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Spanish Language and Sociolinguistic Analysis
Edited by Sandro Sessarego and Fernando Tejedo-Herrero
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 8] 2016
► pp. 323–342

A corpus-based sociolinguistic study of contact-induced changes in subject placement in the Spanish of New York City bilinguals

 | DePaul University
 | The CUNY Graduate Center
This chapter reports on a variationist sociolinguistic analysis of variable subject placement in the Spanish of first- and second-generation Spanish-English bilinguals in New York City. We show that second-generation speakers exhibit a more rigid word order compared to their first-generation peers, and we attribute this difference to their increased use of and contact with English. However, we also find that regional differences in subject placement in the first generation are maintained, to a certain degree, in the second generation, indicating that both English contact and continuity with Latin American ways of speaking shape Spanish in New York City.
Keywords: contact-induced change, subject placement, Threshold Hypothesis
Published online: 25 May 2016
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.8.14bar
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