From Ser Focalizador and Contrast to the Presuppositional [Verb+Ser+X] Construction in Spanish

Abstract This study uses a corpus of conversational speech to describe a structure in Spanish previously known as Ser Focalizador (‘Focalizing Be’, hereafter [Verb+Ser+X]). In this structure, the verb ser ‘to be’ appears after the main verb of the clause. Its function has traditionally been described as indicating what comes after in the sentence as the marked focus. However, by examining how the [Verb+Ser+X] is used in talk-in-interaction it is found that a more particular construction has the function of marking counter-argumentation – i.e., canceling some background inference (presupposition or implicature) – by making the second member of a contrastive pair more clearly contrastive, and establishing a structural distinction which has the pragmatic and contextual effect of contrast. I call this particular construction presupposition canceling [(NEGclause)(pero ’but’)Verb+Ser+X]. The description provided here is also founded on identifying the linguistic contexts that favor the use of the [Verb+Ser+X], by treating it as a variant of the simple clause with a complement where ser was absent in the verbal phrase, but could have been present. The analysis of variation provides evidence for the presuppositional [Verb+Ser+X] to be variably conditioned by a propositional X, and by the co-occurrence of previous negation and of the adversative conjunction pero ‘but’. The analysis also offers an operationalization of contrast in conversational data, as well as a definition of the variable context for a pragmatic construction such as the [Verb+Ser+X].