Absolute Themes in English and Spanish: a comparison

Angela Downing

Universidad Complutense de Madrid

			
ABSTRACT

Absolute Theme is a form of left-detachment (LD) as in That play, it
was terrible. It is a construction which is available to speakers of
Spanish and speakers of English alike. Yet there is no doubt that in
Spanish the construction is more widely exploited, not merely in terms
of frequency, which is not an issue in this study, but in the variety
of genres and syntactic combinations that the detached items
participate in. LD constituents and their combinations don’t always
coincide across the two languages, English in certain cases preferring
other alternatives. Taking examples from authentic Spanish data as the
methodological starting-point, this presentation aims to explore the
mismatches in the grammatical form and the use of LD between the two
languages in question. Naturally-occurring illustrations from English,
similar to the Spanish data, accompany these wherever possible.
Otherwise, literal LD English translations of the Spanish are
provided, each followed by a more idiomatic equivalent.  The
alternative options availed of by speakers of English are seen to be
of a grammatical and a discourse nature. Finally, I suggest an
explanation for the differences of LD use between English and Spanish,
their discourse functions, and their relevance to literacy.