Subject Pronoun Expression among Spanish-Portuguese Bilinguals (original) (raw)
Related papers
Spanish in Context, 2010
The border shared by Brazil and Uruguay represents a situation of sustained, intimate cultural and linguistic contact between Spanish and Portuguese speakers. Previous research on the bilingualism of this region has focused primarily on Dialectos Portugueses del Uruguay ‘Portuguese Dialects of Uruguay’ (DPU) (Carvalho 1998, 2003; Elizaincín 1976, 1992; Elizaincín, Behares, & Barrios 1987; Hensey 1971, 1972, 1982; Rona 1965). Surprisingly, however, the Spanish of Uruguay spoken along this border has never been extensively studied. The current research focuses on the role of sociolinguistic identity in the conditioning of language-specific variants of intervocalic /d/ in the Spanish of 63 bilinguals living in Rivera, Uruguay. Unlike in monolingual varieties of Spanish, in which intervocalic /d/ is realized as either a fricative or a phonetic zero, this phoneme is also variably realized as an occlusive in the bilingual Spanish of Rivera in accordance with Portuguese phonological norms. Perceptions of sociolinguistic identity within this speech community are based on four independent factor groups. These are: (1) frequency of language use, (2) language preference, (3) attitudes toward local Portuguese and (4) attitudes toward language mixing. Results from multivariate analysis reveal that Portuguese-dominant speakers tend to incorporate occlusive variants of intervocalic /d/ into their Spanish to a much greater extent than Spanish-dominant speakers. Conversely, the deletion of this consonant, which has garnered covert prestige within the community due to its association with non-border varieties of Spanish, is statistically favored among speakers who prefer this language. These results provide evidence in support of the hypothesis that the ease of access of phonological exemplars from stored memory is greater for those encoding frequent, recent experiences (Pierrehumbert 2001). With regards to sociolinguistic attitudes, statistical analysis shows that speakers who have positive attitudes toward local Portuguese favor the use of occlusive variants, which serve as markers of Brazilian identity. Somewhat counter intuitively, speakers who have positive attitudes toward language mixing favor deletion. When these attitudes are cross-tabulated with speakers’ occupation, however, it becomes clear that only students have overwhelmingly positive attitudes toward language mixing. Not surprisingly, they are also the least conservative group in the community and lead the way for phonological change (Waltermire 2008).
Sociolinguistics of the Spanish speaking world
Annual Review of Linguistics, 2020
This review provides a state-of-the-art overview of Spanish sociolinguistics and discusses several areas, including variationist sociolinguistics, bilingual and immigrant communities, and linguistic ethnography. We acknowledge many recent advances and the abundant research on several classic topics, such as phonology, morphosyntax, and discourse-pragmatics. We also highlight the need for research on understudied phenomena and emphasize the importance of combining both quantitative and ethnographic methodologies in sociolinguistic research. Much research on Spanish has shown that the language’s wide variation across the globe is a reflection of Spanish-speaking communities’ rich sociohistorical and demographic diversity. Yet, there are many areas where research is needed, including bilingualism in indigenous communities, access to bilingual education, attitudes toward speakers of indigenous languages, and language maintenance and attrition. Language policy, ideology, and use in the legal and health care systems have also become important topics of sociolinguistics today as they relate to issues of human rights.
Some remarks on Spanish in the bilingual world
Journal of World Languages
The core goal of this article consists of raising new questions about the status of Spanish in bilingual contexts. The starting point is that we observe tremendous variance in the repertoire, competence, and use of Spanish by bilinguals across the globe: from very fluent bilinguals to subtractive bilinguals (also known as heritage speakers) to overhearers, who heard Spanish in the background growing up but did not actively speak it. Setting the overhearer type aside, I contend that the other types of bilinguals meet the criteria for native speakerhood, which is nowadays understood in a more flexible and nuanced way than in more traditional variants of sociolinguistics. The discussion centers around the issues of the baseline (the language that serves as input to the bilingual upbringing), minimal exposure required for the acquisition of a language as a native one, and sociolinguistic models that allow for discontinuity in a given language community.
Null Objects with and without Bilingualism in the Portuguese- and Spanish-Speaking World
The topic of null anaphoric direct objects (ADOs) in both Portuguese and Spanish has seen increasing interest over the last 10-15 years, albeit with more emphasis on bilingualism and language contact in Spanish than in Portuguese (e.g. Choi 2000; Gómez-Seibane 2011, 2013; Reig 2008, 2009; Sainz-Maza Lecanda 2014a, 2014b; Schwenter & Silva 2003; Schwenter 2014). In this chapter, we synthesize the results of this research and indicate some points of connection and divergence both across the two languages and in the study of ADOs in the language of monolinguals versus bilinguals. In particular, we focus on the importance of inherent referential characteristics vis-à-vis discourse-pragmatic factors in the variation between overt and null ADO realization in Portuguese and Basque Spanish. Our findings indicate that, among Portuguese speakers and Basque Spanish bilinguals where null and overt ADO variation is productive, some of the linguistic as well as pragmatic constraints analyzed feature strong commonalities in their behavior. Conversely, when comparing Basque Spanish bilinguals with Castilian monolinguals whose degree of ADO variation is limited, such parallelisms do not emerge. Our findings suggest that bilingualism and language contact play a distinctive role in ADO expression in Spanish. Additionally, we believe that the similarities found in our comparison of Portuguese and Basque Spanish are suggestive of the existence of cross-linguistic properties constraining null and overt ADO variation, which calls for further exploration of this phenomenon across languages and other Spanish varieties. Our work conveys the message that, in order to fully understand the system of variation in a given variety or language, it is absolutely crucial to look at and compare monolingual and bilingual communities in addition to other languages with shared linguistic phenomena.
Spanish in Contact with Portuguese: The Case of Barranquenho
The Handbook of Hispanic Sociolinguistics, 2011
Page 1. The Handbook of Hispanic Sociolinguistics, edited by Manuel Díaz-Campos © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Any introduction to linguistics tells us that the main functions of language are encoding reality, communication, and managing social relations. ...
Spanish Pro-Drop Meets the Bilingual Speaker
1989
A study of the language use of 45 transitional Spanish-English bilinguals focused on subject pronoun usage patterns evolving when the bilingual has acquired both a prodrop (Spanish) and a non-prodrop (English) language and frequently switches between them. Subjects were of Mexican, Cuban, and Puerto Rican background, and had not attained the language proficiency of fluent Spanish monolinguals. Findings suggest that modifications of Spanish in a bilingual setting involve underdifferentiation of null and overt subject pronouns, whose behavior is not fixed by parameters but determined by pragmatic and perhaps prosodic configurations. Spanish overt pronouns appear to be losing their status as stressed or strong pronouns as opposed to inherently weak null pronouns, thus paralleling English, where overt subject pronouns are normally unstressed but can recsive contrastive or emphatic stress. Transitional bilingual Spanish speakers seem to be approaching the stage where the only feature disti _uishing null and overt pronouns is the presence or absence of phonetic substance. It is concluded that the resettins of the null subject option is not the normal outcome in unbalanced bilingualism, but that the possibility for null subjects exists in Spanish at all levels. (MSE)