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Article published In: Spanish in Context
Vol. 12:3 (2015) ► pp.349–372

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Resumption or contrast?

Non-standard subject pronouns in Spanish Relative Clauses

Published online: 28 January 2016
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https://doi.org/10.1075/sic.12.3.02cer
This article is a contribution to the study of subject resumptive pronouns (RPs) in Spanish relative clauses (RCs). Previous studies have focused only on the constraints governing RPs across the different functions relativized: subject, direct object and oblique. In this variationist study, two analyses were conducted for the Peruvian Limeño variety: on the one hand, RPs were analyzed as a whole, following the aforementioned tradition; on the other hand, subject RPs were studied separately. When comparing the results of both analyses, it was found that the constraints favoring subject RPs are only a subset of the ones governing RPs as a whole, and the ranking of these constraints is also different. In addition, upon closer inspection, a different type of non-standard subject pronoun was identified: a contrastive one.
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