Anna Wilson

Spanish is a “pro-drop” language, meaning subject personal pronoun (SPP) expression may be phonetically null. Due in large part to the well-understood dialectal differences and universal constraints operating on SPP expression, Bayley, Cárdenas, Schouten, and Vélez Salas (2012) have highlighted it as a “classic” or “showcase” variationist variable.
The present study follows the current trend in using SPP expression as a starting point in order to investigate the effects of lexical frequency on morphosyntactic independent variables and furthers discussion by examining its behavior in a comparative study (Bayley, Holland & Ware, 2013; Erker & Guy, 2012). This study compares SPP expression of 6 Mexican immigrants living in the US with that of 6 speakers living in Mexico City (Butragueño & Lastra, 2000; Wilson, 2013). The data are coded for previous realization (perseverance), continuity of reference, tense-mood-aspect, genre, lexical frequency (based on 1% of non-lemmatized verbs from Bayley et al. (2013) and Erker and Guy (2012)), morphological regularity, and verbal semantic content. Lexical frequency is proven to behave non-orthogonally, supporting the conclusions of Erker and Guy (2012).

Keywords: Spanish, sociolinguistics, pronoun expression, lexical frequency, language contact

Spanish is a “pro-drop” language, meaning subject personal pronoun (SPP) expression may be phonetically null. Due in large part to the well-understood dialectal differences and universal constraints operating on SPP expression, the present study follows the current trend in using SPP expression as a starting point in order to further investigate the effects of lexical frequency on morphosyntactic dependent and independent variables and furthers discussion by examining its behavior in a comparative study (Bayley et al. 2013, Erker & Guy 2012). Furthermore, in this work, lexical frequency also functions as a lens through which to revisit a variable that has been understudied in the literature, namely variation between uno ‘one’, yo ‘I’, and null in naturally occurring discourse, such as in (1) below (Bassa-Vanrell 2013, Flores-Ferrán 2009, Gelabert-Desnoyer 2008).
1. a) Yo ando. b) Ando. c) Uno anda.
‘I walk.’ ‘I walk.’ ‘One walks.’
This study compares SPP expression of 6 Mexican immigrants living in the U.S. with that of 6 speakers living in Mexico City (Butragueño & Lastra 2000 (PRESEEA), Wilson 2013). The data are coded for biological sex, socioeconomic class, age, education, years in the U.S. (where applicable), previous realization (perseverance), continuity of reference, tense-mood-aspect, genre, lexical frequency (based on 1% of non-lemmatized verbs from Bayley et al. 2013, Erker & Guy 2012), morphological regularity, and verbal semantic content. Although the results for self-referential uno are inconclusive due to low frequency, lexical frequency is proven to behave non-orthogonally, supporting the conclusions of Erker & Guy (2012).