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Document Details :

Title: Case, Agreement and Topicality in Spanish
Author(s): QUESADA, J. Diego
Journal: Orbis
Volume: 38    Date: 1995   
Pages: 60-79
DOI: 10.2143/ORB.38.0.563361

Abstract :
The following observations have been made in the relevant literature about agreement, the behavior of pronominal clitics, and other related phenomena in Spanish. Bringing all these phenomena together might at first look chaotic; in fact, one may wonder what each of these could have in common with the rest of them. In this paper, however, a unitary account of these seemingly disparate phenomena will be proposed. In this view, the consolidation of the tendency toward object agreement, the consolida- tion in some varieties of Spanish of an invariable “dative marker” (in others the eventual merging of the accusative and dative pronouns) and the gradual extension of the marker ato other objects lead to a common configuration of all (object) noun phrases: a+ NP + Clitic + V, in which afunctions as “variable object marker” with a function of “anaphoric reinforcement” (when ais not needed, it is deleted). This anaphoric reinforcement is the response to the need to mark NPs whose topicality is high in the clause; the so-called leísmo, loísmo, and laísmo, the discontinuous pluralization on the clitics, and the substitution of lefor les represent instances of the same phenomenon. In the case of a, the question arises whether it is to be considered a case marker. This question is answered negatively.

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