Emphatic Polarity and C in Spanish - Lear

EMPHATIC POLARITY AND C IN SPANISH
a homogeneous group. In this regard, Haegeman (2002), (2003:21) observes
that they fall into two patterns in terms of their internal structure: i) central
adverbial clauses, like those in (51), which lack the Force field, and ii)
peripheral adverbial clauses, which pattern as root sentences in that they
contain a full Force domain. Under this approach, we could expect bien to
freely appear in the latter clauses, since they have a fully articulated CPstructure.
This prediction is borne out, as illustrated by the minimal pair
in (54a)-(54b), involving a central and a peripheral causal clause,
respectively: 38
(54) a. *Julia no ha ido a trabajar porque bien estaba enferma.
Julia not has gone to work because (she) well was ill
b. Julia no debe de estar enferma, porque bien ha ido a trabajar.
Julia not must be ill, because (she) well went to work
‘Julia must not be ill, because indeed she went to work’
Further evidence supporting the distributional asymmetry between negative
and positive markers is provided by Root Infinitives in (53). These
constructions have been argued to exhibit a deficient structure in the Complayer
(see Grohmann and Etxepare (2003)). This hypothesis, combined with
my claim that bien targets FocusP, easily accounts for the fact that bien,
unlike no, is precluded in these constructions.
4.2. The status of bien as a wh-operator
In this section, I will examine a number of salient syntactic properties of
sentences headed by bien, and I will show that they can be accounted for
under the assumption that bien, being a focal adverb, behaves like a whword.
To begin with, recall that bien must precede the finite verb (see section
3.1.). Note, in this respect, that examples like (55), where the subject
intervenes between bien and V, are systematically ruled out:
(55) a. *Bien Juan podría ayudarme.
Well Juan could help+CLACC
38 As is widely known, central causal clauses differ from peripheral causal clauses in terms of
their logical and syntactic relationships. Thus, while in (54a) the subordinate clause expresses
the cause that triggers the event denoted by the main clause, in (54b) the subordinate clause
expresses the reason why the event denoted by the main clause is asserted.
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