The information status and discourse anchorage of non-nominal constituents: A case study on Spanish secondary predicates

•Secondary predicates are anchored both in the preceding and the following context.•Secondary predicates typically have an intermediate information status between given and new.•Secondary predicates typically predicate over a given and highly accessible subject. The information status of nominal constituents has been a recurring topic of research over recent decades. Little is known, however, about the information status of non-nominal constituents such as secondary predicates. In the present paper, we present a corpus based analysis of the information status (and also the discourse anchorage) of Spanish secondary predicates. We will show that secondary predicates are anchored both in the preceding and the following context, but to a much lesser extent than their subjects (i.e., the nominal basis of comparison in our study). The most frequent information status of secondary predicates is neither given nor new, but one where the state denoted by the secondary predicate is evoked by some element of the preceding context (e.g., to cry evokes the state sad). Evoked is an intermediate information status between given and new. While the lack of given secondary predicates is not surprising, the existing literature would suggest that secondary predicates express predominately new information. In this respect, our study shows not only that information status is a relevant category for non-nominal constituents, but also that its analysis requires a more elaborate inventory than a binary given-new distinction.