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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. 185–214

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Chapter 7. The article at the left periphery

 | Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and IUI Ortega y Gasset
Published online: 31 July 2014
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https://doi.org/10.1075/la.214.11ser
In Spanish, the definite determiner el ‘the’ can optionally appear in the left periphery of subject/complement clauses. The previous studies devoted to these clauses (henceforth el que clauses) propose that they should be analyzed as NPs instead of CPs. From the semantic point of view, it has been claimed that since el que clauses can only be selected by factive verbs, the propositions conveyed by them are presupposed. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, it seeks to describe more accurately the distribution of el que clauses since I show that certain other verbs that are not factives can also take these clauses. And second, I claim that their propositional content would be better analyzed as background non-asserted information rather than as presupposed propositions.
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