Cover not available
Part of
Hispanic Contact Linguistics: Theoretical, methodological and empirical perspectives
Edited by Luis A. Ortiz López, Rosa E. Guzzardo Tamargo and Melvin González-Rivera
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 22] 2020
► pp. 139–162

Chapter 6
First person singular subject expression in Caribbean heritage speaker Spanish oral production

| Maynooth University

Research on contact effects on subject pronoun expression in the U.S. has largely focused on Spanish in the U.S. Southwest and New York City (NYC). The conflicting results reported in this literature could be due to the differences in the distribution of varieties in these U.S. regions. To test this hypothesis, this paper offers a variationist analysis of first person singular (1sg) data from eleven Caribbean heritage speakers (HS) divided into two proficiency groups and who were raised in Florida, where the distribution of varieties is similar to that in NYC. Results are consistent with a lack of contact effects in the higher proficiency group, while contact effects are attested in the lower proficiency group.

Keywords: heritage speaker bilingualism, subject pronoun expression, variation, Caribbean Spanish
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
  • 3.Motivation and research questions
  • 4.The current study
    • 4.1Participants
    • 4.2Methodology
    • 4.3Results
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 14 February 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.22.06per
References
Alfaraz, G.
(2015) Variation of overt and null subject pronouns in the Spanish of Santo Domingo. In A. M. Carvalho, R. Orozco, & N. L. Shin (Eds.), Subject pronoun expression in Spanish: A cross-dialectal perspective (pp. 3–17). Washington DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
(2017) The variation of subject pronouns over time in Cuban Spanish. In A. Cuza (Ed.), Cuban Spanish dialectology: Variation, contact, and change (pp. 81–96). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Ávila-Jiménez, B. I.
(1996) Subject pronoun expression in Puerto Rican Spanish: A sociolinguistic, morphological, and discourse analysis, Doctoral dissertation, Cornell University, Ithaca, NewYork.Google Scholar
Bayley, R., & Pease-Álvarez, L.
(1996) Null and expressed pronoun variation in Mexican-descent children’s Spanish. In J. Arnold, R. Blake, & B. Davidson (Eds.), Sociolinguistic variation: Data, theory, and analysis (pp. 85–99). Stanford, CA: CSLI.Google Scholar
(1997) Null pronoun variation in Mexican-descent children’s narrative discourse. Language Variation and Change, 9, 349–371. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bentivoglio, P.
(1987) Los sujetos pronominales de primera persona en el habla de Caracas. Caracas: Central University of Venezuela.Google Scholar
Cameron, R.
(1992) Pronominal and null subject variation in Spanish: Constraints, dialects, and functional compensation. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania dissertation.Google Scholar
(1995) The scope and limits of switch reference as a constraint on pronominal subject expression. Hispanic Linguistics, 6–7, 1–27.Google Scholar
Cameron, R., & Flores-Ferrán, N.
(2004) Perseverance of subject expression across regional dialects. Spanish in Context, 1(1), 41–65. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carvalho, A. M., Orozco, R., & Shin, N. L.
(2015) Subject pronoun expression in Spanish: A cross-dialectal perspective. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Casanova Seuma, L.
(1999) El sujeto en catalán coloquial. Revista Española de Lingüística 29(1), 105–131.Google Scholar
Cuza, A.
(2013) Cross-linguistic influence at the syntax proper: Interrogative subject-verb inversion in heritage Spanish. International Journal of Bilingualism, 17(1), 71–96. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Enríquez, E.
(1984) El pronombre personal sujeto en la lengua española hablada en Madrid. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas.Google Scholar
Erker, D., & Guy, G. R.
(2012) The role of lexical frequency in syntactic variability: Variable subject personal pronoun expression in Spanish. Language, 88(3), 526–557. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Erker, D., & Otheguy, R.
(2016) Contact and coherence: Dialectal leveling and structural convergence in NYC Spanish. Lingua, 172–173, 131–146. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Flores, N., & Toro, J.
(2000) The persistence of dialect features under conditions of contact and leveling. Southwest Journal of Linguistics, 19, 31–42.Google Scholar
Flores-Ferrán, N.
(2002) Subject personal pronouns in Spanish narratives of Puerto Rican in New York City: A sociolinguistic perspective. Munich: Lincom.Google Scholar
(2004) Spanish subject personal pronoun use in New York City Puerto Ricans: Can we rest the case of English contact? Language Variation and Change, 16, 49–73. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hochberg, J.
(1986) Function compensation for /s/ deletion in Puerto Rican Spanish. Language, 62, 609–21. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Holmquist, J.
(2012) Frequency rates and constraints on subject personal pronoun expression: Findings from the Puerto Rican highlands. Language Variation and Change, 24, 203–220. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lapidus, N., & Otheguy, R.
(2005a) Contact induced change? Overt nonspecific ellos in Spanish in New York. In L. Sayahi, & M. Westmoreland (Eds.), Selected proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Spanish Sociolinguistics (pp. 67–75). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
(2005b) Overt nonspecific ellos in Spanish in New York. Spanish in Context, 2, 157–174. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lipski, J. M.
(1994) Latin American Spanish. London: Longman.Google Scholar
(1996) Patterns of pronominal evolution in Cuban-American bilinguals. In A. Roca & J. B. Jensen (Eds.), Spanish in contact: Issues in bilingualism (pp. 159–186). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla.Google Scholar
Martínez Sanz, C.
(2011) Null and overt subjects in a variable system: The case of Dominican Spanish (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Ottawa.Google Scholar
Montrul, S.
(2004) Subject and object expression in Spanish heritage speakers: A case of morphosyntactic convergence. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 7, 125–42. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Montrul, S., & Slabakova, R.
(2003) Competence similarities between native and near-native speakers: An investigation of the preterite/imperfect contrast in Spanish. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 25(3), 351–98. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Morales, A.
(1997) La hipótesis funcional y la aparición del sujeto no nominal: El español de Puerto Rico. Hispania, 80, 153–165. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Orozco, R.
(2015) Pronominal variation in Colombian Costeño Spanish. In A. M. Carvalho, R. Orozco, & N. L. Shin (Eds.), Subject pronoun expression in Spanish: A cross-dialectal perspective (pp. 17–37). Washington DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Orozco, R., & Guy, G.
(2008) El uso variable de los pronombres sujetos. ¿Qué pasa en la costa Caribe colombiana? In M. Westmoreland & J. A. Thomas, Selected proceedings of the Fourth Workshop on Spanish Sociolinguistics (70–80). Sommerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Ortiz López, L. A.
(2009) Pronombres de sujeto en el español (L2 vs L1) del Caribe. In M. Lacorte, & J. Leeman (Eds.), El español en Estados Unidos y otros contextos de contactos: sociolingüística, ideología y pedagogía (pp. 85–110). Frankfurt & Madrid: Vervuert & Iberoamericana. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ortiz López, L. A., Dauphinais, A., & Aponte Alequín, H.
(2017) Cuban Spanish: Is it a null subject parameter dialect? In A. Cuza (Ed.), Cuban Spanish dialectology: Variation, contact, and change (pp. 97–117). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Otheguy, R., & Zentella, A. C.
(2012) Spanish in New York. Language contact, dialectal leveling, and structural continuity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Otheguy, R., Zentella, A. C., & Livert, D.
(2007) Language and dialect contact in Spanish in New York: Towards the formation of a speech community. Language, 83, 1–33.Google Scholar
Prada Pérez, A. de
(2015) 1sg subject pronoun expression in Spanish in contact with Catalan. In A. M. Carvalho, R. Orozco, & N. L. Shin (Eds.), Subject pronoun expression in Spanish: A cross-dialectal perspective (121–142). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Prada Pérez, A. de, & Gómez Soler, I.
(2019) The Effect of Person on the Subject Expression of Spanish Heritage Speakers. In W. Valentín-Márquez & M. González-Rivera (Eds.), Dialects from Tropical Islands. Caribbean Spanish in the United States (pp. ???). Abingdon-on-Thames, UK: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ranson, D. L.
(1991) Person marking in the wake of /s/ deletion in Andalusian Spanish. Language Variation and Change, 3(2), 133–152. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shin, N. L.
(2012) Variable use of Spanish subject pronouns by monolingual children in Mexico. In K. Geeslin, & M. Díaz-Campos (Eds.), Selected proceedings of the 2010 Hispanic Linguistics Symposium (pp. 130–141). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Projects.Google Scholar
Shin, N. L. & Otheguy, R.
(2013) Social class and gender impacting change in bilingual settings: Spanish subject pronoun use in New York. Language in Society, 42, 429–452. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Silva-Corvalán, C.
(1982) Subject expression and placement in Mexican-American Spanish. In J. Amastae & L. Elías-Olivares (Eds.), Spanish in the United States: Sociolinguistic aspects (pp. 93–120). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
(2001) Sociolingüística y pragmática del español. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
(1994) Language contact and change: Spanish in Los Angeles. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Toribio, A. J.
(2004) Convergence as an optimization strategy in bilingual speech: Evidence from code-switching. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 7, 165–73. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Torres-Cacoullos, R., & Travis, C. E.
(2010) Variable Yo expression in New Mexico: English influence? In S. Rivera-Mills, & D. Villa (Eds.), Spanish of the U.S. Southwest: A language in transition (pp. 185–206). Madrid & Frankfurt: Iberoamericana & Vervuert. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Travis, C. E.
(2007) Genre effects on subject expression in Spanish: Priming in narrative and conversation. Language Variation and Change, 19, 101–135. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
U.S. Census Bureau
(2010) Hispanic or Latino by type. Retrieved from [URL]