La posición del sujeto pronominal en las cláusulas no declarativas

Abstract

The variable placement of Spanish subjects offers an illustration of the relevance of discursive-cognitive factors in explaining syntactic variation, as well as a demonstration of the fact that all communicative effects of formal choices can be related to such factors. In the present paper, first- and secondperson overt subjects are analyzed within two types of non-declarative clauses (interrogative and imperative ones) and across two textually diversified corpora. Formal variation is discovered to follow very similar iconic principles in both grammatical contexts. The placing of the subject after the verb is the less-marked variant, which makes a difference with declarative clauses, where SVO is the preferred order. Due to this, subject preposition in the former contexts triggers the generation of special discursive-pragmatic values, particularly of higher assertiveness or presupposition regarding the content of utterances. The communicative projections of these basic values are then illustrated through the analysis of a variety of examples.