This paper discusses the descriptive properties of se-marked directed motion constructions typically instantiated by verbs such as caer-se (fall-se), ir-se (go-se) or subir-se (go up-se). I argue that such constructions are surface representations of two distinct underlying syntactic configurations: an anticausative (Schäfer, 2008) and a figure reflexive (Wood, 2014). The anticausative analysis corroborates work on the same topic by Cuervo (2014), Jiménez-Fernández & Tubino (2014) and Pineda (2016) while the figure reflexive analysis is a novel contribution.
This paper analyzes the syntactic and semantic changes undergone by the PP sin embargo ‘without obstacle/impediment’ as it develops its clause-taking properties in Spanish from the 12th to the 16th centuries, essential for its further reanalysis as a concessive connective. We argue against an account that explains this change through a metaphor from the lack of a barrier in the sociophysical world to the epistemic world. Instead, we show that the syntactic and semantic change stems from the subcategorization properties of the noun embargo, which in the 1400s selects for the preposition de and later for the complementizer que, with scope over a proposition. The selection of a clausal complement, and hence the increase in scope of the original prepositional phrase, underlies the creation of the sentence connective.
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).
We provide empirical evidence that colloquial Brazilian Portuguese (BP) is a variable negative concord language, which allows negative indefinites (NIs) to occur in postverbal position without a preverbal negative licensor, as in Vi nada ontem ‘I saw nothing yesterday.’ The results of an online survey (N = 443) distributed via Facebook show that speakers’ acceptability judgments toward the lack of negative concord in BP are closely connected to the frequency of the individual NIs, and in particular to the frequency of V + NI collocations. Speaker judgments are also sensitive to the type frequency and token-type ratio of individual NIs. We conclude that variable negative concord in BP is paradigmatically constrained by the identity of the NI in question.
This study examines dialect differences in the simultaneous lenition of intervocalic /ptk/ and /bdɡ/ in Peruvian Spanish in Lima and Cuzco. Results from a read speech task show both sets of plosives are lenited significantly less in Cuzco than in Lima. Random forests demonstrate that differences in voicing best explain the distinction between /ptk/ and /bdɡ/, that differences in relative intensity best explain the distinction in Lima, and that in order to best distinguish Cuzco /bdɡ/ from Lima /ptk/, relative intensity must be given more importance than voicing. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that these lenitions constitute a chain shift in progress and offer insight into how these shifts may occur.
I examine syntactic and discursive factors conditioning the variable a-marking of inanimate DOs in Argentine Spanish, using an online questionnaire which includes 16 contextualized discourse items recorded by native Argentines. Argentine respondents (N = 140) evaluated acceptability of the items using a 5-point Likert scale. Linguistic predictors analyzed include: definiteness, mono- vs. ditransitive constructions, and topicality, operationalized in terms of pre-/post-verbal position and referential distance. Mixed-effects analyses in R showed that although participants assigned significantly higher ratings to normative unmarked inanimate DOs than to a-marked ones, a-marking was still widely accepted, with definite DOs, pre-verbal position, and monotransitivity as significant predictors of acceptance. Furthermore, in 10/16 cases, participant ratings showed no significant difference between marked and unmarked DOs, demonstrating that participants are, to an extent, “a-blind” or uninfluenced by marking.
As the state of the field advances empirically, sociolinguists are increasingly expected to utilize statistics in their data analysis. Some researchers have limited formal statistical training, and even for the more experienced researcher, the focus of model construction is often on the independent variables, e.g. interactions or multicollinearity issues. However, dependent variables with three or more variants require careful consideration. Building on Paolillo (2002), I show that identical binomial logistic regression models yield disparate results given differential treatment of a complex dependent variable. I conclude by offering concrete, hands-on advice for linguists working with their data in R with the goal of promoting judicious analyses among Hispanic sociolinguists.
The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, adopting a variationist approach, it examines the relative frequency of the present perfect and preterite alternation and the particular conditioning factors that might favor the use of the PP in Southern Arizona Spanish; secondly, it attempts to situate the use of Southern Arizona PP in the scope of the typology of periphrastic pasts proposed in Harris (1982). A multivariate analysis reveals that frequency and approximate adverbs, stative predicates, and indeterminate reference favor the PP in this variety, meaning that the PP shows characteristics of a continuative perfect. This in turn suggests that the PP in this variety situates at stage II in Harris’s developmental stages.
This qualitative study takes the analysis of Honduran voseo beyond the examination of ‘who’ uses vos to include answers to ‘why’ speakers use vos the way they do. To that end, thirty informants shared their attitudes toward address forms through semi-directed interviews from which three themes emerged: (1) vos belongs to the Honduran norm; (2) vos indexes Honduran national identity; and (3) innovative uses of vos reflect its greatly rooted status in Honduran Spanish. It was evident that voseo is not stigmatized in this variety, as it is part of the Honduran linguistic habitus. Adopting Billig’s (1995) theory of banal nationalism, I conclude that vos is preponderant in Honduran Spanish because it functions as a marker of Honduran national identity.
The present study examines the acquisition of coarticulatory patterns in Spanish as a second language (L2). Through an acoustic analysis of the production of /l/ preceded by a front vowel and by a back vowel by a large cross-sectional sample of English-speaking learners of Spanish (n = 85) and a comparison of L2 Spanish patterns to those in L1 Spanish (n = 20 speakers) and in L1 English, evidence is provided that, similar to the acquisition of other phonetic detail, acquisition of coarticulation proceeds from more L1-like patterns in early stages of learning toward more targetlike coarticulatory patterns in later stages. Additionally, acquisition of coarticulation does not seem to be tied to overall segmental acquisition.
Stop consonants are one of the most investigated sound classes in second language speech production studies. Robust age of acquisition effects are documented in the literature base; however, the advantage of early learners has been primarily documented in second language, not foreign language, contexts. In order to further tease apart the variables of age and context, this paper compares the VOT values of /p, t, k/ of a cross-sectional sample of child, foreign language learners of Spanish with those of Spanish-English bilinguals. Learner productions did not differ from those of native speaking peers, yet there was a significant interaction of first language and grade level, suggesting that age of acquisition alone is insufficient to explain outcomes. Quantity of input, in both the first and second/foreign language, is explored as a possible explanation.
Regarding studies of Spanish in contact with Latin American indigenous languages, there has been little research on contact between Spanish and Purépecha, a language isolate from western Mexico. The present paper addresses this lacuna by examining number marking and number agreement in the Spanish production of five L1 adult Purépecha speakers, and it contributes to both the fields of second language studies and contact linguistics studies, by detecting specific structural and semantic conditions under which Purépecha morphosyntactic patterns are incorporated into Spanish: Results show non-standard number marking and lack of number agreement across the noun phrase, between the subject and the verb, and between the noun and its predicative adjective, possibly due to a shift dynamic (Thomason, 2001).
Infant-directed speech has been shown to be different from adult-directed speech in that it is generally characterized by short, acoustically exaggerated (e.g. higher F0 peaks, wider F0 range) utterances (Fernald et al., 1989; Kitamura et al., 2001, inter alia). Thus, at some point parents begin to change these acoustic parameters once the child is no longer an infant. The present study uses longitudinal data to compare F0 use in two language varieties, American English (AE) and Peninsular Spanish (PS), in an effort to understand how two prosodic aspects (mean F0 and F0 range) change after a child’s first birthday. Specifically, we asked how these parameters might change as a function of the child’s linguistic development, here defined as the children’s mean length of utterance (MLU). Results show that mothers show changes in their use of both of these parameters after the second birthday, with turning points between 28 and 31 months. MLU was not found to be a significant predictor for either language. Additionally, despite differences in how AE and PS exploit F0 for expressing focus, both AE- and PS-speaking mothers were shown to use more narrow F0 range for utterances not containing a focused element sometime after 30 months. Implications for language acquisition are discussed.
Using predictions from the Interface Hypothesis and the grammar of Spanish-English bilinguals, we test whether non-syntactic factors play a role in the that-trace effect. Though generally analyzed syntactically, some work on that-trace supports a syntax-prosody account (Kandybowicz, 2006). The Interface Hypothesis predicts that bilinguals will have difficulty with interface phenomena but not narrow syntax, such that testing bilinguals’ knowledge of that-trace provides a unique testing ground for comparing the two approaches. We demonstrate that bilinguals have the syntactic underpinnings necessary for both syntactic and syntax-prosody accounts of that-trace; however, they differ from the monolinguals with regard to that-trace, extending the phenomenon’s restriction on extraction to a new context, supporting a syntax-prosody account of that-trace.
While most Romance languages have only one morphological form for the imperfect subjunctive, Spanish exhibits variation between two morphological paradigms: -ra and -se. The present study investigated the distribution of these forms according to linguistic factors in Catalonian Spanish, a variety in close contact with Catalan. A corpus of 1,075 imperfect subjunctive tokens was compiled from the letters to the editor section of the regional newspaper La Vanguardia. Results show that the overall distribution of -se is slightly higher than what has been reported for European Spanish. Furthermore, a multivariate analysis revealed that structural priming, the existence of a cognate verb in Catalan and the combination of local frequency and morphological irregularity in the imperfect subjective significantly favor the use of -se.
The present investigation seeks to explore the impact that contact with English has on the variation of first person singular “yo” subject pronoun expression in Sonoran Spanish by analyzing sociolinguistic interviews from sixteen monolinguals from Sonora, Mexico and sixteen bilinguals from Arizona, United States from Sonora born parents/grandparents. Based on previous research, it is expected that if there is English influence on the Spanish of the bilinguals, there will be an increased rate of expressed pronouns, the bilinguals will show decreased sensitivity to switch reference, there will be a decrease of expressed pronouns in coordinate clauses with the same referent, and community (Arizona/Sonora) will be a significant factor. These hypotheses are not born out and thus the results show a lack of evidence for English influence on the variable for the bilinguals in the study.
This paper discusses the descriptive properties of se-marked directed motion constructions typically instantiated by verbs such as caer-se (fall-se), ir-se (go-se) or subir-se (go up-se). I argue that such constructions are surface representations of two distinct underlying syntactic configurations: an anticausative (Schäfer, 2008) and a figure reflexive (Wood, 2014). The anticausative analysis corroborates work on the same topic by Cuervo (2014), Jiménez-Fernández & Tubino (2014) and Pineda (2016) while the figure reflexive analysis is a novel contribution.
This paper analyzes the syntactic and semantic changes undergone by the PP sin embargo ‘without obstacle/impediment’ as it develops its clause-taking properties in Spanish from the 12th to the 16th centuries, essential for its further reanalysis as a concessive connective. We argue against an account that explains this change through a metaphor from the lack of a barrier in the sociophysical world to the epistemic world. Instead, we show that the syntactic and semantic change stems from the subcategorization properties of the noun embargo, which in the 1400s selects for the preposition de and later for the complementizer que, with scope over a proposition. The selection of a clausal complement, and hence the increase in scope of the original prepositional phrase, underlies the creation of the sentence connective.
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).
We provide empirical evidence that colloquial Brazilian Portuguese (BP) is a variable negative concord language, which allows negative indefinites (NIs) to occur in postverbal position without a preverbal negative licensor, as in Vi nada ontem ‘I saw nothing yesterday.’ The results of an online survey (N = 443) distributed via Facebook show that speakers’ acceptability judgments toward the lack of negative concord in BP are closely connected to the frequency of the individual NIs, and in particular to the frequency of V + NI collocations. Speaker judgments are also sensitive to the type frequency and token-type ratio of individual NIs. We conclude that variable negative concord in BP is paradigmatically constrained by the identity of the NI in question.
This study examines dialect differences in the simultaneous lenition of intervocalic /ptk/ and /bdɡ/ in Peruvian Spanish in Lima and Cuzco. Results from a read speech task show both sets of plosives are lenited significantly less in Cuzco than in Lima. Random forests demonstrate that differences in voicing best explain the distinction between /ptk/ and /bdɡ/, that differences in relative intensity best explain the distinction in Lima, and that in order to best distinguish Cuzco /bdɡ/ from Lima /ptk/, relative intensity must be given more importance than voicing. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that these lenitions constitute a chain shift in progress and offer insight into how these shifts may occur.
I examine syntactic and discursive factors conditioning the variable a-marking of inanimate DOs in Argentine Spanish, using an online questionnaire which includes 16 contextualized discourse items recorded by native Argentines. Argentine respondents (N = 140) evaluated acceptability of the items using a 5-point Likert scale. Linguistic predictors analyzed include: definiteness, mono- vs. ditransitive constructions, and topicality, operationalized in terms of pre-/post-verbal position and referential distance. Mixed-effects analyses in R showed that although participants assigned significantly higher ratings to normative unmarked inanimate DOs than to a-marked ones, a-marking was still widely accepted, with definite DOs, pre-verbal position, and monotransitivity as significant predictors of acceptance. Furthermore, in 10/16 cases, participant ratings showed no significant difference between marked and unmarked DOs, demonstrating that participants are, to an extent, “a-blind” or uninfluenced by marking.
As the state of the field advances empirically, sociolinguists are increasingly expected to utilize statistics in their data analysis. Some researchers have limited formal statistical training, and even for the more experienced researcher, the focus of model construction is often on the independent variables, e.g. interactions or multicollinearity issues. However, dependent variables with three or more variants require careful consideration. Building on Paolillo (2002), I show that identical binomial logistic regression models yield disparate results given differential treatment of a complex dependent variable. I conclude by offering concrete, hands-on advice for linguists working with their data in R with the goal of promoting judicious analyses among Hispanic sociolinguists.
The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, adopting a variationist approach, it examines the relative frequency of the present perfect and preterite alternation and the particular conditioning factors that might favor the use of the PP in Southern Arizona Spanish; secondly, it attempts to situate the use of Southern Arizona PP in the scope of the typology of periphrastic pasts proposed in Harris (1982). A multivariate analysis reveals that frequency and approximate adverbs, stative predicates, and indeterminate reference favor the PP in this variety, meaning that the PP shows characteristics of a continuative perfect. This in turn suggests that the PP in this variety situates at stage II in Harris’s developmental stages.
This qualitative study takes the analysis of Honduran voseo beyond the examination of ‘who’ uses vos to include answers to ‘why’ speakers use vos the way they do. To that end, thirty informants shared their attitudes toward address forms through semi-directed interviews from which three themes emerged: (1) vos belongs to the Honduran norm; (2) vos indexes Honduran national identity; and (3) innovative uses of vos reflect its greatly rooted status in Honduran Spanish. It was evident that voseo is not stigmatized in this variety, as it is part of the Honduran linguistic habitus. Adopting Billig’s (1995) theory of banal nationalism, I conclude that vos is preponderant in Honduran Spanish because it functions as a marker of Honduran national identity.
The present study examines the acquisition of coarticulatory patterns in Spanish as a second language (L2). Through an acoustic analysis of the production of /l/ preceded by a front vowel and by a back vowel by a large cross-sectional sample of English-speaking learners of Spanish (n = 85) and a comparison of L2 Spanish patterns to those in L1 Spanish (n = 20 speakers) and in L1 English, evidence is provided that, similar to the acquisition of other phonetic detail, acquisition of coarticulation proceeds from more L1-like patterns in early stages of learning toward more targetlike coarticulatory patterns in later stages. Additionally, acquisition of coarticulation does not seem to be tied to overall segmental acquisition.
Stop consonants are one of the most investigated sound classes in second language speech production studies. Robust age of acquisition effects are documented in the literature base; however, the advantage of early learners has been primarily documented in second language, not foreign language, contexts. In order to further tease apart the variables of age and context, this paper compares the VOT values of /p, t, k/ of a cross-sectional sample of child, foreign language learners of Spanish with those of Spanish-English bilinguals. Learner productions did not differ from those of native speaking peers, yet there was a significant interaction of first language and grade level, suggesting that age of acquisition alone is insufficient to explain outcomes. Quantity of input, in both the first and second/foreign language, is explored as a possible explanation.
Regarding studies of Spanish in contact with Latin American indigenous languages, there has been little research on contact between Spanish and Purépecha, a language isolate from western Mexico. The present paper addresses this lacuna by examining number marking and number agreement in the Spanish production of five L1 adult Purépecha speakers, and it contributes to both the fields of second language studies and contact linguistics studies, by detecting specific structural and semantic conditions under which Purépecha morphosyntactic patterns are incorporated into Spanish: Results show non-standard number marking and lack of number agreement across the noun phrase, between the subject and the verb, and between the noun and its predicative adjective, possibly due to a shift dynamic (Thomason, 2001).
Infant-directed speech has been shown to be different from adult-directed speech in that it is generally characterized by short, acoustically exaggerated (e.g. higher F0 peaks, wider F0 range) utterances (Fernald et al., 1989; Kitamura et al., 2001, inter alia). Thus, at some point parents begin to change these acoustic parameters once the child is no longer an infant. The present study uses longitudinal data to compare F0 use in two language varieties, American English (AE) and Peninsular Spanish (PS), in an effort to understand how two prosodic aspects (mean F0 and F0 range) change after a child’s first birthday. Specifically, we asked how these parameters might change as a function of the child’s linguistic development, here defined as the children’s mean length of utterance (MLU). Results show that mothers show changes in their use of both of these parameters after the second birthday, with turning points between 28 and 31 months. MLU was not found to be a significant predictor for either language. Additionally, despite differences in how AE and PS exploit F0 for expressing focus, both AE- and PS-speaking mothers were shown to use more narrow F0 range for utterances not containing a focused element sometime after 30 months. Implications for language acquisition are discussed.
Using predictions from the Interface Hypothesis and the grammar of Spanish-English bilinguals, we test whether non-syntactic factors play a role in the that-trace effect. Though generally analyzed syntactically, some work on that-trace supports a syntax-prosody account (Kandybowicz, 2006). The Interface Hypothesis predicts that bilinguals will have difficulty with interface phenomena but not narrow syntax, such that testing bilinguals’ knowledge of that-trace provides a unique testing ground for comparing the two approaches. We demonstrate that bilinguals have the syntactic underpinnings necessary for both syntactic and syntax-prosody accounts of that-trace; however, they differ from the monolinguals with regard to that-trace, extending the phenomenon’s restriction on extraction to a new context, supporting a syntax-prosody account of that-trace.
While most Romance languages have only one morphological form for the imperfect subjunctive, Spanish exhibits variation between two morphological paradigms: -ra and -se. The present study investigated the distribution of these forms according to linguistic factors in Catalonian Spanish, a variety in close contact with Catalan. A corpus of 1,075 imperfect subjunctive tokens was compiled from the letters to the editor section of the regional newspaper La Vanguardia. Results show that the overall distribution of -se is slightly higher than what has been reported for European Spanish. Furthermore, a multivariate analysis revealed that structural priming, the existence of a cognate verb in Catalan and the combination of local frequency and morphological irregularity in the imperfect subjective significantly favor the use of -se.
The present investigation seeks to explore the impact that contact with English has on the variation of first person singular “yo” subject pronoun expression in Sonoran Spanish by analyzing sociolinguistic interviews from sixteen monolinguals from Sonora, Mexico and sixteen bilinguals from Arizona, United States from Sonora born parents/grandparents. Based on previous research, it is expected that if there is English influence on the Spanish of the bilinguals, there will be an increased rate of expressed pronouns, the bilinguals will show decreased sensitivity to switch reference, there will be a decrease of expressed pronouns in coordinate clauses with the same referent, and community (Arizona/Sonora) will be a significant factor. These hypotheses are not born out and thus the results show a lack of evidence for English influence on the variable for the bilinguals in the study.