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Abstract
This dissertation investigates the realization and interpretation of information structure in Spanish. Focused constituents may appear in the right-periphery, in the left-periphery or in situ in Spanish. Recent studies have addressed the relative weight of syntactic and phonological cues in the realization of information structure, but have not adequately accounted for these three types of focus. Syntax-based accounts, asserting that focused phrases move to the left-periphery to check features, fail to account for focus in the right-periphery. So-called prosody-based accounts, which in fact depend on the syntactic requirement that focus has to be aligned with nuclear stress, are unable to account for focus in a position other than final. Experimental data from a pilot study reported in this dissertation suggest that prominence in all three types of focus is determined by a prosodic structure without syntactic motivation.
Focal prominence is signaled by high pitch peaks in Spanish, and elements in final position are always realized with high peaks regardless of the information status of the final element. This suggests that a distinction between unmarked and marked stress is required, corresponding to information focus and contrastive focus respectively. Further, differences in semantic interpretation support the view that three different focus types exist in Spanish: contrastive (in the left-periphery) contrastive (in situ) and information (in the right-periphery). I provide evidence that information focus does not have a focus feature, but in contrast, I show that movement to the left periphery of all contrastive phrases always applies, either overtly or covertly, for feature checking purposes. The possibility of contrastive focus appearing in situ is prosodically licensed. In such cases, movement to the left periphery applies at LF as supported by the fact that contrastive phrases in situ show weak crossover effects.
More broadly, this dissertation contributes to the general discussion of the Syntax-Phonology interface. The above results suggest that a prosodic structure mediates between the Syntax and the Phonology, supporting the view that phonological processes must be accessed by the syntactic component before Spell-Out.
