Jessi Elana Aaron

Pushing the envelope: Looking beyond the variable context

However the variable context is defined, it is standard variationist practice to exclude tokens outside this context from further quantitative analyses. The role of occurrences of forms in contexts that lie outside the shared space of grammaticizing constructions in variation, ranging from highly infrequent occurrences to vast and diverse territories, has yet to be adequately explored. Spanish Synthetic Future (SF) in epistemic contexts does not overlap functionally with Spanish Periphrastic Future (PF). Four Goldvarb analyses of SF-PF variation since 1600, alongside quantitative analysis of epistemic SF, reveal an intimate relationship. Beyond a parallel rise in frequency of PF and epistemic SF, a connection between epistemic SF patterns and SF-PF variation is found in shifts in relative magnitudes of effect. It is argued that quantitative analysis of frequently occurring contexts that fall outside the envelope of variation may provide valuable explanatory insight regarding diachronic shifts within the variable context.

Bare English-origin nouns in Spanish: Rates, constraints, and discourse functions

We test the hypothesis that single other-language-origin words are nonce loans (Sankoff, Poplack, & Vanniarajan, 1990) as opposed to code-switches in a corpusbased study of English-origin nouns occurring spontaneously in New Mexican Spanish discourse. The object of study is determinerless nouns, whose status is superficially ambiguous. The study shows that, even with typologically similar languages, variable rule analysis can reveal details of the grammar that constitute conflict sites, even when relative frequencies for variants are similar. Though the rate of bare nouns is identical, their distribution patterns in Spanish and English differ. Linguistic conditioning parallel with the former, and at odds with the latter, shows that the contentious items are loanwords. In information flow terms (Dubois, 1980; Thompson, 1997), it is not lack of grammatical integration but nonreferential uses of nonce-loan nouns to form recipient-language predicates that is manifested in zero determination.

Quantitative measures of subjectification: A variationist study of Spanish salir(se)

Abstract By confronting variable use, the variationist method can reveal patterns of subjectification of grammatical morphemes. Applying this method to the analysis of salir(se)u2009 ‘go out’ variation in Mexican Spanish oral data, we conclude that subjectification is manifested structurally in the tendency for middle-marked salirseu2009 to co-occur with first-person singular or referents close to the speaker, positive polarity and the past tense. Further comparative dialectal and diachronic data indicate the origins of the seu2009-marked form in physical spatial deviation. Usage of the form then extends to situations that denote deviation from social norms. We thus propose that the locus of subjectification of this counter-expectation marker is an increasingly speaker-based construal of expectation. This semantic change appears to proceed via absorption of contextual meaning in the frequently occurring + deu2009 ‘from’ construction.

Lone English-origin nouns in Spanish: The precedence of community norms

This paper offers an examination of morphosyntactic factors that are generally understood to measure grammatical integration—and therefore used to help determine the status of other-language-origin nouns as borrowings or code-switches—through the lens of discourse, semantics, and lexical patterns. A total of 820 lone English-origin nouns surrounded by otherwise Spanish discourse are compared to Spanish and English nouns from the recorded speech of the same bilingual speakers in New Mexico. The semantic domains most open to English-origin nouns include both those traditionally expected, such as technology, and those generally thought to be unborrowable, such as kinship terms. In the case of determiner patterning, lone English-origin nouns’ propensity to occur with indefinite articles or as bare is linked to use in a nonreferential predicating function. Regarding gender, the preference for masculine assignment for lone English-origin nouns is tied to both nonreferentiality and the general patterns found in Spanish. The impact is felt here not from English, but from the conventions of the local community. Among their many functions, these nouns are best suited in this community for naming kin, classifying individuals as belonging to a certain occupation, and creating verbal compounds. It is argued that the morphosyntactic patterns found reflect the community norms, in which English-origin nouns tend to perform certain discourse functions. Systematic quantitative analysis thus reveals the powerful role of discourse referentiality of nominal forms, in tandem with local practices.

The gendered use of salirse in Mexican Spanish: Si me salia yo con las amigas, se enojaba

It has been claimed that women and men use language quite differently in social interaction. Combining a functional and cognitive approach to grammar, this article explores the ways in which men and women use the optional pronominal form of the Spanish verb salir(se) ‘to leave’ in Mexican Spanish. It is found that women use the pronominal form notably more than men, and that, diachronically, this form has traditionally been applied to womens behavior. It is hypothesized that these patterns demonstrate both the relative expressive freedom of womens speech and the socially constrained nature of expectations for female behavior in colonial and contemporary Mexican society. It is shown how culturally shaped conventional construals of gender can both be reflected in and influence morphosyntactic phenomena. I would like to thank Melissa Axelrod, Kathy McKnight, Language in Society editor Jane Hill, and two anonymous referees for their helpful suggestions on this article.

An Awkward Companion: Disability and the Semantic Landscape of English Lame

This article proposes a history of the English word lame, based on quantitative and qualitative evidence from twentieth-century corpora. A path of semantic development is proposed for lame in the twentieth century, from concrete contexts with animate referents to abstract contexts with inanimate referents and abstract contexts with human referents. While lame does participate in the universal tendencies of semantic generalization and subjectification, its participation in contextual generalization is skewed by the strong discursive power of its most common concrete use, human disability. It is suggested that the abstract meanings of lame are the result of the crystallization of frequently occurring inferences surrounding human impairment and disability.

A Certain Future: Epistemicity, Prediction, and Assertion in Iberian Spanish Future Expression

Abstract The choice of future construction in Romance languages with variable expression is complex, and several factors have been shown or hypothesized to influence this choice (e.g. Aaron 2006, 2010 and Poplack & Malvar 2007). One factor stands out time and time again, though scholars do not always associate it with the same form: certainty. Using corpus-based quantitative methods, the role of certainty in Iberian Spanish future form variation is examined. The semantics of futurity and epistemic modality are discussed, with particular reference to the Spanish synthetic, or morphological, future. Then, the onset of non-future-reference use of the Synthetic Future as an epistemic marker is described, and viewed in light of the role of epistemicity in the possible strengthening of the semantics of “certainty” with the Spanish Periphrastic Future. Finally, diachronic evidence from distributional patterns in grammatical person, verb class and clause type is presented, which suggests that speakers associate the periphrastic construction with “certainty” and, increasingly, the synthetic construction with “uncertainty.” It is suggested that functional competition with innovative forms can breathe new life into older forms, sparking further grammaticalization.

Getting closer: Codification of subjective semantic prosody in Spanish continuative aspect

Abstract The syntactic correlates of the diachronic process of subjectification within grammatical constructions, unlike that of discourse markers and connectives, do not include a cancellation of syntax. This can make the identification of subjectification within some grammaticalization processes difficult to identify. Pairs of purportedly synonymous constructions, such as continuative aspectual markers in Spanish, offer an ideal site to explore how certain linguistic contexts, through frequency, can come to be associated with more or less subjectivity. Six forms are included in this study: the phasal adverbs aún ‘still’ and todavía ‘still’ and the “phasal periphrastic” (Laca 2000) constructions including (semi-)auxiliaries: seguir ‘follow’u2005+u2005Vndo and continuar ‘continue’ for positive polarity, and the corresponding seguir sin ‘follow without’u2005+u2005INF and continuar sin ‘continue without’u2005+u2005INF for negative polarity. In a variationist study of 481 occurrences of these forms from 1760–1860 in Corpus Diacrónico del Español (CORDE) and 2762 occurrences from 1975–1980 from Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual (CREA), it is found that the difference between these “synonyms” is linked, on the one hand, to contextual elements indicative of subjectivity, and on the other, to register. Furthermore, it is suggested that variation due to differing levels of subjectivity and register variation may share some characteristic patterns in the distribution of grammatical features.