Multiple Focus Strategies in Pro-Drop Languages: Evidence from Ellipsis in Spanish.

In this paper I use the case of Spanish to argue that language regularities may give rise to multiple strategies for marking focus. In addition to the well-known observation that focus can be marked by word order and intonation, I present experimental results regarding ellipsis that show that overt full DPs in subject position in Spanish are marked as focused. This strategy is linked to a language regularity, namely the availability of silent ( pro) subjects. In Spanish, there is a preference for pro subjects. Overt full DPs in subject position are marked, and the presence of overt full DPs is used to indicate focus on the subject (the pro-drop hypothesis). I will provide a novel syntactic analysis of the ellipsis structures, discuss discourse licensing conditions and present two experiments that investigate preferences in ellipsis resolution and argue in favor of the pro-drop hypothesis. Experiment 1 compares structural preferences for ellipsis resolution across bare argument ellipsis and replacives, investigating the role of syntax and the information-structure status of the subject. Experiment 2 compares the resolution of ellipsis with antecedents with overt DP subjects versus pro subjects. The paper also establishes links with the processing of ellipsis in other languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]