Abstract
The current study examines variable clitic placement (CP) in Spanish in a Mexican community in the metropolitan Atlanta area. By employing sociolinguistic interview data from 20 ...first-generation Mexican speakers, clitic frequencies and constraints are analyzed. Tokens of proclisis and enclisis were coded for linguistic and social factors that potentially influence clitic usage (e.g., topic persistence, specific clitic used, English proficiency, age, gender), and a logistic regression analysis was carried out using
Rbrul
(
Daniel Johnson, 2009
). Results indicate a proclisis rate of 64%, which is comparable to other varieties of Mexican Spanish. The regression analysis revealed that CP is sensitive to the particular construction used, the specific clitic, the presence of a pause, and the speaker’s gender. Additionally, English proficiency showed no effect on CP. This analysis supports previous research that CP is impermeable to contact-induced change and also reveals new conditioning factors (specific clitic, presence of a pause) that have not been examined in previous literature.
The dominant trend in variationist studies of Spanish subject expression is to focus on pronominal subjects, excluding lexical subjects (LSs). Due to such lack of attention to LSs in previous ...research, the current paper aims to fill this gap and to gain a better understanding of variation between LSs and subject pronouns (SPs). While previous research that analyzes LSs makes a significant contribution to the scholarship on subjects and enriches our understanding of the functions of LSs, a variable context for LSs in the variationist tradition has not heretofore been established. The current paper proposes a variable context methodology for LSs by investigating cases where LSs are produced (e.g. mi mamá trabaja ‘my mom works’), particularly in contexts in which SPs (overt or null) could have alternatively been produced (e.g. ella/∅ trabaja ‘she works’). Overall frequencies, constraints, and pragmatic functions of LSs are discussed.
Variationist research on subject pronoun expression (SPE) in Spanish typically incorporates all grammatical persons/numbers into the same analysis, with important exceptions such as studies focusing ...exclusively on first-person singular (e.g., Travis, Catherine E. 2005. The yo-yo effect: Priming in subject expression in Colombian Spanish. In Randall Gess & Edward J Rubin (eds.),
, 329–349. Amsterdam, Salt Lake City: Benjamins 2004; Travis, Catherine E. 2007. Genre effects on subject expression in Spanish: Priming in narrative and conversation.
19. 101–135; Travis, Catherine E. & Rena Torres Cacoullos. 2012. What do subject pronouns do in discourse? Cognitive, mechanical and constructional factors in variation.
23(4). 711–748), third-person singular (Shin, Naomi Lapidus. 2014. Grammatical complexification in Spanish in New York: 3sg pronoun expression and verbal ambiguity.
26. 303–330), and third-person plural subjects (Lapidus, Naomi & Ricardo Otheguy. 2005. Overt nonspecific ellos in Spanish in New York.
2(2). 157–174). The current study is the first variationist analysis (to the best of my knowledge) to focus solely on first-person plural SPE. It is well-established that
exhibits one of the lowest rates of SPE relative to the other persons/numbers; however, factors conditioning its variation are less understood. Conversational corpus data from Mexican Spanish are employed to examine tokens of first-person plural SPE (
=660) in terms of frequency and constraints, incorporating factors such as TMA, switch reference, and verb class in logistic regression analyses. Results suggest that
, like other subjects, is strongly impacted by switch reference and tense-mood-aspect (TMA). However, the TMA effect is unique in that preterit aspect is shown to favor overt
relative to other TMAs, diverging from previous studies. Furthermore, verb class — a factor found to be repeatedly significant in the literature — is inoperative for
. These results suggest that
does not respond to the same factors as other persons/numbers. Additionally, the findings lend support to researchers regarding the importance of studying individual persons/numbers in subject variation research.
While racist discourse has received much attention in Critical Discourse Studies (CDS), there is a dearth of scholarship on the anti-racist text and talk. A critical observation is that the ...anti-racist movement, and hence, discourse, often exclude women. With the goal of contributing to this gap in the CDS literature, the current analysis examines Black women's discourses concerning anti-Black racism in general and Black Feminism in particular. Four YouTube videos that feature both conference talks and news programs surrounding the topic of Black Feminism are analysed for recurring themes using thematic analysis and discourse structures from the perspective of critical discourse analysis. Findings reveal that the primary themes that emerged are the inclusion of Black women, Police brutality and unaccountability, and Black Feminism Defined, with various subthemes. In addition, the discourse structures examined are lexical choice, presupposition, pronominal choice, and the use of tag questions, among others. This study serves to further our understanding of the linguistic manifestation of ideologies through discourse concerning anti-racism and Black Feminism.
The construction lo que pasa es que ‘what happens is that’ is a Spanish discourse marker that was originally a pseudo-cleft construction. Before becoming grammaticalized, the verb pasar contained its ...full lexical meaning ‘to happen,’ but later evolved into a fixed expression losing its lexical meaning and acquiring an implicit contrastive and causal meaning. The present study aims to describe the construction’s evolution on the path of grammaticalization in relation to Traugott’s (1989) three semantic-pragmatic tendencies. In addition, a Usage-based Theory approach is employed in order to describe some of the formal aspects of the construction. Using two corpora, CORDE and Corpus del Español, all instances of the construction were located and analyzed with regard to function and usage in context. Results indicate that the construction was first used in the 16th Century and that its evolution as lexical > concessive > epistemic is in line with Traugott’s tendencies. Mechanisms of change such as chunking and phonetic reduction and loss of compositionality and analyzability, as well as increase in overall frequency are also discussed in relation to this construction, lending further support to Usage-based theory.
The current study analyzes variable subject pronoun expression (SPE) for first-person singular (1sg) and third-person subjects in a variety of Mexican Spanish spoken by first-generation Mexican ...immigrants in the state of Georgia, Southeastern U.S. Conversational data from sociolinguistic interviews are employed to examine tokens of 1sg and third-person variable SPE and their usage patterns, considering factors such as tense-mood-aspect (TMA), switch reference, polarity, and verb class by means of logistic regression analyses. Results suggest that all four factors influence 1sg variation, but that third-person variation is restricted to switch reference and TMA. In addition, a significant link between switch reference and TMA is found for third-person subjects, but not for 1sg. The findings lend further support to previous scholars advocating the importance of studying individual grammatical persons in SPE research as this can reveal previously obfuscated nuances in the patterns of subject variation.
Se emplean datos de un corpus conversacional del español mexicano en Atlanta, Georgia para examinar ejemplos de la expresión del sujeto pronominal (ESP) de segunda persona singular (n = 478) en ...términos de frecuencia y restricciones, incorporando factores tales como tiempo-modoaspecto (TMA), cambio de referencia y especificidad en un análisis de regresión logística. Los resultados sugieren que tú, al igual que otros sujetos, está fuertemente afectado por el cambio de referencia y TMA. Sin embargo, el efecto de TMA es único en el sentido de que se demuestra que el aspecto imperfecto desfavorece tú explícito en relación con otros TMA, divergiendo de estudios previos. Además, la especificidad -un factor que se ha encontrado repetidamente significativo en la bibliografía- es inoperante, lo que sugiere que tú se comporta de manera diferente en este dialecto con respecto a su sensibilidad a factores lingüísticos.
This paper reports on a preliminary analysis of the Spanish discourse marker (DM) por decirlo así (PDA), a metapragmatic expression with an attenuating function used in various dialects of Spanish. ...Aside from brief descriptions (e.g. Piñero Piñero and Díaz Peralta, 2005), PDA has thus far not been studied in the literature. The present study, therefore, aims to provide a more thorough analysis of its discourse functions as well as to compare it to the functions of other DMs. Using oral data from the Corpus del Español (CdE, Davies, 2002-) and the Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual (CREA), 105 cases of PDA were analyzed and categorized according to Caffi's (1999) mitigation framework. Results indicate that PDA functions as both a bush and a hedge, with the former being more prominent. Further, the study suggests that, similarly to what has been observed for the DM o sea (Schwenter, 1996), PDA is used epistemically to reduce the speaker's commitment to an opinion or belief. Similarities with other DMs such as digamos and que digamos are also discussed.
Abstract
The current study analyzes mood alternation in Spanish spoken in Georgia among first-generation Mexican immigrants. Using sociolinguistic interview data, tokens of the subjunctive and ...indicative in dependent clauses were examined, particularly in the following syntactic contexts:
depender, aunque, me gusta que, no porque, quizás, tal vez,
and
no sé si/ cómo/dónde/qué
. We argue that mood selection in the contexts under study is determined by the evaluation of the proposition in the dependent clause. We then use this data to inform theories of possible world semantics (i.e.,
Anand and Hacquard 2013
;
Giannakidou and Mari 2021
;
Villalta 2008
) to better understand mood alternation. Moreover, while many U.S. Spanish varieties may demonstrate what Silva-Corvalán (
1994
, 91) refers to as “a reduced system that made it more difficult to distinguish between more or less possible situations in a hypothetical world,” we show that cases of alternation in the present data still differentiate speaker meaning and evaluation.
This research project sought to explore the non-orthogonal role of the factors that condition the use of pronominal subjects in Spanish (SPE) through a quantitative analysis of interviews, ...systematized by cross tabulation and trees of conditional inference, in order to explore such interaction effects. This study reveals that several factors together restrict the use of SPE and that the variable grammar of PSS is more complex than observed, with only mere effects in sociolinguistic literature.
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