Publications

Publication details [#45457]

Publication type
Article in book
Publication language
English
Language as a subject
Place, Publisher
John Benjamins

Annotation

Although the two copular verbs,ser and estar ‘to be’, have been the subject of extensive debate in theoretical linguistics (Fernández Leborans 1999), less in known about how the use of these two verbs varies from one Spanish-speaking region to another. The sociolinguistic research conducted to date (de Jonge 1993; Díaz-Campos & Geeslin 2004; Gutiérrez 1992; Silva-Corvalán 1994;) has shown that, in contexts where both copulas are allowed, some features (e.g., adjective class, frame of reference and susceptibility to change) can affect the degree to which one copula is favored over the other. This study has recently begun to extend this body of research to the Spanish spoken in Spain and found that while several linguistic factors predict copula use in the Spanish spoken in Galicia (Guijarro-Fuentes & Geeslin, forthcoming), results showed less of an effect for individual variables. The current study further seeks to explore the Spanish spoken in Galicia and the individual characteristics related to language use and language learning by expanding the participant group (N=155 in total) to include a less homogeneous population. The participants include a group of monolingual Spanish speakers residing outside Galicia to whom the bilingual participants will be compared, and a group of Spanish speakers in Galicia (N=73) who vary in degree of bilingualism, language learning histories, and language use profiles. Each participant completed a background questionnaire and a Spanish contextualized preference task. The data were coded for copula choice (the dependent variable) and several independent variables describing characteristics of language learning and language use. The results show significant effects for gender, occupation, the first language of the participant's mother, and the language normally used by the participants.