining to domains of language contact.
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6.2.4. Summary
Efforts to revitalize and promote the learning and use of Basque after Franco’s death in 1975 have led to a generalized system of bilingualism and the concurrent development of the
Basque Spanish contact variety, attested to be spoken by both bilingual and monolingual
Spanish speakers in the Southern Basque Country region. Among the most salient linguistic features of this variety, scholars have documented both phonetic and morpho-syntactic features. Either speculatively or through empirical evidence, while most scholars attribute the presence of these vernacular uses of language to the ‘direct’ influence of Basque under the assumption that highly proficient Basque speakers or Basque-dominant bilinguals produce these non-standard forms significantly more due to the influence of their dominant language onto their non-dominant one, this has not always been reported to be the case. In fact, Basque dominant bilinguals do not always produce these contact features significantly more often than L1 Spanish bilinguals and Spanish monolinguals, suggesting that other extra-linguistic factors, such as linguistic and cultural attitudes, might be at issue when it comes to the emergence, patterns of use, propagation and maintenance of these non- standard variants of language.
6.3. Information focus in Basque Spanish
The linguistic feature chosen to explore what linguistic and social factors contribute to the emergence, usage patterns and maintenance of Basque Spanish contact trademarks is information focus and, in particular, the purportedly claimed contact-induced preverbal variant shown in (159a), which co-occurs in variation with the standard sentence-final 233
exhaustive focus counterpart discussed in chapters 2, 4 and 5. (159b) represents the expected standard variant for non-Basque Spanish varieties spoken in Spain.19
(159) Variable focus placement in Basque Spanish:
(Q: ¿Qué dice Jon que ha comprado?)
‘What does John say that he has bought?’
a. “[F Una moto nueva] dice que ha comprau” (Zarate 1976: 56)
‘He/She says that he/she has bought [F a new motorcycle].’
b. Dice que ha comprado [F una moto nueva].
‘He/She says that he/she has bought [F a new motorcycle].’
The observation that focus placement is variable in Basque Spanish goes indeed back to
Zarate (1976), who points out that one of the most notable peculiarities of colloquial speech in the Txorierri valley located in the northwestern region of Bizkaia in the Basque Country is word order, which according to Zarate is influenced by Basque syntactic configurations having to do with the immediate preverbal nature of the elemento inquirido (literally ‘inquired element’) (1976: 55), or what is more commonly known as information focus in contemporary linguistics research. Zarate (1976) describes that whereas in (Standard)
Spanish questions such as ¿Qué llevas? ‘What do you have?’ or ¿Dónde vas? ‘Where are you going?’ are answered by locating the ‘inquired element’ after the verb as in Llevo peras ‘I have pears’ or Voy a Zamudio ‘I am going to Zamudio’, in Basque, this is expressed in the reverse order as in Madariak daroadaz ‘I have pears’ or Zamudiora noa ‘I am going to Zamudio’ where
19 The original example from Zarate (1976) does not include a wh-question marking the information focus nature of (159a). For ease of exposition, I add a wh-question here in order to distinguish these preverbal focus structures from cases of Spanish contrastive focus, which have been proposed to undergo focus-fronting (see §2.3.3. in this dissertation)
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the element under discussion is placed in front of the verb (1976: 53). Hence, from this reasoning, the fact that Basque Spanish speakers frequently position these ‘inquired elements’ in preverbal position is, in Zarate’s view, the influence of Basque into Spanish.
Along these lines, in his characterization of the Basque Spanish dialect, Urrutia-Cárdenas
(1988) also makes this observation, alluding to the influence of Basque focus mechanisms in purely informational contexts:
“El vasco es una lengua donde el orden de palabras está al servicio del ‘focus’ del
discurso […] El focus es la parte más importante de la nueva información que se
marca por la situación inmediatamente precedente al verbo […] La peculiaridad
anterior se refleja en el español del País Vasco en diversas construcciones, donde
para realzar el ‘focus’ se colocan los elementos oracionales en un orden especial que
refleja el mecanismo subyacente del vasco para destacar lo más importante de la
oración.” (Urrutia-Cárdenas 1988: 35-36)
[“Basque is a language where word order is governed by discourse ‘focus’ […] Focus
is the most important part of new information and it is placed in immediate
preverbal position […] This feature is attested in Basque Spanish in several
constructions, where ‘focus’ follows a special word order mimicking the underlying
Basque structure used to mark the most important element in the sentence.”]
More recently, Fernández-Ulloa (2005) has also emphasized the “great variability” of word order in Basque Spanish, citing Zarate’s words and concluding that research needs to be done in trying to elucidate what linguistic and social factors condition such word order possibilities and, more specifically, the tendency to put focal material in preverbal position.
To my knowledge, the first and only work pursuing a quantitative, corpus-based investigation of variable word order, yet without paying special attention to information 235
focus per se, is due to Gómez-Seibane (2012). Her study performs an exploratory analysis of the variation between standard VO sequences vs. non-standard OV sequences in seeking to understand the discourse-pragmatic functions of such an alternation and evaluate the influence of Basque syntax on the Basque Spanish variety. Following Prince’s (1981) and
Silva-Corvalán’s (1984) taxonomy of new vs. given information, Gómez-Seibane (2012) proposes that OV-VO alternation in Basque Spanish may result from one of the following four semantic-pragmatic functions: ‘textual link’ [-new, -contrastive] (e.g. (160b)),
‘contrastive focus’ [-new, +contrastive] (e.g. (161)), ‘contrary to expectation’ [+/-new, - contrastive] (e.g. (162b)), and ‘information focus’ [+new, -contrastive] (e.g. (163b)).
(160) a. Y ese… se llamaba Pablo S. él tenía dos carretas con bueyes.
‘And that… his name was Pablo S. He had two ox-wagons.’
b. Y [F las dos carretas con bueyes]O las [perdió]V.
‘And he lost both ox-wagons.’
(161) El papel de nacimiento no lo tengo. Pero [carnet]O [tengo]V.
‘I don’t have my birth certificate. But I have my license.’
(162) a. D. tiene 50 (años).
‘D. is 50 (years old).’
b. ¡[Cincuenta]O [tiene]V D.!
‘D. is 50!’
(163) a. ¿Pero qué tratamiento le dan a la presión baja fuera del café con cognac?
‘But what kind of treatment do they give for low blood pressure besides coffee
with cognac?’
b. [F Effortil]O me [dieron]V a mí.
‘They gave me Effortil.’ 236
From a quantitative standpoint, her corpus-based investigation revealed that while the standard VO order is overall produced overwhelmingly more frequently (VO order = 95.3% vs. OV order = 4.7%), her analysis attests a higher proportion of the fronted OV variant among Basque-dominant bilinguals as opposed to Basque-Spanish active bilinguals and
Spanish monolinguals (OV order Basque-dominant bilinguals = 13.7% vs. OV order
Basque-Spanish active bilinguals = 3.1% vs. Spanish dominant-bilinguals = 4.7%). Of relevance for the purposes of the present study is the type of focus reported in (163) as a representative case of information focus. In this regard, Gómez-Seibane (2012) notes that preverbal object construction conveying new, non-presupposed information accounted for around 30% of all quantified OV sequences.
In all, it seems safe to conclude that focused constituents in preverbal position occur in
Basque Spanish and, therefore, constitute an alternative focalization strategy in the speech of
Basque Spanish speakers. Scholars appeal to a language contact explanation in accounting for its occurrence and propose that it is ‘transfer’ of the syntactic configuration of Basque focus mechanisms onto Spanish syntax that has triggered the creation of this alternative focus expression.
6.3.1. Preverbal (exhaustive) information focus: qualitative observations
Most of the attested naturally-occurring instances of preverbal (exhaustive) information focus in Basque Spanish lack any kind of contextual specification (i.e. wh-question and
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answer pairs). For instance, Zarate (1976) documents a list of examples containing Focus-V sequences, which he stipulates represent preposing of the ‘inquired element’:20
(164) “[F Una moto nueva]NP dice que ha comprau.” (Zarate 1976: 56)
‘He/She says that he/she has bought [F a new motorcycle].’
(165) “[F Cebollas enteras]NP dice que le metían.” (Zarate 1976: 56)
‘He/she says that they would give him/her [F whole onions].’
(166) “Lo menos [F cuarenta viajes]NP hice.” (Zarate 1976: 56)
‘I made at least [F forty trips].’
(167) “[F Arriba]AdvP está.” (Zarate 1976: 55)
‘He is [F upstairs].’
(168) “[F Al hospital]PP le han llevau.” (Zarate 1976: 56)
‘They have taken him [F to the hospital].’
(169) “¡Loco te has vuelto tú! ¡[F A Bermeo]PP habrá que llevarte!” (Zarate 1976: 56)
‘You are nuts! We’ll have to take you [F to Bermeo].’
(170) “[F Dormido]AdjP estaba.” (Zarate 1976: 56)
‘He was [F asleep].’
There are a few observations that one might draw from Zarate’s purported cases of information focus. On the one hand, it seems that the range of preposed information foci can extend to different types of phrases. While noun phrases (NPs) seem to be the most frequent focalized constituents among Zarate’s examples (i.e. (164)-(166)), a few occurrences take the form of adverbial phrases (AdvPs) as shown in (167), prepositional phrases (PPs)
20 It is not very clear that all of Zarate’s examples actually represent true cases of information focus. In the following list, I include only those cases of preverbal information focus that can potentially function as responding to some kind of wh-question seeking new information. 238
involving locative expressions (e.g. (168)-(169)), and finally adjective phrases (AdjPs) of the form in (170).
Another observation that one might make from these data is that both arguments and adjuncts can be focalized to the preverbal position. Even though in Zarate’s monograph complements take exclusively the function of direct objects, Urrutia-Cárdenas (1988) reports instantiations of preverbal information focus occurring with subjects as well, as shown in
(171). Despite appearing in preverbal position in neutral, non-focused contexts, as has been shown in chapter 3, when focalized subject constituents typify bona fide cases of exhaustive information focus, non-contact Peninsular Spanish speakers are more likely to place focus in sentence-final position. Therefore, under exhaustive scenarios, (171) would be regarded as deviating from the expected standard pattern.
(171) Con el mogollón, [F la policía] vino. (Urrutia-Cárdenas 1988: 36)
‘With the crowd, [F the police] came.’
It is moreover noteworthy that some of these attested exemplifications of preverbal
(exhaustive) information focus occur outside the embedded clause. Observe the data in (164) and (165). While both una moto nueva ‘a new motorcycle’ and cebollas enteras ‘whole onions’ behave as direct object arguments of the embedded verbs comprar ‘to buy’ in (164) and meter
‘to put’ in (165), these focal objects scope outside the subordinate clause and appear sentence-initially immediately to the left of matrix bridge verbs such as decir ‘to say’, which are said to allow long distance extraction from their sentential complements. A similar example to (164) involving fronting of a focused NP outside the embedded clause is likewise provided by Urrutia-Cárdenas (1988) in his description of Basque Spanish morpho-syntactic features:
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(172) [F Un coche nuevo] dice que ha comprado. (Urrutia-Cárdenas 1988: 36)
‘He/She says that he/she has bought [F a new car].’
To conclude, one last observation that deserves attention is the co-occurrence of preverbal information focus with other attested contact-induced morpho-syntactic features of this variety. The naturally-occurring examples extracted from Zarate (1976) include cases of the non-standard use of indirect object pronouns le or les for normative direct object pronouns lo, la, los or las, known as leísmo (e.g. (168)), as well as of so-called ‘null objects’ (e.g.
(173)).
(173)“Que él no venía [F aqúi] ∅ dijo” (Zarate 1976: 55)
‘That he wasn’t coming he said (it) here.’
In a nutshell, the limited number of examples available from prior research suggest that
Basque Spanish speakers tend to focalize NPs, AdvPs, PPs and AdjPs in preverbal position, but perhaps more preferably NPs. While most reported focalized NPs behave as complements of the verb, subjects and other non-argument constituents may also fall in preverbal (exhaustive) focus position. Likewise, it has been observed that focus fronting seems to apply both across matrix and subordinate clauses as well as in combination with other contact-induced linguistic features particular to Basque Spanish (i.e. ‘null objects’, leísmo). Following these observations, it now remains an open question whether the probability of producing a preverbal (exhaustive) information focus sequence as opposed to its standard sentence-final exhaustive information focus counterpart is at all internally conditioned by these linguistic environments, or else responds to other extra-linguistic constraints.
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6.3.2. Motivation for study, goals and research questions
As has been briefly reviewed, preverbal (exhaustive) information focus has been described and reported as a salient characteristic of the linguistic inventory used by speakers of Basque
Spanish. While its emergence and increased rates of occurrence have been primarily linked to the influence of Basque, admittedly, these arguments are nothing but rather impressionistic and introspective assumptions. Likewise, while its use has been qualitatively observed to apply in numerous linguistic environments, it remains to be clarified in what ways the distribution of this alternative, non-standard preverbal focus variant is linguistically constrained; that is, how internal factors shape the probability of occurrence or lack of occurrence of this marked syntactic variant.
In light of these unresolved matters, the goal of the present investigation is two-fold:
1) Given the numerous introspective and speculative references to language contact as
a pivotal causation in the development of preverbal information focus, this study
seeks to evaluate empirically the effects of Basque on Basque Spanish regarding the
emergence, patterns of use, diffusion and maintenance of non-standard preverbal
(exhaustive) information focus structures.
2) Following the principle of ‘ordered heterogeneity’ couched within the sociolinguistics
enterprise and the quantitative modeling pursued within this field of study
(Weinreich et al. 1968; Labov 1963, 1969; Tagliamonte 2006, 2012; inter alia), this
study also aims to describe the linguistic conditions under which this attested
preverbal information focus is more likely accepted or reported to occur.
In attaining these goals, this work takes an experimental approach to the study of sociolinguistic and language contact phenomena, and uses a 7-point Likert scale acceptability 241
judgment task, which crucially relies on speakers’ linguistic intuitions and perceptions, rather than more traditional semi-guided sociolinguistic interviews, whose objective is to gather semi-spontaneous production data.
The rationale for adopting this method of investigation is as follows. First, the study sought to remain faithful to the definition of information focus proposed in the present dissertation, which defines information focus to express new, non-presupposed information manifested as an answer to a wh-question. Therefore, in following this definition, any accountable observation of preverbal information focus would have to follow from the response to a wh-interrogative. Unfortunately, retrieving large amounts of production data, which require full sentential responses in order to explore the positioning of focused phrases, would have been extremely difficult and laborious given speakers’ bias to provide one-word responses in more casual speech. The current experimental approach overcomes these limitations in that it not only allows for a consistent formulation of wh-question and answer pairs containing the desired structure under investigation, but it also makes it possible to collect a bigger sample size. In view of these advantages, the present task-based perceptual approach is considered well-suited to tackle the goals of this study and address the following research questions:
- RQ #1: Are Basque Spanish speakers more likely to accept and report using
preverbal (exhaustive) information focus than non-Basque Spanish speakers in
Spain?
- RQ #2: Given spontaneous production data reported in earlier work and my own
qualitative observations, do the type of focused phrase, the presence or absence of
accusative clitics and/or the matrix vs. embedded form of the clause influence the
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acceptability and likelihood of occurrence of these “non-standard” preverbal focus
constructions?
- RQ #3: Is the entire Basque Spanish community, regardless of their age, gender,
level of education, living environment, linguistic competence (i.e. proficiency) and/or
self-reported identification with the Basque culture, equally likely to accept and
report using this non-standard focus variant?
As for the first question, it was anticipated that Basque Spanish speakers from the northwestern region of Bizkaia would find the target sentences more natural and that they would be significantly more likely to produce them than other non-Basque, Peninsular
Spanish speakers. In considering the effects that PHRASE TYPE, FORM OF THE DO and
CLAUSE TYPE had on participants’ judgments, it was predicted that all three factors would influence participants’ judgments and, particularly, the judgments of the Basque Spanish subgroup. On the one hand, it was expected that NPs fulfilling the role of a subject would be rated the most positively. Moreover, although target stimuli containing normative overt
3rd person accusative clitics were predicted to receive the highest scorings, I also expected target sentences instantiating so-called ‘null objects’ to be rated higher by the Basque Spanish cohort than the non-Basque group. And, as for CLAUSE TYPE, it was thought that focused phrases appearing outside embedded clauses introduced by bridge verbs would be considered more acceptable than in the context of non-embedded clauses. The answer to the last research question was expected to be negative. Intra-dialectal variability and interspeaker variability were expected among Basque Spanish speakers’ responses depending on their level of Basque proficiency, level of education, living environment and personal attachment with Basque cultural ties.
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6.3.3. The study: 7-point Likert scale acceptability judgment task
In order to investigate whether Basque Spanish speakers are more or less likely to accept and produce non-standard preverbal (exhaustive) information focus sequences and pinpoint any diverging patterns with respect to non-Basque Spanish speakers as well as within the
Basque Spanish community itself, a 7-point Likert scale acceptability judgment task was designed and distributed online among Basque Spanish and non-Basque Spanish speakers residing in Spain.
6.3.3.1. Participants
147 Spanish speakers from Spain participated in the present study. 51 participants, ranging between 22 and 63 years old, were recruited from the northwestern region of Bizkaia in the
Basque Country. The remaining 96 speakers, ranging between 19-66 years old, reported having been born and raised outside the Basque Country, elsewhere in Spain. Participants for this study were recruited online. A short message and link to the online survey were posted in various social networks, asking Basque speakers to participate in the study and share the questionnaire with their friends, family members and acquaintances in Spain.
In order to classify participants according to their place of origin and rule out any
Spanish speakers not born and raised in Spain, a preliminary question asked them to determine whether they had been born and raised in the territory of Bizkaia in the Basque
Country. Those who reported not having been born in Bizkaia were asked whether they were born in Spain and, if so, to name the specific location. If none of these two criteria were met, participants were automatically discarded. 244
Before submitting their responses, every participant was asked to complete a general socio-demographic questionnaire that included questions about their age, gender, place of origin and level of education as well as the number and proficiency level of other languages spoken (Appendix F). The Basque Spanish group also completed a bilingualism assessment test (Appendix I) in order to gather information about their linguistic background, self- evaluated proficiency and dominance in Basque and Spanish and their ideologies towards
Basque and Spanish languages and cultures. To conclude, a 23-item multiple-choice Basque proficiency questionnaire (Appendix C) was also provided to those who reported being
Basque speakers, in order to help determine each participant’s proficiency level more objectively.
6.3.3.2. Stimuli
In determining whether the acceptability and likelihood of occurrence of preverbal
(exhaustive) information focus structures was linguistically constrained, 3 conditions were tested in a 4x2x2 design following prior qualitative observations detailed in section 6.3.1.: the type of focalized phrase, clause type and the form of the direct object. Such design produced
16 target sentences, which were accompanied by 32 distractors. Following the methodology implemented in all previous experiments (see chapter 3), the number of fillers was deliberately doubled in order to distract participants from awareness of the linguistic feature under investigation. Fillers included non-standard uses of various Spanish grammatical phenomena, including cases of leísmo, laísmo or dequeísmo, among others.
As for the target stimuli, in observing that focus preposing does not seem to be solely restricted to noun phrases, but it is possible with other types of phrases (see §3.3.1.), 245
preverbal information focus sequences were constructed in order to test which types of focused phrases are more likely to appear and be favored in preverbal focus position: Noun
Phrases (NPs), Prepositional Phrases (PPs), Adverb Phrases (AdvPs) and Adjective Phrases
(AdjPs). All focalized NPs were restricted to questions with quién ‘who’ and fulfilled the role of a subject in order to control for possible asymmetries between subject and object focalization and also be able to explore the effects of direct object accusative clitics in combination with focused constituents (see §3.3.1.). Focused PPs constituted locative constituents as an answer to dónde ‘where’. Time adverbials in preverbal focus position instantiated new information addressing cuándo ‘when’ questions. And, focused AdjP were constructed using cómo ‘how’ interrogatives. An example of each type of phrases in given in
(174) through (177) respectively.
(174) ¿Quién ha perdido las elecciones en Italia?
‘Who has lost the elections in Italy?’
[F Berlusconi] las ha perdido.
‘[F Berlusconi] has lost them.’
(175) ¿Dónde han celebrado el cumpleaños?
‘Where did they celebrate his birthday?’
[F En Algorta] lo han celebrado.
‘They have celebrated it [F in Algorta].’
(176) ¿Cuando vais a recoger los trajes de la tintorería?
‘When are you picking up the suits from dry cleaning?’
[F Luego] vamos a recogerlo.
‘We’ll pick them up [F later].’
(177) ¿Cómo ha dejado el piso después de la reforma? 246
‘How was the apartment after all the renovation?’
[F Sucísimo] lo ha dejado.
‘It is [F extremely dirty].’
In addition, since it has been noted that preverbal focus structures not only occur in main declarative sentences, but also outside the scope of sentential complements, each focused phrase was embedded in two different types of clauses: main clauses and subordinate clauses. Accordingly, participants heard sentences where focal material appeared fronted in monoclausal environments (e.g. (174)-(177)) as well as outside sentential complements in front of the matrix verb (e.g. (178)).
(178) ¿Dónde han encontrado el cuerpo?
‘Where did they find the corps?’
[F En el bosque] me parece que lo han encontrado.
‘I think they’ve found it [F in the woods].’
The last condition sought to explore whether non-standard preverbal information focus was acceptable and likely to co-occur together with non-standard null 3rd person direct objects, such as (179).
(179) ¿Cuándo habéis entregado el proyecto?
‘When did you turn in the project?’
[F Esta mañana] ∅ hemos entregado.
‘We’ve turned (it) in [F this morning].’
The full list of target sentences in disclosed in appendix H. Importantly, in following the central argumentation made in this dissertation that both immediate preverbal information focus in Basque and sentence-final information focus in Spanish trigger an exhaustive
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implication, all the wh-questions accompanying each preverbal focus structure were intended to be representative of exhaustive questions and, consequently, every answer to each wh- interrogative was assumed to be of the ‘exhaustive’ kind.
All 48 questionnaire items comprised question-answer pairs preceded by a short context.
These short contextual frames and wh-questions were presented in written form, but the response to each wh-question was given in auditory format in order to control for any possible prosodic manipulations on participants’ part. Each target sentence was recorded by the researcher using Audacity version 2.1.2. In order to ensure the best quality of all recordings, the head mounted microphone Plantronics audio 400 DSP was used in the stimuli recording sessions with a 44100Hz sampling rate.
6.3.3.3. Design and procedures
Stimuli, both target and filler items, were imported to the online survey platform
SurveyGizmo (Vanek and McDaniel, 2006). Each question-answer pair was separately uploaded into a different page in the survey. Stimuli were semi-randomized such that two filler items intervened between every target utterance sentence and, in order to avoid second- guessing or changes in participants’ responses, the survey was designed as a forward-only survey.
Participants were first required to accept a consent form in order to be able to participate in the study. Everyone had to be born and raised in Spain and be at least 18 years old. After accepting the consent form, an instructions page instructed participants to 1) read a short context and its corresponding question, 2) listen to the proposed auditory response to such wh-question and 3) rate the acceptability and likelihood of uttering such statement in a 7- 248
point Likert scale, where the lowest value in the scale stood for ‘it is completely unacceptable/I would never produce a sentence like that one’ and the highest value said ‘it is completely acceptable/I would certainly produce a sentence like that one’. Participants were reminded that there were no prescribed right or wrong answers and that this task was about their own linguistic intuitions and judgments.
Before presenting them with the test stimuli, a practice item was shown in their computer screen in order to familiarize everyone with the task and make sure that they understood the instructions. They were instructed to click “7” if they liked the sentence they heard or thought they would produce a sentence such as that one; otherwise, if they completely despised the utterance, they were told to click “1”. In order to reflect any other judgment (e.g. it’s good, but it sounds odd; doubt; uncertainty; etc.), they were encouraged to use the values between “1” and “7”. Participants were reminded at all times about the meanings that values “1” and “7” comprised. The stimuli set-up is depicted in figure 50.
Figure 50: Stimuli set-up consisting of a brief context, a wh-question and its corresponding auditory response
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After rating all the test items, everyone received a socio-demographic questionnaire (see appendix F). The Basque Spanish cohort was asked whether they spoke or knew any Basque.
If they responsed “yes”, they were asked to answer questions regarding their linguistic background, their Basque and Spanish levels of proficiency and rates of dominance or frequency use and, lastly, questions regarding their attitudes towards Basque and Spanish language and culture. The last component of the survey consisted of a 23 multiple choice
Basque grammar and vocabulary proficiency test (compiled from the official Basque standardized test EGA, Euskararen Gaitasun Agiria) to measure their Basque proficiency. Out of 23 possible scores, those who scored between 12 and 15 points were considered intermediate learners; those who scored between 16 and 20 were grouped as advanced learners of Basque; and, finally, those who scored between 21 and 23 points were categorized as early sequential or native, depending on their age of acquisition. They were considered “native” if they reported having acquired the language since birth and “early- sequential bilinguals” if they began learning Basque through immersion programs at the age of 2 or 3.
6.3.3.4. Statistical analysis
In the first part of the statistical analysis, I sought to determine whether participants from the northwestern region of Bizkaia, that is Basque Spanish speakers, rated preverbal information focus constructions any differently from Spanish speakers elsewhere in Spain.
The goal was therefore to elucidate whether participants’ PLACE OF ORIGIN (i.e. Basque
Country vs. non-Basque Country) was chosen as a significant predictor regarding 250
participants’ judgments. To this end, I developed a mixed effects ordinal logistic regression model in RStudio, the integrated development environment for R, using the clmm function in the ‘ordinal’ package (Christensen, 2015). Given that the dependent variable, namely the 7- point Likert scale employed to judge each target utterance, was a factor with ordered values as opposed to a discrete (binary) variable, an ordered logistic regression model was created.
In the analysis, I considered the effects of 3 internal linguistic factors (i.e. PHRASE TYPE,
CLAUSE TYPE, and FORM OF THE DO) and 4 extra-linguistic categories having to do with participants’ PLACE OF ORIGIN (i.e. Basque Country vs. Non-Basque Country), AGE
(continuous variable), GENDER (i.e. male vs. female), and LEVEL OF EDUCATION (i.e. low/middle vs. high), all of which were entered in the statistical modeling as fixed-effects.
PARTICIPANT was also included in the model as a random effect in order to control for the influence that individuals had on the data.
The order in which the independent variables were added into the model was determined through stepwise regression, using the step function in R, which grants an objective and rigorous method of determining the most parsimonious model. Once the nested mixed models were generated, they were compared using ANOVA. In addition,
Conditional Inference Trees (CITs) and Random Forests, available through the ‘party’ package in RStudio, were also developed. The former show recursive binary splitting of the data, which constitutes a great statistical tool to visualize how multiple predictors operate in tandem. Random Forests, on the other hand, provide information about the importance of predictors, whether factorial or continuous, and do so also for unbalanced designs with high multicollinearity. These are especially well applicable to problems with more variables than observations, which is a very typical situation in sociolinguistics research (Tagliamonte &
Baayen, 2012). 251
The second half of the inferential analysis centered only on the responses collected from
Basque Spanish speakers who reported speaking Basque in order to tackle the effects of
Basque onto Basque Spanish. On the one hand, the analysis aimed at determining whether
PHRASE TYPE, CLAUSE TYPE and FORM OF THE DO influenced Basque Spanish speakers’ acceptability patterns and, on the other hand, it intended to resolve whether Basque dominant and highly proficient bilinguals were more willing to accept and produce these non-standard variants than less dominant-proficient Basque Spanish bilinguals as predicted by long-established language contact hypotheses. In doing so, I implemented a second mixed effects ordinal logistic regression model in RStudio. The dependent variable was again the ordered 1-7 acceptability scale, labeled as ACCEPTABILITY. In addition to the same three linguistic constraints included in the first analysis (i.e. PHRASE TYPE, CLAUSE TYPE, and FORM
OF THE DO), 6 additional extra-linguistic factors were added to the model following a stepwise procedure:21
- Participant’s ENVIRONMENT of origin: Participants were asked to specify their place
of origin in the questionnaire. Using this information, each participant was
categorized as belonging to a rural, semi-rural or urban environment.
- Participant’s GENDER, treated as a binary distinction between male and female.
- Participant’s AGE, included as a continuous variable.
21 The questionnaire distributed among Basque Spanish speakers also gathered information about the AGE OF ACQUISITION at which participants started learning Basque and Spanish as well as LANGUAGE FREQUENCY USE in different settings (at home, college/work, with friends). A preliminary inferential analysis was run including these factors, but no significant effect was found. AGE OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION reported collinearity effects with PROFICIENCY (those who acquired Basque since birth scored as native speakers in the 23 multiple choice item test) and, therefore, it was excluded from all subsequent analyses. LANGUAGE DOMINANCE, on the other hand, was excluded due to its lack of effect in the overall Basque Spanish data, the slightly reduced number of Basque Spanish participants and the complex interactions among social and extra-linguistic categories within the model. It is nevertheless my hope that future research will investigate the effects on PROFICIENCY and FREQUENCY OF USE/DOMINANCE upon availability of a bigger sample size. 252
- Participant’s LEVEL OF EDUCATION: Three levels were distinguished within this
factor. On the one hand, participants’ classified within the low level group reported
having no schooling or having attended only primary school. Those in the middle
education group reported having received only secondary education, both secondary
education and bachillerato (i.e. last two years of high school) or having obtained an
associate degree after high school. Finally, the highest degree of education was
bestowed to those attending university for undergraduate and graduate studies.
- Language PROFICIENCY: Relying on participants’ scores from the proficient test, each
participant was placed in one of five proficiency levels: beginner level of Basque,
intermediate level of Basque, advanced level of Basque, early-sequential bilingual or
Basque native speaker. It must be noted that due to low numbers of participants in
some of these groups, on the one hand, and the similar distributional patterns
observed among advanced L2 learners, early-sequential bilinguals and native
speakers, these three were grouped together in all final analyses.
- Basque CULTURAL TIES: Within the attitudinal piece of the questionnaire, participants
were asked to evaluate in a 5-point scale, where “1” meant complete disagreement
with such statement and “5” indicated complete agreement, whether they
agreed/disagreed with the statement ‘I self-identify with the Basque culture’. In all
analyses performed, this predictor was treated as a continuous variable.
The effects of all 9 internal and external predictors were tested on the acceptability of preverbal information focus constructions. Each nested model added one of these independent variables at a time as fixed effects in evaluating whether each new addition improved the predictions made by the model. PARTICIPANT was added as a random effect within each nested model, too. As in the previous analysis, once all nested mixed models 253
were formed, ANOVAs were used to compare them and determine which model made the best predictions towards the acceptability and likelihood of occurrence of [FocusINFO-Verb] sequences. These analyses were complemented with Conditional Inference Trees in order to capture complex interactions among linguistic and social categories.
6.3.3.5. Results
In this section, I report the results obtained from both inferential analyses for the full data- set and the Basque Spanish group only. Before doing so, I consider a general descriptive overview of participants’ response tendencies using violin plots, accessible through the
‘ggplot’ package in RStudio, which show a full distribution of participants’ responses and their responses’ probability density. Subsequent to this, I examine the results of the mixed effects ordinal logistic regression models and conditional inference trees, which allow us to make generalizations about the populations from which the response samples have been drawn.
6.3.3.5.1. General descriptive results
General response ratings suggest that Basque Spanish speakers from the northwestern region of Bizkaia and Spanish speakers elsewhere in Spain do not hold the same judgments about this non-standard, vernacular form of speech. As shown in figure 51, the median (blue dot) and mean (black dot) of all response ratings among Basque Spanish speakers are higher than those among non-Basque Spanish speakers, suggesting that the former cohort finds
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preverbal (exhaustive) information focus more acceptable than the latter group.22 The wider area at the top of the plot suggests that the majority of responses provided by participants from Bizkaia in the Basque Country congregate above 5, with these approaching the highest value in the scale. On the other hand, the non-Basque Spanish group shows a more diverse response distribution. In fact, the wider amplitude towards the lower end of the plot suggests an accumulation of more negative evaluations. These apparent differences are confirmed by a Wilcoxon Signed Ranked test, which pinpoints a significant difference between the mean scores provided by Basque Spanish speakers and non-Basque, Peninsular
Spanish speakers (Z = 2.8596, p-value = 0.003677).
Figure 51: Distribution of acceptability ratings according to participants’ place of origin (blue dot = median; black dot = mean)
22 I use both the median and the mean as measurements of comparison to control for the mean’s susceptibility to the influence of outliers. Outliers are values that are unusual compared to the rest of the data set by being especially small or large in numerical value. 255
Within the Basque Spanish group, the experimental task was completed by both monolingual speakers of the Basque Spanish variety and bilingual speakers reporting different degrees of bilingualism. At first glance, these two groups seem to diverge regarding the distribution of their responses, as typified in figure 52. Surprisingly, the median and mean response ratings collected from monolingual Basque Spanish speakers approach the highest values in the scale, while those of Basque Spanish bilinguals are closer to 5 in the scale. The wider distribution of the density plot within the higher end of the scale among monolinguals as opposed to bilinguals is in fact indicative of a higher proportion of positive acceptability ratings, and results from a Wilcoxon Signed Rank test indicate that in effect the mean scores are significantly different when comparing monolingual Basque Spanish speakers and those who report speaking Basque (Z = -2.2014, p-value = 0.03125).
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Figure 52: Distribution of acceptability ratings according to monolingual Basque Spanish vs. bilingual Basque Spanish speakers (blue dot = median; black dot = mean)
The more positive evaluations granted by Basque Spanish speakers when compared to non-Basque, Peninsular Spanish speakers maintain across all linguistic conditions. Observe, first, the overall acceptability ratings given to test items containing preverbal information focus regarding the FORM OF THE DO (standard overt 3rd person accusative clitics lo, la, los, las vs. their non-standard null counterparts) in figure 53. The mean and the median of participants’ ratings are by and large more positive for preverbal information focus occurring with standard overt 3rd person clitics for both groups. The greater width of the plot at the top for target stimuli containing normative lo, la, los, las clitics reveals a higher frequency of more positive ratings for the standard variant in both groups. Note, however, that non-
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Basque Spanish speakers display a wider probability density than Basque Spanish speakers at the lower end of the plot for target structures containing these non-standard null objects, suggesting that lower ratings are more frequent within the former cohort of participants.
Figure 53: Distribution of acceptability ratings according to place of origin and accusative clitics (blue dot = median; black dot = mean)
As for responses regarding the TYPE OF PHRASE, on the whole, figure 54 suggests that both participants from the Basque Country and elsewhere in Spain provide fairly positive ratings to focalized NPs fulfilling the role of the subject (blue bars). Likewise, AdvPs seem to enjoy more positive ratings than PPs and AdjPs for both groups, but the wider density of the green bar within the Basque Spanish group when compared to non-Basque Spanish speakers indicates that higher ratings are more frequently supplied by the former body of participants. 258
Lastly, negative evaluations seem to predominate for AdjPs and PPs among non-Basque
Spanish speakers, while no such clear patterns are discernible among Basque Spanish informants (orange and purple bars).
Figure 54: Overall acceptability ratings according to place of origin and phrase type (blue dot = median; black dot = mean)
Finally, as for the overall response distributions for CLAUSE TYPE (figure 55), non-Basque
Spanish speakers seem to display a bimodal distribution with two peaks, while Basque
Spanish participants show a more pronounced distribution towards the highest end of the scale. While among Basque Spanish speakers both embedded and non-embedded sentences seem to score similar values, among non-Basque Spanish speakers higher acceptability ratings seem to be more frequent for sentences contemplating focused phrases outside the subordinate clause.
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Figure 55: Overall acceptability ratings according to place of origin and clause type (blue dot = median; black dot = mean)
6.3.3.5.2. Mixed effects ordinal logistic regression model: Full data-set
The results of the mixed effects ordinal logistic regression model indicate that all three linguistic constraints, that is FORM OF THE DO, PHRASE TYPE and CLAUSE TYPE, influence participants’ evaluation of preverbal (exhaustive) information focus when considering
Basque Spanish and non-Basque Spanish speakers together. Among all three factors, the ordinal logistic regression model reveals that participants’ judgments are more sensitive to form of the DO, that is the presence or absence of the accusative clitic, followed by the type of focalized phrase and, thirdly, the type of clause. With positive values reflecting higher acceptability ratings, the model in table 14 confirms that significantly more positive ratings
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are given to target sentences containing standard accusative clitics than those with non- standard null 3rd person direct objects. Regarding the type of focused phrase, it is subject
NPs that show the most positive ratings in preverbal position when compared to AdjPs
(table 14), as well as PPs and AdvPs when changing the reference level (RL = PP, estimate for NP = 2.14772, p value < .001; RL = AdvP, estimate for NP = 1.24980, p value < .001).
AdvPs show a weaker, yet similar, direction of effect when compared against AdjPs (table
14) and PPs (RL = PPs, estimate for AdvPs = 0.89794, p value < .001). As for focalized
PPs, these show a slightly more positive value than AdjPs, but this effect does not reach significance (table 14). Yet, focalized PPs reach a significant difference when compared against NPs and AdvPs, signaling a significantly more negative evaluation than the latter two phrase types (RL = NP, estimate for PPs = -2.14771, p value < .001; RL = AdvPs, estimate for PPs = -0.89794, p value < .001). Lastly, AdjPs are significantly more likely to receive a lower acceptability rating than NPs and AdvPs (RL = NP, estimate for AdjPs = -2.1660, p value < .001; RL = AdvP, estimate for AdjPs = -0.91630, p value < . 001), but not focused
PPs. Clause type exhibits the weakest conditioning effect; in other words, participants’ ratings are least responsive to the type of clause involved in each target sentence. The model suggests preverbal (exhaustive) information focus sequences to be significantly more favorably rated when the focused element is fronted in the context subordinate clause rather than fronted within a main clause.
In addition to all three linguistic constraints tested in the study, two more extra-linguistic factors were selected to condition participants’ perception of these non-standard constructions. On the one hand, the data show that Basque Spanish speakers rate this vernacular form of speech significantly better than Spanish speakers born and raised in other non-Basque regions within the Spanish territory. Along with participants’ origin, the analysis 261
indicates that higher ratings are provided by participants who report having a lower level of education than those holding BA, MA or PhD degrees.
Value Std. Error z value p value
Accusative clitic (RL: Absent)
Present 1.96018 0.08647 22.669 p < .001
Phrase Type (RL: AdjP)
NP 2.16608 0.12041 17.989 p < .001
AdvP 0.91631 0.10951 8.367 p < .001
PP 0.01838 0.10811 0.170 n.s.
Origin (RL: Elsewhere, Spain)
Bizkaia, BC 1.22698 0.29164 4.207 p < .001
Education (RL: High)
Low/Middle 1.23388 0.41598 2.966 p < .01
Type of clause (RL: Main clause)
Embedded 0.19140 0.07807 2.452 p = 0.01419
Table 14: Mixed effects ordinal logistic regression model of the factors conditioning the rates of acceptability and usage of preverbal information focus structures among Basque Spanish and non-Basque Spanish speakers (RL = Reference Level)
Given the effect of PARTICIPANTS’ ORIGIN, I conducted a series of analyses looking at interactions among factors in order to determine whether PARTICIPANTS’ ORIGIN had differential effects across linguistic conditions. In pursuing this line of analysis, I evaluated interactions between ORIGIN*ACCUSATIVE CLITICS, ORIGIN*PHRASE TYPE and
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ORIGIN*CLAUSE TYPE using Conditional Inference Trees. Results from this data partitioning test identified that diverging response effects between Basque Spanish vs. Non-Basque
Spanish are significant in interaction with the overt vs. null nature of 3rd person direct objects (Figure 56) and the type of focalized phrase (Figure 57).
Figure 56: Conditional Inference Tree showing a significant interaction between Participants’ origin and Accusative Clitics
On the one hand, the Conditional Inference Tree in figure 56 shows that Basque Spanish and non-Basque Spanish participants do not rate focus structures containing standard
Spanish accusative clitics lo, la, los, las (node 2) and non-standard ‘null objects’ (node 5) similarly. On the one hand, preverbal information focus structures involving the standard accusative direct object pronouns are judged significantly more positively by Basque Spanish speakers (node 3) than non-Basque Spanish speakers (node 4). This effect is greater for structures containing the non-canonical null 3rd person direct objects: significantly more
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positive ratings are provided by Basque Spanish speakers (node 6) than non-Basque Spanish speakers (node 7) to target sentences containing ‘null objects’.
As for the interaction between PARTICIPANTS’ ORIGIN and the TYPE OF FOCALIZED
PHRASE, the Conditional Inference Tree in figure 57 confirms that Basque Spanish and non-
Basque Spanish do not evaluate the acceptability and likelihood of occurrence of PPs, AdjPs and AdvPs in preverbal (exhaustive) information focus equally: While both Basque Spanish and non-Basque Spanish speakers rate focalized NPs similarly (node 2), a split arises between
Basque Spanish vs. Non-Basque Spanish speakers with regards to AdvPs, AdjPs and PPs, indicating that participants from northwestern Basque Country globally provide significantly higher ratings than participants from elsewhere in Spain (node 3). In addition, within both subsets of the population, an additional partitioning arises between AdvPs, on the one hand, and AdjPs and PPs, on the other (nodes 4 and 7), but the direction of effect is similar in both groups: AdvPs are rated more favorably than AdjPs or PPs in preverbal focus position
(nodes 5 and 8 vs. nodes 6 and 9).
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Figure 57: Conditional Inference Tree showing a significant interaction between Participants’ origin and Phrase Type
6.3.3.5.3. Mixed effects ordinal logistic regression model: Basque Spanish
The second mixed effects ordinal logistic regression delved, on the one hand, into the effects of FORM OF THE DO, PHRASE TYPE and CLAUSE TYPE exclusively with respect to Basque
Spanish speakers’ response ratings and, on the other hand, it also tested the language contact hypothesis by assessing the effects of Basque on participants’ perceptive judgments, primarily through a detailed scrutiny of language PROFICIENCY and SELF-IDENTIFICATION
WITH THE BASQUE CULTURE. Conventional macro-level social categories such as AGE,
GENDER, ENVIRONMENT and EDUCATION, were also included in the analysis.
A preliminary analysis was pursued in order to evaluate the differences devised in figure
52 regarding monolingual speakers of the contact variety and those who reported knowing and/or speaking Basque. Despite these observed trends, neither the stepwise model
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selection obtained through step( ) nor an evaluation of predictors using the random forest computation chose the variable ‘BASQUE SPEAKER’ (Basque vs. Non-Basque) as a significant factor of Basque Spanish speakers’ likelihood of acceptability and use of preverbal information focus structures. This lack of effect, I hypothesize, is likely due to the low number of monolingual participants in the data-set (Basque Spanish monolinguals = 6/51 participants), which do not aggregate sufficient data points to participate in the construction of a large number of conditional inference trees (i.e. random forests), as well as the high degree of interspeaker variability. The individual response patterns of these 6 monolingual speakers of the Basque Spanish contact variety are displayed in figure 58.
Figure 58: Overall acceptability ratings of monolingual Basque Spanish speakers by age and environment (green bar = rural environment; orange bar = semi-urban environment; blue bar = urban environment)
While there is considerable interspeaker variability, figure 58 shows contrast regarding participants’ environment and age. Across these 6 individuals, it seems that older participants belonging to rural or semi-urban environments assign the highest scores. Among younger
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participants living in urban areas, although more variation is overall observed, ratings tend to worsen. Admittedly, these descriptive results should certainly be taken with caution given the reduced number of participants within this subgroup of respondents; yet, the surprisingly positive judgments that older monolingual speakers from rural or semi-urban locations make of this non-standard focus variant could contribute to explaining the diffusion and maintenance of these forms within the Basque Spanish community. I return to these observations in the discussion in §6.3.3.6.
Because of the small number of monolingual speaker and their seemingly diverging response patterns, only participants who reported at least having some knowledge of Basque were considered in subsequent statistical analysis in order to optimize the reliability of the regression model. A summary of the best fitted ordinal logistic regression model is provided in table 15.
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Value Std. Error z value p value
Accusative clitic (RL: Absent)
Present 1.63998 0.15167 10.813 p < .001
Age 0.13988 0.03321 4.212 p < .001
Phrase Type (RL: AdjP)
NP 1.66853 0.21028 7.935 p < .001
AdvP 1.07666 0.19787 5.441 p < .001
PP 0.28109 0.19537 1.439 n.s.
Basque culture 0.57282 0.21564 2.656 p < .01
Table 15: Mixed effects model of the factors conditioning the acceptance and usage of preverbal information focus structures among Basque Spanish who report having at least some knowledge of Basque
When looking exclusively at response patterns from Basque Spanish speakers with at least some degree of Basque proficiency, findings indicate that, unlike the ordinal logistic regression model in table 14 accounting for all participants’ responses, CLAUSE TYPE
(embedded vs. matrix clause) is not a significant predictor of participants’ judgments. FORM
OF THE DO and PHRASE TYPE do, on the other hand, constrain Basque participants’ evaluation of FocusINFO-Verb sequences: the odds of rating preverbal exhaustive information focus more positively are significantly higher when canonical overt 3rd pronominal direct objects are employed as opposed to non-standard null objects, as well as when the focused constituents are NPs and AdvPs rather than AdjPs. These results mirror in effect the response patterns reported for the full data-set, which included also non-Basque Spanish speakers.
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Another additional difference between the present inferential analysis and that reported for the full array of responses in §6.3.3.5.2. is the missing effect of level of education. Within this group, it is Basque Spanish participants’ AGE and their SELF-IDENTIFICATION WITH THE
BASQUE CULTURE what influence their perceptions and judgements towards these non- standard focus constructions. In particular, the data reveal that the older the participants and the stronger their ties with the Basque culture, the more likely they are to accept and/or use this non-standard variant.
Further analysis of interactions using Conditional Inference Trees revealed that the effects of participants’ self-identification with Basque culture is only revelant for participants between 22 and 43 years old. As shown in figure 59, participants between the ages of 22 and
43 who strongly identify with the Basque culture assign significantly better ratings to all test items (node 6) than Basque Spanish speakers who identify less strongly with the Basque culture (node 5). The inference tree moreover captures the general effect of age found in the mixed effects model, showing that the younger cohort of participants, ranging between 18 and 22 years old, rate preverbal information focus constructions more negatively (node 3) than older participants above the age of 43 (node 7) (p < .001).
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Figure 59: Conditional inference recursive partitioning tree showing an interaction between participants’ age and self-identification with the Basque culture
6.3.3.6. Summary & Discussion
Using a 7-point Likert scale acceptability judgment task, this study has sought to 1) empirically evaluate the effects of Basque onto Spanish regarding the emergence, patterns of use, diffusion and maintenance of attested non-standard preverbal information focus structures, and 2) circumscribe under what linguistic conditions this attested preverbal information focus is more likely accepted and possibly used. In doing so, the first research question addressed possible acceptability and usage pattern differences between speakers of this contact variety and speakers of non-contact Peninsular varieties. The findings from an ordinal logistic regression model confirmed a main effect of PARTICIPANTS’ ORIGIN on the judgment task, showing that the probability of assigning more positive scores to preverbal information focus constructions was significantly higher among speakers of the Basque
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Spanish contact variety than non-Basque Spanish speakers. In addition, an analysis of interactions between participants’ origin and all three linguistic constraints revealed that this evaluative difference applied specifically when target sentences were manipulated regarding the presence or absence of accusative clitics and the type of focused phrase involved.
Among the linguistic factors considered in this first quantitative approximation to the study of preverbal information focus constructions in the contact variety of Basque Spanish, findings showed that, while clause type was not a determining factor regarding Basque participants’ preference towards preverbal (exhaustive) information focus, speakers’ judgments were sensitive to the form of the DO (i.e. presence or absence of accusative clitics) and the type of focalized phrase. The overt form of accusative direct object clitics lo, la, los, las triggered significantly higher ratings than its null counterpart. This is to be the expected pattern given that the former represent the normative use of language. It is, nevertheless, important to note that preverbal focus occurring with null objects received significantly better ratings among speakers of the Basque Spanish variety than non-Basque
Spanish varieties by virtue of being a hallmark of the former dialect.
As for the type of focalized phrase, NPs fulfilling the role of a subject were shown to be the most preferred focalized constituent in preverbal position, followed by AdvPs denoting temporal reference, locative PPs and, finally, descriptive AdjPs such as enorme ‘big’ or largo
‘long’. This hierarchy of preference from NPs > AdvPs > PPs/AdjPs may straightforwardly follow from the positions these phrases occupy in unmarked, neutral orderings. On the one hand, subject NPs can frequently appear preverbally in out of the blue contexts or non- exhaustive information focus cases in (standard) Peninsular Spanish (see chapters 3 and 5 for a discussion of focused subject NPs in Spanish). Therefore, participants might have simply
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found the positioning of these phrases in preverbal position more natural, resolving in high acceptability scorings.
The same rationale may apply to temporal AdvPs, which do not appear in a rigid word order in Spanish. In fact, these can frequently appear sentence-initially in out of the blue contexts and cases of topicalization, as shown in (180) and (181a) correspondingly. For that reason, it is possible that their alignment in sentence-initial, preverbal position might not have been particularly salient for participants, granting these target stimuli fairly positive judgments.
(180) ¡Adivina qué! [Mañana AdvP] tengo una entrevista de trabajo.
‘Guess what! I have a job interview tomorrow.’
(181) ¿Qué vais a hacer luego?
‘What are you guys doing later?’
a) [Luego AdvP] vamos al cine con Ana y Juan.
‘We’re going to the movies with Ana and Juan.’
As for locative PPs and descriptive AdjPs, these tend to favor a rightward orientation as opposed to a leftward one in linear order in Spanish. On the one hand, locative PPs most regularly appear sentence-finally in neutral contexts (e.g. (182) vs. (183)). Likewise, descriptive adjectives such as those used in this experiment tend to appear in immediate postverbal position when the DO is expressed with a clitic or post-nominally if the NP is fully spelled-out (e.g. (184), (185)). Hence, the abnormal structural linearization of PPs and
AdjPs in preverbal position might have been responsible for the lower ratings that these phrase types have received.
(182) ¡Adivina qué! Hemos visto al presidente de EEUU [en el aeropuerto PP].
‘Guess what! We saw the president of the United States at the airport.’ 272
(183) ?? ¡Adivina qué! [en el aeropuerto PP] hemos visto al presidente de EEUU.
‘Guess what! We saw the president of the United States at the airport.
(184) Recoge el baño, lo has dejado [ sucio AdjP].
‘Clean up the bathroom, it is dirty.’
(185) ¿Has visto a Ana? Se he dejado el pelo [largo AdjP].
‘Did you see Ana? Her hair is long now.’
The last research question aimed at investigating whether the entire Basque Spanish community held the same judgments and, therefore, asked whether every speaker of the contact variety was equally likely to accept and/or possibly use this non-standard focus variant. On the one hand, while it was not possible to pursue a fine-grained statistical modeling tackling differences between Basque and non-Basque speakers within the Basque
Spanish group due to the reduced sample size of Basque Spanish monolinguals, a descriptive comparison across these two participant samples identified a slight differential behavior in their evaluation of this non-standard focalization strategy, uncovering more positive ratings among old, rural non-Basque speakers of this contact varieties than urban and younger participants reporting no proficiency or some proficiency of Basque. In addition, among
Basque speakers, intergenerational and cultural identity effects were also observed, suggesting that speakers of the contact variety do not constitute one unique homogeneous group in their evaluative responses towards this linguistic phenomenon. The analysis showed that it is older participants (above the age of 43) as well as those ranging between the ages of
22 and 43 who more strongly identify with the Basque culture that rate preverbal information focus sequences more favorably.
Taking all these results together, one might be tempted to posit that since none of the analyses revealed a main effect of language proficiency, language contact between Basque 273
and Spanish and, more specifically the direct influence of Basque features onto Spanish syntax is not the “propelling force” (Heine & Kuteva 2010) accounting for the emergence, diffusion and maintenance of preverbal information focus structures among Basque Spanish speakers.
Nevertheless, as noted in Tagliamonte and Baayen (2012), complex interactions that arise among factors “can be difficult or even impossible to capture adequately even with a mixed- effects logistic linear model” (2012: 164). In overcoming this limitation, Tagliamonte and
Baayen (2012) successfully implement an analysis of interactions using Conditional Inference
Trees. Following Tagliamonte and Baayen’s rationale, I would like to make the argument that the missing effect of Basque proficiency within the current data-set follows precisely from the failure of the inferential models to adequately identify the effects of this constraint due to high levels of interspeaker variability and the complexity of interactions among extra- linguistic factors.
Before considering the interrelations among these extra-linguistic categories, let’s first observe the response behavior of participants holding different proficiency levels of Basque.
This is visually plotted in figure 60.
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Figure 60: Distribution of acceptability ratings according to participants’ level of Basque proficiency (blue dot = median; black dot = mean)
The distribution of response ratings across these three groups indicates that, on average, intermediate L2 learners of Basque provide the highest acceptability scores (x ̅ = 4.975), followed by the most proficient group (advanced L2 learners, early-sequential bilinguals, native speakers) (x ̅ = 4.725), while beginner learners of Basque rate preverbal information focus structures lowest (x ̅ = 4.234). Nonetheless, Wilcoxon Signed Ranked tests revealed that the acceptability ratings across different proficiency groups were not significantly different.
From a traditional language contact hypothesis standpoint, the more proficient Basque speakers would have been expected to provide the highest scores under the assumption that this group would be more prone to transfer Basque features onto Spanish and presumably use them. Along with this rationale, the less proficient Basque speakers would have been 275
expected to report not using and/or disliking Basque-like constructions the most. While this is true of beginner learners of Basque, this prediction is not borne out among intermediate
L2 learners of Basque. Interestingly, the diverging mean (x ̅ = 4.975) and median (Md = 6) values within this group as well as the fairly gradient shape of the violin plot in figure 16 suggest that not every intermediate learner of Basque is showing a fairly positive attitude towards this non-standard focus variant. Figure 17 depicts the mean scores for each of the
10 intermediate Basque learners who participated in the study.
Figure 61: Distribution of responses along the 7-point Likert acceptability scale by intermediate Basque learner (green bar = rural environment; orange bar = semi-urban environment; blue bar = urban environment)
By looking at the distribution of responses, the following may be interpreted: on the one hand, in line with the effect of age found in the ordinal mixed effects logistic regression model, as a whole, the older these intermediate speakers are, the more positively the target
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sentences are rated. A second distinguishing factor seems to be at play, too. Overall, participants from rural environments seem to provide higher ratings (x ̅ = 6) than the semi- urban or urban cohort of participants (x ̅ = 4.291).
Similarly, variability across speakers is modeled within the most proficient group, comprised by 31 speakers. Here, too, an age and environment effect is noticeable. A separate look at advanced, early-sequential bilinguals and native speakers pinpoints a differential behavior between those below and above the age of 22 (below 22 years old x ̅ = 3.625 vs. above 22 years old x ̅ = 4.839). Regarding their place of residence, proficient speakers of
Basque living in rural areas regard preverbal information focus more acceptable than participants from semi-urban or urban settings (rural environment x ̅ = 5.026 vs. semi- urban/urban environments x ̅ = 4.525), suggesting their more positive likelihood to use it in speech.
An analysis of interactions using conditional inference trees among AGE*
*PROFICIENCY*ENVIRONMENT and SELF-IDENTIFICATION WITH THE BASQUE CULTURE, given its main effect in the mixed effects model, confirms these trends (figure 62). On the one hand, the Conditional Inference Tree confirms that the lowest ratings are in effect assigned by the youngest participants and, more specifically, intermediate Basque learners younger than 22 years old (node 5). The greatest variability is encoded among participants between the ages of 22 and 43. The Conditional Inference Tree shows that the response patterns of these participants are conditioned by their self-identification with the Basque culture, their local environment and language proficiency. The multiple partitionings of the data reveal that it is the more proficient speakers living in rural or semi-urban environments who strongly identify with the Basque culture that find preverbal information focus
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structures significantly more acceptable and, therefore, show a more positive attitude to potentially using them (node 12). The same is not true of beginner learners of Basque, who rate these non-standard variant significantly worse (node 13).
Figure 62: Conditional Inference Tree of the interactions between AGE, BASQUE CULTURAL TIES, BASQUE PROFICIENCY AND ENVIRONMENT
It is worth noting the way environment is partitioned. On the one hand, the response behavior of participants from urban environments always shows a disassociation from rural participants. While urban participants who strongly identify with the Basque culture rate these vernacular forms of speech slightly worse than more proficient rural or semi-urban participants (node 12 vs. node 14), the same tendencies are not observed among participants who identify more weakly with the Basque culture. In fact, participants from rural areas who do not relate to the Basque culture so strongly perceive preverbal information focus less acceptable than participants from urban or semi-urban locations (node 8 vs. node 9). The acceptability scores in node 8 come from two speakers and, interestingly enough, the lowest
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mean ratings come from a male speaker, who reports having acquired Basque since birth and
Spanish at the age of 5, and whose frequency patterns of use in Basque significantly exceed his use of Spanish. While a priori his responses may result counterintuitive, these findings tie in with Ciriza’s (2009) network analysis, where she reported that rural, Basque-dominant speakers who employ contact features in their Spanish actually express themselves fairly reluctant to their usage. Given the nature of the present study, I would not completely rule out the hypothesis that this speaker does use the contact feature under investigation, and yet rejects to admit that he would use it.
6.4. The emergence, diffusion and maintenance of preverbal (exhaustive)
information focus in Basque Spanish
This chapter has shown that Basque Spanish speakers find non-standard, preverbal
(exhaustive) information focus constructions significantly more acceptable than non-Basque,
Peninsular Spanish speakers, leading us to the tentative and cautious inference that they may likewise be more prone to using them. Acceptability differences across these two groups have been strongly manifested specially regarding the type of focused constituent (NP,
AdvP, PP, AdjP) and the overt or null nature of 3rd person accusative clitics. Within the
Basque Spanish community, results from an ordinal mixed effects logistic regression model have additionally revealed a main effect of AGE and SELF-IDENTIFICATION WITH THE
BASQUE CULTURE, hinting the overall effect that it is older Basque Spanish speakers and those who report strongly identifying with the Basque culture that rate non-standard preverbal focalization significantly better.
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In evaluating the possible effects of Basque onto Basque Spanish with regards to the acceptability and possible use of this non-standard syntactic variant, the analysis of constraint hierarchies did not choose language proficiency as a significant predictor. Be this as it may, I have argued that the effects of this constraint have failed to be captured adequately in the regression model due to the high degree of interspeaker variability and the complex interactions among categories to be handled by the slightly reduced participant sample size.
On the one hand, although there are a limited number of participants in this group, variability has been observed among monolingual Basque Spanish speakers, in that older monolingual participants from rural and semi-urban environments revealed a more positive attitude towards this construction than the younger and urban population. The same trend was discernible among intermediate learners of Basque and proficient Basque speakers, in that it was older participants from rural and semi-urban environments who rated the target stimuli more positively. In the end, an analysis of interactions using Conditional Inference trees showed that, in effect, it is proficient Basque speakers (i.e. advanced L2 learners, early- sequential bilinguals, native Basques) and less proficient speakers (intermediate L2 learners) between the ages of 22 and 43 from rural and semi-urban environments, who hold strong
Basque cultural ties, that perceive preverbal information focus structures more acceptable and may more readily use them. Hence, in all, Basque does have a bearing on the focalization strategies used by Basque Spanish speakers, not only in relation to their level of proficiency but also their personal attachment and identification with the culture. However, while
Basque proficiency matters, it is participants’ age and how they identify towards the Basque culture that more heavily impact their perception and evaluation towards this non-standard focus construction. 280
In the remainder of this chapter, I use this information to shed light on the types of transfer that might have influenced the emergence, diffusion and maintenance of this non- standard construction in the Basque Spanish.
6.4.1. The framework: Van Coetsem (1988, 2000)
Situations in which two or more languages are in contact, such as the present case, may lead to multiple outcomes. According to Van Coetsem’s (1988, 2000) classificatory framework, there are two types of cross-linguistic influences or transfer types that trigger such contact- induced outcomes: borrowing and imposition (Van Coetsem 1988, 2000). As stated in Van
Coetsem (1988) and later on in Winford (2005, 2010), within both categories, a source language (SL) and a recipient language (RL) are distinguished and the direction of transfer is always from the SL to the RL, but what makes borrowing and imposition different from each other is the type of agentivity involved in each scenario. On the one hand, borrowing involves recipient-language agentivity (henceforth RL agentivity), wherein the agent of change is the speaker of the recipient language. On the other hand, imposition requires source-language agentivity (hereafter SL agentivity), wherein the agent of change is the speaker of the source language. Crucially, a highly relevant difference between the two types of transfer is the notion of language dominance, which under Van Coetsem’s approach encompasses both linguistic proficiency and fluency. Whatever the agent of change is, whether RL and SL, the speaker must be dominant in that language. Van Coetsem defines the notion of borrowing as follows:
“If the recipient language speaker is the agent, as in the case of an English speaker
using French words while speaking in English, the transfer of material (and this 281
naturally includes structure) from the source language into the recipient language is
borrowing (recipient language agentivity)” (1988: 3).
Therefore, in order for a given transfer to involve borrowing, it must occur from the speaker’s non-dominant language (i.e. SL) into his or her dominant language (i.e. RL).
According to Winford (2010), in general, borrowing tends to involve the lexicon and other less stable domains, and does not usually have a significant impact on the RL grammar.
On the other hand, in imposition, “the source language speaker is the agent, as in the case of a French speaker using his French articulatory habits while speaking English”
(1988:3). That is, the transfer must involve a dominant speaker of the source language imposing some articulatory habit (e.g. feature) into his or her non-dominant recipient language. Winford (2010) points out that it is the source language grammar that is more stable and resistant to change. As the dominant language in this case, grammatical features from the SL tend to be retained, and imposed on the RL, leading to significant structural change in the speaker’s version of the latter.
In Van Coetsem’s eyes, an important fact is that each type of transfer not only shows a specific profile in terms of linguistic dominance, but also social dominance. Social dominance refers to the social status of the RL as opposed to the SL which is heavily constrained by people’s attitudes towards the languages involved and which may render explanatory in people’s motivations for producing this kinds of transfer.
In the next section, I adopt this classificatory framework in proposing that, in effect, the emergence, propagation and maintenance of preverbal information focus structures among
Basque Spanish speakers does not result from one of two types of cross-linguistic influences; but, rather, through the interplay or ‘complementarity’ à la Van Coetsem (1988, 2000) of both processes of imposition (SL agentivity) and borrowing (RL agentivity), which are 282
crucially motivated by speakers’ age and self-identification with the Basque culture.
6.4.2. Proposal: Preverbal (exhaustive) information focus as a case of
complementarity of borrowing and imposition
Many contact situations are characterized by what Van Coetsem (1988: 87) calls
‘complementarity’ between both processes of imposition (SL agentivity) and borrowing (RL agentivity), suggesting that these two types of transfer are not mutually exclusive. Following this idea and the findings obtained from the acceptability judgment task, I propose that the influence of Basque is crucial in the acceptance and possible use of preverbal (exhaustive) information focus and, consequently, its emergence, diffusion and maintenance as a productive alternative syntactic construction in Spanish. I maintain that the influence of
Basque is both linguistic and cultural; that is, I posit that the effects of Basque not only come in the form of imposition (SL agentivity) from highly proficient and fluent Basque speakers who hold strong Basque cultural ties and who transfer the syntactic structure of their linguistically and culturally dominant language into their non-dominant, less proficient language, but also as processes of borrowing (RL agentivity), wherein the Basque-like preverbal (exhaustive) information structure is borrowed from speakers’ linguistically non- dominant, yet culturally dominant language (i.e Basque) into their linguistically dominant, but less culturally dominant language (i.e. Spanish).
I use the results of my language proficiency criterion to interpret the high acceptability ratings provided by advanced L2 Basque learners, early-sequential bilinguals and Basque natives to be an indication of imposition (SL agentivity), wherein proficient speakers of the
SL (i.e. Basque) who also strongly self-identify with the culture of the SL act as agents 283
adapting this Basque-like preverbal focus construction into the recipient language, which for some but not necessarily all speakers may represent the language in which they are less proficient or less dominant. On the other hand, I take the high scores provided by monolingual Basque Spanish speakers and less proficient Basque speakers to represent a process of borrowing (RL agentivity), whose RL agents indirectly imitate the preverbal nature of exhaustive information focus structure of the SL (i.e. Basque) that has already been adapted to the Basque Spanish linguistic repertoire of highly proficient speakers of Basque.
In other words, this group indirectly borrows the immediate preverbal structure of focus through direct borrowing of the Basque-like preverbal focus structure that is already being produced by highly proficient Basque speakers and transfer it to their Spanish (i.e. the language in which they are more proficient).
While these two processes are jointly responsible for the current evaluative stage of this focus construction and its possible patterns of use, as far as its emergence is concerned, I hypothesize in the absence of any diachronic or historical data that this focus variant originally arose as a case of imposition (SL agentivity), wherein uneducated, highly dominant and proficient Basque speakers from rural areas altered the structure of Spanish focus to adapting a Basque-like ordering of constituents as a result of their linguistic incompetence in
Spanish and their high linguistic competence in Basque.
At present time, I propose that the motivations to perceive this preverbal focus variant positively and to show disposition to use it among highly proficient Basque speakers, some less proficient speakers and some monolingual speakers are driven by both social dominance and linguistic/cultural attitudes towards Basque and the contact variety of Basque Spanish.
First, it must be noted that despite the Basque government’s and administration’s efforts in promoting the activism of Basque, Basque is still considered a minority language in the 284
Basque Country and is generally perceived as the socially non-dominant, rural language by a large sector of the population. What is more, prescriptive and normative linguistic ideologies within the education system exercise influence over speakers to depart from any Spanish varieties that deviate from the so-called “standard”. These attitudes towards Basque and
Basque Spanish can easily account for the more negative evaluations that predominate among the younger subgroup and beginner L2 Basque learners, who report living in urban or semi-urban settings and being almost purely Spanish-dominant (i.e. language proficiency and use) in addition to having received a high level of education.
Nevertheless, for many others being a speaker of Basque and/or embracing the cultural norms and practices of the Basque Country represent a symbol of pride and provide a sense of belonging to the Basque community (Ciriza, 2009; Rodríguez-Ordoñez, 2016). Likewise, the use of Basque Spanish linguistic trademarks has also been shown to symbolize local identity and function as an alternative or complementary strategy to be considered Basque
(Ciriza, 2009). The present study has shown that both highly proficient and less proficient
Basque speakers who strongly self-identify with the Basque culture rate preverbal information focus significantly better than those who do not. In line with Ciriza’s work, I interpret these findings to be a shibboleth of ‘Basqueness’ and pride as well as an enactment of local identity and sense of belonging to the Basque community. I believe this to be particularly true of the less proficient cohort and also Basque Spanish monolinguals who reported high acceptability scoring across the board. I suggest that their strong agreement with statements such as “it sounds natural” or “I would say that” comes as a compensatory strategy to mark their ‘Basqueness’, Basque identity and pride towards the Basque, and therefore make up for the complete lack of or insufficient knowledge of Basque. I also believe this to be true of proficient Basque speakers (L2 advanced learners, early-sequential 285
bilinguals and Basque natives), who in addition to speaking Basque also incorporate Basque
Spanish features into their linguistic repertoire, not necessarily because they are less dominant or proficient in Spanish, but to mark their ‘Basqueness’ and Basque identity.
6.5. Summary & conclusions
The goal of this chapter has been two-fold. On the one hand, it sought at empirically gauging the effects of Basque focalization strategies onto the non-standard preverbal positioning of (exhaustive) information focus phrases that had been attested in the contact variety of Basque Spanish; and, additionally, it aimed at elucidating under what linguistic conditions is this documented preverbal (exhaustive) information focus construction more likely accepted or reported to occur.
In reaching these objectives, I conducted a first quantitative exploration of this non- standard focus variant using perception data from a Likert scale acceptability task rather than interview-based production data. The results of this task-based approach have shown that
Basque indeed influences the opinions of Basque Spanish speakers regarding the acceptability and likelihood of occurrence of preverbal (exhaustive) information focus structures. Crucially, however, this study has shown that the influence that Basque has onto
Basque Spanish is represented primarily through a consideration of speakers’ strong self- identification with Basque cultural ties, and to a lesser extent through their level of Basque proficiency. In particular, this study has revealed that it is both Basque proficient bilinguals and less proficient speakers (intermediate L2 learners) who crucially self-identified with the
Basque culture that are more likely to accept and produce this non-standard focus variant.
As such, I have proposed that the emergence, diffusion and current stage of this non- 286
standard focalization strategy have resulted from complementarity between processes of imposition (SL agentivity) and borrowing (RL agentivity), which have been suggested to be driven by both social dominance and linguistic/cultural attitudes towards Basque and the contact variety of Basque Spanish.
This study has also shown that monolinguals Basque Spanish speakers are themselves significantly more eager to accept and produce these non-standard forms of language than
Basque Spanish speakers. In this regard, I have hypothesized that the use of Basque Spanish linguistic trademarks functions as a compensatory strategy to express ‘Basqueness’ and
Basque identity in the absence of any linguistic competence in Basque. Yet, these attitudes are not representative of all monolingual and less proficient Basque speakers and, in fact, this research has indicated that other less proficient speakers (i.e. young, intermediate learners of
Basque and beginner learners of Basque) do not find preverbal information focus as acceptable and are not as eager to producing such non-standard structures. In accounting for these differential behaviors, I have proposed that there are indeed opposing attitudinal forces between normative-prescriptive ideologies and shibboleths of ‘Basqueness’ that propel Basque Spanish speakers’ willingness to accept and use this preverbal focus variant.
In conclusion, in light of the complex interactions found in the present study not only among linguistic factors but also extra-linguistic ones and the opposing linguistic attitudes and ideologies that prevail in the Basque Spanish community, I conclude that in evaluating the effects of language contact, while the emergence of this non-standard focus variant may have exclusively been the outcome of differences in language dominance between Basque and Spanish in the first place, its current acceptance, use, and maintenance cannot be accounted for by applying linguistic competence as the sole criteria, but rather are better
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explained through a careful exploration of both speakers’ linguistic competence and cultural as well as linguistic attitudes and ideologies.
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CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSIONS
7.1. Summary and contributions
The purpose of this dissertation has been two-fold.
The primary objective of this dissertation has been to investigate the variable structural positioning of constituents conveying information focus (i.e. new, non-presupposed information) in working to capture how linguistic and social factors, and specially the semantic-pragmatic notion of exhaustivity, affect the syntactic configurations of two typologically unrelated languages, namely Basque and (Peninsular) Spanish. In doing so, I have adopted an experimental approach to syntactic variation and applied the statistical toolkit that is commonly adopted in sociolinguistics through a series of hierarchy of constraints analyses, mixed effects logistic regression models, random forests and conditional inference trees in RStudio, the integrated development environment for R. With the information obtained from several inferential analyses, I have implemented two formal syntactic treatments of exhaustive information focus using the feature-driven approach couched within Minimalism, and a constructional version of the Construction Grammar framework in order to conceptualize the advantages and disadvantages of each model of grammar.
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The second major goal of this dissertation has been to examine the influence of the architecture of Basque focus onto the syntactic realization of focus in the contact variety of
Basque Spanish. It had been impressionistically observed and claimed that Basque Spanish speakers used an alternative preverbal (exhaustive) information focus variant in addition to the standard sentence-final (exhaustive) focus construction presumably due the influence of
Basque syntax onto the Spanish spoken in the Basque Country region. Be this as it may, no empirical or quantitative analyses had been pursued either to evaluate the effects of language contact or delve into the internal-linguistic and extra-linguistic factors constraining the acceptance and use of this vernacular form of speech. To this end, rather than following the long-standing interview-based analysis characteristic of sociolinguistics and contact linguistics, I have also adopted an experimental route of investigation and subsequently submitted the data to a series of inferential analyses in RStudio in order to explore the correlations between preverbal (exhaustive) information focus and various linguistic and social categories in ultimately shedding light on the processes and transfer types involved on the emergence, diffusion and maintenance of this non-standard form of language.
In attaining these goals, this dissertation has constituted the first rigorous empirical cross-linguistic examination of the variable structural placement of constituents conveying new, information focus in Basque and Peninsular Spanish, and its association to exhaustivity.
Prior to this investigation, the variable positioning of Peninsular Spanish information focus had been mostly noted in studies exploring the prosodic properties of focused phrases, which paid little to no attention to elucidating how linguistic and social factors shaped its structural configuration. As for Basque, variable focus placement, and more specifically the expression of focus in a non-preverbal position, had been overlooked in the literature. Here, modeling an experimental approach and quantitative variationist research practices couched 290
with the sociolinguistics tradition (i.e. hierarchy of constraints analysis), it has been compellingly shown that the expression of information focus is not restricted to a unique syntactic position in neither Basque nor Spanish, and in examining the influence of exhaustivity on such variability, it has been confirmed that there is indeed an association between immediate preverbal information focus and exhaustivity in Basque and sentence- final information focus and exhaustivity in (Peninsular) Spanish.
The present study on Basque and (Peninsular) Spanish focus greatly contributes to the study of language typologies and our cross-linguistic understanding of focus and information structure. In particular, this dissertation has brought to light the parallel internal linguistic behavior of two unrelated languages with regards to focus-marking constructions, lending support to the claim that Basque and Spanish structural focus both respond to the underlying demands of exhaustivity on a par with Hungarian preverbal focus, English clefting, or aree focus constructions in K’iche. Whereas some of these make use of overt exhaustive focus markers (i.e. ‘aree’, ‘it is…’, etc.), others as is the case of Basque, Spanish or
Hungarian, use word order to mark it. Hence it may seem that, beyond its semantic- pragmatic contribution, exhaustivity does have a syntactic effect on the structural realization of focus-marking constructions across languages; for now, however, it will remain an open question whether the role of exhaustivity conforms to the group of so-called ‘linguistic universals’ or rather represents a ‘language-particular’ device of the human language faculty.
The results and formalized syntactic approaches developed throughout the course of this dissertation in order to accommodate the characteristics of focus also contribute to syntactic theory and the theory of focus. Following different sets of assumptions and syntactic devices, both generativist and constructionist approaches have been shown to be successful in accommodating the role of exhaustivity. Nevertheless, it has been observed that the 291
syntax-centered nature of the original minimalist-generativist framework has more difficulty incorporating the effects of other linguistic domains (i.e. processing-related effects, social factors) in explaining patterns of language use and linguistic variation, whereas no such restrictions apply when adopting a non-modular, usage-based model of grammar, echoing and supporting the conclusions drawn by many others, including Goldberg (1995), Bybee
(1985; 2001), etc.
This thesis has also benefited research on contact linguistics through the investigation of preverbal information focus constructions in the contact variety of Basque Spanish. On the one hand, in seeking a quantitative assessment of the impact of Basque immediate preverbal exhaustive focus onto Basque Spanish and its non-standard preverbal focus variant, this dissertation has implemented a perceptual rating task that, given the nature of the phenomenon under investigation, has crucially allowed for the collection of larger amounts of data more effectively and rapidly than traditional semi-guided Labovian interviews used in sociolinguistics and contact linguistics, which are usually more suitable for studying phonological or morpho-syntactic variables. On the other hand, the post-questionnaire purposefully designed to retrieve information about participants’ socio-demographic, linguistic and attitudinal profile has likewise provided a rich evaluation of contact effects showing that measuring language competence (i.e. proficiency and/or dominance) by itself is not a sufficient criterion to entirely account for the behavior and patterns of use that individuals adopt. In fact, it has been a combination of geographical (i.e. Basque vs. Non-
Basque origin), linguistic (i.e. phrase type, form of the DO), social (i.e. age, language proficiency, environment) and attitudinal (i.e. self-identification with Basque culture) differences that has proven more informative in furthering our understanding of the emergence, diffusion and maintenance of preverbal information focus structures in Basque 292
Spanish. I have hypothesized that some Basque Spanish (i.e. monolingual Basque Spanish speakers, intermediate L2 Basque learners, highly proficient Basque speakers) are more eager to accept and/or use this vernacular feature because it functions as a complementary or compensatory strategy to mark their ‘Basqueness’ and Basque identity, lending support to the claim that people use language to portray identity and relate to a community (Eckert,
2004; Johnstone, 2010; Barnes, 2013; inter alia).
In all, these findings contribute to a great body of interdisciplinary linguistic research.
While constituting the first systematic exploration of focus from a variationist standpoint through the lens of original experimental data and the statistical toolkit characteristic of the sociolinguistics enterprise, it has not only emphasized the fundamental role that quantitative variationist sociolinguistics plays in informing other subfields of linguistics such as syntax, semantic-pragmatics and contact linguistics, but also has brought together seemingly theory- oriented linguistic subfields with empirically-grounded, data-driven research.
7.2. Limitations
Along with its many contributions to the field of linguistic, this dissertation has encountered some limitations, which I briefly address in the pages that follow.
Despite looking at this topic from a variationist quantitative standpoint, my research and data depend on a series of experiments that target people’s perceptions about their use of language as opposed to featuring what they actually produce. As such, one might object that people’s perception of how they use language is not a clear reflection, but rather a misrepresentation of their real language production patterns. While this may certainly be true, a quantitative analysis of syntactic features that solely relies on production data runs 293
into severe problems given the limited occurrence of these variables in speech. While phonological variables occur with high frequency and could easily render enough token counts to conduct meaningful statistical analyses through a 30-minute sociolinguistic interview, syntactic features occur in much smaller quantities. In addition, the phenomenon of information focus required the question-answer pair configuration that participants could have opted to simply respond with a one-word utterance, hence preventing the recollection of enough valuable information. Importantly, this is not to say that production data should not be used when exploring variation in syntax. Rather, the argument is that a quantitative analysis of syntactic variation, following the analytical toolkit used in sociolinguistics, is best characterized with complementary production data that can help corroborate participants’ perceptive judgments.
The second limitation involves the online implementation of all experiments but the
Basque interpretation task, which was carried out in-situ through one-to-one appointments with all 49 participants. This method was adopted due to the setting of this research, which took place in different regions of the Spanish peninsula, and time constraints. One of the main drawbacks of this method of data collection is that the researcher is not able to clarify and probe the task by virtue of not being in the research setting. In overcoming this limitation, clear instructions and test items were provided in every survey. While these might have been helpful in the forced-choice tasks and the Likert scale acceptability judgment task, they might not have been sufficient for the interpretation tasks. This was primarily observable through the overt commentary that some participants provided in the comment box, which in some cases had little to do with the interpretation question asked in the survey. Likewise, within this type of methodology, not having a trained interviewer prevented any control over the environment and participants’ actions (i.e. noise, level of 294
distraction, interruptions, etc.), which may have also led to less reliable data. In spite of these disadvantages, the advantages of using online surveys are on the other hand manifold. On the one hand, a bigger sample of participants can be recruited using this method at a significantly lower cost. What is more, since respondents can access the questionnaire at any time, a large number of immediate responses can be obtained faster. Informants were overall receptive to participating and distributing the questionnaires, which secured a reasonable number of participants at a fairly fast pace. Yet, the desired sampling of participants was not achieved in the Likert scale acceptability task, which could have benefited tremendously from a bigger sample of monolingual Basque Spanish speakers, low proficient Basque speakers and older participants due to the high degree of interspeaker variability and deviant response patterns according to age and participants’ language proficiency.
Lastly, while an analysis through the lens of participants’ language proficiency was able to provide a first approximation towards an evaluation of contact effects and possible transfer types (SL agentivity vs. RL agentivity), I believe that in order to obtain a more fine-grained picture of the effects of linguistic competence, an analysis of language dominance or frequency of use should also have been included in the study because, in some cases, high proficiency in one language does not necessarily involve dominance. This point is further discussed as part of my future research in the next section.
7.3. Future directions
The study of Basque focus has shown, contrary to Elordieta’s (2001) individual judgments, that immediate preverbal focus is consistent with exhaustivity. More precisely, I have argued that the immediate preverbal positioning of information focus phrases is 295
intricately associated with an exhaustivity implication, whose content is not-at-issue. These findings have instigated a reconsideration of previous formal syntactic analyses on focus movement, which misleadingly stipulated focus fronting to be the result of a formal FOCUS feature, operative in the head of CP or FOCP, that had to be valued as [+FOC]. Conversely, under a generativist approach, my proposal assumes exhaustivity to be the main exponent of movement to SPEC of FOCP; and, consequently, the FOCUS feature is required to be specified via [+EXH]. The fact that it is not focus per se, but exhaustivity what drives movement of focal material to a high, left peripheral position makes the prediction that well- known cases of focus clausal pied-piping in Basque, shown in (186b), may as well be responsive to exhaustivity.
(186) Nori esan dizu Mirenek [ ti ikusi dute-la zure gurasoek]?
Who.ABS say.PRF aux.PRS Miren.ERG see.PRF aux.PRS-COMP your parents.ERG
‘Who did Miren tell you that your parents saw?’
a. [FocP [F Aitor]i] esan dit Mirenek [CP ti ikusi dute-la nire
Aitor.ABS say.PRF aux.PRS Miren.ERG see.PRF aux.PRS-COMP my
gurasoek].
parents.ERG
‘It is Aitor that Miren told me that my parents saw.’
b. [FocP [F Aitor]i ikusi dute-la ti nire gurasoek]j esan dit
Aitor.ABS see.PRF aux.PRS-COMP my parents.ERG say.PRF aux.PRS
Mirenek tj.
Miren.ERG
‘It is Aitor that Miren told me that my parents saw.’
(Lit. ‘That it is Aitor who my parents saw Miren told me.’) 296
Both (186a) and (186b) instantiate movement of focal material from its base-generated position inside the complementizer phrase introduced by –ela ‘that’ to the left of the matrix verb, outside the embedded clause. The difference between (a) and (b) rests of the amount of syntactic material that undergoes movement to the left periphery. While (a) represents a case of exhaustive focus movement affecting exclusively the phrase conveying new, non- presupposed information (i.e. Aitor), in (b) the whole clause containing the focused phrase
(i.e. Aitor ikusi dutela nire gurasoek ‘that my parents saw Aitor’) ‘pied-pipes’ to [SPEC, FOCP]. In accounting for this structural asymmetries, traditional analyses of focus have assumed a
‘feature percolation’ mechanism, wherein the focus specification of the focused phrase located in the specifier of the subordinate clause ‘percolates’ to its mother (i.e. the CP node), granting the entire clause a [+FOC] value that enables movement of the entire CP upon satisfactory valuation of the unvalued FOC feature in FOCP. This feature percolation operation in shown in figure 63.
Figure 63: Feature percolation of [+FOC]
However, since it is not the focus value of the focused phrase what drives the movement, but rather exhaustivity, it is predicted that pied-piping of embedded clauses containing focused phrases will also be handled by exhaustivity and, more specifically, percolation of the exhaustive specification attached to the focused constituent. In order to
297
validate this hypothesis, it would be necessary to test, first, whether pied-piped structures such as (186b) occur in variation with in-situ counterpart such as (187a) and, if so, whether such variation is constrained by exhaustivity.
(187) Nori esan dizu Mirenek [ ti ikusi dute-la zure gurasoek]?
Who.ABS say.PRF aux.PRS Miren.ERG see.PRF aux.PRS-COMP your parents.ERG
‘Who did Miren tell you that your parents saw?’
a. Mirenek esan dit [CP nire gurasoek [F Aitor] ikusi dutela]].
Miren.ERG say.PRF aux.PRS my parents.ERG Aitor.ABS see.PRF aux.PRS-COMP
‘Miren told me that my parents saw Aitor.’
Another issue that deserves further exploration is the postverbal, sentence-final alignments of narrow information focus in Spanish. Most examples provided to describe the linearization patterns of Spanish information focus in the present dissertation and elsewhere conflate sentence-final and immediate postverbal positions. A question that remains to be explored is whether constituents conveying (exhaustive) information focus can also occur in postverbal, yet non-final position. This question was piloted in the Spanish forced-choice task used to study the interactions between focus, exhaustivity and constituent order. The relevant stimuli are shown in (188) and (189).
(188) ¿Quién ha puesto mis llaves ahí?
‘Who left my keys there?’
a. Las [V ha puesto] ahí [F Miguel].
‘It was Miguel who left them there.’
b. Las [V ha puesto] [F Miguel] ahí.
‘It was Miguel who put them there./Miguel put them there.’
298
(189) ¿Quién ha comprado la tarta?
‘Who bought the cake?’
a. La [V ha comprado] en una pastelería nueva [F tu hermana].
‘It is your sister who bought it at a new bakery.’
b. La [V ha comprado] [F tu hermana] en una pastelería nueva.
‘It is your sister who bought it at a new bakery./Your sister bought it at a new
bakery.’
It was thought that if all the information in the answer to the wh-question constituted given information (i.e. known information), then, focused phrases would prefer to be spelled out in sentence-final position. Yet, if the sentence included new information that was simply added by the speaker, as in (189) which specifies where the individual bought the cake, focus would sound more natural and appropriate postverbally, followed by new material. In other words, intervening new material between the verb and exhaustive focus would not be the preferred choice. In the experiment, response choices from Peninsular Spanish speakers matched these intuitions suggesting that information focus may be represented through a tripartite structural system in Spanish (i.e. in-situ, postverbal and sentence-final), each position responding to a different set of qualities. It may also be the case that, beyond the intervening effect of new vs. given material, the length of this intervening material also has a bearing in the positioning of narrow information focus in Spanish. In light of all these unresolved matters, more research on this third alternative variant would advance our understanding of focus and its interaction with exhaustivity in Spanish, while simultaneously helping us better comprehend what the role of intervening material between the verb and focus is (i.e. new vs. given information, length) regarding information structure and information packaging. 299
As referenced in §7.2., another issue that deserves closer attention in future research draws upon my evaluation of the effects of Basque linguistic competence onto Basque
Spanish, which only took into consideration a language proficiency criterion that measured participants’ Basque proficiency through a 23-multiple choice language questionnaire. While language proficiency did not have a main effect in the forced-choice task or the interpretation test, this factor was shown to function in interaction with other constraints in the 7-point Likert scale acceptability task implemented to evaluate the acceptance and likelihood of occurrence of non-standard preverbal focus constructions in Basque Spanish.
In this study, highly proficient Basque speakers were reported to be more willing to accept and use this non-standard focus variant than beginner learners of Basque and some younger intermediate learners of Basque. Be this as it may, it is a well-known fact that high language proficiency does not necessarily entail high fluency or dominance, and vice versa. Within the current data, two participants who reported having acquired Basque since birth and speaking more often in Basque than in Spanish with their friends were placed in the intermediate and beginner groups by the language proficiency test. The multiple-choice proficiency quiz used in this dissertation comes from the Basque standardized test EGA, and while these kinds of tests are frequently used to officially measure language proficiency, there is certainly a tenuous connection between the content of these languages tests and individuals’ real linguistic competence as they tend to measure only one part of language knowledge, namely the part that is privileged by academic institutions (Blommaert & Backus, 2011). Therefore, while these two speakers might not necessarily reflect a high level of Basque proficiency as measured by this test’s standardized nature, this is not to mean that they are not fluent or even dominant Basque speakers. Following these observations and as suggested among the various limitations of this dissertation, it would be beneficial to not only increase the sample 300
of participants, but also consider the effects of language dominance in addition to those of language proficiency as a next step in the study of this contact-induced phenomenon.
Lastly, in this thesis, I have made the proposal that speakers use language variation to build and mark their Basque identity. In the absence of any or little competence in Basque, I have hypothesized that monolingual Basque Spanish speakers and intermediate L2 Basque learners use Basque Spanish linguistic trademark as a compensatory strategy to mark their ethnic Basque identity and their willingness to belong to the Basque community. On the other hand, I have also proposed that other speakers dislike this non-standard preverbal focus variant due to recurrent ideological linguistic pressures to move away from non- normative forms of language. In a nutshell, I presume this non-standard form of language to have competing social meanings that lead to social competition in its usage. I anticipate that for some speakers this non-standard variant will index positive traits related to identity and ethnic pride, but for other speakers this will be perceived as a trademark of uneducated, unintelligent, rural populations. In seeking to validate these hypotheses, my goal will be to conduct a perception study, using matched-guise techniques, in order to uncover the covert attitudes towards speakers who use this non-standard variant. Subsequently, I plan on expanding this study to other non-standard variants characteristics of the Basque Spanish variety such as null 3rd person ADOs and clausal wh-pied-piping. Within the bigger picture, this long-term project on the social perception and evaluation of linguistic variables will not only advance our understanding of how dialect-specific features of Basque Spanish are socially regarded both within the Basque society and elsewhere in Spain, but it will also bolster the determining role that language variation plays in building regional identity.
301
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Appendix A: Basque socio-demographic questionnaire
• Bizkaikoa zara? ‘Are you from Bizkaia?’
o Bai ‘Yes’
o Ez ‘No’ Disqualify
• Non bizi zara Bizkaian? ‘Where are you from in Bizkaia?’ ______
• Sexua ‘Gender’:
o Emakumea ‘Female’
o Gizona ‘Male’
• Adina ‘Age’: ______
• Jasotako hizkuntza mailarik altuena ‘Highest education received’:
o Ezer ere ez ‘None’
o Lehen hezkuntza ‘Primary school’
o Bigarren hezkuntza/Erdi-mailako gradua ‘Secondary school/Associate
degree’
o Batxillergoa/Goi-mailako gradua ‘Junior-senior high school/Associate
degree’
o Unibertsitate ikasketak: diplomatura, lizentziatura, gradua ‘BA degree’
o Masterra/Doktoretza ‘MA/PhD studies’
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• Euskaraz gain, beste hizkuntzarik hitz egiten al duzu? ‘In addition to Basque, do you
speak any other languages?’
o Bai ‘Yes’
o Ez ‘No’
• Aurreko galderan baietz erantzun baduzu, zure gaitasuna zenbatetsi ondorengo
taulan. Kontuan hartu “1”-ak baliorik baxuena adierazten duela (e.g. maila baxua) eta
“5”-ak baliorik altuena (e.g. goi-maila). ‘If you answered ‘yes’ to the previous
question, rate your proficiency in the following table. Keep in mind that “1” stands
for the lowest value (e.g. low-level) and “5” stands for the highest value (e.g. high-
level).’
Entzumena Irakurmena Hizkera Idazkera ‘Listening’ ‘Reading’ ‘Speaking’ ‘Writing’ Hizkuntza #1: 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 ‘Language #1’
Hizkuntza #2: 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 ‘Language #2’
Hizkuntza #3: 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 ‘Language #3’
Hizkuntza #4: 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 ‘Language #4’
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Appendix B: Basque bilingualism assessment test
Hizkuntza historial orokorra ‘General linguistic history’:
Atal honetan zure hizkuntza historialaren inguruko galdera batzuk erantzutea eskatuko dizugu ‘In this section, we are going to ask you some questions about your linguistic history’:
1. Zenbat urterekin hasi ziren gaztelera ikasten? ‘When you were how old did you start
learning Spanish?’
o Jaiotzetik ‘since birth’
o Urtebete neukanetik ‘Since I was one’
o 2 urte bete nituenetik ‘Since I was two’
o 3 urte bete nituenetik ‘Since I was three’
o 4 urte bete nituenetik ‘Since I was four’
o 5 urte bete nituenetik ‘Since I was five’
o 6 urte bete nituenetik ‘Since I was six’
o 7 urte edo gehiago bete nituenetik ‘Since I was seven or more’
2. Zenbat urterekin hasi ziren euskara ikasten? ‘When you were how old did you start
learning Basque?’
o Jaiotzetik ‘since birth’
o Urtebete neukanetik ‘Since I was one’
o 2 urte bete nituenetik ‘Since I was two’
o 3 urte bete nituenetik ‘Since I was three’ 314
o 4 urte bete nituenetik ‘Since I was four’
o 5 urte bete nituenetik ‘Since I was five’
o 6 urte bete nituenetik ‘Since I was six’
o 7 urte edo gehiago bete nituenetik ‘Since I was seven or more’
3. 6 urte bete baino lehenago hasi zinen euskaraz eta gazteleraz hitz egiten? ‘Did you
start learning Basque and Spanish before you were six?’
o Bai ‘Yes’
o Ez ‘No’
4. Zein hizkuntzatan egiten zuten berba zure gurasoek zure jaiotzetik 5 urte bete
zenituen arte? ‘What language did your parents speak from your birth until you were
five?’
o Gaztelera ‘Spanish’
o Euskara ‘Basque’
o Biak ‘Both’
o Beste hizkuntzaren bat ‘Some other language’: ______
5. Zein hizkuntzatan hitz egiten zizuten zure gurasoek gehien? ‘What language did you
parents most of the time?’
o Gaztelera ‘Spanish’
o Euskara ‘Basque’
o Biak ‘Both’
o Beste hizkuntzaren bat ‘Some other language’: ______
Hizkuntza ebaluaketa pertsonala ‘Self-reported language evaluation’:
Atal honetan zure hizkuntza gaitasunaren eta erabileraren inguruan galdetuko dizugu ‘In this section, we will ask you about your language proficiency and use’: 315
6. Zure ustez, orokorrean, zelan menderatzen duzu gaztelera? ‘In your view, how
proficient are you in Spanish?’
o Jaiotzezko hiztun baten moduan ulertu eta hitz egiten dut ‘I speak and
understand Spanish like a native speaker’.
o Erraztasunez ulertu eta hitz egiten dut, zailtasun handirik gabe ‘I speak and
understand Spanish easily, without much difficulty’.
o Ulertu eta hitz egiten dut, baina zailtasun apur batekin ‘I speak and
understand Spanish with some difficulty’.
o Ulertu eta hitz egiten dut, baina zailtasun askorekin ‘I speak and understand
Spanish with great difficulty’.
o Ulertu egiten dut, baina ezin dut hitz egin ‘I understand Spanish, but I can’t
speak it’.
7. Zure ustez, orokorrean, zelan menderatzen duzu euskara? ‘In your view, how
proficient are you in Basque?’
o Jaiotzezko hiztun baten moduan ulertu eta hitz egiten dut ‘I speak and
understand Spanish like a native speaker’..
o Erraztasunez ulertu eta hitz egiten dut, zailtasun handirik gabe ‘I speak and
understand Spanish easily, without much difficulty’
o Ulertu eta hitz egiten dut, baina zailtasun apur batekin ‘I speak and
understand Spanish with some difficulty’..
o Ulertu eta hitz egiten dut, baina zailtasun askorekin ‘I speak and understand
Spanish with great difficulty’..
o Ulertu egiten dut, baina ezin dut hitz egin ‘I understand Spanish, but I can’t
speak it’.. 316
8. Kalifika ezazu zure gaztelera gaitasuna hurrengo arloetan ‘Rate your Spanish
profiency in the following areas’:
o Irakurmena (Nola irakurtzen duzu gazteleraz?) ‘Reading (how well do you
read in Spanish?’:
▪ Jaiotzezko hiztun baten moduan ‘like a native speaker’
▪ Oso ondo ‘very good’
▪ Ondo ‘good’
▪ Zailtasun apur batekin ‘with some difficulty’
▪ Zailtasunez ‘with difficulty’
o Entzumena (Nola ulertzen duzu gazteleraz?) ‘Listening: how well do you
understand Spanish?):
▪ Jaiotzezko hiztun baten moduan ‘like a native speaker’
▪ Oso ondo ‘very good’
▪ Ondo ‘good’
▪ Zailtasun apur batekin ‘with some difficulty’
▪ Zailtasunez ‘with difficulty’
o Idazkera (Nola idazten duzu gazteleraz?) ‘Writing: how well do you write in
Spanish?’:
▪ Jaiotzezko hiztun baten moduan ‘like a native speaker’
▪ Oso ondo ‘very good’
▪ Ondo ‘good’
▪ Zailtasun apur batekin ‘with some difficulty’
▪ Zailtasunez ‘with difficulty’
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o Hizkera (Nola hitz egiten duzu gazteleraz?) ‘Speaking: how well do you speak
in Spanish?’:
▪ Jaiotzezko hiztun baten moduan ‘like a native speaker’
▪ Oso ondo ‘very good’
▪ Ondo ‘good’
▪ Zailtasun apur batekin ‘with some difficulty’
▪ Zailtasunez ‘with difficulty’
9. Kalifika ezazu zure euskara gaitasuna hurrengo arloetan ‘Rate your Basque profiency
in the following areas’:
o Irakurmena (Nola irakurtzen duzu euskaraz?) ‘Reading (how well do you read
in Basque?’:
▪ Jaiotzezko hiztun baten moduan ‘like a native speaker’
▪ Oso ondo ‘very good’
▪ Ondo ‘good’
▪ Zailtasun apur batekin ‘with some difficulty’
▪ Zailtasunez ‘with difficulty’
o Entzumena (Nola ulertzen duzu euskaraz?) ‘Listening: how well do you
understand Basque?):
▪ Jaiotzezko hiztun baten moduan ‘like a native speaker’
▪ Oso ondo ‘very good’
▪ Ondo ‘good’
▪ Zailtasun apur batekin ‘with some difficulty’
▪ Zailtasunez ‘with difficulty’
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o Idazkera (Nola idazten duzu euskaraz?) ‘Writing: how well do you write in
Basque?’:
▪ Jaiotzezko hiztun baten moduan ‘like a native speaker’
▪ Oso ondo ‘very good’
▪ Ondo ‘good’
▪ Zailtasun apur batekin ‘with some difficulty’
▪ Zailtasunez ‘with difficulty’
o Hizkera (Nola hitz egiten duzu euskaraz?) ‘Speaking: how well do you speak
in Basque?’:
▪ Jaiotzezko hiztun baten moduan ‘like a native speaker’
▪ Oso ondo ‘very good’
▪ Ondo ‘good’
▪ Zailtasun apur batekin ‘with some difficulty’
▪ Zailtasunez ‘with difficulty’
10. Zer nolako maiztasunarekin erabiltzen dituzu euskara eta/edo gaztelera hurrengoko
lekuetan/egoeratan ‘How often do you use Basque or Spanish in the following
places/situation’:
o Etxean ‘at home’:
▪ 100% euskara ‘Basque’ – 0% gaztelera ‘Spanish’
▪ 90% euskara ‘Basque’ – 10% gaztelera ‘Spanish’
▪ 80% euskara ‘Basque’ – 20% gaztelera ‘Spanish’
▪ 70% euskara ‘Basque’ – 30% gaztelera ‘Spanish’
▪ 60% euskara ‘Basque’ – 40% gaztelera ‘Spanish’
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▪ 50% euskara ‘Basque’ – 50% gaztelera ‘Spanish’
▪ 40% euskara ‘Basque’ – 60% gaztelera ‘Spanish’
▪ 30% euskara ‘Basque’ – 70% gaztelera ‘Spanish’
▪ 20% euskara ‘Basque’ – 80% gaztelera ‘Spanish’
▪ 10% euskara ‘Basque’ – 90% gaztelera ‘Spanish’
▪ 0% euskara ‘Basque’ – 100% gaztelera ‘Spanish’ o Unibertsitatean/Lanean ‘at the university/at work’:
▪ 100% euskara ‘Basque’ – 0% gaztelera ‘Spanish’
▪ 90% euskara ‘Basque’ – 10% gaztelera ‘Spanish’
▪ 80% euskara ‘Basque’ – 20% gaztelera ‘Spanish’
▪ 70% euskara ‘Basque’ – 30% gaztelera ‘Spanish’
▪ 60% euskara ‘Basque’ – 40% gaztelera ‘Spanish’
▪ 50% euskara ‘Basque’ – 50% gaztelera ‘Spanish’
▪ 40% euskara ‘Basque’ – 60% gaztelera ‘Spanish’
▪ 30% euskara ‘Basque’ – 70% gaztelera ‘Spanish’
▪ 20% euskara ‘Basque’ – 80% gaztelera ‘Spanish’
▪ 10% euskara ‘Basque’ – 90% gaztelera ‘Spanish’
▪ 0% euskara ‘Basque’ – 100% gaztelera ‘Spanish’ o Lagunekin ‘with your friends’:
▪ 100% euskara ‘Basque’ – 0% gaztelera ‘Spanish’
▪ 90% euskara ‘Basque’ – 10% gaztelera ‘Spanish’
▪ 80% euskara ‘Basque’ – 20% gaztelera ‘Spanish’
▪ 70% euskara ‘Basque’ – 30% gaztelera ‘Spanish’
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▪ 60% euskara ‘Basque’ – 40% gaztelera ‘Spanish’
▪ 50% euskara ‘Basque’ – 50% gaztelera ‘Spanish’
▪ 40% euskara ‘Basque’ – 60% gaztelera ‘Spanish’
▪ 30% euskara ‘Basque’ – 70% gaztelera ‘Spanish’
▪ 20% euskara ‘Basque’ – 80% gaztelera ‘Spanish’
▪ 10% euskara ‘Basque’ – 90% gaztelera ‘Spanish’
▪ 0% euskara ‘Basque’ – 100% gaztelera ‘Spanish’
Jarrerak ‘attitudes’:
Atal honetan hizkuntz jarreren inguruko zenbait baieztapen erantzun beharko dituzu 1tik 7ra bitartean markatuz (1 = ez nago ados; 5 = ados nago) ‘In this section, you will have to rate some statements about your linguistic attitudes in a scale of 1 to 5 (1 = I don’t agree; 5 = I agree):
11. Ni neu sentitzen naiz gazteleraz hitz egiten dudanean ‘I feel myself when I speak in
Spanish’:
1 2 3 4 5
12. Ni neu sentitzen naiz euskaraz hitz egiten dudanean ‘I feel myself when I speak in
Basque’:
1 2 3 4 5
13. Kultura erdaldun batekin identifikatzen naiz ‘I identify myself with the Spanish
culture’:
1 2 3 4 5
14. Kultura euskaldun batekin identifikatzen naiz ‘I identify myself with the Basque
culture’:
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1 2 3 4 5
15. Niretzako garrantzitsua da gaztelera ama-hizkuntza bezala erabiltzea (edo erabiltzera
heltzea) ‘It is important that my Spanish sounds native-like (or almost native-like’:
1 2 3 4 5
16. Niretzako garrantzitsua da euskara ama-hizkuntza bezala erabiltzea (edo erabiltzera
heltzea) ‘It is important that my Basque sounds native-like (or almost native-like’:
1 2 3 4 5
17. Besteek jaiotzezko gaztelerazko hiztun bat naizela pentsatzea nahi dut ‘I want others
to think that I am a native Spanish speaker’:
1 2 3 4 5
18. Besteek jaiotzezko gaztelerazko hiztun bat naizela pentsatzea nahi dut ‘I want others
to think that I am a native Basque speaker’:
1 2 3 4 5
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Appendix C: Basque grammar and vocabulary proficiency test
(adapted from Rodríguez-Ordoñez, 2016)
1. Jaiki ohetik, seme, bazkaltzeko ordua da! ‘Wake up, son, its time for lunch!’
a) Itxaron, ama, oso berandu sartu naiz ohean. ‘Hold on, mom, I went to bed really
late’
b) Itxaron, ama, oso berandu sartuko naiz ohean. ‘Hold on, mom, I will go to bed really
late’
c) Itxaron, ama, oso berandu sartzen naiz ohean. ‘Hold on, mom, I am going to to bed
really late’
2. Egia al da Gorbea mendia erre dela? ‘Is it true that the Gorbea Mountain is burning?’
a) Bai, ezer entzun dut. ‘Yes, I heard nothing’
b) Bai, zer entzun dut. ‘Yes, I heard what’
c) Bai, zerbait entzun dut. ‘Yes, I heard something’
3. Zer esan dizu medikuak? ‘What did the doctor tell you?’
a) Kirola egitea. ‘to practice sports’
b) Kirola egiteko. ‘to practice sports’
c) Kirola egiten. ‘practicing sports’
4. Bai, ni lehenengo etxebizitzan bizi naiz, eta anaia goiko etxebizitzan. ‘Yes, I live in the first
house, and my brother lives in the one above.’
323
a) Beraz, zure anaia bian bizi da. ‘So, your brother lives in the two.’
b) Beraz, zure anaia bigarren bizi da. ‘So, your brother lives second.’
c) Beraz, zure anaia bigarrenean bizi da. ‘So, your brother lives in the second one.’
5. Zein multzotan dago hitz bat tokiz kanpo? ’Where is the odd-one-out?’
a) gaur, atzo, bihar, etzi, etzidamu. ‘today, yesterday, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow,
in three days’ time’
b) gona, galtzerdiak, soinekoa, izterra. ‘skirt, socks, dress, thigh’
c) kopeta, belarria, lepoa, sudurra, begia. ‘forehead, ear, neck, nose, eye’
6. Gustatu zait Menchu Gal artistaren erakusketa. ‘I liked Menchu Gal’s exhibition.’
a) Nolako koloreak erabiltzen ditu! ‘Which beautiful colors she uses!’
b) Nolako koloreak erabiltzen dituela! ‘That what beautiful colors she uses!’
c) Nolako koloreak erabiltzen dituen! ‘What beautiful colors she uses!’
7. Ados nago ...... ‘I agree…’
a) bileran esandakoa. ‘what was said at the meeting.’
b) bileran esandakoak. ‘what said at the meeting.’
c) bileran esandakoarekin. ‘with what was said at the meeting.’
8...... guraso eta seme-alaben artean ondo moldatzea! ‘______have a good
relationship between parents and their children’
a) Hau zaila ‘This hard’
b) Zein zaila da ‘It is so hard’
c) Zein zaila den ‘It is so hard to’
9. Zein multzotan dago hitz bat tokiz kanpo? ’Where is the odd-one-out?’
a) Altua, isila, jatorra, eskuzabala. ‘tall, quiet, nice, generous’
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b) Irakaslea, erizaina, arotza, ostalaria. ‘teacher, nurse, carpenter, landlord’
c) Izeba, amaginarreba, koinatua, ahizpa. ‘aunt, mother-in-law, sister-in-law, sister’
10.Bihar ezin dut, baina ...... ’I cant tomorrow, but ______’
a) beste egun batean gera gaitezke. ‘we can meet some other day.’
b) beste eguna gera gaitezke. ‘we can meet other day.’
c) beste egunean gera gaitezke. ‘we can meet in other day.’
11.Ba, nire andregaiari ez ...... asko gustatu pelikula hori. ‘My wife ____ not like that movie’
a) zait ‘did-1st dative case’
b) zion ‘did-3rd dative case’
c) zitzaion ‘did-3rd dative case, 3rd absolutive case’
12.Gidabaimena ateratzea hain erraza ...... , ez ...... hainbeste lagunek huts egingo. ’If getting your driver’s license ____ so easy, so many friend _____ not fail.’
a) bada / du ‘is/do’
b) balitz / luke ‘were/would’
c) balitz / zen ‘were/did’
13.Interes zientifikoa ...... , interes publikoa ere badute ikerketa-lanek. ’______to scientific interest, research also has public interest’
a) baino ‘in addition to’
b) ez ezik ‘not only’
c) ezik ‘if not’
14.Eraman ...... fotokopia hauek Andoniri, zain dago eta! ’bring ______these copies to Andoni, he is waiting for them’ 325
a) diezazkiozun ‘auxiliary verb – no English equivalent, difference in case’
b) iezazkiozu ‘auxiliary verb – no English equivalent, difference in case’
c) itzazu ‘auxiliary verb – no English equivalent, difference in case’
15.Gazteek ez diote euren buruari baino begiratzen. Oso ...... dira. ’Teenagers only care about themselves. They are very ______’
a) berekoiak ‘selfish’
b) burutsuak ‘reasonable’
c) lotsatiak ‘shy’
16.Euri-zaparraden ondorioz, ...... izan dira Levante aldean, eta herri asko argirik gabe geratu dira. ’Due to the rain, there has been ______in the Levante area, and many villages have no power.’
a) Lehorteak ‘drought’
b) Uholdeak ‘flood’
c) Urtegiak ‘reservoir’
17.Ziri galanta sartu digu denoi! Hots: ’He tricked us! Hence:’
a) Animuak eman dizkigula. ‘He cheered on us’
b) Damutu egin zaigula. ‘He regretted us’
c) Engainatu egin gaituela. ‘He told us a lie’
18.Lankideekin al zoaz oporretara? Aukeratu erantzun egokia. ’Are you going on vacation with your co-workers? Choose the right answer.’
a) Lankideekin? Ezta ametsetan. ‘With my co-workers? Not even in my dreams’
b) Lankideekin? Ezta pentsatu ere. ‘With my co-workers? No way’
c) Lankideekin? Zoratuta nagoela. ‘With my co-workers? I am crazy’
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19.Horrek ez du batere zentzurik. Esanahia: ‘That makes no sense. Meaning:’
a) ez du ez hankarik ez bururik. ‘I can’t make heads or tails out of this.’
b) buruan haizea baino ez du. ‘He is full of air in his head.’
c) ez da ez ur ez ardo ‘It is not water or wine.’
20.Zein dago gaizki? Harrigarria badirudi ere, horixe gertatu da. ‘Which one is wrong?
Although it is unbelievable, that’s what happened.’
a) Ez da izango! ‘It can’t be true!’
b) Ez ezezu esan! ‘Don’t say it’
c) Esatea ere! ‘Even to say that’
21.Pozarren gindoazen Miren bisitatzera. Nik …….. izugarrizko ilusioa nuen. ‘We were very excited to visit Miren. I ______was very excited.’
a) gutxienez ‘at least’
b) bidenabar ‘in passing’
c) aitzitik ‘however’
22.“Zergatik ez diozu itzuli bere dirua?” ‘Why didn’t you return the money?’
a) Harexegatik ‘That’s why!’
b) Zergatik ez! ‘Because!’
c) Horratik! ‘However!’
23.Ba ……. daki horrek zer esaten duen! ‘Does he/she even know what that means!’
a) Ahal ‘question particle – No English equivalent’
b) Ote ‘question particle – No English equivalent’
c) omen ‘question particle – No English equivalent’
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Appendix D: Basque forced-choice acceptability judgment task stimuli
❖ Exhaustive, non-argument
Context: Zure senarra udako oporrak antolatzen ari da. Honek ez du gogoratzen noiz amaitzen duten eskola zuen seme-alabek eta, beraz, galdetu egiten dizu: ‘Your husband is planning your summer vacation this year. However, he does not remember when kids finish school and, therefore, he asks you:’
Q: Noiz amaitzen dute ikasturtea umeek aurten?
‘When do kids finish the school year this year?’
(a) Ikasturtea amaitzen dute [F Ekainak 23an].
‘They finish the school year in June 23rd.’
(b) [F Ekainak 23an]i amaitzen dute ti ikasturtea.
‘It is in June 23rd that they finish the school year.’
❖ Exhaustive, argument
Context: Euskal literatura azterketa daukazue bihar eta klasean errepasatzen ari zarete. Irakasleak honako galdera egin dizue: ‘You have a Basque literature exam tomorrow and you are reviewing for the exam in class. Your teacher asks you the following question:’
Q: Nork idatzi zuen Obabakoak?
‘Who wrote Obabakoak?’
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(a) Bernardo Atxagak idatzi zuen eleberri hori.
‘It is Bernardo Atxaga that wrote that novel.’
(b) Bernardo Atxagak eleberri hori idatzi zuen.
‘Bernardo Atxaga wrote that novel.’
❖ Ambiguous, non-argument
Context: Zu eta beste lankide bat Bilbon zabiltzate lan kontuak direla eta. Ordubete falta denez batzarra hasteko, zure lankideari egunkaria pare bat erostea bururatu zaio eta, beraz, galdetu dizu ‘Your workmate and you went to Bilbo in order to handle some business. Since there is still an hour left until the meeting begins, your workmate wants to buy a few newspapers, so he has asked you’:
Q: Non eros ditzaket Deia, El Correo eta Mundo Deportivo hemendik?
‘Where can I buy Deia, El Correo and Mundu Deportivo around here?’
(a) Horrek danak eros ditzakezu kiosko horretan bertan.
‘It is at that kiosk that you can buy all of those.’
(b) Kiosko horretan bertan eros ditzakezu horrek danak.
‘You can buy all of those at that kiosk.’
❖ Ambiguous, argument
Context: Gaur irakasleek batzarra eduki dute institutuan ikasleen ebaluaketa egiteko. Zuzendariak zure klasean ikasle taxerrenak nortzuk diren jakin nahi du eta honako hau galdetu dio ‘Teachers had a meeting today in order to evaluate students’ progress. The principal wants to know who are the worst students in your class and he has asked you:’
Q: Nork entregatzen ditu etxerako lanak berandu egunero?
‘Who turns in homework late every day?’
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(a) Peiok eta Jonek egunero entregatzen dituzte berandu.
‘Peio and Jone turn them in late every day.’
(b) Peiok eta Jonek entregatzen dituzte berandu egunero.
‘It is Peio and Jone who turn them in late every day.’
❖ Ambiguous, bakarrik ‘only’, non-argument:
Context: Euskal selekzioa jokatzen ari da partidua. Ez dituzue San Mameserako sarrerak erosi eta telebistan ikusi nahi duzue, baina Jonek ez daki zein telebistatan ari diren ematen eta galdetu egin dizu
‘The Basque soccer team is playing right now. You guys did not purchase tickets for the game, so you are going to watch it on TV, but John does not remember which TB station is broadcasting it and he has asked you:’
Q: Zein telebistatan emango dute partidua?
‘Which TV station is broadcasting the game?’
(a) ETB1en bakarrik emango dute partidua.
‘It is only in ETB1 that’s broadcasting the game.’
(b) Partidua emango dute ETB1en bakarrik.
‘They are broadcasting the game in ETB1.’
❖ Ambiguous, bakarrik ‘only’, argument
Context: Osasunari buruzko hitzaldi bat ematera etorri dira zure klasera gaur. Hitzaldia ematen ari den medikuak, honako galdera hau egin dizue ‘Today some experts came to your class to provide an information session on health matters. The doctor that’s actually giving the talk has asked you:’
Q: Nortzuk egiten duzue kirola egunero?
‘Who works out every day?’
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(a) Arkaitzek bakarrik egiten du kirola egunero.
‘It is only Arkaitz who works out every day.’
(b) Arkaitzek bakarrik kirola egiten du egunero.
‘Only Arkaitz works out every day.’
❖ Ambiguous, eta guzti, argument
Context: Igandean, minbiziaren aldeko lasterketa ospatuko da Bilbon. Aitor eta Xabirekin zabiltza berbetan lasterketari buruz. Azken honek galdetu egin dizu ‘They are having a race supporting cancer this coming Sunday in Bilbao. You are talking to Aitor and Xabi about the race. The latter has asked you:’
Q: Nortzuk egingo duzue korrika lasterketan?
‘Who is running at the race?’
(a) Ene! Anek eta guzti korrika egingo du lasterketan.
‘Well! Even Ane is running at the race.’
(b) Ene! Anek eta guzti egingo du korrika lasterketan.
‘Well! It is even Ane who is running at the race.’
❖ Ambiguous, eta guzti, non-argument
Context: Zure semearekin Sevillan ospatzen ari diren Aste Santuko prozezioak ikusten ari zara telebistan. Honen inguruan, zure semeak galdetu egin dizu ‘You are watching Easter processions from Sevilla with your son on TV. In this regard, your son has asked you:’
Q: Non ospatzen dituzte Aste Santuko prozezioak gaur egun?
‘Where do they celebrate Easter processions nowadays?’
(a) Horrek ospatzen dituzte Bilbon eta guzti gaur egun.
‘They celebrate those even in Bilbao nowadays.’
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(b) Bilbon eta guzti ospatzen dituzte horrek gaur egun.
‘It is even in Bilbao that they celebrate them nowadays.’
❖ Ambiguous, universal quantifier danak ‘everyone’:
Context: Zuk eta Imanolek euskera irakasten duzue institutuan eta beti zabiltzate ikasleak animatzen
EGA azterketa egiteko. Imanolek galdetu egin dizu ‘Imanol and you teach Basque in high school and you are always encouraging students to take the EGA certificate. Imanol has asked you:’
Q: Nortzuk egingo dute EGA Martxoan zure klasean?
‘Who is taking EGA in March in your class?’
(a) Denek egingo dute azterketa Martxoan.
‘It is everyone that’s taking the test in March.’
(b) Denek azterketa egingo dute Martxoan.
‘Everyone is taking the test in March.’
❖ Ambiguous, universal quantifier denta guztietan ‘every store’:
Context: Zure ahizpa etorri da Bilbora bisitan bere senarra eta haurrarekin. Bat-batean, umearentzako janaria etxean utzi duela konturatu da. Umearentzako janaria erosi behar du eta, beraz, galdetu dizu
‘Your sister is visiting you together with her kid and her husband. Suddenly, she realized that she left the baby’s food at home. She needs to buy some food for her child, so she has asked you:’
Q: Non eros ditzakegu umearentzako papilla eta frutak?
‘Where can we buy some baby food and fruit for the kid?’
(a) Denda guztietan eros ditzakezu horrek.
‘It is at every store that you can buy those.’
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(b) Horrek eros ditzakezu denda guztietan.
‘You can buy those at every store.’
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Appendix E: Basque interpretation task stimuli
GROUP A: Target items
❖ Fronted argument
Context: Gaur irakasleek batzarra eduki dute institutuan ikasleen ebaluaketa egiteko. Zuzendariak zure klasean ikasle taxerrenak nortzuk diren jakin nahi du eta honako hau galdetu dio ‘Teachers had a meeting today in order to evaluate students’ progress. The principal wants to know who are the worst students in your class and he has asked you:’
Q: Nork entregatzen ditu etxerako lanak berandu egunero?
‘Who turns in homework late every day?’
Patxik hauxe erantzun dio:
‘Patxi has responded:’
A: [F Xabik eta Jonek] entregatzen dituzte berandu egunero.
‘It is Xabi and John who turn (them) in late everyday.’
• Q1_Zuzentasun eskala: 1etik 7ra, nola zenbatetsiko zenuke Patxik emandako
erantzuna?
‘Acceptability scale: from 1 to 7, how would you rate Patxi’s answer?’
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Desegokitzat hartuko nuke Egokitzat hatuko nuke
‘I think it’s incorrect’ ‘I think it’s correct’
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Ez nuke horrelakorik esango Nik esango nukeen esaldia da
‘I would never say that.’ ‘I would say that sentence’
• Q2_Ulermena: Entzun duzun erantzunaren arabera, Xabi eta Jonez gain etxerako
lanak berandu entregatzen dituen beste inor dagoela pentsa lezake institutuko
zuzendariak? ‘Comprehension: Based on what you heard, do you believe that the
principal could think that more people, besides Xabi and John, could turn in
homework late?’
• Q3: Euskaraz esanahi berbera daukan beste esaldiren bat bururatzen zaizu?
‘Can you think of another Basque sentence structure that may hold the same
meaning?’
❖ In-situ, non-argument
Context: Zure lehengusina bere semearekin Aste Santuko prozezioen inguruko dokumentala ikusten ari da telebistan. Honen inguruan, bere semeak galdetu egin dio ‘Your cousin is watching a TB documentary about Easter Parades on TV. Her son asked her’:
Q: Non ospatzen dira Aste Santuko prozeioak?
‘Where are Easter parades celebrated?
Zure lehegusinak esan dio:
‘Your cousin told him:
A: Horrek ospatu egiten dira [F Andaluzian].
‘They celebrate those in Andalusia.’
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• Q2_Ulermena: Entzun duzun erantzunaren arabera, Andaluziaz gain, prozezioak beste
lekuren batean ospatzen direla pentsa lezake zure lehengusinaren semeak? ‘Comprehension:
Based on what you heard, do you believe that your cousin’s son could think that
Easter parades are celebrated anywhere else besides Andalusia?’
❖ Fronted, non-argument:
Context: Zure ahizpa etorri da Bilbora bisitan bere senarra eta haurrarekin. Bat-batean, umearentzako merienda etxean utzi duela konturatu da. Umearentzako zeozer erosi behar du eta, beraz, zure Amari galdetu dio: ‘Your sister is in Bilbao on a visit with her husband and child. All of a sudeen, she realizes that she has left the snacks for her son at home. She needs to buy him something to eat, so she asks your mom:
Q: Non erosiko ditugu umearentzako ogitartekoa eta gozoki batzuk?
‘Where are we going to buy a sandwich and sweets for the kid?’
Zure amak erantzun dio:
‘Your mom told her:’
A: [F Denda horretan bertan] eros ditzakezu horrek.
‘It is in that store there that you can buy those.’
• Q2_Ulermena: Entzun duzun erantzunaren arabera, denda horretaz gain, beste
dendaren batean erosi ahal dituela pentsa lezake zure ahizpak? ‘Based on what you
heard, do you believe that your sister could think that she could buy them at some
other store beyond that store there?’
❖ In-situ, argument:
Context: Osasunari buruzko hitzaldi bat ematera etorri dira zure klasera gaur. Hitzaldia ematen ari den medikuak, honako galdera hau egin dizue ‘Today some experts came to your class to provide an
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information session on health matters. The doctor that’s actually giving the talk has asked you:’
Q: Nortzuk egiten duzue kirola egunero?
‘Who works out every day?’
Zure irakasleak zera erantzun du:
‘Your teacher responded the following:’
A: [F Imanolek eta Mikelek] egunero egiten dute.
‘Imanol and Mikel work out everyday.’
• Q2_Ulermena: Entzundako erantzunaren arabera, Mikel eta Imanolez gain, kirola
praktikatzen duen beste inor dagoela pentsa lezake medikuak? ‘Based on what you
heard, do you believe that the doctor could think that someone else, besides Mikel
and Imanol, could work out?
❖ Scope: mutil bat > neska guztiek
Context: Ikasturteari amaiera emateko, zure ikastolak festa ikaragarria antolatu du. Ikasleak bikoteka ibili dira dantzan eta baten batek ere ligatu egin du. Irakasleak marmarrean ari dira eta batek galdetu egin du ‘To finish the school year, your school organized a big party. Students danced in couples and some even had the chance to flirt with each other. Teachers are gossiping about it and one of them asks’:
Q: Norbait besarkatu zuten neskek?
‘Did the girls hug anyone?’
Beste irakasle batek honela erantzun du:
‘Another teacher said the following:’
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A: Bai, [F mutil bat] besarkatu zuten neska guztiek.
‘Yes, it is a boy that every girl hugged.’
• Q2_Ulermena: Mutil berbera besarkatu zuten neska guztiek? ‘Comprehension: did
every girl kissed the same boy?’
Bai/Ez ‘Yes/No’
❖ At-issueness: dissent diagnostic
Context: Fisika azkerketa euki zenuten atzo eta gaur nota eman dizuete. Ekaitz eta Amaiarekin zaude berba egiten azterketari buruz. Zuk bikaina nork atera duen galdetu diezu eta Amaiak esan dizu ‘You had a Physics exam yesterday and you got your grades today. You are talking about the exam with Ekaitz and Amaia. You asked them who got an A on the test and Amaia told you’:
Statement: [F Naiak eta Oihanek] atera dute bikaina.
‘It is Naia and Oihane who got an A.’
Ekaitzek hori entzundakoan, berehala esan dizu:
‘As soon as Ekaitz hears that, he tells you:’
Dissent statement: Ez, hori ez da egia.
‘No, that’s not true.’
• Q2_Ulermena: Zer ari da Ekaitz ezeztatzen? ‘What is Ekaitz dissenting with?’
A) Bikaina atera dutenak ez direla Naia eta Oihane.
‘That Naia and Oihane are not the ones who got an A on the test.’
B) Bikaina atera duten bakarrak ez direla Naia eta Oihane.
‘That Naia and Oihane are not the only ones who got an A on the test.’
GROUP B: Target items
❖ In-situ, argument
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Context: Gaur irakasleek batzarra eduki dute institutuan ikasleen ebaluaketa egiteko. Zuzendariak zure klasean ikasle taxerrenak nortzuk diren jakin nahi du eta honako hau galdetu dio ‘Teachers had a meeting today in order to evaluate students’ progress. The principal wants to know who are the worst students in your class and he has asked you:’
Q: Nork entregatzen ditu etxerako lanak berandu egunero?
‘Who turns in homework late every day?’
Patxik hauxe erantzun dio:
‘Patxi has responded:’
A: [F Xabik eta Jonek] egunero entregatzen dituzte berandu.
‘Xabi and John turn (them) in late everyday.’
• Q1_Zuzentasun eskala: 1etik 7ra, nola zenbatetsiko zenuke Patxik emandako
erantzuna?
‘Acceptability scale: from 1 to 7, how would you rate Patxi’s answer?’
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Desegokitzat hartuko nuke Egokitzat hatuko nuke
‘I think it’s incorrect’ ‘I think it’s correct’
Ez nuke horrelakorik esango Nik esango nukeen esaldia da
‘I would never say that.’ ‘I would say that sentence’
• Q2_Ulermena: Entzun duzun erantzunaren arabera, Xabi eta Jonez gain etxerako
lanak berandu entregatzen dituen beste inor dagoela pentsa lezake institutuko
zuzendariak? ‘Comprehension: Based on what you heard, do you believe that the 339
principal could think that more people, besides Xabi and John, could turn in
homework late?’
• Q3: Euskaraz esanahi berbera daukan beste esaldiren bat bururatzen zaizu?
‘Can you think of another Basque sentence structure that may hold the same
meaning?’
❖ Fronted, non-argument
Context: Zure lehengusina bere semearekin Aste Santuko prozezioen inguruko dokumentala ikusten ari da telebistan. Honen inguruan, bere semeak galdetu egin dio ‘Your cousin is watching a TB documentary about Easter Parades on TV. Her son asked her’:
Q: Non ospatzen dira Aste Santuko prozeioak?
‘Where are Easter parades celebrated?
Zure lehegusinak esan dio:
‘Your cousin told him:
A: [F Andaluzian] ospatu egiten dira horrek.
‘It is in Andalusia that they celebrate those.’
• Q2_Ulermena: Entzun duzun erantzunaren arabera, Andaluziaz gain, prozezioak beste
lekuren batean ospatzen direla pentsa lezake zure lehengusinaren semeak? ‘Comprehension:
Based on what you heard, do you believe that your cousin’s son could think that
Easter parades are celebrated anywhere else besides Andalusia?’
❖ In-situ, non-argument:
Context: Zure ahizpa etorri da Bilbora bisitan bere senarra eta haurrarekin. Bat-batean, umearentzako merienda etxean utzi duela konturatu da. Umearentzako zeozer erosi behar du eta, beraz, zure Amari galdetu dio: ‘Your sister is in Bilbao on a visit with her husband and child. All of a sudeen, she
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realizes that she has left the snacks for her son at home. She needs to buy him something to eat, so she asks your mom:
Q: Non erosiko ditugu umearentzako ogitartekoa eta gozoki batzuk?
‘Where are we going to buy a sandwich and sweets for the kid?’
Zure amak erantzun dio:
‘Your mom told her:’
A: Horrek eros ditzakezu [F Denda horretan bertan].
‘You can buy those in that store there.’
• Q2_Ulermena: Entzun duzun erantzunaren arabera, denda horretaz gain, beste
dendaren batean erosi ahal dituela pentsa lezake zure ahizpak? ‘Based on what you
heard, do you believe that your sister could think that she could buy them at some
other store beyond that store there?’
❖ Fronted, argument:
Context: Osasunari buruzko hitzaldi bat ematera etorri dira zure klasera gaur. Hitzaldia ematen ari den medikuak, honako galdera hau egin dizue ‘Today some experts came to your class to provide an information session on health matters. The doctor that’s actually giving the talk has asked you:’
Q: Nortzuk egiten duzue kirola egunero?
‘Who works out every day?’
Zure irakasleak zera erantzun du:
‘Your teacher responded the following:’
A: [F Imanolek eta Mikelek] egiten dute egunero.
‘It is Imanol and Mikel who work out everyday.’
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• Q2_Ulermena: Entzundako erantzunaren arabera, Mikel eta Imanolez gain, kirola
praktikatzen duen beste inor dagoela pentsa lezake medikuak? ‘Based on what you
heard, do you believe that the doctor could think that someone else, besides Mikel
and Imanol, could work out?
❖ Scope: neska guztiek > mutil bat
Context: Ikasturteari amaiera emateko, zure ikastolak festa ikaragarria antolatu du. Ikasleak bikoteka ibili dira dantzan eta baten batek ere ligatu egin du. Irakasleak marmarrean ari dira eta batek galdetu egin du ‘To finish the school year, your school organized a big party. Students danced in couples and some even had the chance to flirt with each other. Teachers are gossiping about it and one of them asks’:
Q: Norbait besarkatu zuten neskek?
‘Did the girls hug anyone?’
Beste irakasle batek honela erantzun du:
‘Another teacher said the following:’
A: Bai, [F neska guztiek] besarkatu zuten mutil bat.
‘Yes, it is every girl that hugged a boy.’
• Q2_Ulermena: Mutil berbera besarkatu zuten neska guztiek? ‘Comprehension: did
every girl kissed the same boy?’
Bai/Ez ‘Yes/No’
❖ At-issueness: dissent diagnostic (Same as version A)
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Appendix F: (Basque) Spanish socio-demographic questionnaire
• ¿Eres de Bizkaia (País Vasco) ‘Are you from Bizkaia (Basque Country):
o Sí ‘Yes’
o No ‘No’
(Si la respuesta es “SÍ”) (If the answer is “YES”):
• ¿Dónde vives en Bizkaia? ‘Where do you live in Bizkaia?’ ______
• Sexo ‘Gender’:
o Mujer ‘Female’
o Hombre ‘Male’
• Edad ‘Age’: ______
• Por favor, indica tu nivel máximo de educación alcanzado hasta la fecha ‘Indicate the
highest education received’:
o Ninguno ‘None’
o Escuela Primaria ‘Primary school’
o Escuela Secundaria/Grado medio ‘Secondary school/Associate degree’
o Bachillerato/Grado superior ‘Junior-senior high school/Associate degree’
o Estudios universitarios: Diplomatura/Licenciatura/Grado ‘BA degree’
o Posgrado ‘MA or PhD’
• ¿Hablas y/o entiendes euskera? ‘Do you speak Basque?’
343
o Sí ‘Yes’ (Basque proficiency test)
o No ‘No’
• ¿Hablas algún otro idioma además de castellano y euskera? ‘Do you speak any other
languages in addition to Spanish and Basque?’
o Sí ‘Yes’
o No ‘No’
• Si has respondido “Sí” en la pregunta anterior, califica tu dominio en dicho(s)
idioma(s) en esta tabla. Ten en cuenta que el “1” representa en valor más bajo (e.g.
nivel principiante) y el “5” el más alto (e.g. nativo). ‘If you answered ‘yes’ to the
previous question, rate your proficiency in the following table. Keep in mind that “1”
stands for the lowest value (e.g. beginner) and “5” stands for the highest value (e.g.
native/near-native).’
Comprensión Comprensión Producción Producción
Oral Escrita Oral Escrita
‘Listening’ ‘Reading’ ‘Speaking’ ‘Writing’
Idioma #1: 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5
‘Language #1’
Idioma #2: 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5
‘Language #2’
Idioma #3: 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5
‘Language #3’
Idioma #4: 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5
‘Language #4’
344
(Si la respuesta es “NO”) (If the answer is “NO”):
• ¿Eres de España? ‘Are you from Spain?’
o Sí ‘Yes’
o No ‘No’ Disqualify
• ¿De dónde eres en España? ‘Where are you from in Spain?’ ______
• Sexo ‘Gender’:
o Mujer ‘Female’
o Hombre ‘Male’
• Edad ‘Age’: ______
• Por favor, indica tu nivel máximo de educación alcanzado hasta la fecha ‘Indicate the
highest education received’:
o Ninguno ‘None’
o Escuela Primaria ‘Primary school’
o Escuela Secundaria/Grado medio ‘Secondary school/Associate degree’
o Bachillerato/Grado superior ‘Junior-senior high school/Associate degree’
o Estudios universitarios: Diplomatura/Licenciatura/Grado ‘BA degree’
o Posgrado ‘MA or PhD’
• ¿Hablas algún otro idioma además de español? ‘In addition to Spanish, do you speak
any other languages?’
o Sí ‘Yes’
o No ‘No’
345
• Si has respondido “Sí” en la pregunta anterior, califica tu dominio en dicho(s)
idioma(s) en esta tabla. Ten en cuenta que el “1” representa en valor más bajo (e.g.
nivel principiante) y el “5” el más alto (e.g. nativo). ‘If you answered ‘yes’ to the
previous question, rate your proficiency in the following table. Keep in mind that “1”
stands for the lowest value (e.g. beginner) and “5” stands for the highest value (e.g.
native/near-native).’
Comprensión Comprensión Producción Producción
Oral Escrita Oral Escrita
‘Listening’ ‘Reading’ ‘Speaking’ ‘Writing’
Idioma #1: 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5
‘Language #1’
Idioma #2: 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5
‘Language #2’
Idioma #3: 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5
‘Language #3’
Idioma #4: 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5
‘Language #4’
346
Appendix G: Spanish forced-choice acceptability judgment task stimuli
❖ Ambiguous Q, solamente ‘only’
Contexto: Esta semana tenéis que entregar el proyecto final para la clase de inglés. Has quedado con tus compañeros para trabajar en la biblioteca. Uno de ellos os pregunta ‘You have to turn in the final project in your English class this week. You are meeting your classmates to work at the library. One of them asked you:’
Q: ¿Quiénes habéis terminado el proyecto?
‘Who has finished the project?’
(a) Lo han terminado solamente Pilar y Mario.
‘It is only Pilar and Mario who have finished it.’
(b) Solamente Pilar y Mario lo han terminado.
‘Only Pilar and Mario have finished it.’
❖ Ambiguous Q, hasta ‘even’
Contexto: Tus amigos y tú habéis quedado para cenar. No sabéis dónde ir, pero os apetece algo diferente.
Tu amigo Felipe pregunta ‘Your friends and yourself are meeting for dinner. You don’t know where to go for dinner, but you’re in the mood for something different. Your friend Felipe asks:’
Q: ¿Quienes habéis probado el sushi del Miu?
‘Who has tried Miu’s sushi?’
347
(a) Hasta Paula y Susana lo han probado.
‘Even Paula and Susana have tried it.’
(b) Lo han probado hasta Paula y Susana.
‘It is even Paula and Susana who have tried it.’
❖ Ambiguous Q, Universal: non-clitic pre vs. post
Contexto: Tú y otros dos profesores estáis organizando el viaje de fin de curso este año. Tú te encargas de las cuentas y pagos, así que uno de tus compañeros te ha preguntado ‘Two professors and yourself are organizing students’ senior trip this year. You are in charge of accounts and payments, so one of your colleagues has asked you:’
Q: ¿Quién ha pagado la inscripción?
‘Who has paid the registration fee?’
(a) Ha pagado la inscripción todo el mundo.
‘It is everyone that has paid the registration fee.’
(b) Todo el mundo ha pagado la inscripción.
‘Everyone has paid the registration fee.’
❖ Ambiguous Q, Universal: clitic, pre vs. post
Contexto: Estás realizando una encuesta sobre el uso del inglés en la academia donde trabaja tu mejor amigo. Este último te ha preguntado hoy ‘You’re conducting a survey about the use of English at the academy where your friend works. Your friend just asked you today:’
Q: ¿Quién ha completado el cuestionario?
‘Who has completed the questionnaire?’
(a) Lo ha completado todo el mundo.
‘It is everyone that has completed it.’
348
(b) Todo el mundo lo ha completado.
‘Everyone has completed it.’
❖ Ambiguous Q, Non-universal: non-clitic pre vs. post
Contexto: Has quedado para ir al cine con tus compañeros de la facultad. No os habéis decidido aún qué película ver. Sara, que está echándole un ojo a la cartelera, os pregunta ‘You are meeting your university Friends to go to the movies. You still haven’t decided which movie you’re watching. Sara is checking the list of movies and asks you:’
Q: ¿Quiénes habéis visto la última película de Guillermo del Toro?
‘Who has watched Guillermo del Toro’s latest movie?’
(a) Han visto esa película Edu y Manu.
‘It is Edu and Manu who have watched the movie.’
(b) Edu y Manu han visto esa película.
‘Edu and Manu have watched the movie.’
❖ Ambiguous Q, Non-universal: clitic, pre vs. Post
Contexto: Tus amigas y tú estáis pensando ir al concierto de Beyoncé en Barcelona. Ana, que no sabe qué hacer, os ha preguntado ‘Your friends and yourself are thinking about going to Beyonce’s show in Barcelona. Ana is not very sure about going to the show and has asked you guys:’
Q: ¿Quiénes habéis pillado ya las entradas?
‘Who has purchased the tickets already?’
(a) Ya las han pillado Ana y Davinia.
‘It is Ana and Davinia who have pruchased them already.’
(b) Ana y Davinia ya las han pillado.
‘Ana and Davinia have purchased them already.’
349
❖ Exhaustive Q, Non-universal: non-clitic pre vs. Post
Contexto: Tu padre y tú estáis hablando de la Eurocopa. Tu madre, que no se ha enterado de mucho, os pregunta ‘You and your dad are talking about the soccer Eurocup. Your mom, who has not been following the competition, asks you:’
Q: ¿Quién ha ganado la final de la Eurocopa?
‘Who has won the final game at the Eurocup?’
(a) Ha ganado la final Portugal.
‘It is Portugal that has won the final game.’
(b) Portugal ha ganado la final.
‘Portugal has won the final game.’
❖ Exhaustive Q, Non-universal: clitic, pre vs. Post
Contexto: Estás tomando unas cañas con tus colegas. Os encanta el tenis. Mario, que ha estado de viaje toda la semana, no ha podido ver la final de Wimbledon que se jugó el jueves pasado y os ha preguntado
‘You’re having a few drinks with your friends. You all love tennis. Mario, who’s been gone all week, couldn’t watch Wimbledon’s final match, which they played last Thursday:’
Q: ¿Quién ha perdido la final?
‘Who has lost the final match?’
(a) La ha perdido Nadal.
‘It is Nadal who has lost it.’
(b) Nadal la ha perdido.
‘Nadal has lost it.’
❖ Out of the blue; inherent exhaustivity
350
Contexto: Lleva lloviendo 20 días seguidos en A Coruña, lo cual te deprime muchísimo. Hoy, sin embargo, ha salido el sol e irradias felicidad. Te cruzas con tu madre por el pasillo de casa nada más levantarte y ésta, que te ve tan feliz, te pregunta ‘It’s been raining for the past 20 days in A Coruña, which has been upseting you a lot. Today, however, the sun is finally out and you’re extremely happy. You run into your mom when you wake up and, since you are so happy, your mom asks you:’
Q; ¿Qué pasa? ‘What’s up?´
(a) ¡Que por fin ha salido el sol!
‘That the sun is finally out!’
(b) ¡Que por fin el sol ha salido!
‘That the sun is finally out!’
❖ Out of the blue; non-inherent exhaustivity
Contexto: Estás hablando por teléfono con Sofía que te acaba de contar algo que no te esperabas para nada. Tu marido, que está al lado tuyo, nota tu cara de asombro y te pregunta ‘You’re talking to Sofia on the phone, who just told you something that you were not expecting. Your husband, who is right next to you, notices your face of ashtonishment and asks:’
Q: ¿Qué pasa? ‘What’s up?’
(a) Que lo han dejado Alejandro y Patricia.
‘That Alejandro and Patricia have broken up.’
(b) Que Alejandro y Patricia lo han dejado.
‘That Alejandro and Patricia have broken up.’
351
Appendix H: Spanish interpretation task stimuli
SURVEY A: Target stimuli
❖ Ambiguous Q, clitic, in-situ
Contexto: Susana y sus amigas están pensando ir al concierto de Beyoncé en Barcelona. Ana, que no sabe qué hacer, les ha preguntado ‘Susana and her Friends are thinking about going to Beyoncé show in Barcelona. Ana is slightly undecisive and has asked her friends’:
Q: ¿Quiénes habéis pillado las entradas?
‘Who has bought the tickets?’
Susana le ha respondido:
‘Susana told her:’
A: [F María y Davinia] las han comprado.
‘María and Davinia have bought them.’
Q1_Escala de aceptabilidad: Del 1 al 7, ¿cómo valorarías la respuesta de Susana?
‘Acceptability scale: From 1 to 7, how would you rate Susana’s answer?’
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Completamente inaceptable Completemente aceptable
‘completely unacceptable’ ‘Completely acceptable’
No diría una oración así Yo diría algo así
‘I wouldn’t say that’ ‘I would say that’
352
Q2_Comprensión: De acuerdo con la respuesta de Susana, ¿crees que Ana podría pensar que más personas, además de María y Davinia, han comprado las entradas? ‘Based on what you heard, do you believe that Ana could think that more people, in addition to María and
Davinia, have bought the tickets?’
Q3_Reescritura: ¿se te ocurre otra manera de formular la respuesta de Susana? Si es así, escríbela aquí (esta pregunta no es obligatoria). ‘Re-write: Can you think of a different way to formulate Susana’s answer to the question? If so, please, write it here (this question is not obligatory).’
❖ At-issueness (dissent diagnostic):
Contexto: Ayer tuvisteis examen de historia y hoy os han dado la nota. Estás hablando sobre el examen con Cristina y Juan. Tú les has preguntado quién ha sacado un sobresaliente y
Juan te ha dicho ‘Yesterday you took your history exam and today you got your grades back.
You are talking to Cristina and Juan about the test. You asked them who gota n A and Juan has told you’:
Statement: Han sacado sobresaliente [F Mónica y Sergio].
‘it is Monica and Sergio who have received an A.’
Al escuchar esto, Cristina ha dicho:
‘As soon as she heard this, Cristina said:’
Dissent statement (Audio): Eso no es verdad. ‘No, that’s not true.’
Q2_Comprensión: ¿Qué información está negando Cristina? ‘Comprehension: what is
Cristina negating?’
1. Que Mónica y Sergio no han sacado un sobresaliente.
‘That Monica and Sergio haven’t gotten an A.’
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2. Que Mónica y Sergio son los únicos que han sacado un sobresaliente.
‘That Monica and Sergio are not the only ones who have gotten an A.’
SURVEY B: Target stimuli
❖ Ambiguous Q, clitic, sentence-final
Contexto: Susana y sus amigas están pensando ir al concierto de Beyoncé en Barcelona. Ana, que no sabe qué hacer, les ha preguntado ‘Susana and her Friends are thinking about going to Beyoncé show in Barcelona. Ana is slightly undecisive and has asked her friends’:
Q: ¿Quiénes habéis pillado las entradas?
‘Who has bought the tickets?’
Susana le ha respondido:
‘Susana told her:’
A: Las han comprado [F María y Davinia].
‘It is María and Davinia who have bought them.’
• Q2_Comprensión: De acuerdo con la respuesta de Susana, ¿crees que Ana podría
pensar que más personas, además de María y Davinia, han comprado las entradas?
‘Based on what you heard, do you believe that Ana could think that more people, in
addition to María and Davinia, have bought the tickets?’
❖ At-issueness (dissent diagnostic): (Same as survey A)
354
Appendix I: Basque Spanish bilingualism assessment test
Historial lingüístico general: ‘General linguistic history’
En esta sección, nos gustaría que contestaras algunas preguntas sobre tu historial linguistico:
‘In this section, we would like you to answer a few questions about your linguistic background:’
1. ¿A qué edad empezaste a aprender castellano? ‘When did you start learning Spanish?’
o Desde el nacimiento ‘Since birth’
o Desde 1 año en adelante ‘Since I was 1’
o Desde los 2 años en adelante ‘Since I was 2’
o Desde los 3 años en adelante ‘Since I was 3’
o Desde los 4 años en adelante ‘Since I was 4’
o Desde los 5 años en adelante ‘Since I was 5’
o Desde los 6 años en adelante ‘Since I was 6’
o Desde los 7 años o más en adelante ‘Since I was 7 or more’
2. ¿A qué edad empezaste a aprender euskera? ‘When did you start learning Basque?’
o Desde el nacimiento ‘Since birth’
o Desde 1 año en adelante ‘Since I was 1’
o Desde los 2 años en adelante ‘Since I was 2’
o Desde los 3 años en adelante ‘Since I was 3’
o Desde los 4 años en adelante ‘Since I was 4’ 355
o Desde los 5 años en adelante ‘Since I was 5’
o Desde los 6 años en adelante ‘Since I was 6’
o Desde los 7 años o más en adelante ‘Since I was 7 or more’
3. ¿Empezaste a hablar euskera y castellano antes de los 6 años? ‘Did you start speaking
Basque and Spanish before you were 6?’
o Sí ‘Yes’
o No ‘No’
4. ¿Qué idiomas hablaban tus padres entre ellos en casa desde que naciste hasta los 5
años? ‘Which languages did your parents speak between them at home since you
were born until you were 5?’
o Castellano ‘Spanish’
o Euskera ‘Basque’
o Los dos ‘Both’
o Otro: ______‘Other’
5. ¿En qué idioma te hablaban tus padres la mayoría del tiempo? ‘Which language did
your parents use with you most of the time?’
o Castellano ‘Spanish’
o Euskera ‘Basque’
o Los dos ‘Both’
o Otro: ______‘Other’
Evaluación lingüística personal: ‘Personal linguistic evaluation’
En esta sección, nos gustaría que consideres tu dominio de cada lengua y el uso que haces de cada lengua: ‘In this section, we would like you to consider your language proficiency and dominance in each language:’ 356
1. Evalúa tu dominio lingüístico general del castellano: ‘Rate your Spanish competence
in Spanish:’
o Entiendo y hablo con fluidez como un hablante nativo ‘I understand it and
speak it fluently like a native speaker’
o Comprendo y hablo cómodamente, con pocas dificultades ‘I understand it
and speak it comfortably, without much difficulty’
o Entiendo y hablo, pero con cierta dificultad ‘I understand it and speak it, but
with some difficulty’
o Entiendo y hablo, pero con gran dificultad ‘I understand it and speak it, but
with great difficulty’
o Comprendo pero no lo puedo hablar ‘I understand it, but I can’t speak it’
2. Evalúa tu dominio lingüístico general del euskera: ‘Rate your linguistic competence in
Basque:’
o Entiendo y hablo con fluidez como un hablante nativo ‘I understand it and
speak it fluently like a native speaker’
o Comprendo y hablo cómodamente, con pocas dificultades ‘I understand it
and speak it comfortably, without much difficulty’
o Entiendo y hablo, pero con cierta dificultad ‘I understand it and speak it, but
with some difficulty’
o Entiendo y hablo, pero con gran dificultad ‘I understand it and speak it, but
with great difficulty’
o Comprendo pero no lo puedo hablar ‘I understand it, but I can’t speak it’
3. Califica tu dominio del euskera en las siguientes áreas ‘Evaluate your language
dominance in Basque in the following skills’: 357
o Lectura (¿cómo lees en euskera?) ‘Reading (‘how well do you read in
Basque?’):
▪ Habilidad de nativo hablante ‘Like a native speaker’
▪ Muy bien ‘Very good’
▪ Bien ‘Good’
▪ Con un poco de dificultad ‘With some difficulty’
▪ Con dificultad ‘With difficulty’ o Comprensión (¿Cómo entiendes cuando te hablan en euskera?) ‘Listening
(how well can you understand Basque when you hear it?’):
▪ Habilidad de nativo hablante ‘Like a native speaker’
▪ Muy bien ‘Very good’
▪ Bien ‘Good’
▪ Con un poco de dificultad ‘With some difficulty’
▪ Con dificultad ‘With difficulty’ o Escritura (¿Cómo escribes en euskera?) ‘Writing (how well do you write in
Basque?)’:
▪ Habilidad de nativo hablante ‘Like a native speaker’
▪ Muy bien ‘Very good’
▪ Bien ‘Good’
▪ Con un poco de dificultad ‘With some difficulty’
▪ Con dificultad ‘With difficulty’ o Habla (¿Cómo hablas en euskera?) ‘Speaking (how well do you speak
Basque?)’:
358
▪ Habilidad de nativo hablante ‘Like a native speaker’
▪ Muy bien ‘Very good’
▪ Bien ‘Good’
▪ Con un poco de dificultad ‘With some difficulty’
▪ Con dificultad ‘With difficulty’
4. Califica tu dominio del castellano en las siguientes áreas ‘Evaluate your language
dominance in Spanish in the following skills’:
o Lectura (¿cómo lees en castellano?) ‘Reading (‘how well do you read in
Spanish?’):
▪ Habilidad de nativo hablante ‘Like a native speaker’
▪ Muy bien ‘Very good’
▪ Bien ‘Good’
▪ Con un poco de dificultad ‘With some difficulty’
▪ Con dificultad ‘With difficulty’
o Comprensión (¿Cómo entiendes cuando te hablan en castellano?) ‘Listening
(how well can you understand Spanish when you hear it?’):
▪ Habilidad de nativo hablante ‘Like a native speaker’
▪ Muy bien ‘Very good’
▪ Bien ‘Good’
▪ Con un poco de dificultad ‘With some difficulty’
▪ Con dificultad ‘With difficulty’
o Escritura (¿Cómo escribes en castellano?) ‘Writing (how well do you write in
Spanish?)’:
359
▪ Habilidad de nativo hablante ‘Like a native speaker’
▪ Muy bien ‘Very good’
▪ Bien ‘Good’
▪ Con un poco de dificultad ‘With some difficulty’
▪ Con dificultad ‘With difficulty’
o Habla (¿Cómo hablas en euskera?) ‘Speaking (how well do you speak
Spanish?)’:
▪ Habilidad de nativo hablante ‘Like a native speaker’
▪ Muy bien ‘Very good’
▪ Bien ‘Good’
▪ Con un poco de dificultad ‘With some difficulty’
▪ Con dificultad ‘With difficulty’
5. Indica el porcentaje de tiempo que utilizas regularmente euskera y/o castellano en
los siguientes lugares/situaciones ‘Indicate how often you use Basque and/or
Spanish in the following places/situations’:
o En casa ‘at home’:
▪ 100% euskera ‘Basque’ – 0% castellano ‘Basque’
▪ 90% euskera ‘Basque’ – 10% castellano ‘Spanish’
▪ 80% euskera ‘Basque’ – 20% castellano ‘Spanish’
▪ 70% euskera ‘Basque’ – 30% castellano ‘Spanish’
▪ 60% euskera ‘Basque’ – 40% castellano ‘Spanish’
▪ 50% euskera ‘Basque’ – 50% castellano ‘Spanish’
▪ 40% euskera ‘Basque’ – 60% castellano ‘Spanish’
360
▪ 30% euskera ‘Basque’ – 70% castellano ‘Spanish’
▪ 20% euskera ‘Basque’ – 80% castellano ‘Spanish’
▪ 10% euskera ‘Basque’ – 90% castellano ‘Spanish’
▪ 0% euskera ‘Basque’ – 100% castellano ‘Spanish’ o En la universidad/trabajo ‘University/work’:
▪ 100% euskera ‘Basque’ – 0% castellano ‘Basque’
▪ 90% euskera ‘Basque’ – 10% castellano ‘Spanish’
▪ 80% euskera ‘Basque’ – 20% castellano ‘Spanish’
▪ 70% euskera ‘Basque’ – 30% castellano ‘Spanish’
▪ 60% euskera ‘Basque’ – 40% castellano ‘Spanish’
▪ 50% euskera ‘Basque’ – 50% castellano ‘Spanish’
▪ 40% euskera ‘Basque’ – 60% castellano ‘Spanish’
▪ 30% euskera ‘Basque’ – 70% castellano ‘Spanish’
▪ 20% euskera ‘Basque’ – 80% castellano ‘Spanish’
▪ 10% euskera ‘Basque’ – 90% castellano ‘Spanish’
▪ 0% euskera ‘Basque’ – 100% castellano ‘Spanish’ o Con tus amigos ‘Friends’:
▪ 100% euskera ‘Basque’ – 0% castellano ‘Basque’
▪ 90% euskera ‘Basque’ – 10% castellano ‘Spanish’
▪ 80% euskera ‘Basque’ – 20% castellano ‘Spanish’
▪ 70% euskera ‘Basque’ – 30% castellano ‘Spanish’
▪ 60% euskera ‘Basque’ – 40% castellano ‘Spanish’
▪ 50% euskera ‘Basque’ – 50% castellano ‘Spanish’
361
▪ 40% euskera ‘Basque’ – 60% castellano ‘Spanish’
▪ 30% euskera ‘Basque’ – 70% castellano ‘Spanish’
▪ 20% euskera ‘Basque’ – 80% castellano ‘Spanish’
▪ 10% euskera ‘Basque’ – 90% castellano ‘Spanish’
▪ 0% euskera ‘Basque’ – 100% castellano ‘Spanish’
Actitudes ‘attitudes’:
En esta sección, nos gustaría que contestaras a las siguientes afirmaciones sobre actitudes lingüísticas marcando las casillas entre 1 y 5 (1 = no estoy de acuerdo; 5 = estoy de acuerdo)
‘In this section, we would like you to answer the following statements about linguistic attitudes using the scale from 1 to 5 (1 = I disagree; 5 = I agree)’.
• Me siento yo mismo cuando hablo castellano ‘I feel myself when I speak in Spanish’:
1 2 3 4 5
• Me siento yo mismo cuando hablo euskera ‘I feel myself when I speak in Basque’:
1 2 3 4 5
• Me identifico con una cultura hispanohablante ‘I identify myself with the Spanish
culture’:
1 2 3 4 5
• Me identifico con una cultura vasca ‘I identify myself with the Basque culture’:
1 2 3 4 5
• Es importante para mí usar (o llegar a usar) castellano como un hablante nativo
‘using Spanish like a native or near-native speaker is important for me’:
1 2 3 4 5
362
• Es importante para mí usar (o llegar a usar) euskera como un hablante nativo ‘using
Basque like a native or near-native speaker is important for me’:
1 2 3 4 5
• Quiero que los demás piensen que soy un hablante nativo de castellano ‘I want
people to think that I am a native Spanish speaker’:
1 2 3 4 5
• Quiero que los demás piensen que soy un hablante nativo de euskera ‘I want people
to think that I am a native Basque speaker’:
1 2 3 4 5
363
Appendix J: Basque Spanish 7-point Likert scale acceptability judgment task stimuli
Phrase type: NP
(1) Context: Acabas de llegar a casa de tus aitas para comer. Escuchas de fondo que el fin de semana pasado se celebró el festival de Eurovisión. Mientras coméis, les preguntas a tus aitas ‘You just arrived at your parents’ for lunch. You overhear that Eurovision contest took place last week. While you’re having lunch, you ask your parents’:
Q: ¿Quién ha ganado el festival? [+emb], [-clitic]
‘Who won the (music) contest?’
Tu aita responde:
‘Your dad responds:’
[F Ucrania] creo que ha ganado.
‘I think that Ukraine won (it).’
Escala de aceptabilidad: En una escala del 1 al 7, ¿qué te parece la respuesta?
‘Acceptability scale: In a scale from 1 to 7, how would you rate the answer?’
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Me suena mal Me suena natural
‘It sounds bad.’ ‘It sounds natural.’
Nunca lo diría Lo diría
‘I would never say that.’ ‘I would say that.’
364
Nunca lo he oído Lo he oído
‘I’ve never heard that.’ ‘I’ve heard that.’
(2) Context: Ves que tu hermana está leyendo algo sobre las elecciones italianas en el periódico y le preguntas ‘You see your sister Reading something about the Italian election in the newspaper and you ask her’:
Q: ¿Quién ha perdido las elecciones en Italia? [-emb], [+clitic]
‘Who lost the election in Italy?’
Tu hermana te dice:
‘Your sister answers:’
[F Berlusconi] las ha perdido.
‘Berlusconi lost them.’
(3) Context: Tú y tus amigos estáis viendo el partido del Athletic en Pozas. Acaba de marcar gol el
Athletic, pero no te has enterado de quién lo ha metido, así que le preguntas a Jokin ‘You are watching the Athletic soccer game with your friends in Pozas. Athletic just scored a goal, but you missed who scored it, so you ask Jokin’:
Q: ¿Quién ha marcado el gol? [-emb], [-clitic]
‘Who scored the goal?’
Jokin te dice:
‘Jokin says:’
[F Aduriz] ha marcado de falta.
‘Aduriz has scored (it) from fault position.’
(4) Context: Tú y tu novio estáis en Nueva York de vacaciones y habéis ido a ver un partido de la NBA al Madison Square Garden. Acaban de meter un triple los New York Nicks, pero estáis sentados tan lejos de la cancha que no has podido ver quién lo ha metido, así que le preguntas a tu novio ‘You are on 365
vacation in New York with your boyfriend and you are watching a NBA game in Madison
Square Garden. New York Nicks just scored, but you’re sitting so far from the court that you didn’t get to see who scored it, so you ask your boyfriend’:
Q: ¿Quién ha metido ese triple? [+emb], [+clitic]
‘Who scored that triple?’
Tu novio, que tampoco lo ha visto muy bien, te responde:
‘Your boyfriend, who didn’t see it very well either, responds:
Calderón me parece que lo ha metido.
‘I think that Calderon scored it.’
Phrase Type: PP
(1) Context: Has quedado con Andoni y Joseba para tomar unas cañas. Andoni os está contando que
Aitor se ha comprado un coche. Tú preguntas ‘You’re grabbing a beer with Andoni and Joseba.
Andoni is telling you that Aitor bought a car. You ask him’:
Q: ¿Dónde se ha comprado el coche? [-emb], [-clitic]
‘Where did he buy the car?’
Andoni te responde:
‘Andoni responds:’
[F En la Opel de Leioa] se ha comprado.
‘It is in the Open in Leioa that he bought (it).’
(2) Context: Tu hermana te está contando que ayer fue el cumple de su suegra y que anduvieron celebrándolo. Tú le preguntas ‘Your sister is telling you that it was her mother-in-law’s birthday yesterday and that they spent the day celebrating it. You ask her’:
Q: ¿Dónde han celebrado el cumpleaños? [-emb], [+clitic] 366
‘Where did they celebrate his birthday?’
Tu hermana te responde:
‘Your sister responds:’
[F En Algorta] lo han celebrado.
‘It is in Bilbao that they celebrated it.’
(3) Context: Tu marido se ha enterado de que Oihane y Dani han tenido que vender la moto de él para pagar la hipoteca. Cuando te lo ha contado, tú le has preguntado ‘Your husband found out that
Oihane and Dani had to sell his motorcycle in order to pay the mortgage. When he told you, you asked him:’
Q: ¿Dónde han vendido la moto? [+emb], [-clitic]
‘Where did they sell the motorcycle?’
Y tu marido te ha respondido:
‘And your husband said:’
[F En internet] me han dicho que han vendido.
It is in the internet that they told me they sold (it).’
(4) Context: Tu compañero de piso te está contando que la policía ha encontrado el cuerpo sin vida de una mujer de 80 años. Tú le preguntas ‘Your roommate is telling you that the police has found a dead body of an 80 year-old woman. You ask him:’
Q: ¿Dónde han encontrado el cuerpo? [+emb], [+clitic]
‘Where did they find the corps?’
Él te responde:
‘He says:’
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[F En el bosque] me parece que lo han encontrado.
‘It is in the woods that I think they found it.’
Phrase type: AdvP
(1) Context: Estás hablando con Miren por teléfono que te acaba de decir que ya han entregado el proyecto final para la clase de arte. Tú le preguntas ‘You are talking to Miren on the phone, who just told you that they have turned in the final project for her art class. You ask her:’
Q: ¿Cuándo habéis entregado el proyecto? [-emb], [-clitic]
‘When did you turn in the project?’
Ella te dice:
‘She tells you:’
[F Esta mañana] hemos entregado.
‘It is yesterday that we turned (it) in.’
(2) Context: El sábado tenéis una boda y tu hermano y tú aún no habéis recogido los trajes de la tintorería.
Vuestra ama, que es un poco impaciente, os pregunta ‘You have a wedding on Saturday and you and your brother haven’t picked up your suits from the dry cleaner yet. Your mom, who is very impatient, asks you:’
Q: ¿Cuándo vais a recoger el traje de la tintorería? [-emb], [+clitic]
‘When are you going to pick up the suit from dry cleaning?’
Tu hermano le responde:
‘Your brothers tells her:’
[F Luego] vamos a recogerlo.
‘It is later that we are going to pick it up.’
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(3) Context: Como todos los años, hoy se celebra la tradicional comida popular en tu pueblo, donde siempre se sortea un lote de productos caseros. Todos estáis impacientes por saber quién es el ganador y en especial tú que no paras de preguntar a todo el mundo ‘Today your town is celebrating the annual reunion, where they usually raffle a set of locally-grown products. Everyone is really excited to know who is the winner, but specially you who have been insistently asking everyone:’
Q: ¿Cuándo van a anunciar los ganadores? [+emb], [-clitic]
‘When are they going to announce the winners?’
Con mucha calma, tu mujer te responde:
‘Very patiently, your wife responds:’
[F Más tarde] creo que anunciarán.
‘It is later that I think they will announce (them).’
(4) Context: Estás tomando algo con Naia y Irati que te acaban de contar que Asier y Lorea ya han firmado las escrituras del piso. Tú, que eres muy curiosa, les preguntas ‘You are hanging out with Naia and Irati who just told you that Asier and Lorea have already signed the paperwork for their new apartment. You are very nosy, so you ask them:’
Q: ¿Cuando han firmado las escrituras? [+emb], [+clitic]
‘When did they sign the paperwork of their new house?’
Irati te responde:
‘Irati responds:’
[F Antes de ayer] me parece que las firmaron.
‘It is the day before yesterday that I think they signed them.’
Phrase type: AdjP
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(1) Context: Hoy tu hermana ha ido a comer a casa de tus aitas con su nueva pareja. Tu ama les iba a cocinar bacalao, porque es el plato favorito de tu hermana. Tú no has podido ir, así que le has llamado más tarde para que te cuentes cómo ha ido ‘Your sister was having lunch with your parents and her new boyfriend today. Your mom prepared cod because that’s your sister’s favorite dish. You could not make it to lunch, so you called your sister later to ask her how everything went:’
Q: ¿Cómo de salado estaba el bacalao que ha hecho ama? [-emb], [-clitic]
‘How was the cod that mom prepared?’
Tu hermana te ha dicho:
‘Your sister told you:’
[F Salao, salao] hemos comido.
‘It was very tasty.’
(2) Context: Ane, Bego y tú habéis quedado para tomar un café. Bego os ha contado que el inquilino que vivía en su piso de alquiler por fin se ha marchado. Tú le preguntas ‘Ane, Bego and you met for coffee. Bego started taking about her colleague’s renovated apartment, which took about two years. You ask her:’
Q: ¿Cómo de sucio ha dejado el piso? [-emb], [+clitic]
‘How is the apartment after all the renovation?’
Bego te dice:
‘Bego tells you:’
[F Sucísimo] lo ha dejado.
‘She has left it very dirty.’
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(3) Context: Aitor, el primo de tu marido, acaba de comprarse una casa en Bakio. Mientras estáis cenando, le preguntas a tu marido a ver si sabe algo de la casa ‘Your husband’s cousin just bought a house in Bakio. While you are having dinner, you ask your husband about the house:’
Q: ¿Cómo de grande es la casa que se ha comprado Aitor? [+emb], [-clitic]
‘How is the house that Aitor has bought?’
Tu marido parece no tener mucha idea, así que te dice:
‘Your husband does not seem to have much idea, so he says:’
Enorme dicen que se ha comprado.
‘They said he bought a huge one.’
(4) Context: Este verano se casa tu prima María. Tú ya tienes vestido, pero tu hermana no se decide. Ayer fue de compras con tu ama para ver si por fin se compra alguno. La has llamado antes para preguntarle pero no te coge el teléfono, así que has acabado llamando a tu ama para preguntarle: ‘This summer your cousin María is getting married. You already have a dress, but your sister can’t make up her mind. She went shopping with your mom yesterday. You called her earlier to ask her about the dress, but she didn’t pick up the phone, so you ended up calling your mom instead:’
Q: ¿Cómo va a llevar el vestido Iratxe al final? [+emb], [+clitic]
‘How is Iratxe going to wear the dress?’
Tu ama te ha respondido:
‘Your mom responded:’
[F Largo] ha dicho que lo va a llevar.
‘She said that she is going to wear it long.’
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