Chapter 16. Testing English influence on first person singular “yo” subject pronoun expression in Sonoran Spanish

AbstractThis study examines subject expression from a pragmatic perspective in an emerging bilingual community of Roswell, Georgia, an exurb of Atlanta. Using sociolinguistic interviews conducted in Roswell, first-person singular subject pronoun (SP) usage is analyzed among 10 Mexican speakers within five distinct pragmatic contexts: salient referent, switch focus, contrastive focus, pragmatic weight, and epistemic parentheticals. A comparison is made between Georgia speakers and monolingual Mexican speakers in Querétaro in order to explore the possible weakening of pragmatic constraints due to English contact. Results indicate that a contact hypothesis is not supported in terms of overall overt pronoun usage as evidenced by similar frequencies when compared to monolingual Mexican varieties. However, an increased use of overt SPs in the context of salient referent as well as a diminished use of overt SPs in switch focus contexts is found, suggesting a potential weakened sensitivity to such pragmatic constraints.

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Continuity and change

Spanish in Context ◽

10.1075/sic.13.1.05ram ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 13 (1) ◽

pp. 103-127 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Miguel Ramos

Keyword(s):

Language Change ◽

16Th Century ◽

First Person ◽

Semantic Class ◽

Continuity And Change ◽

Subject Pronoun ◽

Subject Expression

Based on 2,685 instances of verbs inflected for first-person singular (1sg) drawn from 14th–16th century Spanish texts, the current study offers two main findings on the diachrony of variable subject expression. The results indicate that, in general, the linguistic conditioning of 1sg subject pronoun expression (yo) remains constant throughout the centuries, following the patterns reported for present-day Spanish. We observe an effect of switch reference and of distance between coreferential subjects favoring expression. Additionally found is coreferential subject priming, such that the form of a previous coreferential subject significantly influences subsequent coreferential mentions. Finally, tense-aspect-mood is significant, though both the imperfect and future tenses favor expression. Nevertheless, verb semantic class does not influence these data. In particular, the yo+cognition verb construction, especially the highly frequent yo creo, which leads the cognition-verb category nowadays, is absent here. The study thus both offers evidence of continuity and suggests possible language change.

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First-person singular and third-person subject pronoun variation: The case of Mexican Spanish in the U.S. state of Georgia

Lenguaje ◽

10.25100/lenguaje.v49i1.10453 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 49 (1) ◽

pp. 104-134

Author(s):

Philip P. Limerick

Keyword(s):

First Generation ◽

Mexican Immigrants ◽

First Person ◽

Regression Analyses ◽

Mexican Spanish ◽

Usage Patterns ◽

Third Person ◽

Subject Pronoun ◽

Person Variable ◽

The U.S

The current study analyzes variable subject pronoun expression (SPE) for first-person singular (1sg) and third-person subjects in a variety of Mexican Spanish spoken by first-generation Mexican immigrants in the state of Georgia, Southeastern U.S. Conversational data from sociolinguistic interviews are employed to examine tokens of 1sg and third-person variable SPE and their usage patterns, considering factors such as tense-mood-aspect (TMA), switch reference, polarity, and verb class by means of logistic regression analyses. Results suggest that all four factors influence 1sg variation, but that third-person variation is restricted to switch reference and TMA. In addition, a significant link between switch reference and TMA is found for third-person subjects, but not for 1sg. The findings lend further support to previous scholars advocating the importance of studying individual grammatical persons in SPE research as this can reveal previously obfuscated nuances in the patterns of subject variation.

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Subjunctive and subject pronoun realization: a study of "no creo que"

Borealis – An International Journal of Hispanic Linguistics ◽

10.7557/1.5.1.3726 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 5 (1) ◽

pp. 87 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Sophie Harrington ◽

Ana Teresa Pérez-Leroux

Keyword(s):

First Person ◽

Subject Pronouns ◽

Subjunctive Mood ◽

Oral Speech ◽

The Matrix ◽

Complement Clauses ◽

Subject Pronoun ◽

The Subject ◽

Embedded Clause ◽

Dependent Clause

Subjunctive mood in complement clauses is licensed under selection from certain predicates or under the scope of a modal or negation. In contexts where mood choice varies, such as the complement of a negated epistemic verb no creer, it introduces a contrast in interpretation. The subjunctive is thought to contribute to a shift in the modal anchoring of the embedded clause, and is consequently interpreted as indicative of a dissociation between the epistemic models of the speaker and the subject. We provide evidence that these uses also interact with pragmatic context. Given independent claims that 1) the overt realization of first person subject pronouns is contrastive and 2) it generally serves to anchor discourse to the speaker’s perspective and 3) overt use is particularly frequent with epistemic verbs, we examined the interaction between negation, first person subject pronoun realization, and mood of the dependent clause for the verb creer. An analysis of oral speech from the Proyecto de Habla Culta revealed that for negative sentences (no creo que), yo is overtly realized more frequently for cases with exceptional indicative dependents than for those with canonical subjunctive dependents; there was no association with mood for affirmative uses of creer. These results support analyses where negation has specific scope over the contrastive subject, rather than over the epistemic clause. As a consequence, the matrix proposition remains an assertion and use of indicative complements is licensed.

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The First Person

Symposion ◽

10.5840/symposion2019612 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

pp. 23-38

Author(s):

James Cargile ◽

Keyword(s):

Strong Tendency ◽

First Person ◽

Normal Person ◽

Subject Pronoun ◽

Necessary Truths

Many languages have a first person singular subject pronoun (‘I’ in English). Fewer also have a first person singular object pronoun (‘me’ in English). The term ‘I’ is commonly used to refer to the person using the term. It has a variety of other uses. A normal person is able to refer to theirself and think about their self and this is of course an important feature of being a person. For any person x, no one other than x can possibly think about x and by that alone, qualify as thinking about theirself. Perhaps this is special. However, there is a strong tendency to conflate this important capacity with capacities of grammar, such as thinking first person thoughts or ‘I thoughts.’ This leads to attempts to establish necessary truths about persons on the basis of rules of grammar which are not logically necessary. Thinking about oneself does not logically require a first person linguistic capacity. This essay is criticizing various tendencies to overlook this.

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First-Person Plural Subject Pronoun Expression in Mexican Spanish Spoken in Georgia

Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics ◽

10.1515/shll-2021-2050 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 14 (2) ◽

pp. 411-432

Author(s):

Philip P. Limerick

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

Language Variation ◽

First Person ◽

Mexican Spanish ◽

Language Variation And Change ◽

Person Plural ◽

Third Person ◽

Subject Pronoun ◽

Subject Expression ◽

First Person Plural

Abstract Variationist research on subject pronoun expression (SPE) in Spanish typically incorporates all grammatical persons/numbers into the same analysis, with important exceptions such as studies focusing exclusively on first-person singular (e.g., Travis, Catherine E. 2005. The yo-yo effect: Priming in subject expression in Colombian Spanish. In Randall Gess & Edward J Rubin (eds.), Selected papers from the 34th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), 329–349. Amsterdam, Salt Lake City: Benjamins 2004; Travis, Catherine E. 2007. Genre effects on subject expression in Spanish: Priming in narrative and conversation. Language Variation and Change 19. 101–135; Travis, Catherine E. & Rena Torres Cacoullos. 2012. What do subject pronouns do in discourse? Cognitive, mechanical and constructional factors in variation. Cognitive Linguistics 23(4). 711–748), third-person singular (Shin, Naomi Lapidus. 2014. Grammatical complexification in Spanish in New York: 3sg pronoun expression and verbal ambiguity. Language Variation and Change 26. 303–330), and third-person plural subjects (Lapidus, Naomi & Ricardo Otheguy. 2005. Overt nonspecific ellos in Spanish in New York. Spanish in Context 2(2). 157–174). The current study is the first variationist analysis (to the best of my knowledge) to focus solely on first-person plural SPE. It is well-established that nosotros/nosotras exhibits one of the lowest rates of SPE relative to the other persons/numbers; however, factors conditioning its variation are less understood. Conversational corpus data from Mexican Spanish are employed to examine tokens of first-person plural SPE (n=660) in terms of frequency and constraints, incorporating factors such as TMA, switch reference, and verb class in logistic regression analyses. Results suggest that nosotros, like other subjects, is strongly impacted by switch reference and tense-mood-aspect (TMA). However, the TMA effect is unique in that preterit aspect is shown to favor overt nosotros relative to other TMAs, diverging from previous studies. Furthermore, verb class — a factor found to be repeatedly significant in the literature — is inoperative for nosotros. These results suggest that nosotros does not respond to the same factors as other persons/numbers. Additionally, the findings lend support to researchers regarding the importance of studying individual persons/numbers in subject variation research.

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The persistence of expression: Clusivity, partial co-reference, and socioeconomic differentiation of first person plural subject pronoun expression in Spanish

Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics ◽

10.1515/shll-2019-2002 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 12 (1) ◽

pp. 65-96

Author(s):

Dora LaCasse

Keyword(s):

Large Body ◽

First Person ◽

Person Plural ◽

Subject Pronouns ◽

Class Differences ◽

Number Systems ◽

Subject Pronoun ◽

Peninsular Spanish ◽

First Person Plural ◽

Expression Evidence

Abstract This study revisits variable subject pronoun expression in Spanish, bringing to bear insights from cross-linguistic patterns of person-number systems. Based on 2259 tokens from two corpora of Mexican Spanish representing distinct social classes, the study focuses solely on first person plural (1pl) subject pronouns, revealing unique aspects of variable nosotros expression. Evidence is offered in favor of a more nuanced measure of switch reference for non-singular grammatical persons through an analysis of the local effects of partial co-referentiality. This measure reconciles the large body of work on switch reference with Cameron’s (1995) measures of reference chains. Additionally, topic persistence — heretofore neglected in prior studies — conditions the variation, with subsequent mentions in the thematic paragraph favoring expressed pronouns. An investigation of clusivity demonstrates that Spanish 1pl subject pronoun expression is sensitive to a distinction grammaticalized in other languages, though subject pronoun rates across clusivities differ from previous results from Peninsular Spanish (Posio 2012). Finally, while subject pronoun expression is generally not sensitive to social factors, distributions of 1pl subjects according to clusivity differ between corpora. Results reveal the style and topic-conditioned differences in contextual distributions that underlie apparent social class differences in subject expression constraints.

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A Fossilized Language Pattern for the Singular First Person Subject Pronoun in the Saudi Context: I vs. I am

ASIAN TEFL Journal of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics ◽

10.21462/asiantefl.v1i1.39 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 1 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Mehmet Bulent Rakab

Keyword(s):

Saudi Arabia ◽

Foreign Language ◽

Undergraduate Students ◽

Corrective Feedback ◽

Extended Period ◽

First Person ◽

Efl Context ◽

Number Of Factors ◽

Language Pattern ◽

Subject Pronoun

The drive that motivated this study was an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher’s observation of a fossilized grammar pattern produced by students over an extended period of time. The fossilized pattern “I am go” frequently emerges in the EFL context of Saudi Arabia, for which a number of factors could be accountable, including overgeneralization of a grammar pattern, inadequate instruction, lack of negative and corrective feedback, being frequently exposed to peers’ production of the fossilized pattern, and so forth. 155 undergraduate students from a Saudi university responded to a multiple-choice question with three options. The findings revealed that only one third of the participants identified the correct singular first person subject pronoun in English “I”, which corresponded to (انا) in Arabic. Based on the results, pedagogical and methodological recommendations are made as to how the possibility of the emergence of the incorrect pattern in question can be reduced or minimized.

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I, Claudian: the syntactical and metrical alignment of ego in Claudian and his epic predecessors

Journal of Latin Linguistics ◽

10.1515/joll-2016-0003 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 15 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Peter Kruschwitz ◽

Clare Coombe

Keyword(s):

First Person ◽

Latin Epic ◽

Subject Pronoun ◽

The Subject

AbstractThis article provides an analysis of the syntactical and metrical alignment of the subject pronoun of the first person singular in Latin epic. Based on the observation that, due to its prosody,

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First Person on the Last Page: Choosing How to Walk the Path

ASHA Leader ◽

10.1044/leader.fplp.19012014.72 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 19 (1) ◽

pp. 72-72

Author(s):

Kelli Jeffries Owens

Keyword(s):

First Person

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