2.1 Contrast and topic continuity

It has been argued that the overt realization of subjects in Romance-type pro-drop languages is triggered by emphasis or contrast, which come in different flavors (cf. Rigau 1989; Luján 1999; Mayol 2010; ex. (1) based on Rigau 1989):

Mayol (2010) argues for Catalan subject pronouns that they are different types of contrastive topics. One type of overt pronoun expresses an “uncertainty contrast” (ibid.: 2506f). It evokes a potential set of topic alternatives, but does not exhaustively resolve them (as in (1a)).

However, it has been argued that overt pronoun realization cannot always be reduced to contrast (Travis & Torres Cacoullos 2012: 723f). In fact, there are several instances of apparently redundant overt pronouns, particularly with first person singular yo creo. Consider the following example from PRESEEA (2014-):³

Here, yo in combination with creo cannot easily be argued to be strongly emphatic given its multiple occurrence and the continuity of the speaker’s perspective. However, the pronoun indicates that the addressee (or a potential set of other believers) might have a different opinion with respect to the embedded assertion and, thus, it could be classified as encoding a weak type of contrast.

Another strand of research assumes that (referential or topic) continuity favors ‘smaller’ forms, while non-continuous or shifting contexts favor ‘larger’ ones (see Givón 1983; Levinson 1987). Given that null is smaller than overt, the former is preferred in continuous and co-referent contexts, while the latter is triggered by shifting contexts. Frascarelli (2007) implements a formal approach to the relevance of topic shift and (dis-)continuity for null subjects in Italian. She assumes that topic types (shift, contrastive, familiar) are encoded by different left-peripheral projections (Frascarelli & Hinterhölzl 2007) in the C-area. In this approach, weak pronouns (destressed overt pronouns and null pro) are the result of an Agree relation between an Aboutness-Shift topic projection in the left periphery and null pro in subject position. Furthermore, the Aboutness-Shift topic can remain phonetically null if it is [+continuous]:

Strong pronouns, on the other hand, indicate a new Aboutness-Shift Topic or reintroduce an insufficiently salient one.

However, the applicability of topic continuity is less straightforward with deictic 1^st and 2^nd person pronouns. Bentivoglio (1983) and Adli (2019) show that insertion of a 1^st or 2^nd person pronoun does not necessarily interrupt the formation of 3^rd person topic chains. Consider the following example:

As can be seen, los soldados ‘the soldiers’, introduced in previous discourse, is continued by a 3PL null subject. Then, the speaker’s perspective is introduced by a 1SG strong pronoun, but it does not break continuity with respect to 3PL ‘the soldiers’, which is continued with a null subject after introduction of the 1SG pronoun. Thus, even though subject pronoun expression influences topic chaining in some contexts, not all instances of overt speaker/addressee pronouns can be explained by the notion of topic continuity.

That 1SG and 2SG pronouns might not necessarily have an effect on referential or topic linking of third person null subjects with verbs taking a CP complement is supported by the observation that the main speech act (or the main assertion) can be located in the subordinate rather than the main clause (see Bianchi & Frascarelli 2010; Krifka 2014; Adli 2019). These so-called “bridge verbs” (see Meinunger 2004 and references) include verbs of communication, verbs of thinking, and verbs of knowing (Class A, B, and E verbs in Hooper & Thompson 1973):

If the topic can be situated in the embedded clause with creer and saber, it cannot be topic-(non-)continuity that sanctions the overt/covert alternation in the main clause in these cases.

The assumption that the topic can be found in the embedded rather than the main clause with creer and saber is in line with the well-known fact that these verbs have parenthetical uses (see Thompson & Mulac 1991; Aijmer 1997 for English I think; Posio 2014 for Spanish), in which their function is evidential or discursive (see Simons 2007). In the following question-answer pair, the embedded rather than the main clause would be the “main point” of the utterance (see Simons 2007 for English examples):

The main predicate forms part of “non-at-issue” meaning, not answering the current Question Under Discussion (in the sense of C. Roberts 2012). In the terminology of Nuyts (2001), the matrix verb “qualifies” the content of the embedded proposition rather than forming part of it (cf. De Saeger 2008: 67).

In previous corpus studies, one hypothesis is that (inter-)subjectivity, epistemicity and/or evidentiality influence overt pronoun realization, particularly with the verb creer in 1SG (cf. Aijón Oliva & Serrano 2010; Hennemann 2012; 2016; Posio 2013; 2014). In the next section, the verb type factor will be discussed.

2.2 Verb type

Several studies of Spanish note that there is variation in overt pronoun frequencies depending on verb type (Enríquez 1984; Morales 1997; Posio 2011; 2013; 2014). These studies agree that verbs like creer ‘believe/think’ and pensar ‘think’ have the highest overt pronoun frequencies.

Enríquez (1984) postulates four verb classes for her quantitative study of overt pronoun expression in spoken Spanish of Madrid: (i) verbs of mental activity (e.g. saber ‘know’), (ii) verbs which express a personal opinion or a judgment (e.g. creer ‘think/believe’)⁴ (iii) stative verbs (e.g. tener ‘have’), and (iv) verbs of (external or objective) activity (e.g. hacer ‘make’) (see Enríquez 1984: 151ff). Within this classification, verbs of personal opinion (type (ii)) have the highest overt pronoun frequency (55%, compared to 33.78% overall overt pronoun frequencies; Enríquez’s 1984: 362). This is partly attributed to their relation to subjectivity and contrast: if overt pronouns imply an individualization of the subject, they would be expected to be especially frequent with those verbs where the personal opinion (in opposition to others) matters (Enríquez 1984: 118).

Posio (2011) also observes differences with respect to verb type and pronoun frequencies. With 1SG, pronoun realization is most frequent with pensar ‘think’ (59%) and creer (55%), which imply Cognizer subjects (i.e. a “thinker”, “believer”, “knower” or “presumer”; see Van Valin 2001: 31). Posio (2011) accounts for the predominance of overt subjects with these verbs in terms of the notion of “focus of attention”: With verbs like creer, the object clause is not prominent, which in turn allows attention to be focused on the subject (see Posio 2011: 786). The high frequency of subject pronoun realization would thus be related to the lower prominence of the object complement with creer.

One problem with this reasoning is in distinguishing verbs whose complement is “prominent” from those whose subject is prominent. One case in point is the verb saber ‘know’. In several studies (e.g. Enríquez 1984; Posio 2015), it is noted that subject realization frequencies are lower with this type of verb, at least in the peninsular Spanish varieties, than with verbs expressing a personal opinion. However, it is not clear how this is related to a different prominence status of the complement clause, primarily because saber also sanctions parenthetical uses.

In the corpus study by Aijón Oliva & Serrano (2010), the subject of 1SG creo ‘(I) think’ is less frequently expressed when the verb is used with the epistemic meaning of making a hypothesis (46.5%/62% overt pronouns in two corpora), compared with when it is used to express a personal opinion (83.7%/81.2%, respectively). Thus, an argumentative use of creer facilitates overt pronoun use and yo ‘I’ is a vehicle for “subjectivization” in discourse (Aijón Oliva & Serrano 2010: 11). According to Davidson (1996: 555), the overt pronoun adds “pragmatic weight” to the utterance, making it “more personally relevant”. In contrast, creo with a null subject implies a more general/objective stance towards the embedded proposition and thus has a merely epistemic value (cf. Aijón Oliva & Serrano 2010: 12). Grajales Alzate (2016: 347), in a study of the corpus PRESEEA-Medellín, also concludes that expression of the 1SG pronoun with creo stresses the personal nature of the source of information and, thus, it emphasizes the personal part of the evidential meaning.

De Saeger (2008) draws a distinction between qualificational and representational uses (in the sense of Nuyts 2001). In the former, the matrix verb introduces the opinion of the speaker or expresses a doubt with respect to the embedded proposition (see De Saeger 2008: 64) and, thus, rather than functioning as a main verb, it is an “opinion marker” (ibid.: 70). According to the author, an overt pronoun reinforces the subject-perspective in this use, similarly to adverbs such as personalmente ‘personally’ (ibid.: 72).

Hennemann (2016) investigates the two constructions creo Ø and creo yo ‘(I) think’ in postposed position. She argues that creo fulfils a subjective function, i.e. it appears in contexts where the speaker expresses her or his evidence for “an epistemic evaluation” (ibid.: 455) and has mainly a mitigating function (ibid.: 461). Creo yo appears in contexts of intersubjectivity (e.g. Nuyts 2001; Traugott 2010), i.e. there is an indication of the speaker’s awareness of the addressee (see Hennemann 2016: 454f) and “the interlocutor is invited to approve or reject the speaker’s opinion” (ibid.: 455).

Some issues, however, remain unresolved: (i) Aijón Oliva & Serrano (2010) and Posio (2013; 2014) focus on 1^st person (yo) creo and Hennemann (2016) on creo (yo). Travis & Torres Cacoullos (2012: 438f) argue that the “yo + COGNITIVE VERB” construction belongs to a more schematic “(subject) + COGNITIVE VERB” construction. Even though 1SG saber ‘know’ has lower pronoun frequencies in some studies, it is also a mental/cognitive verb and is highly frequent in spoken language. If we assume a schematic “(subject) + COGNITIVE VERB” construction, the question is why (yo) sé ‘(I) know’ does not have the same pronoun frequencies as (yo) creo, at least in the peninsular Spanish varieties investigated here (Madrid and Alcalá).⁵ (ii) Epistemic creer has overt pronoun rates of 62% in one corpus from Aijón Oliva & Serrano (2010). Although the frequency is lower than with argumentative creo, it is still a high frequency at above 50%; the question, then, is what determines overt pronoun realization in these cases. Lastly, (iii) distinguishing between epistemic and argumentative uses of creer is not always a clear-cut issue (as acknowledged by Aijón Oliva & Serrano 2010: 12). It would be interesting to see whether there is any formal variable of perspectival notions like (inter-)subjectivity, epistemicity and evidentiality in the local linguistic context of cognitive verbs for the analysis of overt/covert pronouns in a spoken language corpus. This issue is particularly challenging because these perspectival notions rely on speaker-internal information, which cannot always be examined in spoken corpus data.

2.3 Person specification

Several studies have emphasized the opposition between speech act participant (SAP) pronouns on the one hand and 3^rd person pronouns on the other (see DeLancey 1981: 627ff; see also Harley & Rittner 2002: 486ff for differences between 1^st/2^nd vs. 3^rd person). There is thus an opposition between 1^st/2^nd person deictic pronouns and potentially (discourse) anaphoric 3^rd person (see Posio 2018: 291). In the generative literature, different projections for encoding speaker and hearer vs. topic have been proposed in the left periphery of the clause. According to Sigurðsson (2011), there are projections hosting logophoric agent and logophoric patient, in addition to a topic category:

Furthermore, person features on the verb must be bound by speaker/addressee coordinates in the CP area of the clause. Frascarelli (2018) suggests that 1^st and 2^nd person subject pronouns are not sanctioned by a topic projection, but by Logophoric coordinates in the vein of Sigurðsson (2011). However, Frascarelli’s approach does not fully clarify what the trigger is for realizing pronouns in first and second person, given that both – overt and null pronouns, being deictic elements – must be linked to Logophoric coordinates in C.

That person is relevant for overt pronoun realization is also demonstrated by several quantitative studies (e.g. Enríquez 1984; Morales 1997; Posio 2011; Erker & Guy 2012; Adli 2019). However, dialectal variation and verb type also play a role. Posio (2011: 795) observes in his study of Peninsular Spanish that 1SG has overall higher overt pronoun frequencies than 2SG, which he attributes to the “egocentric nature of discourse”. However, creer ‘think/believe’ is an exception in his study (58% with 2SG vs. 55% with 1SG). Furthermore, in Erker & Guy’s (2012: 533) study of a corpus of New York City Spanish, with speakers of Mexican and Dominican origin, (tú) sabes ‘you know’ had overt pronoun frequencies as high as 92% (ibid.: 539). Thus, while person might potentially play a role in overt pronoun realization, it clearly cannot be considered without taking into account both verb type and the features of the particular variety under investigation.

2.4 The role of polarity

Posio (2015) compares the positive and negative forms of saber ‘know’ plus a complement clause. He found that overt pronoun realization is lower with negative than with positive forms, at least in 1SG (see Posio 2015: 64). The author argues that frequent verbs such as creer and saber and their positive and negative forms occur in prefabricated, formulaic sequences, which can have varying degrees of pronoun expression. Aijón Oliva & Serrano (2010: 13) also observe that there seems to be a tendency for negative forms to appear with an overt subject less frequently than positive forms with 1SG creer (4 null subjects out of 7 and 10 out of 11 in two corpora; see ibid.: 13). Although the number of occurrences of negative no creo is generally low, there seems to be a tendency for polarity to also affect overt pronoun realization with this verb.

4.2 Results of [verb], [person], and [polarity]

Table 4 presents the results of the variables [verb], [person] and [polarity] with 1SG/2SG creer and saber [+CP].

Figures 1, 2, 3 depict the effect of verb, person and polarity in the full sample.

Figure 1

Null and overt Speech Act Participant pronouns with creer and saber.

Figure 2

Null and overt Speech Act Participant pronouns according to person.

Figure 3

Null and overt Speech Act Participant pronouns according to polarity.

As indicated under each figure, the values obtained through statistical analysis show that there is a significant association between subject pronoun expression and (i) verb (creer/saber), (ii) person (1SG/2SG) and (iii) polarity (neg/pos), respectively. Overt pronoun realization is higher with creer than with saber (72% vs. 21%; p < 0.001), higher with 1SG than with 2SG (57% vs. 31%; p < 0.001) and higher with positive than with negative verb forms (65% vs. 20%; p < 0.001). The association between subject pronoun expression and [verb] as well as the association between subject pronoun expression and [polarity] has a moderate effect size (Cramer’s V = 0.502 and 0.405, respectively), but the association between subject pronoun expression and [person] has only a small effect size (Cramer’s V = 0.194).¹²

Considering the association between [person] and subject pronoun expression, results are only significant with affirmative creer and saber; the effect not being significant with the negative verb forms. Figures 4 and 5 depict pronoun frequencies with positive verb forms.

Figure 4

[person] with positive creer [+CP].

Figure 5

[person] with positive saber [+CP].

As Figure 5 shows, positive 1SG (yo) sé ‘(I) know’ [+CP] has overt subject pronoun frequencies of 47%, compared with 14% overt pronouns with 2SG (tú) sabes ‘(you) know’. The difference is significant (χ² (1) = 13.216, p = 0.002; Cramer’s V: 0.359). With respect to positive creer [+CP] (see Figure 4), 1SG (yo) creo ‘(I) think’ also has significantly higher overt pronoun rates than 2SG (tú) crees ‘(you) think’ (77% vs. 54%; χ² (1) = 15.071, p < 0.001), but the effect strength is lower (Cramer’s V = 0.179).

With respect to the negative verb forms, there are only a small number of data points for 2SG (see Table 4). Thus, there are only two occurrences of 2SG no crees ‘(you) don’t think’ [+CP] in the sample (both appearing with a null pronoun) and the comparison with 1SG no creo (9/21 = 43% overt pronouns) is not significant (p = 0.86). With negative saber ‘know’ [+CP], subject expression has a tendency towards being higher in 1SG (43/221 = 19%) than in 2SG (0/10 = 0%) but the effect is not significant (p = 0.86).

Turning to the association between subject pronoun expression and polarity, Aijón Oliva & Serrano (2010) report a tendency for overt pronouns to be more frequently used with positive 1SG creo than with negative no creo (see section 2.4). Although there are only a small number of data points for negative no creo que ‘(I) don’t think that’ in the sample investigated here, the results show a tendency in the same direction (Figure 6).

Figure 6

Positive and negative (yo) creo [+CP].

Positive 1SG (yo) creo que ‘(I) think that’ occurred with an overt pronoun more often (336/436 = 77%) than negative 1SG (yo) no creo que ‘(I) don’t think that’ (9/21 = 43%). The association is significant (p = 0.005), even though the effect strength is small (Cramer’s V = 0.167).

Posio (2015) observes higher overt pronoun frequencies in positive 1SG (yo) sé ‘(I) know’ than in negative (yo) no sé ‘(I) don’t know’. Again, the results in Figure 7 show the same tendency: Positive forms of 1SG saber ‘know’ [+CP] have significantly higher overt pronoun rates than negative forms (47% vs. 19%; p = 0.002). The association between overt pronoun realization and polarity does not prove significant in either 2SG creer ‘think’ or 2SG saber ‘know’ (p = 0.86).

Figure 7

Positive and negative (yo) sé [+CP].

4.3 Results of the analysis of the complement of (yo) creo and (yo) sé

Table 5 presents the main numbers of the annotation of complement type with 1SG (yo) creo and (yo) sé.

Independently of overt pronoun realization, 1SG creer more frequently co-occurs with EVALUATIONS (113/344 = 33%) than 1SG saber (23/222 = 10%). Complements expressing DESCRIPTIONS, in contrast, appeared more frequently with 1SG saber (94/222 = 42%) than with 1SG creer (94/344 = 27%).

Figure 8 shows overt pronoun frequencies depending on complement type with 1SG creer.

Figure 8

Subject expression with 1SG creer according to complement type.

The overall association between complement type and 1SG pronoun expression with creer is significant (p = 0.006). Subject pronoun expression is highest with 1SG creer if it takes complements tagged as EVALUATION (91/113 = 81%) and MIND_SELF/OTHER (58/70 = 83%) and lowest with complements expressing DESCRIPTIONS (57/94 = 61%). An anonymous reviewer asks Fisher’s Exact Test to be applied to comparisons of subject expression with different complement types. If pairwise comparisons are made (Fisher’s Exact Test with Bonferroni-Holm correction), the only two comparisons that result significant are those between EVALUATION and DESCRIPTION (p = 0.02) and between MIND_SELF/OTHER and DESCRIPTION (p = 0.028). In fact, these are important comparisons if the status of the embedded complement as [sensorily perceivable] vs. [non-sensorily perceivable] (see Table 3) plays a role for 1SG subject expression with matrix cognitive verbs. The other comparisons are not significant (see Appendix B).

Figure 9 shows overt pronoun frequencies with 1SG saber according to complement type.

Figure 9

Subject expression with 1SG saber according to complement type.

The overall association between overt 1SG subject pronoun expression with saber and complement type is significant (p = 0.004). It is interesting to note that the highest overt pronoun rates (11/23 = 48%) are also found with saber if its complement is tagged as EVALUATION. However, the total number of cases is substantially lower than with creer. Complements classified as MIND_SELF/OTHER and UNREAL have overt pronoun frequencies of 32% (14/44) and 28% (10/36), respectively. Just as with (yo) creo que, 1SG saber has lower overt pronoun frequencies if its complement is tagged as DESCRIPTION (14/94 = 15%). The lowest overt pronoun frequencies were found with 1SG saber selecting an infinitive introduced by a complementizer (1/18 = 6%).

If pairwise comparisons are made between different complement types, the comparison between EVALUATION and DESCRIPTION is significant (p = 0.021). This indicates that, also with saber ‘know’, evaluative complements favor 1SG pronoun expression. The other comparisons are not significant (see Appendix B), which indicates that they have to be tested against a larger data set in future studies.

5.1 Epistemicity, evidentiality, subjectivity and the extended IP

Cinque (1999) and Speas (2004) argue that pragmatically relevant features, such as speech act, evaluative, evidential and epistemic mood are encoded as projections in a designated order:

In sections 4.2. and 4.3, it was shown that overt pronoun expression is frequent when the subject of 1SG creer is not merely a cognizer but a subjective evaluator. Moreover, there is non-quantitative evidence that the use of yo creo is not only preferred when expressing speaker confidence, but also when subjectivity is a strategy for presenting the embedded proposition as information whose truth value depends on the speaker’s perspective. The close relation between speaker perspective and epistemic/evidential values for overt pronoun realization could be encoded in what Davis et al. (2007), building on Lewis (1976), call the “quality threshold”:

If assertability is related to the subjective truth probability, the “quality threshold” of an expressed belief should be dependent on the speaker’s relation to the embedded information. Note that evaluative contexts often imply a contrast with respect to a set of potential other evaluators (which can include the addressee in intersubjective settings):

Here, the perspective of the speaker is explicitly contrasted with respect to an undefined set of individuals and, thus, an alternative set is evoked (see Rooth 1992; Krifka 2007 for focus alternatives and Büring (2003) for topic alternatives).

Mayol (2010) argues that Catalan overt subject pronouns encode different types of contrast, one being a “weak contrast”. The author draws on Büring’s (2003) analysis of Contrastive Topic (CT). However, unlike Büring (2003), who argues that CTs introduce alternative sets of questions (i.e. complex sets of alternatives), Mayol (2010) follows Hara & van Rooij (2007) in assuming that CTs create a simple set of topic alternative propositions, combined with a CT-implicature which indicates that one of the topic alternatives is not known to be true by the speaker (cf. Mayol 2010: 2505). This implicature is called an “uncertainty contrast” (ibid.: 2506).

Several examples with yo creo que ‘I think that’ closely match the interpretation of “weak contrast”. Consider (13), repeated here for convenience:

Realization of the 1SG pronoun in this context of evaluation implies an uncertainty contrast. It indicates that the opinion of the speaker may or may not be shared by others, i.e. it evokes a set of alternative perspectives, including other perspective holders:

Realization of the 1SG pronoun contrasts the speaker’s perspective towards the embedded proposition with a potential set of other ‘evaluators’, which might agree with the speaker or not, i.e. the evoked alternatives in (28) might be true or false. This type of contrast is made explicit in (26). It also becomes apparent in examples in which intersubjectivity is crucial (such as (21)), where realizing the 1SG pronoun evokes the addressee as an alternative perspective holder and the question of whether the two perspectives agree remains open.

Evoking alternative perspective holders means that the truth probability of the embedded proposition is consequently adapted to the speaker as an evaluator. The reason for the high frequency of this strategy with the verb creer ‘think/believe’ is that it leaves the (subjective) truth probability of the complement clause largely undefined. This paves the way for further strategies of lowering or elevating the “quality threshold” according to context. Contrast assignment to the subject and correlated 1SG overt pronoun expression can thus be considered one such strategy.

In our data, evaluative contexts favor weak contrast assignment. With the verb creer ‘think’, also the category MIND_SELF/OTHER favors 1SG subject expression (see Figure 8), which indicates that abstract information which is not based on direct perception favors contrast assignment to the subject. Thus, the probability of contrast assignment and the evoking of alternative perspective holders seems to increase in contexts of low objectivity, evidence, and/or certainty:

With respect to assignment of the feature [contrast] in syntax, this means that the following preference relations obtain:

This scale might have a correlate in Cinque’s (1999: 128ff) marked and unmarked values of the Epist and Evid projections, where [direct evidence] is the unmarked value for Evid and [commitment] the unmarked value for Epist (see also Roberts & Roussou 2003 for discussion).

There is evidence that the interaction of the notions of epistemicity, evidentiality and subjectivity has an impact on contrast assignment to the subject position and, consequently, on the use of (yo) creo and (yo) sé. Contrast can thus yield an overt, strong pronoun in a functional category encoding perspective or “point-of-view” (e.g. Uriagereka’s 1995 FP; Speas & Tenny’s 2003 Sentience Phrase), in which epistemicity, evidentiality and subjectivity interact to yield contrast assignment:

FP as conceived of here is the interaction between perspectival notions relating to epistemicity, evidentiality and subjectivity, as an extension of the morpho-syntactic IP containing [person] (see section 5.2). A relation between person and perspectival notions such as evidentiality has in fact been postulated by de Haan (2005), who argues that evidentiality is a deictic category, and Rooryck (2019), who argues that evidentiality encodes distal relations.¹⁴ In (32), I depict these views of the deictic nature of evidentiality:

If perspectival notions are projected in syntax as functional categories (Cinque 1999, Speas & Tenny 2003; Speas 2004), it is reasonable to assume that [+contrast] can be assigned to their specifier (Spec,F), in addition to being assigned to Spec,TopP in the high C-domain. The next section lays out the evidence for a low, IP-related position for preverbal yo with creo.

5.2 Deriving preverbal yo with cognitive verbs in syntax

The approach adopted so far assumes that preverbal yo ‘I’ is in a position below CP. This is problematic in light of the general assumption that notions such as [contrast] and [focus] form part of the (high) C-domain, as an anonymous reviewer notes.

For Spanish, evidence that preverbal subjects do not share all their properties with left dislocated, topicalized objects in the C-domain has been widely discussed (see Suñer 2003; López 2009). One argument against a uniform dislocation analysis is that SVO, in contrast to OVS, is the unmarked word order and can be the answer to the question ‘What happened?’ (see Zagona 2002).

In the case of yo creo que, some evidence that yo can appear in a high CP-related or a low IP-related position is functional in nature. In the few cases, in which yo appears in a clearly dislocated position, separated from the verb by a non-clitic constituent (8 cases of Subj-XP-V, where XP = phrasal), the overt pronoun seems to have a shifting function and could in fact be argued to be situated in the high left periphery:

Here, yo shifts from impersonal hay ‘there is’ to the speaker’s perspective. The preverbal PP en el barrio de Salamanca ‘in the Salamanca neighborhood’ is continuous, referring to information already contained in E’s question. This could be explained if shifting topics are situated above familiar topics in the syntactic tree (see Frascarelli & Hinterhölzl 2007).

In 4 out of 8 examples with unambiguously peripheral yo, the discourse marker es que ‘[the thing] is that’ appears between the pronoun and the verb (see (26)). It has been argued that es que introduces rhematic or focal material (see Fernández Leborans 1992: 239). Sentences with peripheral yo followed by es que therefore represent configurations in which yo is shifted out of the focus projection. However, yo creo que can also appear inside the clause introduced by es que:

If es que introduces focal/rhematic material, preverbal yo cannot be a left-dislocated topic in this case.¹⁵ This can be explained if yo is a perspectival marker that appears in a position below TopP, i.e. in the extended IP.

Furthermore, in the word order XP-yo-creo, the fronted XP can be a contrastive topic:

In (35), left-peripheral el amarillo ‘the yellow [one]’ is a contrastive topic and yo creo que appears below it. If the ContrP is not recursive (Frascarelli & Hinterhölzl 2007: 97), yo cannot be a dislocated contrastive topic in this case. As argued here, it is a perspectival marker within the extended IP.

There is therefore evidence that the preverbal 1SG subject pronoun in yo creo que is not uniformly a dislocated, C-related topic, but can appear in a low position despite being licensed by (weak) [contrast].¹⁶ In fact, it has been argued for Spanish that Spec,TP/IP can be a pragmatic interface point (see Zubizarreta 1998 for the assumption that [topic]/[focus] phrases can move to Spec,TP). According to Gallego’s (2010) phase sliding, V-to-T movement has the effect of extending the vP phase level to TP/IP in Spanish. If pragmatically relevant features are assigned at the phase level (López 2009), it is expected that [contrast] can be assigned to the Spec of (the extended) IP:

Technically, movement of the subject pronoun would not be triggered by [Case]+EPP, but by weak [contrast] associated with an Edge Feature (Chomsky 2008).

If Spanish allows the assignment of pragmatically relevant features at the IP as well as the CP level, it straightforwardly follows that preverbal yo can be licensed in Spec,IP/FP or in Spec,CP, correlating with different discourse functions (see López 2009 for the assumption that subjects can be in Spec,CP or Spec,TP). Generating yo with creo in Spec,IP/FP corresponds to a weak contrast, motivated by notions relating to epistemicity/evidentiality/subjectivity.

5.3 The pronoun plus cognitive verb construction in syntax

The analysis outlined up to this point has assumed that subject+cognitive verb combinations are fully transparent. However, it has been argued by Thompson & Mulac (1991) for English that expressions like I think do not always function as a main verb plus clausal complement, but as an “epistemic phrase”, i.e. they behave similarly to adverbs (see Aijmer 1997 for “pragmaticalization” and uses as “speech act adverbs”). Posio (2015) also argues that frequent verb forms occur in “prefabricated, formulaic sequences” in Spanish and that sequences like no sé ‘(I) don’t know’, yo creo ‘I think’, etc. can be seen as “epistemic/evidential markers” (ibid.: 74). One piece of evidence for a certain degree of fixation of yo creo que comes from its low internal flexibility: in addition to the fact that material only rarely intervenes between preverbal yo and the cognitive verb, postverbal yo is also almost absent in the data. Only 1 instance of 1SG creer que (in imperfect aspect) had the pronoun in postverbal position. Furthermore, (yo) creo (que) ‘(I) think (that)’ does not always function as a lexical verb with a prototypical external argument. Apart from the literal meaning of ‘believe (in God)’ and ‘think’ as a mental process, it can have more functional (epistemic/evaluative) meanings (see Aijón Oliva & Serrano 2010) and its subject pronoun is a perspectival marker rather than an agentive subject.

In what follows, an analysis of degrees of fixation and functional uses of (yo) creo (que) will be outlined, based on Roberts & Roussou’s (2003) theory and Cruschina’s (2015) analysis of grammaticalization of Italian dice che and Sicilian dicica (see Cruschina & Remberger 2008 for SAY+Comp in Romance). According to Aijmer (1997: 2), there is a distinction between grammaticalization and pragmaticalization in that elements such as you know, you see, etc. “involve the speaker’s attitude to the hearer”. According to Diewald (2011: 384), pragmaticalization is a subordinate process of grammaticalization, i.e. it can be considered as “grammaticalization of discourse functions”. Both processes are closely related to frequency and “routinization” (see Detges & Waltereit 2016). As we have discussed, subject+COGNITIVE VERB sequences are frequent in spoken discourse and their use depends on the speaker’s perspective.

In the generative architecture adopted here, discourse-sensitive features are encoded in FP or CP. The process of pragmaticalization should thus affect these functional projections. We have shown that fixation of yo+creo(+que) is predominantly associated with its evaluative use, which is closely related to contrastive interpretations. It will be argued that the close connection between contrast, evaluative uses, and speaker perspective has the consequence that the subject pronoun and cognitive verb are not always generated within vP, but that they can be directly merged in the functional category F encoding perspective.

Roberts & Roussou (2003) assume in the context of modals that (lexical) verbs come to be more functional by means of movement of lexical V to functional T with subsequent loss of the movement option. Thus, modals can be generated by direct merge into a functional category (see Roberts & Roussou 2003: chapter 2). For creo ‘(I) think’, let us assume that, in its more functional, epistemic/evaluative meaning, this verb is moved into the category F_[epist/eval], triggered by a V-feature (in the sense of Chomsky 1995):

As Roberts & Roussou (2003: 47) note, a system along the lines of Cinque (1999) allows a single lexical item to receive different interpretations according to its syntactic position. In the case of (yo) creo, the epistemic or evaluative meaning can thus be derived via movement to the relevant functional head F marked for [epist]/[evid] or [eval].

Roberts & Roussou (2003: 198) argue that certain instances of grammaticalization involve loss of movement and simplification of morphological features: prior to reanalysis, a lexical element bears a feature combination X+Y and after reanalysis, the element itself becomes Y. In (37), creo bears [V] by means of its lexical specification and F_[epist/eval] by means of movement. We have argued that the subject pronoun in (yo) creo does not function as a typical argument within the VP but, rather, it is a perspectival marker. This correlates with a more functional use of creo as a verb expressing the personal opinion of the speaker. If this use as an “evaluative phrase” is the outcome of a pragmaticalization process, it can be implemented by means of loss of movement to the functional category F. This way, creo (que) does not function as V bearing F_[epist/eval], but it constitutes an F_[epist/eval] element itself, encoding speaker perspective:¹⁷

In contrast to (37), where a theta-role is assigned to the subject pronoun within vP, creo in (38) is a functional element, lacking an external as well as internal argument. However, if creo, in its use as an evaluative/epistemic phrase, does not have argument structure, its appearance with an overt pronoun is unexpected. Following Speas & Tenny (2003: 332), the functional category encoding epistemic, evidential and evaluative mood projects a “speaker” or “seat of knowledge” argument in its specifier:

If [contrast] associates with the “seat of knowledge”=“speaker”, the result is an overt 1SG pronoun.

There is furthermore evidence from spoken Spanish that que ‘that’ does not always function as a subordinating conjunction; yo creo que is instead used parenthetically:¹⁸

Here, the whole phrase yo creo que appears clause-internally, and thus has a certain configurational freedom, similarly to adverbs.

For the grammaticalization of Spanish dizque ‘say+comp’, Demonte & Fernández Soriano (2013) propose that que ‘that’ as a subordinating conjunction has the features SUB + OP (building on Roussou 2000), i.e. que functions as an operator and a subordinating conjunction. With grammaticalized dizque, the complementizer loses its SUB feature and que moves to the verb contained in Evid. In fact, if creo can be directly merged as an F category, the CP projected by que would appear in the non-prototypical configuration of not being the complement of V. This might consequently lead to que losing its SUB feature and incorporating into the F-head.

Admittedly, although there is evidence in our data for a certain degree of fixation of yo creo que, more research is needed to determine the exact productivity of each of the two proposed configurations (37) and (38). In fact, an investigation of the degree of pragmaticalization of (yo)+creo+COMP would ideally integrate a diachronic perspective, which I leave for future research. However, the use of yo creo que ‘I think that’ and no sé ‘(I) don’t know’ as perspectival phrases is compatible with the approach outlined in this paper: in addition to a derivation in which the pronoun and verb originate in the VP and move to FP, they can directly merge in the functional projection encoding perspective.

6.1 2SG pronouns

Pronoun realization with 2SG is less frequent than with 1SG in the positive forms of creer and saber in the study presented here. However, pronouns are realized with positive 2SG creer with a high frequency of 54% (Table 4). Because 2SG creer mostly appeared when the interviewers were speaking, there are only a small number of data points, which only allow a suggestion of a possible reason for null and overt pronoun use. 2SG creer frequently appears in interrogatives. It might be the case that overt pronoun realization is a strategy on the speaker’s side to indicate acceptance of a subjective perspective towards the embedded information. Hence, the use of an overt 2SG pronoun might be an explicit request for an answer to the current Question Under Discussion (in the sense of Roberts 2012), regardless of its evidential basis. Thus, the intersubjective relation between speaker and addressee could be of crucial importance (as Hennemann 2016 argues for creo yo). The following example supports the idea that a reasoning along these lines might be interesting to pursue:

Here, the speaker explicitly asks the addressee for her/his personal view compared with other perspectives. Thus, similar mechanisms could be at stake in yielding 1SG and 2SG overt pronouns with creer ‘believe/think’.

6.2 The cognitive verb class and ‘bridge verbs’

The cognitive verbs investigated here form part of the class of “bridge verbs”, whose complement displays main clause characteristics (see Emonds 2004; Meinunger 2004; Heycock 2006; Bianchi & Frascarelli 2010). Meinunger (2004) argues that verbs of thinking are among the contexts that license embedded clauses with root-like properties, such as embedded V2 in German and “root transformations” (Hopper & Thompson 1973) in English. Furthermore, Hooper & Thompson (1973) argue that “root transformations” in embedded contexts are possible if the embedded clause introduces an assertion (cf. Meinunger 2004: 217).

Meinunger (2004) observes that certain contexts, including negation, block embedded V2 in German. He furthermore draws a parallel with the trigger of embedded indicatives (with positive creer) and subjunctives (with negative no creer) in Romance languages:

We have seen that overt 1SG pronoun frequencies are lower with negative no creo than with positive creo. If overt pronoun realization is related to assertivity (Aijón Oliva & Serrano 2010), the lower overt pronoun frequencies with negative forms of creer could be related to the non-assertive character of the embedded clause, in parallel with the (im-)possibility of “root transformations” and embedded V2 with bridge verbs in other languages. If this line of reasoning is pursued further, the expectation would be that those matrix contexts that have high 1SG pronoun frequencies in Spanish correlate to an extent with those contexts that license embedded clauses with main clause characteristics in other languages. This comparative approach is worthy of further investigation.