The effect of the verb on pronominal expression: A reanalysis (original) (raw)
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A Variationist Study of Subject Pronoun Expression in Medellín, Colombia
Languages
This variationist study of subject pronoun expression (SPE) in Medellín, Colombia uses multivariate regressions to probe the effects of ten predictors on 4623 tokens from the Proyecto para el Estudio Sociolingüístico del Español de España y de América (PRESEEA) corpus. We implement analytical innovations by exploring transitivity and the lexical effect of the verb, which we analyze by testing infinitives and subject pronoun + verb collocations, respectively, as standalone, random-effect factors. Our results reveal the highest pronominal rate (28%) found in a mainland Spanish-speaking community. Additionally, we uncover that pronominal rates increase with age, a finding which appears to have cognitive implications. The internal conditioning contributes to pronombrista studies by showing the effects of discourse type and transitivity. Narratives and opinion statements favor overt subjects, but statements indicating routine activities favor null subjects. Whereas unergative verbs promo...
Much recent work argues that lexical frequency plays a central explanatory role in linguistic theory, but the status, predicted effects, and methodological treatment of frequency are controversial, especially so in the less-investigated area of syntactic variation. This paper addresses these issues in a case study of lexical frequency effects on variable subject personal pronoun (SPP) expression in Spanish. Prior studies of Spanish SPP use revealed significant constraints including formal and semantic properties of the verb, and discourse factors such as a switch-reference. These appear to be confirmed in our analysis of 4,916 verbs from a spoken corpus of Spanish, along with a powerful role for lexical frequency. But the frequency effect – best configured as a discrete rather than continuous variable - is complex; statistically, it has no independent direct effect, but operates entirely through interaction with other constraints. All other constraints on SPP use are amplified in high frequency forms, and some disappear at low frequencies. Frequency thus acts as a ‘gatekeeper’ and potentiator: above some frequency threshold, significant linguistic constraints on SPP use emerge; below the threshold they do not. We propose that this reflects experience and acquisition: speakers cannot formulate hypotheses about individual lexical items until they have sufficient evidence; the threshold is the level at which speakers have enough experience with a form to do so.
Earlier work on existential agreement variation in British English and Caribbean Spanish has made a convincing case for the hypothesis that existential agreement variation is constrained by three domain-general cognitive constraints on language (production) that are assumed in Cognitive Linguistics: markedness of coding, statistical preemption, and structural priming. A corollary of this analysis is that the same constraints should also be able to account for the behavior of other morphosyntactic alternations. To explore this hypothesis, I perform a case study of a well known, but notoriously hard to model alternation: subject pronoun expression in Cuban Spanish. I propose that the variation between overt and omitted tacit amounts to a competition between two abstract constructions: and , which is constrained by the three domain-general cognitive constraints. The database consists of 7,849 conjugated verbs with human-reference subjects that were drawn from 24 sociolinguistic interviews with native speakers of Cuban Spanish residing in Havana, Cuba. The results of a mixed-effects logistic regression suggest that speakers prefer for conceptually more prominent subjects, for verb forms that are entrenched in this construction, and when they have just used or processed this construction. As this pattern coincides completely with the predictions that follow from markedness of coding, statistical preemption, and structural priming, the paper concludes that morphosyntactic variation is constrained by these domain-general cognitive constraints.
Categories and Frequency: Cognition Verbs in Spanish Subject Expression
Languages 2021, 6(3), 126., 2021
Are semantic classes of verbs genuine or do they merely mask idiosyncrasies of frequent verbs? Here, we examine the interplay between semantic classes and frequent verb-form combinations, providing new evidence from variation patterns in spontaneous speech that linguistic categories are centered on high frequency members to which other members are similar. We offer an account of the well-known favoring effect of cognition verbs on Spanish subject pronoun expression by considering the role of high-frequency verbs (e.g., creer ‘think’ and saber ‘know’) and particular expressions ((yo) creo ‘I think’, (yo) no sé ‘I don’t know’). Analysis of variation in nearly 3000 tokens of unexpressed and pronominal subjects in conversational data replicates well-established predictors, but highlights that the cognition verb effect is really one of 1sg cognition verbs. In addition, particular expressions stand out for their high frequency relative to their component parts (for (yo) creo, proportion of lexical type, and proportion of pronoun). Further analysis of 1sg verbs with frequent expressions as fixed effects reveals shared patterns with other cognition verbs, including an association with non-coreferential contexts. Thus, classes can be identified by variation constraints and contextual distributions that are shared among class members and are measurably different from those of the more general variable structure. Cognition verbs in variable Spanish subject expression form a class anchored in lexically particular constructions.
Spanish in Context, 2020
The objective of this article is to extract certain general consequences about social and linguistic-pragmatic conditions in the expression of subject personal pronouns (SPPs) in contemporary urban Spanish. The study examines some of the results obtained in Valencia and Granada, Spain; Mexico City, Mexico; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Caracas, Venezuela; Bogotá and Medellín, Colombia; and Montevideo, Uruguay. These works have all analyzed data from the “Project for the Sociolinguistic Study of Spanish in Spain and America” (PRESEEA), thus they all share data collected under very similar circumstances (Moreno Fernández 1996; Cestero Mancera 2012). The presence or the absence of pronominal subjects in Spanish is required in certain contexts, but in most cases they are considered optional. This optionality depends on fixed factors of linguistic nature (such as the grammatical person and number of the subject, or the co-reference between the subject and a previous element) and of social nature (such as age or gender), and on random factors (such as individuals and verbal pieces). The hypotheses to be tested are: (a) there is geographical variation among the cities studied, which is reflected in the rates of overt SPPs (Otheguy & Zentella 2012; Carvalho, Orozco & Shin 2015); (b) social variation is relatively small within each city; (c) the fixed and random linguistic-pragmatic variation is intense within each city and similar among cities; (d) the most relevant factors that activate overt SPPs are related to adequate information management of the anaphoric chains and textual coherence.
Lexical Frequency Effects on L2 Spanish Subject Pronoun Expression
Lexical frequency clearly plays a role in shaping the developing grammar, as frequent forms are acquired earlier and processed more easily than infrequent forms (Ellis 2012, Lieven 2010). Nevertheless, little is known about how frequency affects morphosyntactic variation during acquisition. This study examines the influence of frequency of verb forms on subject pronoun expression (e.g. yo canto ~ canto) in sociolinguistic interviews conducted with 12 second language learners of Spanish. Analyses of 980 verb forms indicate that frequency effects are dependent on L2 proficiency. During earlier stages of acquisition, frequency has a direct impact on pronoun expression: learners express pronouns more often with frequent than with infrequent verbs. This finding suggests that, in the face of the heavier cognitive burden presented by infrequent forms, learners with lower levels of proficiency tend to omit linguistic material. During more advanced stages of acquisition, however, frequency plays a more complex role: it activates or amplifies other linguistic variables that influence pronoun expression, such as switch-reference. This mediating role of frequency is similar to what has been found for native speakers of Spanish (Erker & Guy 2012), indicating that the advanced learners in the study produce target-like pronoun expression patterns. In summary, the study shows that lexical frequency influences variable morphosyntax during second language acquisition, and that its role is increasingly complex as learners become more proficient.
Perseveration of subject expression across regional dialects of Spanish
Spanish in Context, 2004
Models of communication strictly as a function of intention and control founder when confronted by variationist findings of perseveration at different levels of linguistic structure in use. When Poplack (1981) finds that Spanish [s] leads to more [s] and that “zeros lead to zeros,” it is unclear how speaker intention is involved. But, it is clear that what a speaker says at one point will influence what this same speaker says next. Here we identify perseveration of pronominal and null subjects in three dialects of Spanish: Madrid, San Juan, and New York City. In null subject Spanish, expression of subject pronouns leads to more pronouns, and expression of null subjects leads to more nulls. We argue that a perspicuous account of perseveration may be found within Spreading-Activation Theory (Dell 1986), a psycholinguistic theory of production based on speech errors. Thus, this work integrates quantitative dialect description with psycholinguistic explanation.
Variable subject pronoun expression revisited: This is what the Paisas do
Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America
We explore subject pronoun expression (SPE) in Medellín, Colombia using 4,623 tokens to test eight predictors. The 28% overall pronominal rate found is significantly higher than those in other mainland communities. Grammatical person exerts the greatest conditioning effect, with uno ‘one’ strongly favoring overt subjects. Findings for verb class reveal that speech and cognitive verbs promote overt subjects. However, our in-depth analysis unveils opposing tendencies between different pronominal subject + verb collocations for the same verb. E.g., whereas (yo) soy ‘I am’ strongly favors overt subjects, (ellos) son ‘they are’ favors null subjects. These findings suggest that analyses focusing on infinitives do not constitute the most accurate way to explore verb effects on SPE. Moreover, the effect of age reveals a low pronominal rate among the youngest speakers, a finding that appears to have cognitive and acquisitional implications, as younger speakers would be expected to have highe...