Logos

CONSTRUCTIONcon.spa.foco-antepuesto

foco antepuesto

A pattern in which a phrase carrying the new information is placed before the verb with no clitic standing for it, and the subject follows the verb.

The construction fronts a phrase and refuses the clitic that dislocation requires, and it forces the subject after the verb because nothing may intervene between the fronted phrase and the finite verb. Those two properties travel together and neither is optional, which is why the pattern is a construction rather than a word order preference. What the fronted phrase carries is the new information rather than the topic, which is the opposite of what dislocation does with the same position, and the two are distinguished in speech by intonation as well as by the clitic. Only one phrase may be fronted this way, where dislocation admits several.

statusstatus
documentedasserted, and the sources agree
provenanceprovenance
authoredwritten for Logos, from first principles
derivation statusderivation_status
unstatednobody has said whether it follows from anything
saliencesalience
No salience. Where no frequency source applies the object carries none, rather than a default or a guess (03-schema.md §3.5).
aliasesaliases
  • metalanguagefocus fronting
sourcessources
  • SOURCENueva gramática de la lengua española (2009)src.nueva-gramaticano page in v1
  • SOURCEA New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish (Butt and Benjamin)src.butt-benjaminno page in v1

Why this is a construction at all

construction.admission

Goldberg's admission test: a template earns storage either by being unpredictable or by being frequent.

admissionadmission
unpredictableit is stored because its meaning does not follow from its parts

The slots

construction.slots

At least two, by the schema: fewer is not a multi-element template. Every filler is a link, never a name in prose.

  1. 0el elemento focalizado, antepuesto y sin clítico que lo retomepositional: this slot is a place in the string, not a lexical requirement

    fillerslots[].filler
    No filler is named. For a positional slot that is the correct reading; for a lexical one it is a gap.
    functionslots[].fn
    FUNCTIONcomplemento directofun.spa.complemento-directo

  2. 1el verbo finito, inmediatamente despuéslexically specified: only the fillers below may occupy it

    fillerslots[].filler
    functionslots[].fn
    FUNCTIONnúcleofun.spa.nucleo

  3. 2el sujeto, pospuesto al verbopositional: this slot is a place in the string, not a lexical requirement

    fillerslots[].filler
    No filler is named. For a positional slot that is the correct reading; for a lexical one it is a gap.
    functionslots[].fn
    FUNCTIONsujetofun.spa.sujeto

Slot template

3 slots: 1 constrained, 2 positional, 3 naming a grammatical function.

  1. el elemento focalizado, antepuesto y sin clítico que lo retome
    positional

    no lexical filler — this slot marks a position only

    names complemento directo

  2. el verbo finito, inmediatamente después
    constrained
    • verboclass

    names núcleo

  3. el sujeto, pospuesto al verbo
    positional

    no lexical filler — this slot marks a position only

    names sujeto

Confusable with

construction.confusable

Objects a reader is likely to mix up with this one, and the difference that separates them. The edge is symmetric and stored once, so this renders on both objects' pages from the one statement.

Everything joined to this object

One group per typed edge, in both directions. A1b guarantees no object node is an orphan, so this is the whole navigation: an object with no edges would have failed the build rather than reached this page.

What this object is a kind of

Walking this object's own `is-a` edges: what it is a kind of. Several branches from one object are several classification axes, not competing supertypes.

objects
1
places drawn
1
multi-parent
None in this view. This subgraph happens to be a tree, which the explorer draws as one without assuming it is one.

Siblings are listed by name, then by id to break ties. That is a display choice made here and not an order the graph asserts.

Fan-out per dimension

A4

One row per dimension, largest first. That is a display order, not a verdict: 03-schema.md declares no threshold above which fan-out is too much, so this reports the count and grades nothing.

  • case13 values
  • mood8 values
  • voice8 values
  • aspect7 values
  • aktionsart6 values
  • number6 values
  • person6 values
  • tense6 values
  • comparison4 values
  • evidentiality4 values
  • gender4 values
  • politeness4 values
  • valency4 values
  • animacy3 values
  • definiteness3 values
  • deixis3 values
  • finiteness2 values
  • information structure2 values
  • interrogativity2 values
  • polarity2 values
  • switch-reference2 values

What kinds of this object there are

Walking the `is-a` edges that point at this object: what kinds of it there are. An object reachable two ways is drawn in both places and is still one object.

objects
1
places drawn
1
multi-parent
None in this view. This subgraph happens to be a tree, which the explorer draws as one without assuming it is one.

Siblings are listed by name, then by id to break ties. That is a display choice made here and not an order the graph asserts.

has-a

edges.has-a

the parent carries this

this object carries

selects

edges.selects

the parent requires this elsewhere

this object requires, elsewhere

  • FUNCTIONsujetofun.spa.sujetodocumented
    • conditionNothing may stand between the fronted phrase and the verb, so the subject is forced after the verb, which is the structural signal that separates this pattern from dislocation.

via

edges.via

this realizer, this way

this object realizes

derives

edges.derives

the why-chain

derived by