Subject Personal Pronouns Research Articles

Social variables and Turkish subject pronoun use in New York City: The effect of language contact

AbstractOver recent years a great deal of attention has been paid to the influence of social variables on the usage of subject personal pronouns (SPP) in South and Central America as well as in immigrant communities in the USA (

Ambiguous pronoun use in narratives of children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

This study explored pronoun production and general syntactic abilities in story retelling and story generation among children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Twenty-four children diagnosed with ASD, ages 6;1–14;3 and 17 typically-developing (TD) children ages 5;11–14;4 participated in the study. The linguistic measures for general syntax were sentence complexity and morpho-syntactic errors. The pronoun production measure was referential use of third person subject, object and possessive pronouns. The results revealed no group differences in general syntactic measures in either task. The ambiguous third person pronoun measure showed different results between the two tasks. Although there was no difference between the groups in the retelling task, children with ASD produced more ambiguous pronouns in the story-generation task than did the TD children. Interestingly, this pattern was shown for different types of pronouns, suggesting a cognitive deficit in monitoring the listener’s mental model.

The role of lexical frequency in syntactic variability: Variable subject personal pronoun expression in Spanish

Much recent work argues that lexical frequency plays a central explanatory role in linguistic theory, but the status, predicted effects, and methodological treatment of frequency are controversial, especially so in the less-investigated area of syntactic variation. This article addresses these issues in a case study of lexical frequency effects on variable subject personal pronoun (SPP) expression in Spanish. Prior studies of Spanish SPP use revealed significant constraints including formal and semantic properties of the verb, and discourse factors such as a switch reference. These constraints appear to be confirmed in our analysis of 4,916 verbs from a spoken corpus of Spanish, as is a powerful role for lexical frequency. But the frequency effect—best configured as a discrete rather than continuous variable—is complex; statistically, it has no independent direct effect, but operates entirely through interaction with other constraints. All other constraints on SPP use are amplified in high-frequency forms, and some disappear at low frequencies. Frequency thus acts as a 'gatekeeper' and potentiator: above some frequency threshold, significant linguistic constraints on SPP use emerge; below the threshold they do not. We propose that this reflects experience and acquisition: speakers cannot formulate hypotheses about individual lexical items until they have sufficient evidence; the threshold is the level at which speakers have enough experience with a form to do so. These results have important theoretical and methodological implications. They require rich lexical representations incorporating frequency and collocational information. Methodologically they indicate the need for careful quantitative explorations of frequency, because its role as an enabler of other constraints produces unstable statistical results.

Frequency rates and constraints on subject personal pronoun expression: Findings from the Puerto Rican highlands

AbstractThis study examines subject personal pronoun expression in the Spanish of the west-central highlands of Puerto Rico. Although rates of s-deletion are comparably high, rates of overt subject expression are shown to be much lower than rates reported for varieties of coastal Puerto Rican Spanish and U.S. mainland Puerto Rican Spanish. The linguistic constraints on overt versus null pronoun usage in the data are shown to coincide to a very large extent with constraints identified for other Puerto Rican dialects and also Castilian Spanish in central Spain, whereas of the social factors, only the distinction between farmers and nonfarmers is significant. The study suggests that, if rates of personal subject pronoun expression are an indication of dialectal variation, the rates presented here for this syntactic phenomenon represent the continuing effects of a conservative dialect in the interior of the island of Puerto Rico.

Continuity of Reference and Subject Personal Pronoun Variation in the Turkish Spoken in Turkey and in New York City

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of continuity of reference on the use of subject personal pronouns (SPP) in the Turkish spoken in Turkey and in New York City (NYC) from a variationist perspective. Whereas the variable use of SPPs in Turkish has been extensively analyzed in many studies conducted in Europe, it has received much less attention in the US. One of the aims of the present study is to replicate the study conducted by Otheguy et al., where the influence of different social and linguistic variables on the expression of Spanish SPPs was examined across Latin American and Caribbean immigrant generations in NYC. The present study is part of a dissertation that examined several linguistic and social variables that condition the presence and absence of SPPs in the speech of 20 adult speakers living in Turkey and 20 living in NYC, but reports here only the results regarding the rates of use of overt SPPs in Turkish and the effects of continuity of reference on the use of SPPs. In both the TT and TNY samples, there were an equal number of males and females. The speakers ranged in age from 20 to 80 years old. The results of the study indicate that there was an increase in the use of overt SPPs in both the same- and different-reference environments among the TNY and a significantly higher rate of overt SPP use for TNY than for TT. These findings are consistent with those obtained in the work by Otheguy et al.

¡Tú no me hables! Pronoun expression in conflict narratives

In their sociolinguistic analyses of the variable use of Spanish subject personal pronouns, researchers have noted that pronominal expression is conditioned by several linguistic and social variables such as a change in subject referent, the semantic class and person and number of the verb, formality of speech and speaker age. Recent studies have also reported that pronominal expression is also influenced by a speaker's exposure to English and contact with other Spanish varieties that exhibit elevated uses of overt pronominals. Based on Grimshaw's (Conflict talk, Cambridge University Press, 1990) and Labov and Fanshel's (Therapeutic discourse: Psychotherapy as conversation, Academic Press, 1977) tenets regarding conflict talk, in which they note that conflict involves speech acts such as defenses, retreats and challenges, and on Brenneis (Telling troubles, Oxford University Press, 1996), who maintains that the contents of conflict narratives are intertwined with the “narrator, audience, purposes and expectations”, this study hypothesizes that the presence of conflict in narratives mediates subject pronoun expression. It is posited here that because conflict contains such features, its presence will affect singular and plural subject pronoun forms, and it will strongly compete with the effect that another strong variable (a change in subject referent) has on pronominal expression. It is also posited that the robust effect that conflict exerts on pronominals will be attested in all speakers regardless of age.

Language and Dialect Contact in Spanish in New York: Toward the Formation of a Speech Community

Subject personal pronouns are highly variable in Spanish but nearly obligatory in many contexts in English, and regions of Latin America differ significantly in rates and constraints on use. We investigate language and dialect contact by analyzing these pronouns in a corpus of 63,500 verbs extracted from sociolinguistic interviews of a stratified sample of 142 members of the six largest Spanish-speaking communities in New York City. A variationist approach to rates of overt pronouns and variable and constraint hierarchies, comparing speakers from different dialect regions (Caribbeans vs. Mainlanders) and different generations (those recently arrived vs. those born and/or raised in New York), reveals the influence of English on speakers from both regions. In addition, generational changes in constraint hierarchies demonstrate that Caribbeans and Mainlanders are accommodating to one another. Both dialect and language contact are shaping Spanish in New York City and promoting, in the second generation, the formation of a New York Spanish speech community.*

A Bend in the Road: Subject Personal Pronoun Expression in Spanish after 30 Years of Sociolinguistic Research

AbstractScholars have investigated the variable use of subject personal pronouns (SPP) in oral and written discourse using a sociolinguistic framework for over three decades. The focal point of their research has been to determine the linguistic, stylistic, and social factors that influence speakers to express or not express the SPP as in Yo canto (I sing), and Canto [(I) sing]. Several linguistic, stylistic, and social factors have been found to condition the use of the expressed SPP. Nonetheless, this syntactic variable remains highly debated among scholars who investigate Spanish in the US, Latin American, and Peninsular varieties. The remarks in the article are suggestive rather than probative as the discussion represents an overview. It also provides a gateway of interest regarding this feature. Given the many empirical studies that have investigated this feature, the metaphor of ‘the bend in the road’ represents a slight turn that should guide our thoughts for future research.

Placeholders in the English Interlanguage of Bilingual (Basque/Spanish) Children

In this article we provide an explanation for 2 syntactic phenomena whose systematic production has been observed in the English nonnative grammar of 3 different age groups of 58 bilingual (Basque/Spanish) children after 4 years of exposure to English in a formal setting: (a) insertion of is before a lexical verb and (b) insertion of a subject personal pronoun before a lexical verb. We argue that the presence of these phenomena could be explained assuming the transfer of a functional projection common to the participants’ first languages and a gradual incorporation of the second language lexical items involved.

Subject Personal Pronouns in Spanish Narratives of Puerto Ricans in New York City: A Sociolinguistic Perspective (review)

Subject Personal Pronouns in Spanish Narratives of Puerto Ricans in New York City: A Sociolinguistic Perspective (review)

Single-language and code-switching strategies in immigrant and heritage varieties: Spanish subject personal pronouns in Toribio's cross-modal hypothesis

In an important theoretical contribution to our understanding of language contact, Toribio elaborates on the familiar generalization, best known from the work of Silva-Corvalán, that contact varieties resemble monolingual lects of the same language in overall grammar, but differ with regard to (a) the selection of structures and (b) the semantic-pragmatic constraints on the use of structures. In Toribio's valuable elaboration of this basic idea, these peculiar patterns of selection and constraint in the contact variety are not the same in all contexts of use, but differ depending on whether the bilingual is in the single-language mode, or in the codeswitching mode where stretches of speech in the contact variety alternate, rapidly and relatively seamlessly, with stretches in the acrolect. The insight is that the same type of process that distinguishes the contact variety from its monolingual reference lects also distinguishes, within the contact variety, the codeswitching mode from its single-language reference mode.

Spanish subject personal pronoun use in New York City Puerto Ricans: Can we rest the case of English contact?

The variable use of subject personal pronouns (SPPs) in null subject languages, though extensively researched in several Spanish dialects, is for the first time examined in a contact variety of Puerto Rican residents of New York City (NYC). In a large-scale study conducted by Flores-Ferrán (2002), a number of contradictions arose with regard to how the degree of exposure to NYC may mediate the influence of overt SPP use on speakers. The degree of exposure to NYC was considered as indirect contact with English. This article further analyzes how 41 Puerto Rican residents in NYC use overt SPPs, and it also describes the patterns of each group: the recent arrivals, established residents, and native-born NYC Puerto Ricans. Of the larger study, this article examines the verbs' person and number, switch reference, and exposure to NYC. A striking resemblance in the patterns of overt SPP use was found among NYC residents, as a group, when compared to those reported on the island (Ávila-Jiménez, 1995, 1996; Cameron, 1992). However, when considering years of exposure to the City, the NYC native-born group appeared to have the strongest tendency to use explicit SPPs. In spite of the fact that this distinction was found with the NYC native-born group, there remains little evidence in favor of an English contact hypothesis.This study has benefited from previous research conducted by Richard Cameron and Bárbara Ávila-Jiménez. I thank Richard for his insight, comments, and his continuous support throughout the years. I also express much gratitude to Ricardo Otheguy and Edward Bendix and the three anonymous reviewers whose sharp criticisms contributed to this work. All errors, of course, remain mine.

‘Pragmatic weight’ and face: pronominal presence and the case of the Spanish second person singular subject pronoun tú

Studies of the presence or absence of the subject personal pronoun in Spanish have typically taken place within the fields of theoretical syntax or variationist sociolinguistics and have sought to correlate pronominal occurrence either with linguistic features or with speaker variables. This study places the occurrence of the second person subject pronoun tu within the framework of interactional pragmatics and investigates the potential effects of extra-linguistic factors on the linguistic choices of speakers within a broad framework of Gricean pragmatics and politeness theory. It argues that the pronoun functions as a multi-functional Gricean hedge which allows speakers both to construct a social identity and to negotiate face (their own as well as that of their interlocutor) in interpersonal interaction. The mere inclusion of the pronoun by the speaker in contravention of the Gricean maxim of quantity invites the hearer to draw an implicature; this may be discoursal and relate to the frames of belief of the speaker and hearer, or conversational as in the use of the second person singular pronoun in an attempt by the speaker to cede the floor. The article focuses in particular on the use of the pronoun tu and argues that its presence responds to the face wants of speaker and hearer.

Subject NP patterning in the development of text production

This paper examines how choice of subject NP types and structures changes in the development of text construction, and the extent of variation in the developmental patterns which are produced in speech and in writing. The population for this study consisted of 80 participants — 40 grade-school children and 40 university-level adults — with 20 participants in each of four languages: Dutch, Hebrew, English, and Spanish. The database for each language-specific analysis consisted of 40 grade-school texts and 40 adult texts. In each group, half were spoken texts and half written, half were narratives and half expository texts: altogether 320 texts. All subject NP slots in each text were counted and classified by category of realization (zero, pronoun, or lexical), by pronoun type (personal vs. impersonal), and by lexical complexity (terminal NPs governing a single lexical noun vs. non-terminal NPs governing more than one lexical noun). In general, the written expositions of adults are the preferred site for lexical subjects and for non-terminal subjects. Among both children and adults, narratives contain more personal subject pronouns, and expository texts contain more impersonal pronouns. Several cross-linguistic differences emerged (mainly between Spanish and the other three languages), reflecting differences in the syntactic, inflectional, and pronominal patternings of the target languages.

“Surely you knew!”

A broad view of evidentiality is adopted, based on Chafe (1986) and Haviland (1987) which goes beyond the grammatical marking of the speaker’s or writer’s perceived sources of knowledge and reliability of these sources to encode, not only what the speaker knows and how s/he knows it, but also what can be taken to be an addressee’s state of knowledge. According to this view, evidentials are contemplated as interactive devices or resources for redefining common ground between interlocutors. They go beyond referential content to signal such meanings as confrontation and contradictory assumptions. They are necessarily situated in social contexts and have an indexical function. They may also overlap with epistemic stances and with affect, ranging in the case of surely from surprise, disbelief, doubt and disapproval to persuasion and an invitation to share beliefs or to agree on future courses of action. Using data from the British National Corpus, I analyse a sample of concordances of surely with subject personal pronouns, with the aim of providing a preliminary characterisation of the range of interpersonal attitudes expressed by surely and the determining factors which trigger these apparently contradictory stances.

‘Pragmatic weight’ and Spanish subject pronouns: The pragmatic and discourse uses of ‘tú’ and ‘yo’ in spoken Madrid Spanish

Spanish is a pro-drop language in which first and second person subject pronouns are frequently omitted (80%); traditionally the function of overt subject pronouns has been regarded as adding emphasis or to contrast explicit statements. I argue that their function is more similar to that of topicalized NPs, referred to as X-Forms by Klein-Andreu (1989a,b), and that their appearance is governed by their conversational function as discourse topics; they are used pragmatically and meta-linguistically to switch reference, for purposes of emphasis and negotiating conversational turns, and to add ‘pragmatic weight’ to frames of reference, epistemic parentheticals and potential speech act verbs. I introduce the notion of ‘pragmatic weight’ as a label that describes the ways in which subject pronouns are used to signal utterances as ‘less abstract’ or ‘more personally relevant’. Finally, some predictions are made as to what this description of the use of subject pronouns may imply for other, structurally similar pro-drop languages.