Focus affinity in Spanish. An experimental study.

The notion focus affinity refers to the likelihood that a grammatical role (e.g., subject, object) is the narrow focus of a sentence. There is evidence that such differences exist at the level of distributional data. For example, subjects are less often focal and more often topical as compared to direct objects. However, it is not obvious whether focus affinity is genuinely related to grammatical roles. Focus affinity could be an epiphenomenon of various other linguistic and pragmatic processes or their interactions (e.g., direct objects are more often indefinite, less often animate, more often new than subjects). In our controlled experimental study, we investigate the focus affinity of three adjunct types (instruments, locatives, depictive secondary predicates) in Spanish and provide evidence that these grammatical roles indeed differ with respect to focus affinity. Depictives show the highest degree of focus affinity, followed by instruments and finally locatives. These effects are robust and stable even if we account for a number of possible alternative explanations. Thus, we suggest that focus affinity is a property sufficiently closely associated with grammatical roles to justify more attention both in theoretical linguistic and psycholinguistic literature. • Focus affinity is an understudied information structural concept. • Focus affinities of three adjunct types have been experimentally investigated. • Focus hierarchy: Depictives > Instruments > Locatives. • Differences between grammatical roles are robust even if we consider alternative explanations (e.g., probabilities). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]