Séminaire de Recherche en Linguistique

The mapping of the left periphery (in Romance) has traditionally relied on the study of different CP-related phenomena such as topics, questions, exclamations, preposed adverbials, and foci, which led to Rizzi’s articulated left periphery/split CP (i.e., ForceP > TopicP > FocusP > FinitenessP). In this talk, I concentrate on the lexical (non)realisation of left-peripheral heads by means of que ‘that’ (from Lat. QUID) cross-dialectally in Spanish. I take a microcomparative view and submit that different (diachronic and synchronic) varieties of Spanish (and Romance) (i) require overt que, (ii) optionally have que, or (iii) cannot have que as the head of the phrase hosting a particular CP-related phenomenon.
The data relate to the highest, subordinating que, the que that surfaces below dislocated/topic phrases or recomplementation que, the que that occurs below interrogative and exclamative wh-phrases in some Romance varieties, “jussive/optative” que, and other Cº realisations via que along the CP field. I also explore simultaneous lexicalisations of said complementisers, which provides further support for Rizzi’s influential proposal.

An important question is how to account for the microvariation observed in the realisation of the relevant heads. In other words, how can we parameterise the presence/absence of que as the manifestation of the relevant C-heads? Relevant questions include whether the presence/absence of que is just a matter of PF spellout (i.e., que/que) or rather, whether sentences with and without que mask different underlying derivations altogether.