Rena Torres Cacoullos

Defaults and indeterminacy in temporal grammaticalization: The ‘perfect’ road to perfective

ABS T R AC T Adopting a grammaticalization path perspective on the envelope of variation, that is, the range of grammatical functions along the cross-linguistic perfect-to-perfective path, and employing the variationist comparative method, we compare use of the Present Perfect and Preterit in Mexican and Peninsular Spanish to identify the default past perfective form in each dialect. The linguistic conditioning of the variability provides evidence that the Present Perfect is becoming the default exponent of past perfective in Peninsular Spanish; in empirical terms, the default expression is the one appearing more frequently (combined effect of corrected mean and factor weight) in the most frequent and, crucially, the least specified contexts. The quantitative analysis of natural speech production—rather than elicited—data also suggests a different trajectory for perfect-to-perfective grammaticalization than the commonly assumed route via remoteness distinctions: the Present Perfect’s shift from hodiernal to general perfective advances in temporally indeterminate past contexts.

On the persistence of grammar in discourse formulas: a variationist study of that*

Abstract This article provides evidence that, just as lexical meaning is retained in grammaticization, grammatical conditioning persists in fixed discourse formulas. Despite their high frequency and formulaic status, such formulas are not completely autonomous from the productive constructions from which they emerge. This evidence comes from a variationist analysis of that and zero complementizer in a corpus of spoken Canadian English. Testing syntactic, semantic, and discourse-pragmatic factors proposed to account for the variation, we focus on claims that frequent collocations have developed as discourse formulas. Multivariate analysis shows that, although the variation is largely lexically constrained, that serves to demarcate the boundaries of two clauses with lexical content, while zero tends to occur when the clauses function like a single unit. Moreover, the linguistic conditioning of that in frequent collocations that behave like discourse formulas parallels its conditioning in the general construction. These findings suggest that the principle of semantic retention or persistence should be extended to grammar.

Testing convergence via code-switching: priming and the structure of variable subject expression:

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.

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.

Construction frequency and reductive change: Diachronic and register variation in Spanish clitic climbing

A comparison of Old Spanish and present-day Spanish data provides evidence that reductive change in grammaticizing forms may be manifested not only as a diachronic process but also as a synchronic difference between formal and informal registers. Clitic climbing frequencies in Spanish auxiliary + gerund sequences have increased diachronically as part of a series of reductive changes and in tandem with construction frequency increases. In calculating construction frequency, both the token frequency of auxiliary + gerund sequences and their frequency relative to lone-standing gerunds turn out to be important. Differences between present-day conversational and written data show that clitic position is stylistically stratified. Register differences in clitic climbing are found to be linked to construction frequency as well, suggesting that frequency effects operate on a more general synchronic level as well as on the level of particular texts. These text-level frequency effects may be related to parallel structure “birds of a feather” effects.

Gauging convergence on the ground: Code-switching in the community

Is grammatical convergence between bilinguals’ two languages inevitable and does code-switching inherently promote it? Despite the burgeoning of bilingualism studies, this question—and even what should count as code-switching—remains contentious. Cumulative scientific advances will depend on attention to the social context in which bilingual phenomena arise, proper handling of spontaneous speech data, and consideration of the probabilistic constraints underlying occurrence rates of linguistic forms. We put forward this program of study as implemented in systematic quantitative analysis of linguistic structures in the New Mexico Spanish-English Bilingual (NMSEB) corpus. This unique compilation of bilingual speech by members of the Hispanic northern New Mexican community in the United States records both borrowing and—vitally—copious multi-word code-switching. Advancing the study of bilingualism is community-based data collection and accountable analysis of the linguistic conditioning of variation in both of the languages in contact as used by the bilinguals themselves, in comparison with appropriate benchmarks, again of both languages (monolingual, or earlier, varieties). The role of code-switching in convergence is evaluated through a novel on-line measure, comparisons based on the proximity of spontaneous use of the other language. Implementation of this test of proximate code-switching confirms a disjunction between bilinguals’ phonology, which is more labile, and morpho-syntax, which is stable. Variation is conditioned by intra-linguistic contextual features, the distribution of which, however, may shift under code-switching, shaping patterns in the bilingual community.

Making Voices Count: Corpus Compilation in Bilingual Communities

Corpus compilation is of great relevance in linguistics today, with growing appreciation of studies based on spontaneous speech, in particular for minority communities. This paper puts forward a model for corpus compilation in bilingual communities, illustrated through the New Mexican Spanish–English Bilingual corpus, in which the same speakers—from a long-standing minority community in the United States—use both Spanish and English in the same conversations, smoothly alternating between their languages. We advocate community-based fieldwork for the collection of speech data by community members; the formation of a corpus which comprises recordings of spontaneous interactions and is thus of widespread usability (rather than being tied to any particular set of research questions or elicited linguistic features); scrupulously compiling information about the demography and the linguistic history of the participants that may shape their patterns of language use; and comprehensive transcription of the data taking into account prosodic aspects and making considered decisions about how to responsibly represent the speech. This community-based approach yields linguistic data situated in its social context and amenable to systematic quantitative analysis, which allows for confronting the many claims about language contact with the facts of bilingual usage.

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)  ‘go out’ variation in Mexican Spanish oral data, we conclude that subjectification is manifested structurally in the tendency for middle-marked salirse  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 se -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 + de  ‘from’ construction.

Two languages, one effect: Structural priming in spontaneous code-switching

We investigate here the contribution of code-switching and structural priming to variable expression of the Spanish first person singular subject pronoun in the New Mexican bilingual community. Comparisons with both Spanish and English benchmarks indicate no convergence of Spanish toward English grammar, including in the presence of code-switching, where the linguistic conditioning of variant selection remains unaltered. We find a language-internal and cross-language priming effect, albeit of differing strength, such that speakers’ preceding coreferential (Spanish and English) subject pronouns favor subsequent pronouns, whereas unexpressed subjects tend to be followed by unexpressed subjects. Given the rarity of unexpressed subjects in English, in the presence of code-switching fewer tokens occur with unexpressed primes. Thus, code-switching has no intrinsic effect. Instead, it results in associated shifts in the distribution of contextual features relevant to priming, contrary to the convergence-via-code-switching hypothesis and in accordance with the contextual distribution-via-code-switching hypothesis, which we put forward here.

Cross-language priming: A view from bilingual speech ∗

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.