Two languages, one effect: structural priming in spontaneous code-switching (original) (raw)
Related papers
Testing convergence via code-switching: Priming and the structure of variable subject expression
International Journal of Bilingualism, 2011
In this study, we test the hypothesis that code-switching promotes grammatical convergence by investigating Spanish first-person singular subject (yo 'I') expression in bilingual conversations of New Mexican speakers of Spanish and English. We find that variable yo expression in New Mexican Spanish follows the same grammatical patterning as has been identified for non-contact varieties, and that this is the case regardless of the degree of bilingualism of the speakers. We observe a slightly higher rate of subject expression in the presence of code-switching, however this is found to be attributable not to the code-switching per se, but to the presence of an English expressed first-person singular subject (I) in the preceding discourse. We interpret this as a cross-linguistic priming effect, and note that the presence of I increases the proportion of first singular subjects that occur in the context where the previous coreferential subject was expressed (be that Spanish yo or English I), an environment that favors yo expression. We conclude that, despite prolonged contact, the data do not support Spanish convergence with English in this variety, nor code-switching as a mechanism of language change. Instead, multivariate analyses indicate that cross-linguistic priming may play a role in ostensible contact-induced change by modestly raising the rate of a superficially similar construction, without accompanying changes in language-particular grammatical patterns.
Subject Pronoun Expression and PrimingEffects among Bilingual Speakers of Puerto Rican Spanish
2012
One of the most researched aspects of the Spanish language is the optional expression of subject personal pronouns (SPPs). Though some researchers and even some Spanish textbooks claim that overt SPPs are only used in contexts of contrast or emphasis (c.f. Montrul & Rodriguez Louro, 2006; Knorre, et al., 2009; Rothman, 2009), studies of actual usage of SPPs have shown that no one factor can explain all uses of overt SPPs, nor are overt SPPs used all the time in any one context. Factors that have been found to influence SPP expression include verb semantics, discourse connectedness, and person and number, among others (e.g., Ranson, 1991; Morales, 1997; Avila-Shah, 2000; Hurtado, 2005; Lapidus & Otheguy, 2005; Orozco & Guy, 2008). Another factor that recent studies have shown to relate to the use of overt SPPs is priming (FloresFerran, 2002; Cameron & Flores-Ferran, 2004; Travis, 2005b; Travis, 2007). Priming is a psycholinguistic process found to occur in the production of many lang...
Cross-language priming: A view from bilingual speech
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 2017
In the current paper we report on a study of priming of variable Spanish 1sg subject expression in spontaneous Spanish–English bilingual speech (based on the New Mexico Spanish–English Bilingual corpus, Torres Cacoullos & Travis, in preparation). We show both within- and cross-language Coreferential Subject Priming; however, cross-language priming from English to Spanish is weaker and shorter lived than within-language Spanish-to-Spanish priming, a finding that appears not to be attributable to lexical boost. Instead, interactions with subject continuity and verb type show that the strength of priming depends on co-occurring contextual features and particular [pronoun + verb] constructions, from the more lexically specific to the more schematically general. Quantitative patterns in speech thus offer insights unavailable from experimental work into the scope and locus of priming effects, suggesting that priming in bilingual discourse can serve to gauge degrees of strength of within- and cross-language associations between usage-based constructions.
Él Code-Switches More Than tú y yo: New Data for the Subject Pronoun-Verb Switch Constraint
Languages
In early studies, code-switches between a subject pronoun and a finite verb were considered highly dispreferred or even impossible. However, naturalistic data from several language pairs has since highlighted that such switches are possible, although their grammaticality is constrained by the typology of the pronouns involved. In this study, we test the switching constraints postulated for subject pronouns-verbs among P’urhepecha-Spanish bilinguals (n = 12) from Michoacán, western Mexico. Using a two-alternative forced-choice acceptability judgement task (2AFC), we found that, contrary to expectations, switches between a third person singular pronoun and a verb were considered the most acceptable, followed by the coordinated ‘you and I’ second person, then the first person singular. The same order was found for both switch directions, despite third-person pronouns in P’urhepecha having a stronger typological profile. Building on the results of previous studies, we suggest that the l...
Priming as a Diagnostic of Grammatical Constructions: Second-Person Singular in Chilean Spanish
Languages, 2021
Structural priming has been described as a measure of association between constructions. Here, we apply priming as a diagnostic to assess the status of the Chilean second-person singular (2sg) voseo, which exists in variation with the more standard tuteo. Despite being the majority variant in informal interactions, Chileans are reported to have little metalinguistic awareness of voseo and they avoid the vos pronoun, in some cases using the tú pronoun with voseo verb forms, leading to proposals that tuteo and voseo are conflated into a single mixed form. The patterning for priming, however, indicates otherwise. Analyses of some 2000 2sg familiar tokens from a corpus of conversational Chilean Spanish reveal that a previous tuteo or voseo favors the repetition of that same form, indicating that speakers do treat these forms as distinct. We also observe that invariable forms with historically tuteo morphology are associated with neither voseo nor tuteo, while the invariable voseo discourse marker cachái ‘you know’ retains a weak association with voseo. Furthermore, while tuteo is favored with a tú subject pronoun, this effect does not override the priming effect, evidence that, even with a tú pronoun, voseo and tuteo are distinct constructions in speakers’ representations.
On the position of subjects in Spanish: Evidence from code-switching
Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, 2021
Some languages have a fixed subject position, while others are more flexible. Languages like English require pre-verbal subjects; languages like Spanish allow subjects in postverbal position. Because this difference clusters with several linguistic properties distinguishing the two languages, subjects in Spanish and English have been a perennial issue in linguistic theory, touching central problems like the EPP, the nature of cross-linguistic variation, and the relationship between core functional heads. Our project contributes a novel source of evidence to these debates: Spanish/English codeswitching. Code-switching, the use of two languages in one utterance, combines the languages' lexical items and their attendant syntactic features in a single derivation. Because code-switching, like all natural language, is rule-governed, researchers can exploit judgments about the well-formedness of code-switched sentences to draw conclusions about the combinations of features they represe...
Code-switching and bilinguals’ grammars
The Routledge Handbook of Language Contact, 2020
Does code-switching entail grammatical convergence or are speakers who regularly code-switch alternating between separate grammars? Underlying debates on codeswitching are the methodological issues of what counts as code-switching, as well as appropriate data and evaluation metrics that prioritize community norms over idiosyncratic instances and robust patterns over isolated cases. This chapter illustrates how bilingual behavior as observed in sociolinguistically constructed corpora of spontaneous speech provides replicable findings. Widely entertained mechanisms of contact-induced change are tested through measures of code-switching presence in comparisons with non-contact benchmarks, pivoted on quantitative diagnostics of grammatical similarity evinced in the linguistic conditioning of variation.
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.