Subject Pronoun Expression in Spanish: A Cross-dialectal Perspective ed. by Ana M. Carvalho, Rafael Orozco, and Naomi Lapidus Shin

Abstract

Reviewed by: Subject Pronoun Expression in Spanish: A Cross-dialectal Perspective ed. by Ana M. Carvalho, Rafael Orozco, and Naomi Lapidus Shin Sarah E. Blackwell Carvalho, Ana M., Rafael Orozco, and Naomi Lapidus Shin, eds. Subject Pronoun Expression in Spanish: A Cross-dialectal Perspective. Washington, DC: Georgetown UP, 2015. Pp. 258. 2015. ISBN 978-1-62616-170-2. Subject Pronoun Expression in Spanish: A Cross-dialectal Perspective is a welcome volume comprising important contributions on Spanish subject pronoun expression (SPE) by scholars focusing on monolingual Spanish varieties (part 1), Spanish in contact with other languages (part 2), and Spanish in contexts of acquisition (part 3). Each part contains four chapters, and all of them present quantitative analyses of SPE. In the preface, Ricardo Otheguy sketches the ground-laying work of early variationist sociolinguists, which sets the stage for quantitative-variationist studies of subject personal pronouns (SPPs) by Spanish pronombristas. In their “Introduction,” the editors identify questions addressed in the volume, including whether or not SPE is consistent across language varieties or susceptible to contact-induced change, and how it develops during language acquisition. These questions provide a unifying theme for the subsequent chapters. In chapter 1, Alfaraz analyzes Santo Domingo Spanish to determine whether its higher pronominal expression rate indicates a change in progress toward obligatory SPE in Dominican Spanish. She finds that variables conditioning SPE in other Spanish varieties (e.g., switch reference, singular verbs) also condition SPE in Dominican Spanish, but that second person singular references most strongly favor overt tú expression. Additionally, gender affects SPE, with Santo Domingo women favoring overt pronouns only slightly more than men. Nevertheless, overall SPP rates are similar to those of other Caribbean varieties, suggesting that Dominican Spanish is not unique in this regard. [End Page 486] In chapter 2, Orozco analyzes a corpus of Colombian Costeño (Barranquilla) Spanish and reports SPE rates comparable to those of other Caribbean varieties. Priming and tense/mood/aspect (TMA) effects on Costeño SPE also reflect results from earlier studies. The imperfect indicative most clearly favors SPE in Costeño, thus supporting the hypothesis that morphologically ambiguous verb paradigms promote more pronoun expression. Additionally, while perception verbs most strongly favor overt SPPs in Costeño, among mental activity verbs, only creer and saber favor expression. These findings suggest the need for further research on the effects of verb semantics on SPE. Lastra and Martín Butragueño (chapter 3) investigate SPE in Mexico City (MC) Spanish and report a low rate of overt SPPs in their MC corpus, a finding consistent with other “mainland” Spanish varieties. Grammatical person and number emerged as the strongest constraint on SPE in MC Spanish, which is also congruent with results form earlier studies. Textual genre has significant effects on subject expression (e.g., argumentation favors subject expression most strongly in the MC data). Interestingly, younger MC speakers use fewer overt subjects than older speakers, which contrasts with the direction of change evidenced in other Romance languages, suggesting a need for more research on age effects. Posio examines a corpus of conversational Peninsular Spanish in chapter 4, hypothesizing that frequently occurring verb forms, with or without SPPs, tend to appear in formulaic sequences having discourse-pragmatic functions with recognizable SPP expression or omission. For instance, the parenthetical epistemic downtoner no sé nearly always occurs with a null subject, while creo, when used to present opinions, has the highest SPP expression rate of the verbs Posio analyzes. Posio’s analysis of the discourse-pragmatic functions of frequent verb forms suggests that such forms may amplify (and possibly skew) the effects of constraints on SPE. Furthermore, his observation that constructions like ¿sabes? and ya sabes have low overt SPP rates in Peninsular Spanish, while formulaic tú sabes is quite frequent in Latin American varieties, highlights the need for future cross-dialectal studies of SPE in formulaic sequences to determine their contribution to dialectal differences in SPP usage. Part 2 begins with Torres Cacoullos and Travis’s chapter in which they compare the effects of cognition verbs, subject continuity, and priming on Spanish yo and English I expression in Colombian Spanish and American English. They show that first person singular expression in...