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Part of
Contemporary Trends in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics: Selected papers from the Hispanic Linguistic Symposium 2015
Edited by Jonathan E. MacDonald
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 15] 2018
► pp. 49–70

Chapter 3
Variable clitic placement in US Spanish

| University of Georgia

This study examines clitic placement (CP) among US Spanish-speakers using data from two corpora: Corpus del Español en el Sur de Arizona (Carvalho, 2012–) and a corpus of interviews conducted in Roswell, Georgia (Wilson, 2013). Clitics were analyzed and coded for linguistic and social variables (e.g. specific construction, age of arrival). Results indicate an overall proclisis rate of 67%, which is similar to the rate reported for speakers in Mexico City (e.g. Davies, 1995). A subsequent multivariate analysis reveals that CP is significantly influenced by the specific construction used, the non-finite verb form, and the speakers’ age of arrival. This analysis lends support to the argument for the impermeability of CP to contact-induced change in Spanish (Silva-Corvalán & Gutiérrez, 1995).

Keywords: clitics, US Spanish, language contact, morphosyntactic variation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Variable CP in Spanish
    • 2.1Clitic rates and conditioning factors
    • 2.2Linguistic factors
      • 2.2.1Reflexivity
      • 2.2.2Non-finite verb
      • 2.2.3Finite verb and construction
      • 2.2.4Frequency
    • 2.3Social factors
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1The data
    • 3.2Analysis
    • 3.3Coding
      • 3.3.1Reflexivity
      • 3.3.2Non-finite verb form
      • 3.3.3Construction
      • 3.3.4Frequency
      • 3.3.5Social variables
    • 3.4Predictions
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Clitic rates
    • 4.2Conditioning factors of CP
      • 4.2.1Non-finite verb form
      • 4.2.2Construction
      • 4.2.3AOA
      • 4.2.4Comparing constraints between the two varieties
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 14 February 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.15.04lim
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Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Limerick, Philip P.
2022. New considerations for variable clitic placement in Spanish. Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics 35:2 ► pp. 650 ff. DOI logo
Viner, Kevin Martillo
2021. Generational differences in the placement of clitic se in New York City Spanish. International Journal of Bilingualism 25:5 ► pp. 1460 ff. DOI logo

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