Spanish PredNPs and the Left Periphery Javier Gutiérrez-Rexach and Melvin González-Rivera 1. Introduction * This paper proposes an analysis of Spanish Predicative Noun Phrases (PredNPs) (1) as structures related to the left periphery and argues against a right-dislocated analysis of PredNP Clauses. (1) a. Un verdadero idiota NP , el camarero este. ‘A real idiot, this waiter.’ b. Extremadamente caro AP , aquel vino. ‘Extremely expensive, that wine.’ As these examples show, Spanish PredNPs consist of two expressions: an initial XP acting as a predicate and a DP that is interpreted as the subject of the predicative expression. The predicate or head phrase of the expression can be a Noun Phrase (1a), or an Adjectival Phrase (1b). There are other similar constructions in Spanish, but here we will focus our attention on structures like the ones in (1) above. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In section 2 we discuss the grammar of Spanish PredNPs. In section 3 we examine previous syntactic accounts of this predicative structure. In section 4 we argue that PredNPs are better understood if we assume that the XP-predicate moves to the left of the DP-subject to a focus position where the former may check its affective feature (cf. the AFFECT- criterion; see Brody 1990; Haegeman 1995). Finally, section 5 presents our conclusions. 2. The grammar of Spanish PredNPs PredNPs are verbless utterances which are not discourse fragments and display clausal properties (Vinet 1991; Laurens 2008). For example, each one of the expressions in (1) may be interpreted as full sentences, as the paraphrases in (2) show: (2) a. ⇒ El camarero este ES un verdadero idiota. ‘This waiter IS a real idiot.’ b. ⇒ Aquel vino ES extremadamente caro. ‘That wine IS extremely expensive.’ A reasonable hypothesis would be that this is possible because of the presence of a semantically empty or light verb in the verbless correlates of these sentences or, alternatively, of a functional projection. These clauses involve predication and they actually denote a complete proposition, i.e. they are expressions of type <s,t> in Montague’s terminology. Their clausal content type can be easily demonstrated by the fact that Spanish PredNPs can be coordinated with full verbal clauses (3a, b) and also participate in sentential VP ellipsis ellipsis constructions (3c), as noted by a reviewer: (3) a. Un verdadero idiota, el camarero este, aunque es un buen empleado. ‘A real idiot, that waiter, even though he is a good employee.’ b. Extremadamente caro, aquel vino, pero es la mejor opción para esta noche. ‘Extremely expensive, that wine, but it is the better option for tonight.’ c. Inteligente este chiquillo, pero este otro no. 'Smart, that kid, but this other one is not (smart).' * Javier Gutiérrez-Rexach, The Ohio State University. Melvin González-Rivera, University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez. For questions, contact the authors at gutierrez-rexach.1@osu.edu and melvin.gonzalez@upr.edu. © 2013 Javier Gutiérrez-Rexach and Melvin González-Rivera. Selected Proceedings of the 16th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, ed. Jennifer Cabrelli Amaro et al., 1-14. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.