Variable subject placement in the Atlanta metro area (original) (raw)

Variation in subject placement in Spanish (yo pienso vs. pienso yo) has been shown to be conditioned by multiple factors, such as clause type (e.g. Rivas 2013; Mayoral 2014), verb type (e.g. Mayoral 2007, 2014; Sánchez 2008), and information structure (e.g. Bentivoglio 2003; Rivas 2008, 2013), among others. Other factors, however, such as person/number, TMA, and priming are less studied (but see, e.g., Brown & Rivas 2011; Benevento & Dietrich 2014). The current paper uses sociolinguistic interview data from the Corpus of Spanish in Georgia (Limerick 2021) to examine pronominal subject placement among 20 first-generation Mexican immigrants in the Atlanta metro area, constituting the first study (to the best of my knowledge) to analyze this phenomenon in Southeastern U.S. Spanish. Linguistic predictors (e.g. person/number of the subject, TMA, verb type, priming) as well as social predictors (e.g. age, sex, English proficiency, preferred media language) were incorporated into logistic regression analyses, with results suggesting that subject pronoun placement is most strongly influenced by the person/number of the subject. In particular, third person singular pronouns favor postverbal subjects while other pronouns favor preverbal position. Regarding social predictors, both sex and preferred media language appeared to play significant roles in the initial analysis; however, upon considering individual outlier speaker effects, the only predictor that remained significant was media language, with the apparent effect of sex disappearing. The media language effect shows that those with a preference for English media favor preverbal subjects, suggesting a potential language contact effect. The present work contributes to our knowledge of subject placement by revealing new patterns for underexplored linguistic and social factors that influence its variation. Furthermore, the findings have implications for the study of language contact and change more broadly, demonstrating the importance of considering how individual speakers could misrepresent the overall data, interpretations of results, and conclusions in sociolinguistic studies.