Posición del tópico en la estructura oracional del español

Abstract

This work tries to analyze topic order in Spanish with particular attention to its position in sentence. It starts from the general perspetive of Siewierska, in which pragmatic factors occupy the highest hierarcky in the determination of word order. This work describes, first of all, various morphological, syntactic and semantico-pragmatical characteristics of the topic in Spanish and estimates its topic-configurationality. Secondly, it makes comparative analysis of topic and focus after indicating particular functions and positions of the focus in Spanish. From all this, the following conclusions can be derived: (i) In Spanish the topicalization occurs mainly through left-dislocation, and, additionally, through right-dislocation and subject topic. The right-dislocation weakens topic function making the topic an additional information and the subject topic can lose its distinctive function as it is simply a subject in preverbal position. (ii) The presence of the topicalization can be proved by revising compatibility with "en cuanto a" except in preverbal subject topics. (iii) The topic is syntactically an argument and can asume any semantic function, so the topic is a NP or at least has to be nominalized. (iv) Normally the topic requires pronominal copy in the predication, but when the topic is related pragmatically with some element of the predication the pronominal copy is not. necesarily obligatory. (v) Spanish is a language that shows a topic-configurationality in a weaker sense. (vi) In Spanish the topic and the focus can constitute a complementary distribution and can be neutralized when the topic is focalized and asumes preverbal subject function. (vii) In Spanish the topic occurs mainly in preverbal position, while the focus is free in its position, therefore the topic order has to be considered with priority in the determination of word order.