A Case of Prosody-induced Word Order Variation without Narrow Focus*

1. Introduction This paper analyses a number of word order alternations observed in relative clauses in Spanish and concludes that they are the result of intonational considerations. However, it is shown that the relevant intonational factors are not the same as those related to focalization (which is well-known to induce word order alternations in Spanish), but rather they relate to the relative prosodic weight of constituents in the intonational structure of these clauses. Spanish relative clauses typically (but not necessarily) show transitive subjects in a post-verbal position, as in (1).