Clitic doubling: The Case of Nariño Andean Spanish

Abstract

This thesis examines the behavior of clitic doubling in Nariñense, a little-studied Andean Spanish variety spoken in the southwest of Colombia, and compares it to well-studied varieties such as standard Peninsular, Rioplatense, and other Andean Spanish varieties. Its aim is to present novel data about clitic doubling in order to shed more light into the extensive literature about this phenomenon in Spanish. Through spontaneous speech recordings obtained from thirty native speakers of Nariñense, 133 sentences involving clitic doubling were analyzed. Features such as agreement matching between the clitic and the doubled NP, use of the preposition a to introduce the doubled NP, animacy, specificity, and definiteness were considered in the comparison between the four varieties. The results show that clitic doubling in Nariñense partially parallels other Spanish varieties. Nariñense exhibits agreement matching in most of the cases paralleling standard Peninsular and Rioplatense Spanish. However, it also shows neutralization of number and/or gender features in favor of the invariable lo for DO NP and le for IO NP clitic doubling, as in other Andean Spanish varieties. Another characteristic shared with Andean Spanish is doubling of animate and inanimate, definite and indefinite NPs. While doubling of inanimate NPs is allowed in Rioplatense, doubling of indefinite DO NPs is ungrammatical, as it is in standard Peninsular. Finally, the use of the preposition a to introduce doubled IO and DO NPs was attested in Nariñense. However, several examples without this preposition were also found. This occurs not only with inanimate DO NPs, as in Rioplatense, but also with animate DO NPs, as in Andean Spanish. This preposition was also absent in the doubling of some overt pronominal and proper name IO NPs. This last feature differs from standard Peninsular and Rioplatense Spanish, varieties that require a mandatory presence of this preposition.