Spanish subjects can be subjects: Acquisitional and empirical evidence
Keywords:
Overt subjects, left periphery, wh-questions, dislocations, acquisitionAbstract
The paper provides novel converging acquisitional and empirical evidence from Spanish in support of the hypothesis that preverbal subjects in Spanish can, but need not, be left-dislocated constituents in the CP layer; they can occupy the canonical subject position, Spec,TP, contrary to what is often assumed in the literature. On the basis of acquisitional and statistical evidence gathered from a longitudinal study of five children, the paper argues against Grinstead’s (1998 et seq.) claim that overt subjects emerge in development concurrently with less controversially CP-related phenomena such as wh-questions and dislocations. Moreover, based on the different distributional behavior of genuine subjects and dislocations/foci in the context of desiderative/exhortative sentences introduced by que ‘that,’ the paper argues that Spec,TP/AgrSP is indeed available in Spanish and can only host bona fide subjects to the exclusion of non-subject XPs.
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