Elisabeth Mayer

Feature variability in the bilingual-monolingual continuum: clitics in bilingual Quechua-Spanish, bilingual Shipibo-Spanish and in monolingual Limeño Spanish contact varieties

ABSTRACT Direct object clitics in Latin American Spanish are subject to great variability in features across dialects. Variability also characterizes bilingual acquisition and especially clitic doubling structures in language contact contexts. We focus on the distribution of clitics and Differential Object Marking (DOM) in clitic doubling structures among Shipibo-Spanish bilinguals, Quechua-Spanish bilinguals, and monolingual speakers of Spanish in contact with Quechua. We analyze a continuum of clitic forms and DOM as complex cases of feature reassembly and functional convergence that results in new interface rules with scalar hierarchies.

Romance Linguistics in the Pacific: Variation in Time and Space

This special issue includes selected peer reviewed proceedings of the workshop Romance Linguistics in the Pacific: variation in time and space, part of the Australian Linguistic Society Conference held in December 2011 at the Australian National University in Canberra. We would like to take this opportunity to thank the participants and the audience for their comments and suggestions. We are also grateful to the editor of AJL, Keith Allan, for giving us this opportunity. The workshop brought together specialists from both sides of the Pacific working on a variety of topics within Romance Linguistics, ranging from phonological analysis to syntax and discourse. The rationale behind this workshop was to celebrate the establishment of a research group in the field at the School of Language Studies at the ANU, in particular Hispanic Linguistics. This special edition marks the launch of the Romance Linguistics in the Antipodes (RomLA) virtual research centre, which aims to provide a platform for researchers in Australia and New Zealand, and to facilitate collaborations and networking with colleagues outside of Oceania. The papers are organized in alphabetical order, which coincidentally allows us to organize the papers according to theoretical frameworks and/or topics. In the first paper, Delicado Cantero addresses clausal substantivization in Spanish. After introducing a formal syntactic account of finite clauses and clausal nominalization in Spanish, a language where a DP may optionally top a CP in certain contexts, the author concentrates on two main issues. The first is the unexpected constraint barring the combination of prepositions and clauses introduced by determiners. While DPs make typical prepositional complements, BD CP in Spanish results in ungrammaticality if selected by a preposition. Building on the weak nature of the Spanish complementizer que and on interpolation tests, the author argues for the application of strict adjacency between P and C, thus blocking a potential DP projection. The author goes on to argue against the need for the determiner layer*a DP*in creating a nominal (finite) clause, and supports a differentiation between the nominality of the (finite) clause and the projection of an additional DP, labelled clausal substantivization.

Floating Agreement in American Spanish Leísta Dialects

In this paper I link ‘floating features’ in clitic clusters with two third-person participants to a split object marking system, indicative of a language change in progress. Both clitics are undergoing concurrent reanalysis processes affecting them differentially, i.e. they are located at different stages in the process. Whereas standard varieties draw a clear distinction between direct and indirect object, American Spanish Leísta dialects move to a distinction between primary and secondary object. Clitic cluster agreement in those dialects is triggered by a loss of case restrictions on the third-person clitics resulting in a tendency to mark the primary object.

Linguistic attitudes toward Shipibo in Cantagallo: Reshaping indigenous language and identity in an urban setting

Aims and objectives: This study aims to explore language attitudes among speakers of Shipibo, an Amazonian indigenous language from the Panoan family, in the community of Cantagallo in the city of Lima, an urban, Spanish-dominant environment. The study is motivated by the paucity of studies on language attitudes in urban indigenous communities. The Cantagallo Shipibo community was settled in the early 2000s and temporarily relocated in 2017. Methodology: Interviews were conducted based on questionnaires with two groups of participants in 2002 and 2017, 60 in total, focusing on their attitudes toward Shipibo and Spanish. Some of the participants answered the questionnaires both times, others answered only once. Responses were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. Open-ended responses were classified into similar categories and tallied. Findings: Participants showed positive attitudes toward Shipibo-Konibo in 2002 and 2017, and strong identification with it, but language shift toward Spanish is now taking place, especially among the second generation. This development has triggered perceived changes in the performance aspects of linguistic identity. Furthermore, while in 2002 attitudes toward Spanish were mostly positive, in 2017 some negative attitudes toward the majority language emerged along with the perception of discrimination against the Shipibo-Konibo. Originality: The study’s originality rests on tracing the evolution of this community’s perspectives on language use from shortly after its arrival in Cantagallo, Lima, to its final relocation. Furthermore, few other studies have engaged this Shipibo community in Lima regarding language attitudes. Significance: The project highlights the importance of different factors in the successful language maintenance in this context. Specifically, although speakers still have positive attitudes toward Shipibo, they also see increasing advantages to speaking Spanish, a clear case of utility-maximization. Limitations: Although the study provides important insights, its methodology (a questionnaire/interview) gives a partial view of the language attitudes and maintenance in this community.