Information structure, subject positions, and the cartography of the preverbal field in Cibaeño Dominican Spanish

Early generative studies on grammatical subjects produced two key findings: the Extended Projection Principle (Chomsky, 1982), and the Null Subject Parameter (NSP, e.g. Chomsky, 1981).[1] Caribbean Spanish exhibits a number of key differences compared to non-Caribbean varieties, and has been claimed to be transitioning from null-subject to non-null-subject language (e.g. Cameron, 1993; Toribio, 2000). I review these findings as well as those reported in a number of important theoretical and empirical studies that examine Spanish constituent order, in particular those that incorporate variables such as predicate type and information structure, thus leading to a deeper understanding of the syntax of grammatical subjects in Spanish, a null-subject language with flexible word order and a variety of information structure-related functions for preverbal subjects (e.g. López, 2009; Ordóñez, 2000; Zubizarreta, 1998). I compare this work to empirical data from Cibaeño Dominican Spanish (CDS) reported in Gupton (2023), paying particular attention to the implications for subject positions in this variety. I also examine claims suggesting parametric change in progress related to the NSP in Caribbean varieties of Spanish. The CDS data examined suggest: 1) behavior consistent with a null-subject analysis, and 2) minor structural differences suggesting multiple preverbal syntactic positions for subjects.