37.1715, Books: Subject Focus in French and Spanish: Cassarà (2026)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-1715. Fri May 08 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.1715, Books: Subject Focus in French and Spanish: Cassarà (2026)

Moderator: Steven Moran (linguist at linguistlist.org)
Managing Editor: Valeriia Vyshnevetska
Team: Helen Aristar-Dry, Mara Baccaro, Daniel Swanson
Jobs: jobs at linguistlist.org | Conferences: callconf at linguistlist.org | Pubs: pubs at linguistlist.org

Homepage: http://linguistlist.org

Editor for this issue: Mara Baccaro <mara at linguistlist.org>

================================================================


Date: 08-May-2026
From: Sebastian Nordhoff [support at langsci-press.org]
Subject: Subject Focus in French and Spanish: Cassarà (2026)


Title: Subject Focus in French and Spanish
Series Title: Open Romance Linguistics
Publication Year: 2026

Publisher: Language Science Press
           http://langsci-press.org
Book URL: https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/581

Author(s): Alessia Cassarà

eBook

Abstract:

This book investigates the realization of subject focus in French and
Spanish from a comparative, variationist perspective. Building on
spontaneous dialogical data, it examines the range of syntactic,
prosodic, and elliptical strategies speakers use to encode narrowly
focused subjects. The study draws on two highly comparable sub-corpora
of spontaneous speech elicited through the same task, allowing for
fine-grained cross-linguistic comparison. Adopting a Question Under
Discussion (QUD) framework, it analyzes how discourse factors such as
focus type, givenness, and argument structure condition speakers’
choices among competing focus-marking strategies. Particular attention
is paid to the alternation between full forms (e.g. clefts, postverbal
subjects) and more economical elliptical answers (e.g. fragments,
reduced clefts). Quantitative analyses show that subject focus
realization is not free but systematically constrained by pragmatic
and semantic factors, albeit differently across the two languages. The
results challenge rigid form–function mappings and highlight the role
of language economy in discourse. Overall, the book contributes to a
more flexible typology of focus realization and to our understanding
of syntactic variation in closely related Romance languages.

Linguistic Field(s): Syntax

Subject Language(s): French (fra)
                     Spanish (spa)

Language Family(ies): Romance

Written In: English (eng)



------------------------------------------------------------------------------

********************** LINGUIST List Support ***********************
Please consider donating to the Linguist List, a U.S. 501(c)(3) not for profit organization:

https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=87C2AXTVC4PP8

LINGUIST List is supported by the following publishers:

Bloomsbury Publishing http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/

Cambridge University Press http://www.cambridge.org/linguistics

Cascadilla Press http://www.cascadilla.com/

De Gruyter Brill https://www.degruyterbrill.com/?changeLang=en

Edinburgh University Press http://www.edinburghuniversitypress.com

European Language Resources Association (ELRA) http://www.elra.info

John Benjamins http://www.benjamins.com/

Language Science Press http://langsci-press.org

Lincom GmbH https://lincom-shop.eu/

MDPI Languages https://www.mdpi.com/journal/languages

MIT Press http://mitpress.mit.edu/

Multilingual Matters http://www.multilingual-matters.com/

Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG http://www.narr.de/

Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics / Landelijke (LOT) http://www.lotpublications.nl/

Peter Lang AG http://www.peterlang.com

SIL International Publications http://www.sil.org/resources/publications


----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-37-1715
----------------------------------------------------------