Cover not available
Article published In:
Spanish in Context
Vol. 17:1 (2020) ► pp.58–83

Are the systems the same?

Applying the comparative method to variable intensification in the Spanish and Catalan of Tarragona, Spain

| University of Pittsburgh
| University of Rhode Island

Although two languages in contact may contain similar structures, superficial structural similarities may abscond important differences. The comparative method critically determines whether the languages differ in relative rates of variant use, the significance of independent variables, constraint rankings, and ordering within factor groups (Poplack & Tagliamonte 2001). The study explored intensifier (i.e., degree modifier) variation between Spanish muy and bien and Catalan molt and ben “very”, as based on 84 sets of responses from bilinguals on a 24-item contextualized preference task (40 in Catalan, 44 in Spanish). Results indicated significantly higher selection of muy in Spanish than molt in Catalan. Moreover, independent variables played a greater role in Spanish, with adjective quality, animacy, and verb type all predicting intensifier selection, whereas in Catalan only adjective quality was predictive. The study provided the first variationist analysis of Catalan intensification, while also revealing key systemic differences between the two languages despite surface similarities.

Keywords: comparative method, sociolinguistic variation, morphosyntax
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Cross-linguistic influence, the comparative method, and functional equivalence
    • 2.2Intensification in Spanish and Catalan
  • 3.Previous research
    • 3.1Empirical research on intensification in Spanish and Catalan
  • 4.Method
    • 4.1Current study
    • 4.2Participants
    • 4.3Tasks
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Overall rates of selection
    • 5.2Mixed-effects regression models
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Limitations, future directions, and conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 3 June 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sic.18021.kan
References
Agostini, Tainara D. and Scott A. Schwenter
2018 “Variable Negative Concord in Brazilian Portuguese: Acceptability and Frequency.” In Contemporary Trends in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics: Selected Papers from the Hispanic Linguistics Symposium 2015, ed. by Jonathan E. MacDonald, 71–94. Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Arjona, Marina
1990 “El adverbio muy y otros intensificadores en el habla popular de México.” Anuario de Letras 281: 75–96.Google Scholar
Batllori, Montserrat and M. Lluïsa Hernanz
2009 “En torno a la polaridad enfática en español y en catalán: un estudio diacrónico y comparativo.” In Diachronic Linguistics, ed. by Joan Rafel, 319–352. Girona: Documenta Universitaria.Google Scholar
2013 “Emphatic Polarity Particles in Spanish and Catalan.” Lingua 1281: 9–30. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Birdsong, David, Libby M. Gertken, and Mark Amengual
2012 Bilingual Language Profile: An Easy-to-Use Instrument to Assess Bilingualism. COERLL, University of Texas at Austin. Web 20 Jan. 2012 <[URL].
Blas Arroyo, José Luis
2004 “El español actual en las comunidades del ámbito lingüístico catalán.” In Historia de la lengua española, ed. by Rafael Cano Aguilar, 1065–1086. Barcelona: Ariel.Google Scholar
2008 “The Variable Expression of Future Tense in Peninsular Spanish: The Present (and Future) of Inflectional Forms in the Spanish Spoken in a Bilingual Region.” Language Variation and Change 201: 85–126. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2011 “Spanish in Contact with Catalan.” In The Handbook of Hispanic Sociolinguistics, ed. by Manuel Díaz-Campos, 374–394. Malden, MA: Oxford-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brown, Esther L. and Mayra Cortés-Torres
2013 “Puerto Rican Intensifiers: Bien/muy variables .” In Selected Proceedings of the 6th Workshop on Spanish Sociolinguistics, ed. by Ana Maria Carvalho and Sara Beaudrie, 11–19. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan
2006 “From Usage to Grammar: The Mind’s Response to Repetition.” Language 821: 711–733. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2010 Language, Usage, and Cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan, Revere Perkins, and William Pagliuca
1994 The Evolution of Grammar: The Grammaticalization of Tense, Aspect, and Modality in the Languages of the World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Cuenca, Maria-Josep and Marín, Maria-Josep
2009 “Co-occurrence of Discourse Markers in Catalan and Spanish Oral Narrative.” Journal of Pragmatics 411: 899–914. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ellis, Nick C. and Stefanie Wulff
2015 “Usage-based Approaches to SLA.” In Theories in Second Language Acquisition: An Introduction (2nd ed.), ed. by Bill VanPatten & Jessica Williams, 75–93. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Enrique-Arias, Andrés
2010 “On Language Contact as an Inhibitor of Language Change.” In Continuity and Change in Grammar, ed. by Anne Breitbarth, Christopher Lucas, Sheila Watts, and David Willis, 97–117. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Geeslin, Kimberly L.
2003 “A Comparison of Copula Choice in Advanced and Native Spanish.” Language Learning 531: 703–764. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goffman, Erving
1981 Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Gutiérrez, Manuel
1995 “On the Future of the Future Tense in the Spanish of the Southwest.” In Spanish in Four Continents: Studies in Language Contact and Bilingualism, ed. by Carmen Silva-Corvalán, 214–223. Washington: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin
2014 “The Three Adnominal Possessive Constructions in Egyptian-Coptic: Three Degrees of Grammaticalization.” In Egyptian-Coptic Linguistics in Typological Perspective, ed. by Martin Haspelmath, Eitan Grossman, and Tonio S. Richter, 262–285. Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin and Andrea D. Sims
2010 Understanding Morphology (2nd ed.). London: Hodder Education.Google Scholar
Hernanz, M. Lluïsa
1995  Bien y la polaridad positiva en español. Estudio inédito.Google Scholar
2010 “Assertive Bien in Spanish and the Left Periphery.” In Mapping the Left Periphery: The Cartography of Syntactic Structures, Volume 5, ed. by Paola Benincà & Nicola Munaro, 19–62. New York: OUP.Google Scholar
Institut d’Estudis Catalans
2017 Gramàtica de la llengua catalana. Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans.Google Scholar
Ito, Rika and Sali Tagliamonte
2003 “ Well Weird, Right Dodgy, Very Strange, Really Cool: Layering and Recycling in English Intensifiers.” Language in Society 321: 257–279. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Daniel E.
2009 “Getting off the Goldvarb Standard: Introducing Rbrul for Mixed-Effects Variable Rule Analysis.” Language and Linguistics Compass 31: 359–383. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kanwit, Matthew, Virginia Terán, and Silvia Pisabarro Sarrió
2017 “ Un fenómeno bien curioso: New Methods for Analyzing Variable Intensification Across Four Dialects of Spain and Argentina.” Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 101: 259–295. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Klee, Carol A. and Andrew Lynch
2009 El español en contacto con otras lenguas. Washington: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Labov, William
1978 “Where Does the Linguistic Variable Stop? A Response to Beatriz Lavandera.” In Working Papers in Sociolinguistics (Vol. 441). Austin, TX: Southwest Educational Development Laboratory.Google Scholar
2001 Principles of Linguistic Change, vol. 2: Social Factors. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Lavandera, Beatriz R.
1978 “Where Does the Sociolinguistic Variable Stop?” Language in Society 71: 171–182. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Meyerhoff, Miriam
2009 “Replication, Transfer, and Calquing: Using Variation as a Tool in the Study of Language Contact.” Language Variation and Change 211: 297–317. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Poplack, Shana and Sali Tagliamonte
2001 African American English in the Diaspora. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Pradilla, Miquel Ángel
2001 “The Catalan-speaking Communities.” In Multinguialism in Spain: Sociolinguistic and Psycholinguistic Aspects of Linguistic Minority Groups, ed. by M. Teresa Turell, 58–90. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Romaine, Suzanne
1984 “On the Problem of Syntactic Variation and Pragmatic Meaning in Sociolinguistic Theory.” Folia Linguistica 181: 409–437. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Salvador Salvador, Francisco
1987 “La gradación adjetiva en el habla popular de Ciudad de México.” Actas del I Congreso Internacional del Español de América, 419–430. San Juan de Puerto Rico: Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua Española.Google Scholar
Sankoff, David and Pierrette Thibault
1981 “Weak Complementarity: Tense and Aspect in Montreal French.” In Syntactic Change, ed. by Brenda B. Johns and David R. Strong, 206–216. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Sankoff, David, Shana Poplack, and Swathi Vanniarajan
1990 “The Case of the Nonce Loan in Tamil.” Language Variation and Change 21: 71–101. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sankoff, Gillian
1973 “Above and Beyond Phonology in Variable Rules.” In New Ways of Analyzing Variation in English, ed. by Charles-James N. Bailey and Roger W. Shuy, 44–61. Washington: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Schwenter, Scott A. and Rena Torres Cacoullos
2008 “Defaults and Indeterminacy in Temporal Grammaticalization: The “Perfect” Road to Perfective.” Language Variation and Change 201: 1–39. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sedano, Mercedes
2002–2004 “Este tema es muy/bien interesante.” Archivo de filología aragonesa 59–601: 859–873.Google Scholar
Serradilla Castaño, Ana
2006 “Bien + adjetivo como perífrasis de superlativo en español. Particularidades semánticas y sintácticas.” Verba 331: 215–233.Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali
2008 “So Different and Pretty Cool! Recycling Intensifiers in Toronto, Canada.” English Language and Linguistics 121: 361–394. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012 Variationist Sociolinguistics: Change, Observation, Interpretation. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Torres Cacoullos, Rena and Catherine E. Travis
2010 “Testing Convergence via Code-Switching: Priming and the Structure of Variable Subject Expression.” International Journal of Bilingualism 151: 241–262. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vann, Robert E.
1998 “Pragmatic Transfer from Less developed to More Developed Systems: Spanish Deictic Terms in Barcelona.” In Romance Linguistics: Theoretical Perspectives, ed. by Armin Schwegler, Bernard Tranel, and Myriam Uribe-Etxebarria, 307–318. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar