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Direct object clitics in Spanish are morphological markers at the interfaces of syntax, phonology, morphology, and information structure (Zwicky, 1985; Ordóñez & Repetti, 2006; Belloro, 2007; Spencer & Luís, 2012). They play an important part in argument morphology in Spanish and are subject to variability in bilingual acquisition (McCarthy, 2008). In this paper we explore the morphology- syntax-information structure mapping of direct object clitics in clitic structures in a range of speakers that includes Quechua-dominant bilinguals and Spanish monolingual individuals along a continuum of language contact situations. Our findings indicate clear dissociation between syntactic properties and marking of morphological features. They also indicate a progression from default gender marking in clitics to a scalar system of clitic forms based on animacy and informational value along the continuum of speakers. Finally, while clitics in liberal clitic doubling varieties receive a focus interpretation (Sánchez, 2010; Sánchez & Zdrojewski, 2013), our data indicate that in some Spanish contact varieties they denote the primary object and secondary topic (Sánchez, 2003; Dalrymple & Nikolaeva, 2011; Mayer, 2008, 2013, forthcoming). The findings of this exploratory study support the view that while clitics exhibit common syntactic properties across a continuum of speakers, they may vary in morphological marking and informational value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grammar studies have focused lately on speech instead of on written language, being the latter the most traditional approach. This situation confronts us with the necessity of a new definition for some grammar concepts. This paper proposes a new definition for the concept of sentence so that it can be used for spoken Spanish analysis. Already existing definitions are evaluated and discarded because they do not fit with many normal speech structures. Besides, they usually are confusing regarding syntactic, prosodic and pragmatic features. We propose a new definition only based on grammar and semantic features. Conclusions show that this approach allows the syntactic analysis of speech in a much more accurate way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]