Abstract In contemporary Spanish, the verb decir ‘say’ presents idiosyncratic behavior regarding subject expression and position. In spoken Peninsular Spanish, decir strongly favors postverbal subjects, unlike other transitive or ditransitive verbs. The present paper focuses on the diachrony of the verb form dice / dize , tracing back the syntactic patterns in diachronic data extracted from the Corpus del Español from the 13th to the 21st century. Our aim is to elucidate whether postverbal subjects of dice/dize have become more frequent over time, or whether they rather can be considered a vestige of word order patterns that were more productive in old Spanish, as the residual V2 hypothesis predicts. The data suggest that while null subjects have become more common and postverbal subjects less common in general, this is due to the increasing use of specific constructional patterns, partly related to the frequency of syntactic operations like quotative inversion. The idiosyncratic morphosyntactic tendencies of the verb decir reflect the subject types and discourse functions of the verb that remain unchanged throughout the centuries.
Abstract This investigation is a close replication of Kanwit and Geeslin (2014). The initial study was the first study in variationist second language acquisition to examine the second-language development of the interpretation of a variable linguistic structure. In particular, Kanwit and Geeslin investigated the interpretation of verbal moods in adverbial clauses in Spanish among second-language learners who were first-language speakers of English. We participate in iterative replication research by extending their research to first-language speakers of Turkish. Although all of the results in this replication study were not identical to those in the initial study, we found many commonalities. Thus, we argue that this close replication of Kanwit and Geeslin (2014). The interpretation of Spanish subjunctive and indicative forms in adverbial clauses: A cross-sectional study. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 36. 487–533, suggests that certain universal learning strategies may be at play in the acquisition of the interpretation of variable moods in Spanish.
Abstract This paper discusses issues of linguistic identity regarding the creole languages spoken in São Tomé and Príncipe: Forro (or Santome), Lung’Ie (or Principense), Angolar, and Kabuverdianu. The research is based on a qualitative-quantitative methodology, using questionnaires answered by undergraduate students of the Portuguese Language Program at the University of São Tomé and Príncipe, during a fieldwork trip conducted by the first author in 2016. The survey included 19 participants (men and women) aged between 22 and 45. The questionnaire was designed with questions related to the linguistic identity of the speakers and their use of creole languages, the diglossic relationship with Portuguese, and the presence of the State in supporting and maintaining these languages. We concluded that university students are aware of the urgent need to maintain, promote and use creole languages in formal domains of society, even though most were not speakers of these languages. Their discourse emphasizes the minoritized status of the creole languages relative to Portuguese, the official and majority language of São Tomé and Príncipe.
Abstract This study focuses on the choice between Spanish accusative and dative clitics as a phenomenon of morphological variation with functional and cognitive implications. The analysis is based on a corpus of written digital media discourse, representing a variety close to the northern-central Peninsular standard. Dative forms are linked to higher salience of the object referent, as evidenced by their distribution in both ditransitive and monotransitive clauses with an identifiable agent or experiencer. It is hypothesized that the defocusing of the latter participant should increase the contextual salience of object referents, thus favoring the use of dative clitics. This is tested with two types of defocusing constructions, namely impersonal reflexives, and non-phoric plural third persons. The results show a marked dominance of the dative in the former context, owing to the fact that the event is construed as internal to the object, whereby the initiator becomes cognitively blurred. With plural third persons, while general dative rates are also comparably high, the initiator is often still perceivable, which makes formal choice more dependent on other factors related to transitivity. Clitic variation needs to be further analyzed as a simultaneously formal and meaningful phenomenon in different textual modalities and interactional settings.
Abstract Our understanding of language change has been shown to benefit from considering prominent cognitive processes investigated in usage-based language research. Specifically, robust processes observed in formulaic language studies can be evaluated in terms of the predictions they make about language change. We consider one of its manifestations, the loss of reflexivity marking. While this study focuses primarily on eroding reflexivity in Portuguese, the factors involved play a role in this evolution more generally. We assume that it is a potential scenario in other languages that mark reflexivity overtly, of which English is one example. One factor investigated here is semantic autonomy, which is associated with chunking. Based on corpus data, we identify conspicuous pockets of resistance to change. Despite the pervasive degree of the erosion attested across all types of reflexive verbs, some exceptional verbs resist the trend of omission of the reflexive marker. This is a demonstration of the impact that formulaic processing has on the maintenance of reflexivity and, more generally, on the speakers’ cognitive representations of language knowledge. The observed variability of reflexive marking calls for an account of how formulaic language is processed in the mind. The hypothesis being proposed here is that fixed phrases undergo both analytic and holistic processing simultaneously.
Abstract Usage-based approaches to language variation and change can explain how token and type frequencies interact such that lower token frequency word-forms might be regularized and adapted to higher type frequency patterns. This quantitative variationist study explores the regularization of the preterit andar ‘walk’ in Spain, a phenomenon that has received little empirical attention except for one recent analysis of bogotano Spanish in a controlled production task. We advance research on this understudied topic by considering more open-ended production data, a different set of regional varieties (i.e., European Spanish), and five independent linguistic variables, the latter four of which are new to this topic: person/number, meaning/function of andar , polarity, formality, and structural priming. Data were analyzed from two corpora which offered comparable written data (e.g., websites, newspapers, blogs), with a focus on European subsets of data: El Corpus del Español (ECDE) and Sketch Engine. Mixed-effects regression revealed that numerous predictors favored andar regularization: negation, informality, regularized primed tokens, 2PL and 3SG subjects, and the meaning/function of ‘walk’. We provide a rare systematic analysis of andar regularization in European Spanish in written data and reveal that regularization is indeed constrained by a range of linguistic predictors.
The current study investigates how native English phonetic categories affect the perception of Spanish diphthong /ei/ for second language (L2) learners and heritage speakers (HS) of Spanish. Based in L2 speech models (PAM-L2 and SLM-r), it was hypothesized that late L2 learners, especially beginners, would struggle in the categorization and discrimination of Spanish diphthong /ei/ and monophthong /e/ due to their predicted assimilation to the same first language (L1) English category. In contrast, heritage speakers (HS), exposed to these sounds from an early age, may have advantages over the L2 learners in the perception of Spanish /ei/. To test this, an identification task and an ABX discrimination task were administered to beginning-L2 learners, HS, and non-heritage native speakers (NHNS) of Spanish. Results showed that L2 learners were less accurate in identifying and discriminating Spanish /ei/, particularly in word-final position, where more L2 vowel lengthening has been found to occur Nibert (2012. Factors affecting the off-gliding of mid vowels by intermediate-level adult learners of Spanish with L1 English. Poster presented at the Current Approaches to Spanish and Portuguese Second Language Phonology Conference, University of South Carolina, 16–19 February), while HS performed similarly to NHNS in perception of Spanish /ei/. Some differences in vowel identification mappings were noted between HS and NHNS, however, possibly due to HS knowledge of English orthography. Overall, findings support the predictions made under the PAM-L2 and SLM-r and highlight the effects of early language exposure and cross-linguistic influence on L2 and HS speech perception.
The testing of competing accounts of adjective-noun code-switching involving language pairs with different rules for adjective placement has produced inconclusive results. Some studies have found that word order is determined by the language of the verb, as predicted by the Matrix Language Framework, others point to the language of the adjective, as predicted by the Minimalist Program, and some have found an additive effect in which both the language of the verb and the language of the adjective determine word order. These results are based on the analysis of naturalistic oral data or controlled, experimental data. This paper provides new insights by analyzing a corpus of written Spanish-English code-switching. Results show that the pre-nominal position is preferred for both English and Spanish adjectives regardless of the language of the verb or the language of the adjective.
The present study comprises the first approximation of the indexical field of Chilean Spanish creaky voice, a type of prosodic variation that is highly understudied in Spanish. This study asks what creaky voice means to listeners and what (social) identities they attribute to its users. Results of a survey collecting both quantitative and open-ended qualitative data from 148 Chilean Spanish listeners point to creaky voice being associated with lower status, familiar relationships, informal and relaxed style, perceived older age (for women talkers) and tall stature (for men talkers). I show that these results mirror embodied and ideological distinctions for creaky voice within this dialect, rather than actual production patterns. This study lays the groundwork for further examinations of the meaning of creaky voice in additional cross-linguistic and cross-cultural settings.
Despite a significant body of research on the acquisition of Spanish psych verbs in adult bilingual populations, little attention has been given to the accusative/dative experiencer alternation that occurs in a subset of object experiencer psych verbs; namely, Class II verbs (e.g., sorprender ‘to surprise’). This syntactic alternation, which is relatively unique cross-linguistically, provides an opportunity to examine the factors at play when bilinguals are faced with optionality in argument structure. The present study explores experiencer preferences (accusative vs. dative) in three groups of bilingual Spanish-English speakers – L2 Spanish (L1 English late acquirers of L2 Spanish), heritage Spanish (early childhood acquirers of English), and L1 Spanish (late acquirers of L2 English). Participants completed an acceptability judgment task and a preference task, both designed to examine the role of context (eventive vs. stative) in experiencer choice. The results can be characterized as follows: L2 Spanish participants display a preference for dative experiencers, while L1 and heritage Spanish participants prefer accusative experiencers, regardless of context. Overall, the data patterns observed through both inter- and intra-group analyses are best explained in terms of overall language experience, including participants’ lifetime exposure to naturalistic input as well as language activation and use.
Previous work on the second language (L2) acquisition of Spanish voiced stop weakening by first language (L1) speakers of English has followed either a categorical or a continuous approach to allophonic production. This study combines both types of analyses to explore the phonetic development of intervocalic voiced stops. In addition, utterance initial voiced stops are examined to compare the development of different allophones, more precisely, approximants, voiced stops, and voiceless stops. Twenty-seven participants were recorded performing a reading task at the beginning and at the end of a semester during which they took a college-level Spanish phonetics course. Voiced stops in intervocalic and utterance initial position were analyzed for type of allophone production, and the consonant-vowel intensity ratio was used as a continuous measure of consonant weakening. Results show that learners develop their production of voiced stop weakening both at the segmental level, with an increase in approximants, and at the subsegmental level, with approximants being produced with increasingly less constriction. Moreover, an asymmetry between the development of intervocalic approximants and utterance initial voiced stops is observed, with the latter displaying a slower pace of acquisition. This finding is discussed within theories of L2 phonology that model the role of similarity in the acquisition process.
Variationist research typically focuses on monolingual speakers of majority languages, leaving change in minority languages understudied, especially in diasporic communities. Addressing this gap, we analyze interview data from 16 Puerto Ricans in Lorain, Ohio, to examine social and linguistic constraints on the manner of articulation of coda /r/ (N = 2,363) across three sociolinguistic generations (G1, G1.5, G2). We find that the conditioning of /r/ in the first generation is attenuated by G2. Specifically, the pattern in G1 whereby women produce significantly more prescriptively normative taps and fricatives than men is absent in G2 women, who produce lenited variants (approximants and deletions) at the same rate as men. The conditioning of /r/ by the manner of articulation of the following sound is similarly absent in the second generation. However, the influence of preceding vowel height and speaker origin remains consistent across generations. We posit that the shifts in coda /r/ conditioning result from a combination of language-internal and language-external factors whereby the tendency in Caribbean varieties of Spanish to weaken coda consonants is promoted by forces in the contact environment.
In Spanish, the -e suffix as a gender-inclusive morpheme (e.g., elles son bonites) has been proposed as an alternative to traditional -o to refer to mixed-gender groups. Limited studies on this innovation suggest that the computation of inclusive morphology might not incur high processing costs. However, it is unclear whether native speakers who have acquired the Spanish binary grammatical system before puberty effectively process noun-adjective gender agreement with said inclusive language morpheme. Thirty-seven native speakers of Spanish completed a self-paced reading task and a sociolinguistic questionnaire. The former task contained sentences with (1) a subject comprised of two stereotypically masculine names (e.g., Pedro) and two stereotypically feminine names (e.g., María), (2) the verb están, and (3) an adjective with the traditional -o suffix or the inclusive -e suffix, and the latter included questions about language use and beliefs. Results show that while -e was associated with longer processing time overall, participants who reported using inclusive language most frequently showed no difference in processing -o and -e. Additionally, questionnaire data show that participant beliefs about learnability and usability of inclusive language mirror experimental findings. These results suggest that it is possible to acquire the -e morpheme in the L1 after puberty, with beliefs influencing the processing of these forms. Furthermore, the results highlight the roles of use of and exposure to inclusive gender in the language in order for speakers to acquire and process it.
Non-standard gender agreement (N-SGA) is one of the linguistic features resulting from contact between Basque and Spanish in the Spanish spoken in the Basque Autonomous Community (BAC Spanish). The present study triangulates data from 73 participants (age range: 19–90), who completed three tasks: an exaggerated imitation task, a modified matched-guise task, and explicit questions regarding N-SGA in BAC Spanish. Statistical and thematic analyses reveal that N-SGA in BAC Spanish is associated with stereotypical perceptions of Basque native speakers from rural areas with limited access to education. Although results from the exaggerated imitation task suggest that N-SGA may not be the most salient feature associated with BAC Spanish, results from the explicit questions clearly reveal the social salience of N-SGA. Indeed, N-SGA is indexically linked to Basque native speakers with limited access to education (Fernández Ulloa, Teresa. 2006. Influencias morfosintácticas de la lengua vasca en el castellano actual. Oihenart 21. 73–99), despite other studies suggesting that this linguistic feature is also present among young native speakers of Basque who have had access to education (Basterretxea Santiso, Gorka. 2022. A triangulation study on gender agreement in Spanish by native Basque speakers. Revista Espanola de Linguistica 52(1). 7–37). As such, the study contributes to the field by modeling an approach to connecting formal grammatical constructs to their social significance in use, while also demonstrating the importance of the use of multiple methodologies to uncover nuances between use and perception.
Following the restoration of Spanish democracy in the 1970s, the institutions of the Balearic Islands crafted a legal framework for Catalan and Spanish that recognized them as official languages in the region and strived for the normalization of Catalan as the historic language of the archipelago. The establishment of this legal framework, however, and the consequent implementation of certain language policies, has been accompanied by a process of societal polarization in terms of language attitudes, particularly in Palma. Likewise, these language attitudes have become associated with certain political orientations, turning the linguistic situation in the Balearic Islands into a constant political debate. Consequently, this study explores the relationship between political orientation and language attitudes toward Catalan and Spanish in Palma. Data from 99 participants aged 18 to 71 were collected through an online questionnaire and analyzed using linear regression in R. Results revealed a significant association between political orientation and language attitudes toward both languages, as well as three main findings. First, a clear political division between progressive and conservative participants; second, distinct attitudes reflecting Catalan’s and Spanish’s social roles; and third, individual language attitudes do not necessarily align with usage patterns. Together, these findings underscore the influential role of political orientation in shaping language attitudes and emphasize the broader implications for language policy.
The current study investigates the oral production of plural noun phrases (NPs) in subject position in Spanish and English among forty child heritage speakers of Spanish who were raised in the United States. Their results were compared with twenty-four monolingual children of similar ages from Mexico. We elicited determiner use in generic and specific contexts in Spanish and English. Results showed a high level of determiner omission with generic referents in Spanish but much less variability with specific referents, suggesting crosslinguistic influence from English. Spanish proficiency played a role in the extent of determiner omission in Spanish generic contexts. Regarding the children’s English, the results showed a high proportion of determiner overextension with generic referents but little variability with specific contexts, suggesting bilingualism effects in sorting out the genericity problem in English. The results are discussed along the lines of the Bilingual Alignment Hypothesis and recent proposals on the effects of proficiency and experience in heritage language acquisition.
This article focuses on one aspect of the Brazilian Portuguese (BP hereafter) direct object ellipsis. In BP animate direct objects cannot be elided when they are definite. Using feature geometry (Harley, Heidi & Elizabeth Ritter. 2002. Person and number in pronouns. Language 78. 482–526) as a theoretical tool, I propose that the interaction between the features responsible for animacy and the features responsible for definiteness in the verb allow to explain such a restriction. Crucially, the organizing node class (related to animacy, and which is the main feature in the ellipsis operation) would have suffered an impoverishment in BP. This impoverishment (an operation that deletes morphosyntactic features post-syntactically) would cause that certain objects cannot be elided. The proposed interaction between animacy features and grammaticalized pragmatic features (specificity, definiteness) makes it feasible to explicitly relate the operation of nominal ellipsis to other phenomena such as differential object marking (DOM).
Although scant, the previous research on Guatemalan Spanish has suggested that both /f/ lenition, /f/ → [h], and /f/ fortition, /f/ → [p], are more common among Mayan-Spanish bilinguals with lower levels of education as /f/ is not present in any Mayan language. The present study analyzes 1,430 tokens of /f/ from sociolinguistic interviews in Spanish from 40 bilinguals of Spanish and the Mayan language K’iche’ according to both linguistic and extra-linguistic factors. Overall, both lenition and fortition were relatively infrequent. The results indicate that /f/ lenition is favored by the following phonetic contexts of [u̯i] and [u̯e] and by speakers with less formal education, especially for those who were more K’iche’-dominant. /f/ fortition is favored by previous nasals and pauses and by speakers who were more K’iche’-dominant. That is, while /f/ fortition is predicted by language dominance, /f/ lenition, similar to other varieties of Spanish, is most predicted by educational attainment, although with an interaction between education and language dominance. Thus, it is argued that in this community, /f/ lenition is due to sociolinguistic variation of a diachronic sound change while /f/ fortition is a result of language contact and processes of enregisterment. The findings indicate that sociolinguistic studies in bilingual communities must examine the role of education, language dominance, and the interaction between the two as language dominance does not inherently explain all variation in situations of language contact.
The present study compares the Second Language (L2) acquisition of Spanish Voice Onset Time (VOT) by 14 U S. semester-long study-abroad (SA) students in Madrid (Spain) and 9 at-home (AH) peers using an oral production task. To identify the trajectory of phonetic development across the fourteen-week program, Spanish and English /t/s were recorded at three different time points (pre-/mid-/post-semester). Based on an acoustic analysis and a three-pronged statistical approach – random forests, mixed-effects linear regression models, and conditional inference trees – we found that both groups of L2 Spanish speakers produced language-specific VOT values in each of their languages. Even though the comparison between each time point did not show significant differences in the VOT values for either group, an analysis of the individual variation in the data reveals a clear trend of VOT reduction from pre-to post-semester for most SA students. More specifically, SA students overall produced shorter (more target-like) Spanish VOTs during mid-semester and post-semester in comparison to pre-semester. Results also support findings that learner motivation and oral proficiency play prominent roles in the acquisition of L2 phonology abroad, while they question the role (or operationalization) of intensity of contact with the target language.
Few studies have investigated the developing grammars of school-aged children acquiring Spanish as a heritage or second language (L2) in dual language immersion programs. The present project evaluated 57 English-dominant Spanish heritage speakers (HS) and L2 learners enrolled in a dual language immersion school on their production and recognition of subjunctive mood in volitional clauses. Older children (12–14 year olds) produced more subjunctive mood and selected it more frequently on a forced choice task than younger participants (9–11 year-olds). Specifically, the older HSs produced and selected more subjunctive than age-matched L2 learners. However, HSs’ earlier age of acquisition of Spanish provided this group with a modest advantage over L2 learners in their command of subjunctive across tasks. Participants were more likely to produce and select subjunctive mood with irregular verbs. Finally, participants were more likely to select the subjunctive than to produce it. Implications for bilingualism theory and pedagogy in dual language immersion programs are discussed.
