Analyzing the production of a non-standard form

Abstract

Although the Spanish verb andar ‘to walk' has a prescriptively irregular preterit conjugation (e.g., anduve ‘I walked'), adult native speakers may produce an innovative, regularized form (e.g., andé). Nevertheless, researchers have had difficulty documenting this form of variation. The current study presents the first systematic, variationist analysis of andar regularization. We sought to answer three research questions: 1) Do speakers in Bogotá, Colombia produce regularized forms of preterit andar? 2) If so, at what rate do bogotanos produce regularized forms? 3) Do any independent factors predict regularization? We designed a 25-item cloze task in which we manipulated person/number, with 164 bogotanos participating. In addition to providing the first systematic study of andar regularization, we demonstrate that the phenomenon is constrained by independent linguistic and social variables, while appealing to changes in the overall frequency of use of andar diachronically and to the relationship between the frequency of use of each person/number and regularization.