Subject Personal Pronouns Research Articles

Overt Subject Pronoun Use in Switch-Reference Contexts in Child Spanish Developmental Language Disorder: A Discriminant Function Analysis.

Our study analyzes probabilistic constraints on subject expression previously found in adult Spanish in the speech of typically developing (TD) Spanish-speaking children and children with developmental language disorder (DLD). Previous work shows that children with DLD produce fewer overt subjects than typically developing children, and that the latter acquire constraints on subject expression as they age into adolescence. Our study complements these findings and provides further substance to the grammatical profile of children whose morphosyntactic development diverges from that of typically developing children. Data are drawn from unstructured spontaneous production data from a sample of 19 monolingual Mexican, Spanish-speaking children, collected in 2006-2007. This sample includes 19 children diagnosed with DLD and 19 age-matched, typically developing children. We collected all instances of finite verbs that either did or could have occurred with a subject personal pronoun uttered by the child participants and coded them for several factors including tense-mood-aspect, switch reference, and person and number. We find that children with DLD produce fewer overt subject pronouns in switch reference contexts than typically developing controls, with a significant interaction of group and switch reference. Furthermore, a discriminant function analysis shows that overt pronoun use in switch reference contexts can form part of a useful diagnostic discriminant function, with high levels of sensitivity and specificity. Overall, we find important differences between TD Spanish-speaking children and those diagnosed with DLD regarding rates of overt subjects and sensitivity to the probabilistic constraint of switch reference. This finding contributes to our understanding of the morphosyntactic profiles of children with DLD, as well as the utility of factors such as switch reference in the identification of language disorders.

A Historical-Variationist Analysis of Subject Pronoun Expression in 19th and Early 20th Century Arizonan Spanish

This diachronic study is a variationist analysis of subject pronoun expression (SPE) in two key Spanish-language Arizonan newspapers, El Fronterizo (1878–1914) and El Tucsonense (1915–1957), following Tucson’s annexation to the United States through the Gadsden Purchase, a period of great social change during which the Spanish-speaking population in the city underwent a gradual process of anglicization. Since some research on SPE in Spanish in the United States suggests that English-Spanish bilingualism increases the use of overt subject personal pronouns (SPPs) because of their almost categorical use in English, this study’s main aim is to track the initial stages of such progression in a period when social bilingualism was steadily extending in Tucson. In this respect, our results show that the presence of overt SPPs does increase over time in the data analyzed; however, lower rates of overt SPPs in contemporary Tucson and Phoenix spoken Spanish raise the possibility that the percentage surge in the aforementioned period is rather due to the offline written nature of the newspapers, which, for instance, weakens the effect of online constraints, such as switch reference, ambiguous TAM endings, and non-reflexive verbs. Even so, regression analyses with the mixed-effects statistical software Rbrul reveal that the linguistic factor groups shaping SPE in the diachronic data are essentially the same ones found operating in contemporary varieties of Spanish.

Estudio de las variables predictoras de la expresión del sujeto pronominal en el corpus PRESEEA. Málaga. Nivel de instrucción bajo

The absence or presence of the subject personal pronoun is a linguistic phenomenon typical of pro-drop languages. This paper initiates a series of studies that try to find the linguistic and social determinants that affect the occurrence of this pronoun in the variety of Spanish spoken in Malaga (Spain). We show partial results concerning speakers with a low educational level obtained from the study of the first linguistic corpus of the Project for the Sociolinguistic Study of Spanish from Spain and American in Malaga (PRESEEA-Malaga) collected in the 1990s. For this purpose, we assume the methodology employed in other studies within the framework of the pan-Hispanic preseea project to compare the results obtained. We use the Coding Guide for the variable “expression of the pronominal subject” (Bentivoglio, Ortiz and Silva-Corvalán, 2011), although we have updated and adapted it. The exploratory analysis helps us to broadly compare the percentages of pronoun presence with previous studies carried out in different Spanish-speaking geographical areas. The correlation analysis allows us to observe which predictor variables favour its presence or omission and to assess whether there are similarities with the data from the corpora of Málaga (2015) and other cities such as Granada (2016), Seville (2019) and Valencia (2021), to finally establish a possible linguistic pattern.

Analysis of Gender Stereotyping in English Textbook from A Sociolinguistics Perspective

Human language learning is inextricably linked to its cultural environment. Therefore, the Male-oriented perspective of language bias can give rise to invisible gender stereotypes and internalize them in the minds of language learners. The New English Grammar Course, as a commonly used textbook for English-related majors at the university level, is bound to have a profound impact on college students' values and ways of thinking, and its gender perspective has profound research value. This thesis will build a text corpus of A New English Grammar Coursebook based on quantitative method and text analysis, analyze the linguistic phenomena containing gender stereotypes, and explore the defects of the textbook in several aspects such as masculine subject personal pronouns, strong masculine vocabulary, collocative adjectives, and references to professions and famous people. It also extrapolates past research experiences to finally propose effective ways to address gender stereotyping in textbook texts.

Politeness in Using Mandailingnese Personal Subject Pronouns in Medan

This research aims to explain and reveal Politeness in Using Mandailingnese Personal Subject Pronouns by trying to find out of the types, the way and the reason of used mandailingnese personal subject pronouns mostly by people in Medan around Lingkungan Kelurahan Bantan Timur. The theory of this research used Leech (2014) Brown&Levinson (1987) theory. This research took 25 respondent and conducted quantitatively. The data was collected by using questionnaire that distributed to different people. The finding of this research shows that Mandailingnese Personal Subject Pronouns are mostly used by people live at Lingkungan Kelurahan Bantan Timur. The First Personal Subject Pronouns Au/Ku with 89 times chosen (51%), Second Personal Subject Pronouns Ho/Hamu/Amu with 118 times chosen (67%), Third Personal Subject Pronouns Ia/Halai with 115 times chosen (65%). The reason why people live at Lingkungan Kelurahan Bantan Timur use Mandailingnese Personal Subject Pronouns are determine by gender, situation, age and familiarity. The reason of people using Mandailingnese Personal Subject Pronouns were making no distance/gap, adapting the situation, knowing the rules of communication and learning from family also the findings of this research revealed that four parameters of politeness influenced chosen of pronouns, and the use of the pronouns of Mandailing People itself influenced the level of politeness.

Acquisition of cumulative conditioning effects on words: Spanish-speaking children’s [subject pronoun + verb] usage

Child language acquisition research has provided ample evidence of lexical frequency effects. This corpus-based analysis introduces a novel frequency measure shown to significantly constrain adult language variation, but heretofore unexplored in child language acquisition research. Among adults, frequent occurrence of a form in a particular discourse context that conditions usage accumulates in memory over time and shapes the lexical representation of that form. This study contributes to the body of research on frequency effects in child language acquisition by testing whether such cumulative conditioning effects are also found among children, and, if so, at what age such effects appear. Specifically, the study investigates the influence of a distributional frequency measure (each verb form’s likelihood of use in a switch vs same-reference discourse context) on variable subject personal pronoun (SPP) expression ( N = 2227) in Spanish (e.g. yo voy ~ voy, both meaning ‘I go’) in the speech of 65 monolingual children in two age cohorts. Results reveal sensitivity to the contextual conditioning of discourse continuity (switch reference) among both the younger (6- and 7-year-olds) and older (8- and 9-year-olds) children in support of previous research. In addition, each verb’s likelihood of use in a switch-reference context significantly predicted the SPP use among the older children, but not the younger ones, suggesting that the cumulative effect of a probabilistic pattern takes time to emerge during childhood. The lexically specific accumulation in memory of contextual conditioning effects supports exemplar models of child language acquisition: each instance of use in discourse contributes to the lexical representation of that form and, over time, plays a role in the creation of morphosyntactic patterns during language development.

The role of Function Words to build syntactic knowledge in French-speaking children

The question of how children learn Function Words (FWs) is still a matter of debate among child language researchers. Are early multiword utterances based on lexically specific patterns or rather abstract grammatical relations? In this corpus study, we analyzed FWs having a highly predictable distribution in relation to Mean Length Utterance (MLU) an index of syntactic complexity in a large naturalistic sample of 315 monolingual French children aged 2 to 4 year-old. The data was annotated with a Part Of Speech Tagger (POS-T), belonging to computational tools from CHILDES. While eighteen FWs strongly correlated with MLU expressed either in word or in morpheme, stepwise regression analyses showed that subject pronouns predicted MLU. Factor analysis yielded a bifactor hierarchical model: The first factor loaded sixteen FWs among which eight had a strong developmental weight (third person singular verbs, subject pronouns, articles, auxiliary verbs, prepositions, modals, demonstrative pronouns and plural markers), whereas the second factor loaded complex FWs (possessive verbs and object pronouns). These findings challenge the lexicalist account and support the view that children learn grammatical forms as a complex system based on early instead of late structure building. Children may acquire FWs as combining words and build syntactic knowledge as a complex abstract system which is not innate but learned from multiple word input sentences context. Notably, FWs were found to predict syntactic development and sentence complexity. These results open up new perspectives for clinical assessment and intervention.

Language Variation in Mandarin as a Heritage Language: Subject Personal Pronouns

Abstract Because of limited language input, different dominant languages, and learners’ differing backgrounds, the acquisition of heritage languages is distinguished from the acquisition of L1 and L2. Few studies of Chinese as a Heritage Language (CHL) have explored whether students can acquire native-like sociolinguistic competence and language-specific variables with educational input. Based on a sociolinguistic variationist perspective, this study investigates the acquisition of variation between null and overt subject personal pronouns (SPP s) by heritage learners in an undergraduate-level Mandarin program. A total of 11,970 tokens were collected through classroom observation, sociolinguistic interviews, and narratives. Measuring mixed-effects logistic regression with Rbrul (Johnson, 2009), results show that the overall usage pattern of SPP s by CHL students largely resembled that in the input provided by the language program. Results also demonstrate that linguistic constraints including coreference, person and number, and verb type, and social factors such as discourse context, first languages, course level, and age of arrival had a significant effect on SPP expression by CHL learners. Implications for CHL development and variationist studies in heritage languages are discussed.

Some considerations on the syntax of expletive subjects in Old Venetan and the emergence of subject clitics

Old Venetan varieties display different forms of third person subject pronouns. In particular, the reduced monosyllabic and asyllabic forms are stronglyrelated to the expletive subject function. Even if the reduced forms do not have the same distribution of subject clitics in Modern Venetan, it can be argued that these forms have become clitics before the other pronouns. The article takes into consideration the syntax of expletive subjects in Old Venetan in relation to the rise of subject clitics in these varieties.

After the Null Subject Parameter: Acquisition of the Null-Overt Contrast in Spanish

ABSTRACT In many so-called canonical null subject languages, null and overt subject pronouns have contrasting referential preferences: null subjects tend to maintain reference to the preceding subject while overt pronominal subjects do not. We propose that children acquire this contrast by initially restricting their attention to 1st and 2nd person pronouns, whose reference is simpler to infer compared to 3rd person pronouns. We provide supporting evidence from spontaneous production and comprehension in Mexico City Spanish, showing that (i) the null/overt contrast is in principle acquirable from exclusively observing the referential preferences of 1st and 2nd person subject pronouns in caretaker speech; (ii) children themselves condition subject pronoun expression on pronoun reference in the 1st and 2nd persons before doing so in the 3rd person; and (iii) children use the null/overt contrast in comprehension at a similar age when they begin making this distinction in production.

HONORIFIC SUBJECTIVE PRONOUNS USED BY MINANGNESE IN KECAMATAN MEDAN AREA

This study aimed to reveal and explain honorific subjective pronouns used by Minangnese in Kecamatan Medan Area by trying to find out the type most used, the way, and the reason of people in Kecamatan Medan Area to use it. This study used a descriptive qualitative method, this study conducted in Kecamatan Medan Area, there were 32 Minangnese in Kecamatan Medan Area as respondents. In this research, the data collected by using an interview and questionnaire. The findings of this study that Minangnese Subjective Pronouns in Kecamatan Medan Area mostly used were first honorific subject pronouns Ambo/Denai with 93 times chosen, second honorific subject pronouns Menyebut nama orang lain (call a name) with 91 times chosen, and third Personal Subject Pronouns si + nama orang with 120 times chosen. Age, gender, situation, and formality that determined the way of people in Kecamatan Medan Area using honorific subjective pronouns and reason of respondents in Kecamatan Medan Area using Minangnese honorific subjective pronouns were adapting situation and politeness

A Study on the Comparative Analysis of Hausa and Jar Pronouns of Northern, Nigeria

This paper title “A Comparative Analysis of the Hausa and Jar Pronouns”, started with brief introduction of importance of language in human endeavor, meaning of pronoun. The historical background of both languages was reviewed, and also the work examines the behavior of the Hausa and Igbo Pronouns. As such, the work analytically compares the nature and positions of pronouns within the sentences or noun phrase of the two languages (Hausa and Igbo). However, this paper identifies the similarities and differences of both singulars and plural Pronouns, such as the Hausa language, has gender in second person and third person, Singular Pronouns Kai, Shi, and Ita. While Jar languages has no gender in second and third person pronouns. Also where English and Jar languages have shared the same rules in second person and object pronouns (you) while the rule differs with Hausa. Another difference is the positions of some subject pronouns singular in Jar languages almost always come after an action word or verb in a sentence, while in Hausa almost always the singular personal subject pronouns appear before an action word (Verb), and methodology of research has been discussed in the paper.

An approach to subject pronoun expression patterns in data from the “Project for the Sociolinguistic Study of Spanish in Spain and America”

Abstract The objective of this article is to extract certain general consequences about social and linguistic-pragmatic conditions in the expression of subject personal pronouns (SPPs) in contemporary urban Spanish. The study examines some of the results obtained in Valencia and Granada, Spain; Mexico City, Mexico; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Caracas, Venezuela; Bogotá and Medellín, Colombia; and Montevideo, Uruguay. These works have all analyzed data from the “Project for the Sociolinguistic Study of Spanish in Spain and America” (PRESEEA), thus they all share data collected under very similar circumstances (Moreno Fernández 1996; Cestero Mancera 2012). The presence or the absence of pronominal subjects in Spanish is required in certain contexts, but in most cases they are considered optional. This optionality depends on fixed factors of linguistic nature (such as the grammatical person and number of the subject, or the co-reference between the subject and a previous element) and of social nature (such as age or gender), and on random factors (such as individuals and verbal pieces). The hypotheses to be tested are: (a) there is geographical variation among the cities studied, which is reflected in the rates of overt SPPs (Otheguy & Zentella 2012; Carvalho, Orozco & Shin 2015); (b) social variation is relatively small within each city; (c) the fixed and random linguistic-pragmatic variation is intense within each city and similar among cities; (d) the most relevant factors that activate overt SPPs are related to adequate information management of the anaphoric chains and textual coherence.

Swedish modal particles as markers of engagement: Evidence from distribution and frequency

AbstractThe paper analyses the Swedish modal particlesjuandvälas markers of engagement. This analysis finds support in the distribution and frequency ofjuandvälin a corpus of spoken Swedish along with an examination of existing accounts concerning the semantics of the investigated forms. Engagement encodes differences in the distribution of knowledge and/or attention between the speaker and the addressee, where the basic semantic contrast consists of the speaker asserting an assumption about the addressee’s knowledge of/attention to an event as either shared, or non-shared with the speaker.Juandvälare paradigmatically contrastive in signaling shared access to an event from the point of view of the speaker, or the addressee:jusignals shared access to an event and at the same time places the epistemic authority with the speaker, andvälsignals shared access to an event, placing the epistemic authority with the addressee. Analytical support forjuandvälas markers of engagement comes from the distribution of both forms with first person (jag), second person (du), and generic (man) subject pronouns.

Lexico-grammatical Framework of a Politeness Category in Russian and Korean

This paper presents research on subject pronouns such as “Ty” (You) and “Vy” (polite form of You) from the perspective of expressing politeness. Politeness is explored as a communicative category, which has various connotations in different cultures. Second person singular subject pronouns have different roles when comparison is drawn between the two languages. For instance, second person subject pronouns are indicators of two forms of politeness in Russian such as informal and formal when addressing somebody using “Ty” and “Vy” respectively. Second person subject pronouns in the Korean language do not indicate forms or degrees of politeness, but they are the means of expressing politeness. It is presented in the paper that second person object pronouns in Russian are related to “terms of address” as an indicator of social etiquette and the attitude of a speaker towards an interlocutor (close versus distant) as well as their social roles in the society (superior vs inferior, elderly vs young). Meanwhile in the Korean language forms of politeness are divided into official and unofficial, which implies that politeness in Korean is social in nature and depends on the communicative situation (formal or informal). In contrast with Korean politeness, pragmalinguistic meaning of politeness forms in Russian have the connotation of proximity, closeness (or familiarity) and distancing (or showing respect) when the subject pronouns “Ty” and “Vy” are used respectively. Yet, Korean degrees of politeness have major differences to show various levels of respect or a lack of it. Comparative analysis of second person singular pronouns in both languages showed that subject pronouns have differences from the perspective of structure, semantics and function. As for structural differences, pronouns in Korean compared to Russian pronouns, are included into the category of content words. The functional difference is that pronouns in Russian indicate a degree of politeness and are used in different forms of politeness (“Ty” and “Vy”). Semantic and linguistic aspect of a politeness category relies on the the lexical and grammatical framework, so in Korean it is a grammatical system of politeness, whereas in Russian it is a system of subject pronouns such as “Ty” and “Vy”. Lexical and grammatical features of the two languages compared in this work show that politeness in the Russian language is interpersonal in nature, it indicates the formal and informal nature of communication, which is expressed through strategies used by communicators to become either close or distant. In the Korean language politeness is social in nature and depends on the level of formality of a particular communicative situation.

American myths of linguistic assimilation: A sociolinguistic rebuttal

AbstractThis study examines the behavior of 331 Spanish speakers, 269 immigrants to the United States and sixty-two native-born individuals, through questionnaires and sociolinguistic interviews. Results show that increased US life experience correlates with expanded use of English in both private and public domains of life. Additionally, greater use of English co-exists with maintenance of fine-grained patterns of structured linguistic variation in Spanish, such that US-born speakers demonstrate remarkable similarity to the immigrant generation in their usage of three variables: (i) subject pronoun presence vs. absence, (ii) grammatical subject position, and (iii) syllable-final /s/. The co-occurence of increased use of English, on one hand, and intergenerational structural continuity in variable linguistic behavior in Spanish, on the other, challenges two misconceptions about Spanish in the United States: that (a) Spanish-speaking immigrants and their US-born children are unwilling or unable to learn English, and (b) regular use of English entails attrition and/or failed acquisition of Spanish. Neither of these views finds empirical support in our data. (Spanish in the United States, comparative variationist linguistics, subject personal pronouns, grammatical subject position, syllable final /s/, bilingualism)

POLITENESS IN USING PAKPAKNESE IN PERSONAL SUBJECT PRONOUNS IN DAILY CONVERSATION AT JAMBU MBELLANG

This descriptive qualitative research deals with the Politeness in Using Pakpaknese in Personal Subject Pronouns in Daily Conversation at Jambu Mbellang. The problem of the study were to find the (1)types of politeness in using Pakpaknese in personal subject pronouns show daily conversation, (2)how to personal subject pronouns show daily conversation and (3)why Pakpak people need to show personal subject pronoun by Pakpaknese. The data were collected by taken 30 people (15 male and 15 female) at Jambu Mbellang District as respondent/participant were collected by using questionnaire, recording the daily conversation of Pakpaknese people,the last data the researcher used interview and then were transcribed. The data were analyzed by qualitative research based on Brown and Levinson. The result of the research shown that second types of politeness show pakpaknese,how do Pakpak people show personal subject pronouns and why Pakpak people need show personal subject pronouns. The analyzed of questionnaire that speaker male speak to male the equal language were often used and in the speaker male speak female the younger language were often used. In the speaker of female speak female show younger language to used communication and female speak male the older language were often used. types of politeness in show PSP, on record the answer how Pakpak people show PSP that conversation found four speech function , and used interview found intimacy, politeness, relation, adapting situation into ever conversation in Pakpak why Pakpak people need to show PSP.Keywords : pakpaknese, personal pronouns, politeness,

인칭대명사 생략 문장의 A-B번역 양상 : 소설 프라자호텔을 중심으로

This study evaluates translations of a Korean short story to determine how pro-drop pronouns are translated into other languages, whether they are translated into null subject pronouns as in Korean. Eight researchers identified instances of pro-drop from a Korean short story titled Plaza Hotel and identified the distribution of overt and null subject pronouns in five target languages including English, German, Russian, Spanish and Japanese. The sentences were divided into dialogues and declarative sentences and subjects were classified into different types of pronouns for further analysis. The study demonstrated that null subjects were translated into overt pronouns in English (76.0%), German (64.3%), Russian (56.1%), Spanish (1.4%) and Japanese (0.5%). The percentage of overt pronouns in Spanish and Japanese were considerably low compared to other languages, which indicates that these two languages share a particular characteristic. The study also illustrated that the distribution of overt pronouns were higher in declarative sentences than dialogues and the gap was particularly pronounced in English (14.5 percentage point) and Russian (28.2 percentage point), and less so for German (3.0 percentage point). Moreover, the occurrence of null subjects being translated into first person subject pronouns were higher than third person subject pronouns

POLITENESS IN USING SIMALUNGUNESE PERSONAL SUBJECT PRONOUNS

This study aimed to reveal and explain politeness in using simalungunese personal subject pronouns by trying to find out the type mostly used, the way and the reason of people in Galang City using it. This study was qualitatively conducted that taken 35 people of Galang City as respondent/participant. The data was collected by using questionnaire paper. The findings of this study showed that Simalungunese Personal Subject Pronouns people in Galang City mostly used were First Personal Subject Pronouns Ahu/au with 130 times chosen (46%), Second Personal Subject Pronouns Ham/Handian/Nassiam with 159 times chosen (57%), Third Personal Subject Pronouns Ia/Sidea with 128 times chosen (46%). The ways of people in Galang City using Simalungunese Personal Subject determine by gender, Situation, Age, and Familiarity. The reason of people in Galang city using Simalungunese personal subject pronouns were making no distance/gap, adapting the situation, knowing the rule of communication, learning from family. The findings of this study revealed that four parameters of politeness influenced chosen of pronouns, and the use of Simalungunese Personal Subject pronouns itself influenced the level of politeness. Keywords : Politeness , Simalungunese , Personal Pronouns

Bilingualism in the community: Code-switching and grammars in contact by Rena Torres Cacoullos and Catherine Travis

Reviewed by: Bilingualism in the community: Code-switching and grammars in contact by Rena Torres Cacoullos and Catherine Travis Ricardo Otheguy Bilingualism in the community: Code-switching and grammars in contact. By Rena Torres Cacoullos and Catherine Travis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Pp. 254. ISBN 9781108415828. $110 (Hb). Linguists have long asked whether one finds in bilinguals, in addition to lexical transfer, crosslinguistic influences in morphosyntax. The familiar answer given in most places is: yes (see e.g. Thomason & Kaufman 1988). But in this book the answer, in a revealing dissent, is pursued by Rena Torres Cacoullos and Catherine E. Travis (TC&T) with such seriousness and rigor as to make this substantial volume indispensable. Their answer to the question is that there is no morphosyntactic convergence in bilinguals. Not, at least, in this painstakingly carried out case study of the use of subject personal pronouns by fluent English-Spanish bilinguals in the state of New Mexico in the United States. Subject personal pronouns in Spanish (yo, tú, ella, él, etc. 'I, you, she, he', etc.) and especially the difference between expressed versus unexpressed pronominal subjects in finite clauses (ella camina ∼ camina, both 'she walks') represent a mature research topic (Carvalho et al. 2015). Most studies, like the authors', have been conducted on the basis of speech data under the quantitative variationist paradigm first established by William Labov (1966). Also comprising a large variationist literature is the related matter of the possible influence of English on the use of these pronouns in the Spanish of bilinguals. But scholars plowing this field have mostly concentrated on the presumed target of contact influence, Spanish, and not enough on the presumed source, English. This is because while the expression of subjects is obviously variable in Spanish, it is typically assumed to be essentially categorical in English. Yet TC&T make a point that is no less crucial for its being obvious: unexpressed subjects are also found in English (e.g. He .. took off for .. Big Bear. // You're kidding. // 0 Had no idea where he was going (112); the '0' indicates an unexpressed pronoun). There are other important differences between this book and most work on English-Spanish bilingualism in the US. First, the speakers here are almost all US-born and belong to a 150-year-old bilingual community, thus differing from those of the relatively recent immigrant settings studied in most US bilingual research. This speaker profile facilitates conclusions about long-term linguistic change that are harder to reach when a time depth of only two or three generations is considered. Second, the very frequent code-switching that marks the normal speech mode of many bilingual settings is especially noticeable in the corpus utilized here. This allows TC&T to analyze pronominal use in stretches of both languages produced by the same speakers. In this way the authors take into account more directly than other investigators the familiar dictum that the true locus of crosslinguistic influence is the bilingual individual. And since, more than in [End Page 575] other studies, English here thrives in the mind of a single speaker as much as does Spanish, the authors can expose their central claim of no contact effects to the highest risk of falsification, increasing the value of their conclusions. Moreover, the authors can dismiss the claim that the incidence of crosslinguistic influence of English on Spanish is greater in stretches of Spanish located in the vicinity of English stretches. And of special interest to the wider field of bilingual studies, the characteristics of the corpus lead TC&T to note that our confidence is misplaced in such notions as 'the native language', 'the matrix language', 'the second language', or more generally in what they correctly discount as the belief in 'the regime of ordered first and second language acquisition' (66). A third distinctive trait of the study is that the corpus comes with a prosodic transcription, crucially incorporating into the analysis intonational units, or IUs, that are not always found in this literature. A fourth and final differentiating feature is that the English and Spanish stretches of the bilingual corpus are contrasted with two different English...