First-person singular and third-person subject pronoun variation: The case of Mexican Spanish in the U.S. state of Georgia (original) (raw)
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Regional comparisons of subject pronoun expression among Mexican-origin immigrants in Georgia
This paper reports on a comparative analysis of variable subject pronoun expression (SPE) among first-generation Mexican immigrants in the U.S. with differing regional origins. Using sociolinguistic interview data collected in Georgia, occurrence rates and usage patterns of first-person singular SPs were examined among two groups of speakers: those hailing from Mexico City (N=8) and those from other Mexican regions, such as Guerrero, Zacatecas, and Colima, among others (N=12). From a variationist sociolinguistic perspective, rates and constraints on SPs were examined comparatively across the two groups by means of logistic regression analyses in Rbrul, with results indicating wide variation in pronoun rates both across and within groups. This suggests that Mexican Spanish may exhibit a wider range of variation in SP rates than was previously assumed. Regarding usage patterns, the linguistic constraints on SPE (switch reference, TMA, verb class, polarity) show remarkable similarities between Mexico City speakers and non-Mexico City speakers, suggesting cross-regional uniformity for firstperson singular SPE in Mexican dialects. Additionally, the social predictors of age and gender were examined, and, while no significant main effects were observed, interaction effects between the linguistic and social predictors were differentially operative between Mexico City and non-Mexico City speakers, reflecting a more nuanced view on the sociolinguistic conditioning of variable SPE.
Subject Expression in a Southeastern U.S. Mexican Community
2018
This dissertation examines language contact between Spanish and English in the Southeastern U.S. by analyzing Spanish spoken in Georgia. Through an analysis of immigrant Spanish in the city of Roswell, an exurb of Atlanta, potential contact-induced language change is investigated through the lens of subject expression. While most research on Spanish has been carried out in regions such as the Southwest and Northeast, the Southeastern U.S. has not received as much scholarly attention. Therefore, the present investigation seeks to examine understudied varieties of U.S. Spanish, specifically regarding the linguistic processes at work in recent language contact situations. Latin American immigration to the Southeast has led to recent demographic shift in this region and substantial Spanish-speaking populations are emerging that historically were not part of the Southeast. The city of Roswell in particular represents this demographic shift in the Southeast, making it an ideal test site for emerging bilingual speech communities. The current study examines subject expression among 20 Mexican immigrants using sociolinguistic interview data. The speakers' average length of residency (LOR) in the U.S. is 12 years, and their average age of arrival (AOA) is 27. Tokens of subject pronouns from the interviews were coded for language-internal (linguistic) variables previously shown to constrain subject expression (e.g. person/number, switch reference, tense-mood-aspect [TMA]), morphological ambiguity, polarity, specificity) as well as language-external (social) variables (e.g. English proficiency, age, gender, LOR, AOA), and then analyzed using mixed-effects multivariate analysis in Rbrul (Johnson 2009). Results indicate an overall overt pronoun rate of 27% for Mexicans in Roswell, which is higher than what has been reported for monolingual Mexican Spanish. The multivariate analysis showed that several linguistic variables (e.g. person/number, switch reference, morphological ambiguity, polarity) and one social variable (age) played a significant role in pronoun variation. Moreover, differential effects were revealed when compared to monolingual Mexican Spanish for variables such as TMA and verb class, suggesting an influence of bilingualism. Such divergent linguistic configurations in Roswell Spanish suggest that we are seeing an emergent variety of Mexican Spanish in the U.S. with regard to subject pronoun expression.
Referring to discourse participants in Ibero-Romance languages, 2023
This study provides a cross-dialectic comparison of first person singular subject pronoun expression in the Spanish varieties of two US-Mexico borderland communities, Southern Arizona and Southeast Texas. Using data collected from sociolinguistic interviews of 32 Spanish/English bilingual speakers, this analysis further explores the impact that trans-frontier practices have on the realization of subject pronouns in border communities and demonstrates the similarities in the variable grammar of the Spanish spoken in the US Southwest. The results show that both Arizona and Texas express first person singular pronouns at a similar rate (19.3% and 18.7%, respectively). Additionally, the linguistic factors that condition the variable (switch reference; clause type; tense, mood, and aspect; and whether or not the verb is reflexive) are very similar within each group.
This study examines subject expression from a pragmatic perspective in an emerging bilingual community of Roswell, Georgia, an exurb of Atlanta. Using sociolinguistic interviews conducted in Roswell (Wilson 2013), first-person singular subject pronoun (SP) usage is analyzed among 10 Mexican speakers within five distinct pragmatic contexts which were adapted from Quesada and Blackwell (2009): salient referent, switch focus, contrastive focus, pragmatic weight, and epistemic parentheticals. A comparison is made between Georgia speakers and monolingual Mexican speakers in Querétaro (Quesada and Blackwell 2009) in order to explore the possible weakening of pragmatic constraints due to English contact (Silva-Corvalán 1994). Results indicate that a contact hypothesis is not supported in terms of overall overt pronoun usage as evidenced by similar frequencies when compared to monolingual Mexican varieties. However, an increased use of overt SPs in the context of salient referent as well as a diminished use of overt SPs in switch focus contexts is found, suggesting a potential weakened sensitivity to such pragmatic constraints.
THE INTERACTION EFFECTS ON VARIABLE SUBJECT PRONOUN EXPRESSION IN SPANISH
Lingüística y Literatura, 2020
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.
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.
Grammatical complexification in Spanish in New York: 3sg pronoun expression and verbal ambiguity
2014
This study provides evidence of grammatical complexification, operationalized as the emergence of a significant linguistic constraint on the use of a linguistic structure, in Spanish spoken in New York City (NYC). Analyses of 4,276 third person singular (3sg) verbs produced in sociolinguistic interviews with first-generation Latin American immigrants and second-generation US-born Latinos demonstrate that 3sg subject pronoun expression (ella canta ~ canta 'she sings ~ sings') is constrained by tense-mood-aspect (TMA) in the second generation, but not the first. Further analysis shows that this effect reflects a strategy aimed at clear referent identification. I conclude by suggesting that the increase in attention to ambiguous verb morphology, i.e., the complexification, is related to other, concomitant changes in pronoun expression patterns in Spanish in NYC.