Predicate focus fronting in the Spanish determiner phrase

Abstract

This article brings new evidence to the fore supporting the hypothesis that the architecture of the DP domain mirrors that of the sentence, particularly concerning the topic–focus articulation. To fulfill this task a Spanish nominal construction (the lo-de construction) is analyzed on a pair with comparative qualitative binominal noun phrases (QBNPs). A wide bulk of evidence is presented that these constructions have a subject–predicate configuration, and involve predicate raising to a Focus Phrase, yielding a partition of the sentence where the predicate is focus, and the subject, a background topic. This proposal provides an accurate explanation of a wide range of mostly unattested data, particularly concerning the wide and complex set of referential restrictions involved in the l o-de construction and in Spanish QBNPs. Moreover, it is argued that the ‘exclamatory flavor’ of the lo-de construction results from the combination of a degree quantificational structure with the definiteness value of the highest Det head. This proposal is argued to offer a simple solution to the restriction of this construction to factive predicates.