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Part of
Free Variation in Grammar: Empirical and theoretical approaches
Edited by Kristin Kopf and Thilo Weber
[Studies in Language Companion Series 234] 2023
► pp. 260–283

Chapter 9
Syntactic priming and individual preferences

A corpus-based analysis

ORCID logo | Freie Universität Berlin

This paper analyses the relation between syntactic priming/persistence and individual preferences in the variation between the two forms of the Spanish past subjunctive (-ra vs -se). The analysis finds that the probability of repetition of one of these variants is governed by an interaction between individual preferences and the difference between self- and other-priming. Previous use of a variant by another speaker is more likely to lead to persistence than previous use by the current speaker in the case that the current speaker does not usually prefer usage of the variant in question. However, if the current speaker prefers usage of the variant in question, this situation is inverted. These findings suggest that for speakers who prefer usage of the primed variant, self-priming in corpus data might actually be more adequately explained as an effect of individual preferences.

Keywords: variation, persistence, priming, subjunctive, Spanish, sociolinguistics
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Persistence and individual variation
  • 3.The case study: Variation in the Spanish past subjunctive
    • 3.1Data
    • 3.2Persistence as a predictor of the variation between -ra and -se
    • 3.3Modelling the influence of individual preferences
    • 3.4Discussion of results
  • 4.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 31 October 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.234.09ros
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