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Maintenance of Spanish subject pronoun expression patterns among bilingual children of farmworkers in Washington/Montana
Abstract
It has been suggested that contact between Spanish and English results in an increased rate of Spanish subject pronouns and a desensitization to factors that constrain pronoun usage. Yet, evidence for such contact-induced change has been found in some U.S. communities, but not others. In this study we analyze Spanish pronoun expression in interviews with Hispanics in Washington State who do agricultural work in Montana each summer. We compare U.S.-born bilingual children to monolingual adults from this community. Results from analyses of 3,572 verb tokens indicate little to no change in pronoun expression — neither in rates of expression nor in usage patterns. We explain this lack of change in pronoun expression by drawing on the well-established connection between social networks and language change. Poorer, more rural communities, like the farmworker community in Washington/Montana, tend to have tight-knit social networks, which increases the likelihood of retention of linguistic patterns.
... Previous research on bilingual children's acquisition of morphosyntactic variation, including variable subject pronoun expression, has tended to compare bilingual children to monolingual children (e.g., Cuza, 2016;Cuza & Pérez-Tattam, 2016;Shin & Van Buren, 2016). Yet, bilingual children comprise a heterogeneous group, and different bilingual communities in the United States vary in their linguistic practices, leading to different outcomes of bilingual language development (Beatty-Martínez & Dussias, 2019). ...
... Likewise, studies that focus on children yield varying results. Some find that bilinguals have higher subject pronoun expression rates and decreased sensitivity to discourse constraints on variation (Silva-Corvalán, 2014, whereas others find no differences between monolingual and bilingual children (Goldin, 2021;Shin & Van Buren, 2016). As Cerrón-Palomino (2016) notes, the conflicting findings may be related to differences among Spanish-speaking speech communities in the United States; in particular, continued contact with and influx of monolingual Spanish-speaking immigrants may reinforce monolingual-like patterns in certain speech communities (Shin & Van Buren, 2016). ...
... Some find that bilinguals have higher subject pronoun expression rates and decreased sensitivity to discourse constraints on variation (Silva-Corvalán, 2014, whereas others find no differences between monolingual and bilingual children (Goldin, 2021;Shin & Van Buren, 2016). As Cerrón-Palomino (2016) notes, the conflicting findings may be related to differences among Spanish-speaking speech communities in the United States; in particular, continued contact with and influx of monolingual Spanish-speaking immigrants may reinforce monolingual-like patterns in certain speech communities (Shin & Van Buren, 2016). ...
This study explores variable Spanish subject pronoun expression (e.g., yo veo ~ veo ) in Spanish-English speaking children in different regions of the United States (U.S.): Los Angeles (LA), California, and the Tri-Cities area of the state of Washington. We also compare the U.S. children to monolingual Spanish-speaking children in Mexico. Binary logistic regression analyses of 2,064 verb tokens produced by nine U.S. children and nine children in Mexico, ages 5;11 to 7 years old, show that the children are sensitive to linguistic factors that typically influence children’s Spanish subject pronoun expression in their respective communities. In addition, we find that the LA children’s subject pronoun expression is predicted by lexical frequency. A subsequent analysis of the LA children’s frequent verbs uncovers two phrases with high degrees of prefabrication, yo creo and yo no sé , which, we argue, obscure the LA children’s sensitivity to Reference, all while acting as central exemplars of a [1sg+cognitive verb] construction.
... Another predictor of subject pronoun expression is tense/mood/aspect morphology or 'TMA'. Specifically, verbs in the imperfect tense (imperfective past) favor pronoun expression, while verbs in the preterit (perfective past) favor pronoun omission (Abreu 2009;Bentivoglio 1987: 45;Flores-Ferrán 2002;Hurtado 2005;Lastra and Martín Butragueño 2015;Michnowicz 2015;Orozco 2015;Otheguy and Zentella 2012;Shin 2014;Shin and Van Buren 2016;among others). Although the TMA effect may be related to ambiguity in the verb endings (1sg and 3sg share the same verb form in the imperfect, but are distinct in the preterit), I assume that the relationship between TMA categories and subject pronoun expression is routinized. ...
... Furthermore, they note that there is no evidence of any delay in their development, as their pronoun patterns were on par with monolingual children in Mexico (Shin 2016). The authors explain the lack of any bilingual effects by pointing out that the children hailed from farmworker communities that have tight-knit social networks, a continued influx of immigrants from Mexico, and many monolingual Spanish speakers (Shin and Van Buren 2016;Van Buren 2017;Villa, Shin and Nagata 2014). Indeed, it is likely that children in these farmworker communities experience a higher amount of exposure to Spanish than, for example, Silva-Corvalán's grandchildren. ...
... Moreover, expressed subject pronouns are relatively infrequent in general. The adults in Shin's Corpus of Spanish in Washington/Montana expressed pronouns at a rate of 22% (Shin and Van Buren 2016). In other words, most of the time adults omit subject pronouns. ...
The Interface Hypothesis predicts that syntax-discourse interface features are acquired later than features involving the interface between syntax and other components of grammar. The Frequency Hypothesis predicts that frequent grammatical patterns are acquired earlier than infrequent ones. This study tests these hypotheses by examining Spanish subject pronoun expression in interviews with 28 U.S. bilingual children of Mexican-descent. Binary logistic regression analyses demonstrate that the children’s pronoun expression is significantly constrained by switch-reference, a discourse-pragmatic factor, but not tense/mood/aspect, a morphological factor. These results do not support the Interface Hypothesis since the children acquire a discourse-pragmatic constraint before a morphological one. Instead, frequency effects can explain the findings: the more frequent the constraint, the earlier it is acquired.
... Además, los resultados cuantitativos ayudan a crear una jerarquía de probabilidades dentro de un solo grupo de factores (ej., Cambio de referencia), es decir, las probabilidades dentro de un grupo de factores que favorecen a los SP explícitos (ej., cambio de referencia) versus aquellos que no favorecen a los SP explícitos (ej., continuidad de referencia). Además, la inclusión del hablante como un efecto aleatorio en el análisis multivariado es una forma de controlar por el hablante individual y asegurar de que los resultados obtenidos sean generalizables al conjunto de datos en general, y que los patrones observados no se deben a que ningún hablante en particular sesgue los resultados (Bayley, Greer y Holland 2013;Shin 2014;Michnowicz 2015;Shin y Van Buren 2016). ...
... En particular, el efecto desfavorecedor de SP explícitos con el imperfecto (PP = .35) no era de esperar y contradice los hallazgos generales en la bibliografía (tanto los estudios que toman en cuenta todas las personas gramaticales como los que incluyen solo una persona) que demuestran una preferencia fuerte por SP explícitos con el imperfecto al compararse con otros TMA (Silva Corvalán 1982;Cameron 1994;Travis 2007;Carvalho y Bessett 2015;Orozco 2015Orozco , 2016Shin y Van Buren 2016;Lastra y Martín Butragueño 2015). No obstante, el hallazgo presente es consistente con nosotros variable (Limerick, En prensa). ...
... y .46, respectivamente) sí indican patrones semejantes a los de otras variedades mexicanas (Michnowicz 2015;Shin 2016). Además, la preferencia de tú explícito para referencia específica es consistente con variedades dominicanas (ej., Martínez-Sanz 2011; Alfaraz 2015) y peninsulares (Cameron 1993), no en términos de las tasas generales, pero en el sentido de que las tasas para tú específico son más altas que las tasas de tú no específico (ej., Alfaraz 2015: específico 85% vs. no específico: 66%). ...
Se emplean datos de un corpus conversacional del español mexicano en Atlanta, Georgia para examinar ejemplos de la expresión del sujeto pronominal (ESP) de segunda persona singular (n = 478) en términos de frecuencia y restricciones, incorporando factores tales como tiempo-modo-aspecto (TMA), cambio de referencia y especificidad en un análisis de regresión logística. Los resultados sugieren que tú, al igual que otros sujetos, está fuertemente afectado por el cambio de referencia y TMA. Sin embargo, el efecto de TMA es único en el sentido de que se demuestra que el aspecto imperfecto desfavorece tú explícito en relación con otros TMA, divergiendo de estudios previos. Además, la especificidad-un factor que se ha encontrado repetidamente significativo en la bibliografía-es inoperante, lo que sugiere que tú se comporta de manera diferente en este dialecto con respecto a su sensibilidad a factores lingüísticos.
... Is the vernacular feature /f/ aspiration, which is typical of the participants' speech communities in Mexico, retained in the migrant setting in the U.S.? Or does this nonstandard feature associated with rural speech undergo levelingthe decrease of variable, typically marked, features (Trudgill 1986: 98)in the face of migration and bilingualism? Though migration can result in leveling, social network theory predicts that tight-knit groups promote the maintenance of vernacular features (Milroy 1987), and considering the tight-knit social networks found in this community (Shin and Van Buren 2016), it is expected that /f/ aspiration remains a stable variable among farmworkers in the Pacific Northwest of Mexican descent. ...
... The grammatical structure of Spanish subject pronoun expression has been investigated in this community, however, in order to test whether patterns conditioning language use change across generations. Shin and Van Buren (2016) find that patterns are maintained in the children's speech, which they attribute to the presence of tight-knit social networks, typical of communities which are poor and rural. Indeed, this community has characteristics which suggest that there are salient local networks capable of exerting pressure on individuals' language behavior. ...
... The nonstandard feature /f/ aspiration, a long-standing variable in Spanish, is found in the migrant farmworker community in the Pacific Northwest described in Villa et al. (2014) and Shin and Van Buren (2016). What is the trajectory of /f/ aspiration in this particular migrant setting? ...
Fricative /f/ aspiration (i. e., /f/ -> [h] in words such as afuera ‘outside’ and fui ‘went.1sg’) is a nonstandard rural feature of Spanish that occurs in a Pacific Northwest speech community of migrant farmworkers of Mexican descent. While the historical change in Spanish from /f/ > [h] has an extensive literature (see Naro 1972; Penny 1990; Pensado 1993; Torreblanca 1984), the social and linguistic factors that condition the variable’s synchronic use are poorly understood (Renaud 2014). This study examines the current trajectory of /f/ aspiration in the context of migration in the U.S., utilizing sociolinguistic interviews conducted with 28 participants ranging in age from 17 to 71, born in either Mexico or the U.S. The study demonstrates that speakers who are more tightly integrated into local family and agriculture networks are more likely to produce [h]. A significant interaction between gender and age is also found: while women of all ages are sensitive to the standard variant and use less of the stigmatized variant [h] overall, young men are robust producers of [h]. It is suggested that this variant holds covert prestige among men of Mexican descent working in agriculture in the migrant setting of the Pacific Northwest.
... Scholars have begun to pursue this question (Hudson Kam 2015;Miller 2013;Shin 2016;Smith et al. 2007Smith et al. , 2013, but few have focused on bilingual children's acquisition of variable grammatical patterns (cf. Shin and Buren 2016). ...
... These children reside in the U.S. and are part of a community of farm workers of Mexican descent who travel to Montana each summer to pick cherries. For more detailed descriptions of this community, see Villa et al. (2014) and Shin and Buren (2016). We compare these U.S. children's direct object clitic placement patterns to those found among (i) 21 adults from their same community of farm workers (10 monolingual, 11 bilingual); and (ii) 43 monolingual children in Mexico, ages 6;3-11;9 (mean age 9;1). ...
... Our study indicates that bilingual and monolingual children are similar with respect to variable clitic placement, and thus provides preliminary evidence that bilingual children do not struggle with variable grammatical patterns (see also Shin and Van Buren 2016). We assert that the endeavor to study bilingual children's variable clitic placement and other variable grammatical patterns is of utmost importance, as we still know little about how these patterns develop during childhood. ...
This study addresses whether monolingual and bilingual Spanish-speaking children differ in their acquisition of grammar by examining direct object clitic placement in children's narratives. Specifically, we analyze contexts where either proclisis or enclisis is possible (Lo voy a ver ~ Voy a verlo). Corpus studies of adult monolingual Spanish show that proclisis is more frequent than enclisis. Furthermore, variation between proclisis and enclisis is constrained by linguistic factors, such as verb lexeme. We hypothesize that if bilingual children's Spanish syntax is influenced by English, they will (i) produce higher rates of enclisis, and (ii) display decreased sensitivity to factors that constrain variation. One previous study of bilingual children suggests that English influences Spanish clitic placement. Pérez-Leroux, Cuza, and Thomas (Biling Lang Cogn 14(02):221–232, 2011) asked children to repeat sentences with proclisis and enclisis, and found that bilingual children reordered sentences with proclisis, and produced enclisis instead. In contrast, research on adult bilinguals' production of proclisis/enclisis suggests no impact of English on Spanish. In fact, bilingual adults' proclisis rates are similar to those of monolingual adults, and the same linguistic factors constrain variation between proclisis and enclisis among monolinguals and bilinguals alike (e.g. Gutiérrez M, Hisp Res J 9(4):299–313, 2008; Peace M, Southwest J Linguist 31(1):131– 160, 2013). Nevertheless, to the best of our knowledge, no previous research has examined variable clitic placement in bilingual children's naturalistic production data. Our study aims to address this gap in the literature, and asks whether bilingual children produce higher rates of enclisis than monolingual children do, which is predicted if indeed bilinguals transfer English word order into Spanish. Furthermore, we ask whether monolingual and bilingual children are similar to each other and to adults with respect to the tendency to pair proclisis with certain verb lexemes and enclisis with others. To address these questions, third person direct object clitics were extracted from narratives/sociolinguistic interviews with (i) 17 Spanish-English bilingual children of Mexican descent in the U.S. and (ii) 43 monolingual children in Mexico. All child participants were between 6 and 11 years old. Our results show no differences between monolingual and bilingual children, neither in overall rates of enclisis, nor in rates with particular verb lexemes. Furthermore, data from 21 adults from the same community as the bilingual children suggest that children match patterns of use found in their community. We interpret this as evidence that children learn probabilistic patterns of variation by attending to distributional tendencies in the input. We also discuss how our findings contribute to the current and pressing need to find ways to differentiate between typical and atypical bilingual language development in contexts of language dominance shift. Abstract This study addresses whether monolingual and bilingual Spanish-speaking children differ in their acquisition of grammar by examining direct object clitic placement in children's narratives. Specifically, we analyze contexts where either proclisis or enclisis is possible (Lo voy a ver ~ Voy a verlo). Corpus studies of adult monolin-gual Spanish show that proclisis is more frequent than enclisis. Furthermore, variation between proclisis and enclisis is constrained by linguistic factors, such as verb lexeme. We hypothesize that if bilingual children's Spanish syntax is influenced by English, they will (i) produce higher rates of enclisis, and (ii) display decreased sensitivity to factors that constrain variation. One previous study of bilingual children suggests that English influences Spanish clitic placement. Pérez-Leroux, Cuza, and Thomas (Biling Lang Cogn 14(02):221–232, 2011) asked children to repeat sentences with proclisis and enclisis, and found that bilingual children reordered sentences with proclisis, and produced enclisis instead. In contrast, research on adult bilinguals' production of proclisis/enclisis suggests no impact of English on Spanish. In fact, bilingual adults' proclisis rates are similar to those of monolingual adults, and the same linguistic factors constrain variation between proclisis and enclisis among monolinguals and bilinguals alike (e.g. Gutiérrez M, Hisp Res J 9(4):299–313, 2008; Peace M, Southwest J Linguist 31(1):131–160, 2013). Nevertheless, to the best of our knowledge, no previous research has examined variable clitic placement in bilingual children's naturalistic production data. Our study aims to address this gap in the literature, and asks whether bilingual children produce higher rates of enclisis than monolingual children do, which is predicted if indeed bilinguals transfer English word order into Spanish. Furthermore, we ask whether monolingual and bilingual children are similar to each other and to adults with respect to the tendency to pair proclisis with certain verb lexemes and enclisis with others. To address these questions, third person direct object clitics were extracted from narratives/sociolinguistic interviews with (i) 17 Spanish-English bilingual children of Mexican descent in the U.S. and (ii) 43 monolingual children in Mexico. All child participants were between 6 and 11 years old. Our results show no differences between monolingual and bilingual children, neither in overall rates of enclisis, nor in rates with particular verb lexemes. Furthermore, data from 21 adults from the same community as the bilingual children suggest that children match patterns of use found in their community. We interpret this as evidence that children learn probabilistic patterns of variation by attending to distribu-tional tendencies in the input. We also discuss how our findings contribute to the current and pressing need to find ways to differentiate between typical and atypical bilingual language development in contexts of language dominance shift.
... Scholars have begun to pursue this question (Hudson Kam 2015;Miller 2013;Shin 2016;Smith et al. 2007Smith et al. , 2013, but few have focused on bilingual children's acquisition of variable grammatical patterns (cf. Shin and Buren 2016). ...
... These children reside in the U.S. and are part of a community of farm workers of Mexican descent who travel to Montana each summer to pick cherries. For more detailed descriptions of this community, see Villa et al. (2014) and Shin and Buren (2016). We compare these U.S. children's direct object clitic placement patterns to those found among (i) 21 adults from their same community of farm workers (10 monolingual, 11 bilingual); and (ii) 43 monolingual children in Mexico, ages 6;3-11;9 (mean age 9;1). ...
... Our study indicates that bilingual and monolingual children are similar with respect to variable clitic placement, and thus provides preliminary evidence that bilingual children do not struggle with variable grammatical patterns (see also Shin and Van Buren 2016). We assert that the endeavor to study bilingual children's variable clitic placement and other variable grammatical patterns is of utmost importance, as we still know little about how these patterns develop during childhood. ...
This study addresses whether monolingual and bilingual Spanish-speaking children differ in their acquisition of grammar by examining direct object clitic placement in children’s narratives. Specifically, we analyze contexts where either proclisis or enclisis is possible (Lo voy a ver ~ Voy a verlo). Corpus studies of adult monolingual Spanish show that proclisis is more frequent than enclisis. Furthermore, variation between proclisis and enclisis is constrained by linguistic factors, such as verb lexeme. We hypothesize that if bilingual children’s Spanish syntax is influenced by English, they will (i) produce higher rates of enclisis, and (ii) display decreased sensitivity to factors that constrain variation. One previous study of bilingual children suggests that English influences Spanish clitic placement. Pérez-Leroux, Cuza, and Thomas (Biling Lang Cogn 14(02):221–232, 2011) asked children to repeat sentences with proclisis and enclisis, and found that bilingual children reordered sentences with proclisis, and produced enclisis instead. In contrast, research on adult bilinguals’ production of proclisis/enclisis suggests no impact of English on Spanish. In fact, bilingual adults’ proclisis rates are similar to those of monolingual adults, and the same linguistic factors constrain variation between proclisis and enclisis among monolinguals and bilinguals alike (e.g. Gutiérrez M, Hisp Res J 9(4):299–313, 2008; Peace M, Southwest J Linguist 31(1):131–160, 2013). Nevertheless, to the best of our knowledge, no previous research has examined variable clitic placement in bilingual children’s naturalistic production data.
... same reference). In addition, the inclusion of the speaker as a random effect in the statistical model is a way of controlling for the individual speaker and ensuring that the results obtained are generalizable to the data set as a whole, and that the patterns are not due to particular speakers skewing the results (Bayley et al., 2013;Michnowicz, 2015;Shin, 2014;Shin & Van Buren, 2016). ...
... Also consistent with previous studies in general (e.g. Cameron, 1994;Carvalho & Bessett, 2015;Lastra & Martín Butragueño, 2015;Orozco, 2015Orozco, , 2016Shin & Van Buren, 2016;Silva-Corvalán, 1982;Travis, 2007), imperfect verbs favored yo while all other TMAs disfavored yo (fw = .59 vs. .41, ...
The current study analyzes variable subject pronoun expression (SPE) for first-person singular (1sg) and third-person subjects in a variety of Mexican Spanish spoken by first-generation Mexican immigrants in the state of Georgia, Southeastern U.S. Conversational data from sociolinguistic interviews are employed to examine tokens of 1sg and third-person variable SPE and their usage patterns, considering factors such as tense-mood-aspect (TMA), switch reference, polarity, and verb class by means of logistic regression analyses. Results suggest that all four factors influence 1sg variation, but that third-person variation is restricted to switch reference and TMA. In addition, a significant link between switch reference and TMA is found for third-person subjects, but not for 1sg. The findings lend further support to previous scholars advocating the importance of studying individual grammatical persons in SPE research as this can reveal previously obfuscated nuances in the patterns of subject variation.
... Bayley, Greer & Holland 2013;Michnowicz 2015;Shin & Van Buren 2016). Furthermore, the analysis of lexical effects of the verb was employed by incorporating the 20 most frequent verbal infinitives in the data set as random effects(Orozco 2016;Orozco and Hurtado 2021). ...
This paper reports on a comparative analysis of variable subject pronoun expression (SPE) among first-generation Mexican immigrants in the U.S. with differing regional origins. Using sociolinguistic interview data collected in Georgia, occurrence rates and usage patterns of first-person singular SPs were examined among two groups of speakers: those hailing from Mexico City (N=8) and those from other Mexican regions, such as Guerrero, Zacatecas, and Colima, among others (N=12). From a variationist sociolinguistic perspective, rates and constraints on SPs were examined comparatively across the two groups by means of logistic regression analyses in Rbrul, with results indicating wide variation in pronoun rates both across and within groups. This suggests that Mexican Spanish may exhibit a wider range of variation in SP rates than was previously assumed. Regarding usage patterns, the linguistic constraints on SPE (switch reference, TMA, verb class, polarity) show remarkable similarities between Mexico City speakers and non-Mexico City speakers, suggesting cross-regional uniformity for first-person singular SPE in Mexican dialects. Additionally, the social predictors of age and gender were examined, and, while no significant main effects were observed, interaction effects between the linguistic and social predictors were differentially operative between Mexico City and non-Mexico City speakers, reflecting a more nuanced view on the sociolinguistic conditioning of variable SPE.
... Nevertheless, Brennan's overall pronoun rate and distribution of pronouns in same-and switch-reference are unattested in other studies. Thus, it may be that English morphosyntax leaves its footprints on bilingual children's Spanish subject pronoun expression, but only among those children who experience very restricted exposure to Spanish (Shin & Van Buren, 2016). ...
The primary aim of the chapter is to extract broad generalizations from the literature, to interpret those generalizations within current theories of language acquisition and bilingualism. In particular, two questions are explored:
1. Do child heritage speakers and monolingual children acquire Spanish morphosyntax at the same rate?
2. Do child heritage speakers’ morphosyntactic patterns reflect influence from English?
The literature reviewed suggests that reduced exposure to Spanish results in slower acquisition of Spanish morphosyntax. With respect to the second question, it appears that English influences Spanish morphosyntax during heritage language development; however, with age, heritage speakers become increasingly adept at suppressing features that do not correspond to communicative expectations, which in turn reduces the likelihood of structural convergence. The chapter also provides discussion that illuminates unanswered questions, and thus suggests topics that are ripe for future investigation.
... Recent comparative sociolinguistic methods have allowed for the comparison of pairs of variable grammars. VAN BUREN 2016, to name a few). Finally, the same speaker's variable grammars for both languages can also be compared, enabling crosslinguistic comparisons of grammars that coexist in the same community and even in the same speaker (CARVALHO; , KERN 2017. ...
This article discusses the contributions made by variationist sociolinguistics to the study of languages in contact. After summarizing the development of this subfield and its theoretical and methodological implications, 3rd p.sg. subject pronoun expression is examined in Portuguese and Spanish in contact in Northern Uruguay. Based on comparative sociolinguistics, the results show that this variable use among bilinguals does not converge into a single system. Lastly, it calls for more studies in Portuguese dialects in contact with other languages that follow the framework of variationist sociolinguistics.
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Research on heritage language development in children can profit greatly by incorporating insights from analyses of structured variation, which is defined as the interchange of linguistic forms where the choice to use one form over the other is probabilistically conditioned by linguistic and social factors. This article reviews the limited research on bilingual children's structured variation, focussing specifically on child heritage speakers of Spanish. It is argued that careful attention to structured variation advances our understanding of heritage language development in childhood and can help us move beyond a deficit view of bilingualism.
This variationist study examines the contexts of appearance of the Spanish intensifiers muy (very) and bien (very) in the bilingual community of Tucson, Arizona. Although some descriptive work has been published on these intensifiers ( Serradilla Castaño, 2006 ), little quantitative research has been conducted with the exceptions of studies by Brown and Cortés-Torres (2013) and Kanwit, Terán, and Pisabarro Sarrió (2017) . Based on a formal, syntactical analysis of the intensifiers, the present study adds to this research ( Pastor and Armstrong, 2016 ) by establishing possible new conditioning factors such as emphasis and reiteration for the selection of one variant over the other. An analysis of 1,385 tokens in 43 interviews shows an overall use of muy of 81%, a figure that is comparable to the results reported in most previous studies. Verb type, emphasis, and reiteration prove significant in determining which variant is used. A discussion of these results provides a more in-depth description of the characteristics of these intensifiers in the focal bilingual community and offers a position on the debate over whether bien has come to the end of its grammaticalization process or continues to hold a positive value from its past as a modal adverb.
This paper examines the dynamics of linguistic change in Madrid (Spain), exploring the ways in which values related to the dialect–standard dichotomy help explain them. The analysis focuses on the delateralization of the palatal lateral approximant /ʎ/ and the development of yeísmo (merger). Three concentric levels of dissemination of the innovation can be distinguished in Madrid: 1) the city center, where yeísmo seems to be stable and shows no variation; 2) the cities on the outskirts of the metropolitan area, which show variable yeísmo; and 3) the towns of the region, where there is the highest variability.
This analysis broadens the scope of the research to Vallecas, a neighborhood to the southeast of Madrid, where immigrants from rural Spain settled throughout the 20th century, to demonstrate the geographic and social sequence of change: rural towns in the region > peripheral urban communities > districts on the outskirts of Madrid > center of Madrid.
The current study examines variable clitic placement (CP) in a Mexican community in the metropolitan Atlanta area. By employing sociolinguistic interview data from 20 first-generation Mexican speakers, clitic frequencies and constraints are analyzed. Tokens of proclisis and enclisis were coded for potential linguistic and social factors that influence clitic usage (e.g., topic persistence, specific clitic used, English proficiency, age, gender), and a logistic regression analysis was carried out using Rbrul (Johnson, 2009). Results indicate a proclisis rate of 64%, which is comparable to other varieties of Mexican Spanish. The regression analysis revealed that CP is sensitive to the particular construction used, the individual clitic, pause/hesitation phenomena, and the speaker's gender. Additionally, English proficiency showed no effect on CP. This analysis supports previous research that CP is impermeable to contact-induced change and also reveals new conditioning factors (specific clitic, pauses) that have not been examined in previous literature.
Variationist research on subject pronoun expression (SPE) in Spanish typically incorporates all grammatical persons/numbers into the same analysis, with important exceptions such as studies focusing exclusively on first-person singular (e.g. Travis 2005, 2007; Travis and Torres Cacoullos 2012), third-person singular (Shin 2014), and third-person plural subjects (Lapidus and Otheguy 2005). The current study is the first variationist analysis (to the best of my knowledge) to focus solely on first-person plural SPE. It is well-established that nosotros/nosotras exhibits one of the lowest rates of SPE relative to the other persons/numbers; however, factors conditioning its variation are less understood. Conversational corpus data from Mexican Spanish are employed to examine tokens of first-person plural SPE (n=660) in terms of frequency and constraints, incorporating factors such as TMA, switch reference, and verb class in logistic regression analyses. Results suggest that nosotros, like other subjects, is strongly impacted by switch reference and tense-mood-aspect (TMA). However, the TMA effect is unique in that preterit aspect is shown to favor overt nosotros relative to other TMAs, diverging from previous studies. Furthermore, verb class-a factor found to be repeatedly significant in the literature-is inoperative for nosotros. These results suggest that nosotros does not respond to the same factors as other persons/numbers. Additionally, the findings lend support to researchers regarding the importance of studying individual persons/numbers in subject variation research.
This study examines subject expression from a pragmatic perspective in an emerging bilingual community of Roswell, Georgia, an exurb of Atlanta. Using sociolinguistic interviews conducted in Roswell, first-person singular subject pronoun (SP) usage is analyzed among 10 Mexican speakers within five distinct pragmatic contexts: salient referent, switch focus, contrastive focus, pragmatic weight, and epistemic parentheticals. A comparison is made between Georgia speakers and monolingual Mexican speakers in Querétaro in order to explore the possible weakening of pragmatic constraints due to English contact. Results indicate that a contact hypothesis is not supported in terms of overall overt pronoun usage as evidenced by similar frequencies when compared to monolingual Mexican varieties. However, an increased use of overt SPs in the context of salient referent as well as a diminished use of overt SPs in switch focus contexts is found, suggesting a potential weakened sensitivity to such pragmatic constraints.
Spanish is spoken by approximately 406 million people, making it the second most commonly spoken language in the world. A fair estimate is that approximately one-third of this population is bilingual. This article focuses on Spanish-speaking bilingual youth in a variety of sociolinguistic situations around the world, summarizing a sample of research in four broad areas - linguistic structure, family language policy, education, and identity - and points out areas for future research.
The role of English in shaping U.S. Spanish is widely debated. Evidence for English influence has been found in New York where greater familiarity with English correlates with changes in subject pronoun use (Otheguy and Zentella, 2012). The present study further examines the impact of English by studying divergent contexts, where pronoun omission is common in Spanish, but not English, as well as convergent contexts, in which omission is common in both Spanish and English (imperatives, e.g. Ø sit down, and coordinate clauses maintaining reference, e.g. we came in and Ø sat down). Analyses of over 25,000 verbs in the speech of two generations of Latinos in New York indicate that English acts not only as a promoter of pronoun use in Spanish, but also as an inhibitor of pronoun use in contexts where both languages tend to omit pronouns. progress.
The alternation between overt and null subject personal pronouns (SPPs) has been widely researched in various populations of Spanish-speakers, including adult monolinguals, bilinguals, and second language learners of Spanish. Very few studies have investigated this variable syntactic phenomenon in monolingual first language (L1) acquisition of Spanish. In this study, speech samples from 13 monolingual Mexican children under age eight were analyzed to examine SPP use. Compared to adults and older (bilingual) children, the Mexican monolingual children's rates of overt SPP use in three types of speech contexts were very low. This was the case for almost all grammatical persons, but was particularly noteworthy for third person singular contexts, in which the Mexican children produced only 3.1% overt él/ella (he/she). These results are interpreted as an indication that children in this age range avoid overt SPPs, and alternate between overt lexical NPs and null pronouns instead.
Adults’ variable use of grammatical structures is highly systematic (e.g. Labov 1994). Yet, we know very little about how or when the variable use of morphosyntactic structures develops during childhood. The current study begins to address this lacuna in the literature by investigating overt versus null subject pronoun expression (e.g. yo bailo ~ bailo) in child Spanish. Over 2,500 finite verbs were extracted from sociolinguistic interviews conducted with 24 monolingual Spanish-speaking children in Oaxaca, Mexico, ages six to eight years old (mean age 7;0). The children’s rate of pronoun expression was only nine percent, which suggests that the overproduction of null subjects during null-subject first language acquisition persists into school age. Despite their infrequent use of pronouns, the children’s behavior nonetheless demonstrates a) systematic patterns of variation, and b) evidence of an emerging adult-like system. We demonstrate this through multivariate analysis of six factors routinely shown to constrain pronoun use among adults: Person/number of the verb, Switch-reference, TMA, Semantic class of the verb, Clause type, and Reflexivity. Results indicate that the children in the current study are sensitive to the factors that are the strongest predictors of adult pronoun expression. Taken together, these results – both the low rate of pronoun use and sensitivity restricted to only the most robust conditioning factors – reflect a conservative learning pattern, whereby children introduce new forms into their discourse in a constrained fashion. Additionally, the study suggests that the acquisition of adult-like patterns of morphosyntactic variation proceeds in a predictable sequence: the stronger the pattern among adults, the earlier it emerges in children.
Previous studies have shown that some of the probabilistic discourse-pragmatic predictors of overt and null subject pronouns are subject to erosion In this study we investigate the 'Continuity of reference variable' (Continuity). This variable refers to whether a verb maintains the same subject as the previous verb or changes it. Overt subject pronouns are used more frequently in 'switch-reference' contexts than in 'same-reference contexts'. We analyzed over 27,000 instances of verb use among first-generation newcomers and second-generation Latinos in New York City (NYC). Results showed that second-generation Latinos are less sensitive to the Continuity variable than newcomers. But this change is conditioned in part by functional considerations, in this case by the communicative utility of pronouns in different contexts. Bilinguals born or raised in NYC are less sensitive to Continuity in first-and second-person singular verbs but, in third-person singular verbs, they are like monolingual newcomers. Thus the change occurs in the part of the grammar where using an overt pronoun is less crucial. Establishing clear referents is easier for first-and second-person singular pronouns than for third-person due to the possibility of competing referents for the latter, but not the former. These findings support a functional explanation of linguistic change in contact situations: areas of the grammar that are more useful for communication tend to resist change under contact, while less crucial areas are more permeable to change.
It is well known that women lead language change in monolingual settings, but this women effect has not been thoroughly investigated for bilingual settings where factors such as language contact come into play. This study examines an ongoing change in Spanish spoken in New York City (NYC) having to do with the alternation between expression and omission of subject personal pronouns with tensed verbs (e.g. canto ~ yo canto, 'I sing'). Bivariate and multivariate analyses of 116 NYC Spanish speakers' pronoun use show that Latin American women are ahead of men with respect to both increasing rates of pronoun use and desensitization to the impact of switch-reference on pronoun use. It is suggested that the female lead among Latin American immigrants is due to extensive intergenerational contact between women and their high-pronoun using bilingual children.
Washington State, demographically speaking, represents the northernmost boundary, la nueva frontera, of what might now be called the Spanish speaking West. Previously, Spanish speakers in the West were concentrated mostly in the Southwest. However, in recent years the Hispanic population of the U.S. has steadily grown, with the result that it forms the largest minority group in the nation, extending into areas that traditionally have not had significant Hispanic communities, including the Pacific Northwest. Little research to date has been carried out on the Spanish-speaking Hispanic populations in that region, particularly in interior Washington. This article seeks to begin to fill that research lacuna. Analyses of U.S. Census data, as well as sociolinguistic interviews with Washington Hispanics, indicate that what used to be the Spanish-speaking Southwest can now be subsumed under the broader ‘Spanish-speaking West,’ with Washington at its northernmost border.
The role of English in shaping US Spanish is widely debated. Evidence for English influence has been found in New York where greater familiarity with English correlates with changes in subject pronoun use (Otheguy & Zentella 2012). The present study further examines the impact of English by studying divergent contexts, where pronoun omission is common in Spanish, but not English, as well as convergent contexts, in which omission is common in both Spanish and English (imperatives, e.g. Ø sit down, and coordinate clauses maintaining reference, e.g. we came in and Ø sat down). Analyses of over 25,000 verbs in the speech of two generations of Latinos in New York indicate that English acts not only as a promoter of pronoun use in Spanish, but also as an inhibitor of pronoun use in contexts where both languages tend to omit pronouns.
Introduces articles in this journal volume on bilingual borrowing. Each paper carries out two methodological imperatives: (1) All are focused on well-defined speech communities using a standard social network; (2) most authors were members of the communities and data was collected from interactions with their own close contacts. (Author/VWL)
In general Spanish, references to nonspecific third-person plurals are usually made by means of a verb occurring with the null form of the subject pronoun, as in llamaron del banco, rather than by means of a verb occurring with the overt form of the subject pronoun. In contrast to the position in this discussion, the literature presents null pronouns in these nonspecific 3pl contexts as resulting from a categorical syntactic rule, when in fact we consider that they are the result of a strong pragmatic constraint: overt ellos for nonspecific references are rare, not ungrammatical. That is, one occasionally does find in the Spanish of Latin America nonspecific 3pl NPs with overt subject pronouns, as in the disfavored but grammatical ellos llamaron del banco. This study, based on a large corpus of sociolinguistic interviews from the CUNY Project on the Spanish of New York, reveals that, among bilinguals in New York City whose exposure to English is intensive, such nonspecific ellos are even more frequent.
Three degrees of nonspecificity are recognized in the literature on 3pl nonspecific NPs. Among both contact and non-contact speakers, the use of overt nonspecific ellos increases as nonspecificity decreases, though the absolute numbers are much larger in New York. In this way, the contact dialect is a quantitatively enhanced copy of the qualitatively identical pre-contact variety. Since, as the evidence presented here shows, examples of overt nonspecific ellos are found in Spanish in Latin America, their appearance in Spanish in New York does not represent a radical change in the syntax of contact Spanish; instead, these usages are an example of the familiar situation where contact varieties expand usages that were already incipient in the pre-contact community. Thus, the study would appear to indicate that the use of overt nonspecific ellos in New York represents a quantitative change in the strength of a pragmatic constraint that guides the use of subject pronouns, not a qualitative change in a syntactic rule that governs their use.
The variable use of subject personal pronouns (SPPs) in null subject
languages, though extensively researched in several Spanish dialects, is
for the first time examined in a contact variety of Puerto Rican residents
of New York City (NYC). In a large-scale study conducted by
Flores-Ferrán (2002), a number of
contradictions arose with regard to how the degree of exposure to NYC may
mediate the influence of overt SPP use on speakers. The degree of exposure
to NYC was considered as indirect contact with English. This article further
analyzes how 41 Puerto Rican residents in NYC use overt SPPs, and it also
describes the patterns of each group: the recent arrivals, established
residents, and native-born NYC Puerto Ricans. Of the larger study, this
article examines the verbs' person and number, switch reference, and
exposure to NYC. A striking resemblance in the patterns of overt SPP
use was found among NYC residents, as a group, when compared to those
reported on the island (Ávila-Jiménez, 1995, 1996; Cameron, 1992). However, when considering years of
exposure to the City, the NYC native-born group appeared to have the
strongest tendency to use explicit SPPs. In spite of the fact that this
distinction was found with the NYC native-born group, there remains
little evidence in favor of an English contact hypothesis. a
Many simultaneous bilinguals exhibit loss or incomplete acquisition of their heritage language under conditions of exposure and use of the majority language (Silva-Corvalán, 1994, 2003; Polinsky, 1997; Toribio, 2001; Montrul, 2002). Recent work within discourse-functional (Silva-Corvalán 1994) and generative perspectives (Sorace, 2000; Montrul; 2002; Tsimpli, Sorace, Heycock, Filaci and Bouba, 2003, in press) suggests that while syntax proper is impervious to language loss or attrition, syntax-related interfaces like lexical-semantics and discourse-pragmatics are not. This study investigates argument expression in adult simultaneous bilinguals who are heritage speakers of Spanish, because in this language subjects, direct, and indirect objects are regulated by syntactic, pragmatic and semantic factors. It was hypothesized that if language loss affects interface areas of competence more than the purely syntactic domains, then Spanish heritage speakers should display robust knowledge of null subjects as well as object clitics, but variable behavior in the pragmatic distribution of null vs. overt subjects, the a preposition with animate direct objects, and cases of semantically based dative clitic-doubling. Results of an oral production task administered to 24 intermediate and advanced heritage speakers and 20 monolinguals confirmed the hypotheses. With the erosion of pragmatic and semantic features, the grammars of the intermediate proficiency Spanish heritage speakers appear to display morphosyntactic convergence with English in the expression of subject and object arguments.
How do children develop bilingual competence? Do bilingual children develop language in the same way as monolinguals? Set in the context of findings on language development, this book examines the acquisition of English and Spanish by two brothers in the first six years of their lives. Based on in-depth and meticulous analyses of naturalistic data, it explores how the systems of both languages affect each other as the children develop, and how different levels of exposure to each language influence the nature of acquisition. The author demonstrates that the children's grammars and lexicons follow a developmental path similar to that of monolinguals, but that cross-linguistic interactions affecting lexical, semantic and discourse-pragmatic aspects arise in Spanish when exposure to it diminishes around the age of four. The first of its kind, this original study is a must-read for students and researchers in bilingualism, child development, language acquisition and language contact.
Thirty-three million people in the United States speak some variety of Spanish, making it the second most used language in the country. Some of these people are recent immigrants from many different countries who have brought with them the linguistic traits of their homelands, while others come from families who have lived in this country for hundreds of years. John M. Lipski traces the importance of the Spanish language in the United States and presents an overview of the major varieties of Spanish that are spoken there. Varieties of Spanish in the United States providesüin a single volumeüuseful descriptions of the distinguishing characteristics of the major varieties, from Cuban and Puerto Rican, through Mexican and various Central American strains, to the traditional varieties dating back to the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries found in New Mexico and Louisiana. Each profile includes a concise sketch of the historical background of each Spanish-speaking group; current demographic information; its sociolinguistic configurations; and information about the phonetics, morphology, syntax, lexicon, and each group's interactions with English and other varieties of Spanish. Lipski also outlines the scholarship that documents the variation and richness of these varieties, and he probes the phenomenon popularly known as Spanglish. The distillation of an entire academic career spent investigating and promoting the Spanish language in the United States, this valuable reference for teachers, scholars, students, and interested bystanders serves as a testimony to the vitality and legitimacy of the Spanish language in the United States. It is recommended for courses on Spanish in the United States, Spanish dialectology and sociolinguistics, and teaching Spanish to heritage speakers.
The more than 2 million predominantly bilingual Spanish speakers from different parts of Latin America who live in New York City make it an ideal setting to study language contact and dialectal leveling. The Spanish feature under study is presence versus absence of subject personal pronouns (e.g., yo canto, "I sing" ~ canto, "I sing"). Variationist sociolinguistic research is conducted through bivariate analyses of pronoun occurrence rates and multivariate hierarchical analyses of the social, grammatical, and discourse-communicative factors that probabilistically condition the use of pronouns. Statistical results based on 60,000 pronouns extracted from interviews with a stratified sample of 140 first- and second-generation Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Colombians, Ecuadorians, Mexicans, and Cubans show that contact with English and convergence between speakers from different Latin American regions are molding new forms of Spanish in New York. As predicted, pronoun occurrence rates are higher, and regional rate differences are smaller, in New York than in Latin America. Ranges and rankings of constraint hierarchies are also different in New York, as predicted by contact and leveling hypotheses. The book also studies the opposite force, namely, preservation of the patterns of the Latin American reference lects, even in the Spanish of English-dominant bilinguals. No relationship is seen between pronominal patterns affected by English and reduced proficiency, and a critique is offered of the connection between simplification and incomplete acquisition.
Constraints on linguistic variation are consistent across adult speakers, yielding probabilistic and systematic patterns. Yet, little is known about the development of such patterns during childhood. This study investigates Spanish subject pronoun expression in naturalistic data from 154 monolingual children in Mexico, divided into four age groups: 6-7, 8-9, 10-11, 12+. Results from logistic regressions examining five predictors of pronoun expression in 6,481 verbs show that children's usage is structured and patterned. The study also suggests a developmental progression: as children get older, they become sensitive to more constraints. I conclude by suggesting that children learn patterns of variation by attuning to distributional tendencies in the input, and that the more frequent the patterns are, the easier they are to detect and learn.
This paper examines the variation between null and overt subject pronouns found in Romance null subject languages (NSL). While it is well known that several factors regulate the distribution between these two forms, it is also well known that not all null subject languages behave the same. The contexts in which null and overt subject pronouns are required or forbidden vary across dialects, as well as their rates. This paper examines such quantitative and qualitative differences and proposes two mechanisms to explain them. In the first place, a change in progress in some varieties is responsible for the qualitative and quantitative differences found. I apply Yang’s (2000) model of language change and show that NSLs can become non-NSLs only if there is enough migration, which is what happened in the varieties undergoing the change. In the second place, following Cameron (1992) and Cameron and Flores-Ferrán (2004), I claim that priming effects also play an important role in explaining the quantitative differences across several dialects.
Unexpressed subjects, though rare, do occur systematically in English. In this study, we seek to answer the question of what motivates speaker choice between expressed and unexpressed first singular subjects (i.e. I vs. an unexpressed, or null, pronoun) in a corpus of conversational American English. We find that the apparently widespread cross-linguistic constraint of subject continuity is bound to coreferential coordinating constructions with and, including lexically particular constructions ([I Verb1sgiand Ø Quotative verb1sgi], [I go1sgiand Ø Verb1sgi]), and to an overarching priming constraint, whereby coreferential unexpressed mentions tend to cluster together. A pivotal restriction is prosodic, such that, outside of coordinating constructions, unexpressed 1sg subjects occur only in Intonation-Unit initial position. We therefore find that variable I expression is sensitive to factors operative in subject expression in other languages and in language variation more generally, though paramount are prosodic considerations and particular constructions that may be specific to English.
This study examines the role of social class and gender in an ongoing change in Spanish spoken in New York City (NYC). The change, which has to do with increasing use of Spanish subject pronouns, is correlated with increased exposure to life in NYC and to English. Our investigation of six different national-origin groups shows a connection between affluence and change: the most affluent Latino groups undergo the most increase in pronoun use, while the least affluent undergo no change. This pattern is explained as further indication that resistance to linguistic change is more pronounced in poorer communities as a result of denser social networks. In addition we find a women effect: immigrant women lead men in the increasing use of pronouns. We argue that the women effect in bilingual settings warrants a reevaluation of existing explanations of women as leaders of linguistic change. (Language change, social class, gender, bilingualism, Spanish in the US, pronouns)*
In this study, we test the hypothesis that code-switching promotes grammatical convergence by investigating Spanish first-person singular subject (yo ‘I’) expression in bilingual conversations of New Mexican speakers of Spanish and English. We find that variable yo expression in New Mexican Spanish follows the same grammatical patterning as has been identified for non-contact varieties, and that this is the case regardless of the degree of bilingualism of the speakers. We observe a slightly higher rate of subject expression in the presence of code-switching; however, this is found to be attributable not to the code-switching per se, but to the presence of an English expressed first-person singular subject (I) in the preceding discourse. We interpret this as a cross-linguistic priming effect, and note that the presence of I increases the proportion of first singular subjects that occur in the context where the previous coreferential subject was expressed (be that Spanish yo or English I), an environment that favors yo expression. We conclude that, despite prolonged contact, the data do not support Spanish convergence with English in this variety, nor code-switching as a mechanism of language change. Instead, multivariate analyses indicate that cross-linguistic priming may play a role in ostensible contact-induced change by modestly raising the rate of a superficially similar construction, without accompanying changes in language-particular grammatical patterns.
Examines 1990 Census data for a large sample of the Hispanic-origin population in the Southwest, exploring two possible indices of language maintenance--Spanish home language claiming and English proficiency--as these are influenced by nativity, time, and age of immigration, citizenship status of the foreign born, education, and income. (Author/VWL)
In sociolinguistics, approaches that use the variables of socioeconomic class and social network have often been thought to be irreconcilable. In this article, we explore the connection between these variables and suggest the outlines of a model that can integrate them in a coherent way. This depends on linking a consensus-based microlevel of network with a conflict-based macrolevel of social class. We suggest interpretations of certain sociolinguistic findings, citing detailed evidence from research in Northern Ireland and Philadelphia, which emphasize the need for acknowledging the importance of looseknit network ties in facilitating linguistic innovations. We then propose that the link between network and class can be made via the notion of weak network ties using the process-based model of the macrolevel suggested by Thomas Højrup's theory of life-modes. (Sociolinguistics, sociology, quantitative social dialectology, anthropological linguistics)
In Spanish, subject pronouns may be realized phonetically or as null. Previous research on a wide range of dialects has established a rich patterning of constraints on this variation, with switch reference as the first order linguistic constraint. Recently, however, Paredes Silva (1993), in a study of written Brazilian Portuguese, suggested a more fine-grained analysis of null subject pronoun variation based on a model of discourse connectedness. This study tests Paredes Silva's model on the oral and written Spanish narratives of northern California Mexican-descent preadolescents. Results of multivariate analysis indicate that discourse connectedness provides a more fine-grained account of pronoun variation in the Spanish of these children than switch reference. The study also considers the effect of morphological ambiguity. We suggest that tense and aspect features provide a better explanation for the higher incidence of overt pronouns with imperfect, conditional, and subjunctive verb forms than the functional compensation hypothesis. Finally, we examine pronoun variation across immigrant generations. The results indicate that children with the greatest depth of ties to the United States are less likely to use overt pronouns than children born in Mexico.
In introducing this special issue of Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , we feel it is critical to clarify what we understand ‘linguistic convergence’ to mean in the context of bilingualism, since ‘convergence’ is a technical term more readily associated with the field of language contact than with the field of bilingualism (for recent discussions of the role of convergence in contact see Thomason and Kaufman, 1988; Thomason, 2001; Myers-Scotton, 2002; Clyne, 2003; Winford, 2003). Within the language contact literature, the term invites a variety of uses. Some researchers adopt a definition of convergence that requires that all languages in a contact situation change, sometimes to the extent that the source of a given linguistic feature cannot be determined (see April McMahon's commentary in this issue). For others, convergence may be more broadly defined to also apply to situations in which one language has undergone structural incursions of various sorts from contact with another.
The present article examines one property of bilingual speech – convergence – and strives towards explanatory depth by attending to the insights of the antecedent research in formal linguistics, psycholinguistics, and sociolinguistics. In particular, the paper adopts as a point of departure (and further substantiates) the argument that convergence will be evidenced in the syntax–pragmatic interface (Hulk and Müller, 2000) and the assertion that convergence is a ‘bilingual optimization strategy’ (Muysken, 2002), in advancing the claim that convergence (cum congruent lexicalization) in bilingual speech may be amplified or attenuated in tandem with the language mode (bilingual versus monolingual) of the bilingual (Grosjean, 1998). Specifically, it will be demonstrated through an analysis of two individual bilinguals' productions in both monolingual and bilingual modes that the convergence that is already manifested to some degree in these individuals' Spanish is enhanced in Spanish-English code-switching when their languages are simultaneously activated and deployed.
Structural priming refers to the process whereby the use of a
syntactic structure in an utterance functions as a prime on a subsequent
utterance, such that that same structure is repeated. This article
investigates this phenomenon from the perspective of first-person singular
subject expression in Spanish. Two dialects and two genres of spoken
Spanish are studied: New Mexican narratives and Colombian Spanish
conversation. An analysis of 2,000 verbs occurring with first-person
singular subjects reveals that subject expression undergoes a priming
effect in both data sets, but that the effect is more short-lived in the
Colombian data. This is found to be attributable to the interactional
nature of these data, showing that the need to deal with interactional
concerns weakens the priming effect. As the first study to compare priming
of subject expression across distinct genres, this article makes an
important contribution to our understanding of this effect, and in
particular, of factors that play a role in its maintenance or dissipation
in discourse. a
The word 'Spanglish', used most often to describe the casual oral registers of the speech of Hispanics in the USA, is an unfortunate and misleading term. Speakers of popular varieties of Spanish in the USA would be better served by recognizing that they are already speakers of Spanish. The present article is intended as a technical discussion of the empirical foundations for our position that there is no justification for the use of the term Spanglish. We demonstrate that features that characterize popular varieties of Spanish in the USA are, for the most part, parallel to those of popular forms of the language in Latin America and Spain. Further, we show that Spanish in the USA is not of a hybrid character, that is, not centrally characterized by structural mixing with English. We reject the use of the term Spanglish because there is no objective justification for the term, and because it expresses an ideology of exceptionalism and scorn that actually deprives the North American Latino community of a major resource in this globalized world: mastery of a world language. Thus on strictly objective technical grounds, as well as for reasons of personal and political development, the term Spanglish is to be discarded and replaced by the term Spanish or, if greater specificity is required, Spanish in the United States.
The variable rule program is one of the predominant data analysis tools used in sociolinguistics, employed successfully for over three decades to quantitatively assess the influence of multiple factors on linguistic variables. However, its most popular current version, GoldVarb, lacks flexibility and also isolates its users from the wider community of quantitative linguists. A new version of the variable rule program, Rbrul, attempts to resolve these concerns, and with mixed-effects modelling also addresses a more serious problem whereby GoldVarb overestimates the significance of effects. Rbrul's superior performance is demonstrated on both simulated and real data sets.
For different reasons, speakers re-use recently used or heard linguistic options whenever they can, a tendency which is referred to as ‘persistence ’ in the present paper. The phenomenon has been largely neglected in extant corpus-based, variationist research, and no standard methodology for dealing with the phenomenon is available. By analyzing three well-known alternations (analytic vs. synthetic comparatives, particle placement, and future marker choice) in several spoken corpora of English, this paper demonstrates that factoring in persistence increases the researcher’s ability to account for linguistic variation. It is also shown that persistence itself is subject to several determinants, such as textual distance between two successive choice contexts in discourse, or turn-taking. In conclusion, I argue that persistence is a factor which deserves empirical attention, and that its existence has consequences for both linguistic theory and practice.
For different reasons, speakers re-use recently used or heard linguistic options whenever they can, a tendency which is referred to as 'persistence' in the present paper. Ihe phenomenon has been largely neglected in extant corpus-based, variationist research, and no standard methodology for dealing with the phenomenon is available. By analyzing three wellknown alternations (analytic vs. synthetic comparatives, particle placement, and future marker choice) in several spoken corpora of English, this paper demonstrates that factoring in persistence increases the researcher's ability to account for linguistic variation. It is also shown that persistence itself is subject to several determinants, such as textual distance between two successive choice contexts in discourse, or turn-taking. In conclusion, I argue that persistence is a factor which deserves empirical attention, and that its existence has consequences for both linguistic theory and practice.
Null and Expressed Pronoun Variation in Mexican-descent Children’s Spanish
- Bayley
Bayley, Robert, and Lucinda Pease-Álvarez. 1996. "Null and Expressed Pronoun Variation in
Mexican-descent Children's Spanish. " In Sociolinguistic variation: Data, theory, and analysis, ed. by Jennifer Arnold, Renee Blake, and Brad Davidson, 85-99. Stanford: Center for
the Study of Language and Information.
The Many Faces of Language Maintenance: Spanish Language Claiming in Five Southwestern States
- Alan Hudson
- Eduardo Hernández Chávez
- Garland Bills
Hudson, Alan, Eduardo Hernández Chávez, and Garland Bills. 1995. "The Many Faces of
Language Maintenance: Spanish Language Claiming in Five Southwestern States. " In
Spanish in Four Continents: Studies in Language Contact and Bilingualism, ed. by Carmen
Silva-Corvalán, 165-83. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
La variable expresión del sujeto en el español de los colombianos y colombo-americanos residentes en el condado de Miami-Dade
- Luz Hurtado
- Marcela
Hurtado, Luz Marcela. 2001. "La variable expresión del sujeto en el español de los colombianos
y colombo-americanos residentes en el condado de Miami-Dade. " PhD diss., University of
Florida.
Under review. Spanish in Colombia and New York: Dialectal Parallelism Meets Language Contact
- Rafael Orozco
Orozco, Rafael. Under review. Spanish in Colombia and New York: Dialectal Parallelism Meets
Language Contact.
Language Contact and Change
- Carmen Silva-Corvalán
Silva-Corvalán, Carmen. 1994. Language Contact and Change. New York: Oxford University
Press.
Variationist Sociolinguistics: Change, Observation, and Interpretation
- Sali Tagliamonte
Tagliamonte, Sali. 2012. Variationist Sociolinguistics: Change, Observation, and Interpretation.
Malden, MA/West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.
The Many Faces of Language Maintenance: Spanish Language Claiming in Five Southwestern States
- Hudson