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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]

This paper proposes a new framework for the grammaticalization of the Old Spanish manner adverb sí so / yes' as a positive polarity item. My proposal is that Old Spanish and Modern Spanish display different syntactic structures to convey positive polarity; in Old Spanish it involves not only the adverb sí, but it is related to verb movement, focus, clitic placement, VP-ellipsis and the properties of the Po/(arity) Head. I claim that the restructuring of the Left Periphery in Renaissance Spanish set the scenario for the reanalysis of sí as a polarity item and led to the emergence of previously unknown syntactic structures related to the expression of positive polarity, such as sí que or bare sí. Since the strong or weak features of the Pol Head is what regulates whether sí was a polarity item or not, strong features of Pol appear to be the underlying factor which determines the syntactic properties of positive polarity in Old Spanish. [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]

The present paper focuses on Italian existential structures and on the incidence of the clitic ci, allegedly locative, in the interpretation of the whole clause predicate, aiming to find out a link between the clitic's presence and the notorious changes in the lexical and syntactic configuration of the base verb. The comparisons made with Catalan, French and Spanish are intended to support such a hypothesis, given that these languages take haber as base verb for existential structures, whose possessive meaning has been confirmed in the first two languages, a value that seems to be subdued in the presence of the element required (hi o y, respectively) in favour of the existential interpretation of constructions such as haver-hi o il y ha. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]