Emphatic Polarity and C in Spanish - Lear

M. LLUÏSA HERNANZ
means that the structure in (84) must be discarded, since it cannot capture the
fact that {bien/sí} and {bien/sí que} do not merge in the same position.
5.2. Alternative II: que heads ForceP
In this section I would like to argue that the sequence bien que is obtained by
merging bien in ForceP, as seen in (87):
(87) ForceP
Spec Force’
bien Force 0 TopicP
que FocusP
This approach is consistent with the largely motivated assumption that Force
is the syntactic domain that expresses assertion and which provides the
structure to host modality operators. In this connection, I would like to
suggest that bien que exhibits appealing similarities with the so-called of
course-type adverbs (i.e., desde luego, la verdad, etc.), which have been
claimed to behave as truth operators (see Etxepare (1997:50)). Note, in this
respect, that the adverbs alluded to, as well as evidential adverbs such as
ciertamente (“certainly”), obviamente (“obviously”), evidentemente (“obviously”),
etc., may also co-occur with que:
(88) a. {Evidentemente / ciertamente / desde luego}, Julia está muy
enfadada.
‘{Obviously / certainly / of course}, Julia is very angry’
b. {Evidentemente / ciertamente / desde luego} que Julia está muy
enfadada.
{Obviously / certainly / of course}that Julia is very angry
It is worth noting that (88a) and (88b) are by no means semantically
equivalent. As has been observed by Etxepare (1997:98), “there is a subtle
but nevertheless clear and substantial difference” between the two cases:
unlike those in (88b), the examples in (88a) can be uttered out of the blue. In
other words, (88a) qualifies as an appropriate construction in the following
situation: someone is late and realizes that Julia got very angry. By contrast,
(88b) are emphatic sentences that can only be used to stress an alreadymentioned
proposition [i.e., Creo que Julia está muy enfadada (“I think that
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