Romance clitic left dislocation is widespread across all kinds of nonroot contexts, but it is forbidden in infinitive wh-relatives. This article investigates the extent and nature of this restriction and the consequences it raises for the truncation and intervention analyses of the left periphery of embedded sentences. We will show that current proposals cannot account for the whole gamut of data. In consequence, we will propose that infinitive wh-relatives display a maximally syncretic left periphery, whereas infinitive wh-interrogatives have a full-fledged left periphery, crucially involving ForceP, because they are selected by a higher predicate. This crucial difference between infinitive relatives and interrogatives will also be shown to be consistent with the existence of specialized complementizers for the former but not the latter.

Three experimental studies are presented testing the choice of a left or a right dislocation in Catalan, depending on the bridging relation between the dislocate and its antecedent. We make the hypothesis that the stronger the anaphoric link between the dislocate and its antecedent, the more appropriate a right dislocation is, whereas the opposite is true for left dislocation. The results of two acceptability judgment experiments partially support our hypothesis: Ratings with right dislocation decrease proportionally to the strength of the anaphoric link; however, it is ratings of canonical sentences (without dislocation at all), rather than of left dislocation, that display the opposite direction. For left dislocation, the picture is more complex and reflects the pragmatic function of this construction as a topic shifter or marker of contrast. A third experiment tests the monotonicity hypothesis, according to which a left dislocation is chosen when the anaphoric relation with the antecedent is either downward monotonic or nonmonotonic, whereas a right dislocation is preferred with an upward monotonic relation. The results partially support such a hypothesis but also further support the importance of taking the pragmatic function of left dislocation into account to explain its choice in discourse by speakers.

En este artículo proponemos analizar los elementos que encabezan las relativas preposicionales de infinitivo (libros por/para leer) como complementantes preposicionales que se generan en el núcleo de SFinitud. Ello nos permite trazar claras diferencias con las construcciones preposicionales finales y causales y ofrecer al mismo tiempo un análisis uniforme para todas las relativas, sean finitas o no. También sugerimos que la lectura modal asociada a las relativas preposicionales se expresa mediante una categoría funcional específica ligada a la modalidad radical, lo que nos permite explicar parte de las restricciones combinatorias de estas relativas. Por último, proponemos extender este análisis a las relativas de infinitivo introducidas por que (libros que leer).