Dialectal variation in the expression of que in sí-que ‘yes that’ contexts across Spanish: The case of some Latin American Spanish varieties

Abstract

This paper investigates dialectal microvariation across the Spanish-speaking world in terms of the presence/absence of que in sí-que contexts. The function of this construction is to signal the speaker’s commitment to the truth of the proposition. In this connection, we argue that the syntactic account recently proposed by Villa-García & González Rodríguez (2020) for polarity-encoding sí ‘yes’ on the one hand and for sí-que ‘yes that’ sequences in Iberian Spanish on the other readily extends to a number of Latin American varieties where que in sí que is syntactically present albeit unpronounced (i.e., sí Ø/que), although it can be overt as well. We provide a variety of syntactic arguments together with Phonetic-Form- and Logical-Form-related arguments to this effect, and show that the dialectal split brought to light here is consonant with a view of (micro-)variation whereby Phonetic Form spellout plays a key role (Barbiers 2009; Rizzi 2013; Rizzi & Bocci 2017; inter alia).