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In:Left Sentence Peripheries in Spanish: Diachronic, Variationist and Comparative Perspectives
Edited by Andreas Dufter and Álvaro S. Octavio de Toledo y Huerta
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 214] 2014
► pp. 155–184

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Chapter 6. The left periphery of Spanish comparative correlatives

 | Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Published online: 31 July 2014
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.214.10san
Spanish correlatives are argued to involve a predication relation articulated upon a null predicator head, both in correlatives with tanto... cuanto... ‘as... as...’ and in comparative correlatives with cuanto más/menos... (tanto) más/menos... ‘the more/less... the more/less ...’ . The predication relation guarantees that both the correlatum and the relative denote the same quantity, degree or amount. The left periphery position of the correlative sentence depends on the fronting of the correlatum into the main clause. It is proposed that the internal merge of the correlatum in FocusP allows the main clause to establish a predication relation with the correlative clause in an inverted predicate structure. Consequently, at least for comparative correlatives, the anchoring conditions of the subordinate clause in the left periphery are related to establishing a predication relation with the main clause.
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