Recomplementation and locality of movement in Spanish

Abstract

Abstract The paper investigates recomplementation (i.e. double-complementizer) constructions in Spanish and provides a number of arguments in favor of analyzing secondary que as the head of TopicP in the left periphery. The paper further examines left-dislocated phrases occurring between overt complementizers and lays out the proposal that sandwiched dislocates are not moved into but merged in the specifier of TopicP, which is headed by secondary que (or its null counterpart). Likewise, it is shown that extraction across double-que constructions is prevented by locality of movement (i.e. any movement operation across secondary que is illicit). The paper argues that the locality effects induced by movement across secondary que are reminiscent of the notorious English Comp-t phenomenon. Drawing on the Rescue-by-PF-Deletion analysis of the ameliorating effect of ellipsis on island violations, the paper provides an account of the contrast between ungrammatical sentences displaying extraction across secondary que and their grammatical counterparts without it.