Abstract
This study is the first variationist analysis of subject personal pronoun expression (SPE) in the Spanish of Xalapa, Mexico. The overall pronominal rate (25%)—the highest such rate found in Mexican Spanish so far—also constitutes one of the highest in a mainland Spanish variety. Six predictors—four internal and two external—significantly condition SPE. The internal conditioning—congruent with what occurs elsewhere—reveals grammatical number and person of the subject as the strongest predictor. It also shows that verb class has tendencies similar to those found in other communities. However, further analysis uncovers that lexical frequency provides more definite answers regarding how verbs condition SPE, as within the copulative verb class category ser ‘be’ favors overt subjects but estar ‘be’ favors null subjects. Moreover, the unusually robust effect of age sets Xalapa Spanish apart from most other varieties. Interestingly, the pronominal rate among teenagers (11%)—below the lowest overall pronominal rate anywhere—is consistent with what occurs in other Spanish varieties such as Colombian, European, Dominican, and Mexican. These findings call for further research on the effects of verb semantics and age on SPE.
Highlights
The variable presence and absence of subject personal pronouns constitutes a morphosyntactic feature that Spanish inherited from Latin
Variationist subject pronoun expression (SPE) studies were pioneered by Barrenechea & Alonso (1973), Bentivoglio (1980), and Morales (1980) who explored the Spanish spoken in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Caracas, Venezuela; and San Juan, Puerto Rico, respectively
The highest overt pronoun expression rates are found in the Caribbean (~38%) while lower pronominal rates occur in Spain and mainland Latin American varieties such as those of Mexico and Ecuador (~21%)
Summary
The variable presence and absence of subject personal pronouns (e.g. ellos cantan alternating with cantan to mean ‘they sing’) constitutes a morphosyntactic feature that Spanish inherited from Latin. The effect of the third person singular, by most strongly favoring overt subjects, sets Xalapa apart from other speech communities including NYC Mexicans (Shin & Erker 2015:179), Mexico City (Lastra & Martín Butragueño 2015:43), Barranquilla, Colombia (Orozco 2015:27), San Juan, Puerto Rico (Claes 2011:199), and Yucatan, Mexico (Michnowicz 2015:109), where first person singular pronouns favors most strongly the occurrence of overt pronominal subjects.
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