<i>¡Mira!</i>The grammar-attention interface in the Spanish left periphery

Abstract In this paper, we focus on Spanish hearer-oriented particles like the highly frequent verb-based particle mira (lit. ‘look’). We provide a detailed syntactic account of these by demonstrating (i) that they must be distinguished from both vocative/appellative and expressive/exclamative particles, (ii) feature illocutionary restrictions familiar class discourse in languages other than Spanish. Since our proposal locates information-structural layer clause and, at same time, demonstrates its sensitivity to component sentence interpretation, thus raise more general questions about interaction between syntax speech acts encoding information structure.