The Information Structure of Predicate Doubling

• Autores: Muñoz Pérez, Carlos, Verdecchia, Matías
• Formato: artículo
• Fecha de Publicación: 2022
• Institución: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
• Repositorio: Revistas - Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
• Lenguaje: español
• OAI Identifier: oai:ojs.pkp.sfu.ca:article/26334
• Enlace del recurso: http://revistas.pucp.edu.pe/index.php/lexis/article/view/26334
• Nivel de acceso: acceso abierto
• Materia: Doblado de predicados; Estructura informativa; Foco; Tópico contrastivo; Predicate doubling; Informative structure; Focus; Contrastive topic

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