Subjunctives: How Much Left Periphery Do You Need? Manuela Ambar a and Ángel L. Jiménez-Fernández b a FLUL-CLUL, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal; b University of Seville, Seville, Spain a manuela.ambar.flul@gmail.com; b ajimfer@us.es Abstract: In this paper we explore the left periphery (LP) of subjunctive clauses selected by desiderative and psych-emotive verbs, concentrating on the availability of contrastive focus in (European and Brazilian) Portuguese, Spanish, and English. We claim that the composition of the LP correlates with the distinction between agreement- prominent languages and discourse-prominent languages, in that the latter allow for a more flexible LP in subjunctives. Moreover, it also correlates with the specific type of matrix verbs which select the subjunctive clause. We argue that in European Portuguese and Spanish (discourse-prominent languages), Contrastive Focus Fronting is possible with desiderative and psych-emotive verbs, but the focused element occupies a post- verbal position (V moves to a high position in the LP); whereas in English (agreement- prominent languages), CCF is not allowed in subjunctives. Keywords: subjunctive; left periphery; contrastive focus; V-movement. 1. Introduction In this paper we explore the left periphery of subjunctive clauses selected by desiderative and psych-emotive verbs, concentrating on the availability of contrastive focus in Portuguese, Spanish, and English. 1.1 Problems and Background There has always been a certain controversy with respect to the semantic and syntactic analysis of subjunctive clauses (Quer 2006). Properties which have been analyzed in the literature include the following:  Obviation (impossibility of coreference between subjunctive subject and matrix subject [Picallo 1984])  Defective tense (tense in subjunctives seems to be dependent on matrix tense [Picallo 1984; Raposo 1986])  The existence of an operator-like Comp in subjunctives (Kempchinsky 1986; 1990)  Worlds, (non)veridicality, and evaluation model shift (Giannakidou 1998; 2009; Quer 2001; 2009) However, no full account can be found of the discourse properties of subjunctive clauses, which is the gap that we intend to fill in this paper. Before we address the special status of the left periphery of subjunctive clauses, we have to discuss the issue that there is no consensus on contrastive focus fronting (CFF) in European Portuguese (EP). Raposo (1998) claims that Portuguese is the only (major) Romance language with English-style topicalization of a definite direct object. Hence, in