ABSTRACT
The order of words or constituents influences the interpretation of utterances at the intraphrasal (i.e., within a noun or verb phrase), intrasentential (i.e., order of clausal constituents like subjects and objects relative to verbs), and intersentential (i.e., order of clauses within complex sentences or dislocation phenomena) levels. Spanish word order is affected by syntactic rules (e.g., subject-verb inversion is mandatory in partial interrogative clauses in most dialects), lexical semantics (e.g., some adjectives have different meanings before and after the modified noun), and dialectal differences (e.g., the frequency of postverbal subjects varies considerably between dialects). However, much of the variation can be attributed to pragmatic factors, in particular, information structure and the management of common ground between speakers. For instance, the placement of clausal constituents is affected by their status as old or new information in the discourse context. Word order may also serve specific discourse-pragmatic functions such as irony, the mitigation of the contents of a proposition, or the management of politeness and face. The current chapter provides an overview of the pragmatic functions of word order variation, surveying relevant studies that focus on the different types of word order in Spanish.
