Word order and NP characteristics in Cuban Spanish: pragmatic and sociolinguistic variation

Ashlee Dauphinais Civitello, The Ohio State University

Luis A. Ortiz López, University of Puerto Rico

Word orderGreenberg (1963)The tricotomy of VSO/SVO/SOV

Lehmann (1973), Vennemann (1972)VO/OV

PROBLEM: languages with variationSpanish? Intransitive phrases? (Dryer, 2007)SVO?

Description of the phenomenon

Spanish has been traditionally classified as a language with supposed “free variation” in terms of the position of the subject

Examples:

(1) a. ¿Dónde vives (Ø/ tú)? (nCS)

where live+2ps Ø/you?

b. ¿Dónde tú vives? (CS)

where you live+2ps?

(2). a. Llegó Juan de viaje. (nCS)

Arrived Juan from trip.

b. Juan llegó de viaje . (CS)

Juan arrived from trip

Null Subject Parameter Subjects are obligatory in many languages (English, French, German, Haitian)

(5a-d, respectively):

(3) a. Je mange des fruits tous les jours.

b. I eat fruit every day.

c. Ich esse fruechte jeden tag.

d. Mwen manje fri yo.

Other languages allow null subjects (Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Greek, Arabic) (6a-6e)):

(4) a. Ø Como frutas todos los días

b. Ø Mangio frutta tutti i giorni.

c. Ø Como frutas todos os dias.

d. Ø Τρώω φρούτα κάθε μέρα./ Ø Tróo froúta káthe méra.

e. .آكل فاكهة كل يوم Ø/ Ø aakulu faakiha kol yaum.

(Bosque & Gutiérrez, 2009; Rizzi, 1982, 1986; Sorace, 2004, 2005)

Obligatoriness of Subjects

Extended Principle Projection (Chomsky, 1981)[Spec, SI] must be projected

Null Subject Parameter1) Null subjects (5a-b); 2) subject-verb inversion (6a-b); 3) violation of that-trace filter (7a-b) y 4) obligatory null expletives (8a-b):

(5) a. Ø terminé de leer el libro la semana pasada.

b. Yo terminé de leer el libro la semana pasada.

Ø/I finished reading the book last week.

(6) a. Llegó Sofía a la fiesta.

b. Sofía llegó a la fiesta. Arrived Sofía to the party/ Sofía arrived to the party.

(7) a. ¿Quién dice la prensa que asesinó a Filiberto Ojeda? b. *¿Quién dice la prensa Ø asesinó a Filiberto Ojeda?

Who says the press Ø/that murdered to Filiberto Ojeda?

(8) a. Ø Hace tiempo que no llueve en esta zona. b. Ello hace tiempo que no llueve en esta zona.*

Ø/It has been a while since it’s rained in this area.*Acceptable in Dominican Spanish (Toribio, 1994)(Bosque & Gutiérrez-Rexach, 2009; Chomsky, 1981; Jaeggli, 1982; Rizzi, 1982, 1997; Sorace, 2005).

Property 2: inversion in Spanish

Intransitive verbs:

unergative (agentive subject) and unaccusative (thematic subject)

8

Agent

Sv

v ’

vV

v

Sv

SV ’

VTheme

Arrive, come, rise, fallrun, walk, speak

Word order in Caribbean Spanish Caribbean Spanish presents a higher frequency

of prevebal subjects, particularly in questions:

(11) a. ¿Qué quieres (tú)? (nCS)

What want+2ps (you) b. ¿Qué tú quieres? (CS) What you want+2ps (you)

(12) a. Sofía llegó a la fiesta. (CS) Sofia arrived at the party b. Llegó Sofía a la fiesta (nCS) Arrived Sofía at the party

(Aponte Alequín, 2014; Camacho, 2011, 202; Comínguez, 2013; Dauphinais & Ortiz López, 2013; Morales, 1999; Ordóñez & Olarrea, 2006; Ortiz López,2010; Suñer, 1983; Toribio, 1994)

Word order in CS

With infinitives (Aponte Alequín & Ortiz López, 2012; 2014)(13) Para tú llevarme a la UPR, papi te tiene que prestar el carro.

For you to take me to the UPR, dad (to) you has to loan the car.

With interrogatives (Comínguez, 2013)

(14) ¿Dónde tú vives?

Where you live?Emphasis on the presence/absence of PSPs

(Cameron, 1992; Flores-Ferran, 2010; Hurtado, 2005; Matos & Schwenter, 2005; Morales,1999; Orozco & Guy, 2008; Ortiz López, 2010; Otheguy & Zentella, 2012; Toribio, 1994;s etc.)

Estudios formales más recientesCabrera (2008)

The four parameters of the NSP in the Dominican Republic

Martínez Sanz (2011)Patterns of subject expression in Dominican RepublicTakes into account the NSP, without competing

grammars in the minds of the speakers

Camacho (2011; 2012; 2013)Preverbal subjects in Dominican Spanish and Brasilian

PortugueseClitic Left Dislocation more frequent than pre-verbal

subjectsLoss of informational weight

Justifications for study

•Few quantitative studies•Few based on natural speech data•Lack of studies on Cuban Spanish•Minimalist Program: syntntactic variables are constant•Many unanswered questions

Theoretical framework

VariationistLabov: “Linguistic change normally proceeds from an ordered set of shifts in the frequency of the application of the rule”

Microvariationist syntax

Objectives & Research Questions

Objectives QuestionsTo describe qualitatively and quantitatively the word order (SV/VS) in a corpus of spontaneous speech of Cuban Spanish

What is the preferred word order in Cuban Spanish?

To identify the factors that restrict word order in Cuban Spanish

What role do linguistic factors such as subject type, level of embedding, unaccusativity, lexical class of the verb, presence of a SAdv or clitics play in word order in Cuban Spanish?

To investigate the effect of extralinguistic factors on word order in Cuban Spanish

Are there dialectal differences in Cuba? Are there differences in word order conditioned by gender, age, and level of formal education?

Methodology

Sociolinguistic Interviews

Participants (focus)44 Cuban participants recorded in situ

Other participants:17 Dominicans from different regions10 Puerto Ricans from PRESEEA corpus10 Colombians from the Caribbean Coast

(Barranquilla) from PRESEEA corpus12 Mexicans from PRESEEA corpus

Methodology

(Map: Figueroa, 2008)(Choy, 2011; Fuster, 2012)

Codification and type of analysis

Codification sheet with various linguistic and extralinguistic variables

Dependent variable : SV versus VSStatistical analysis in Rbrul

VariablesSyntactic Semantic-pragmatic SociolinguisticType of subject Inaccusativity DialectLevel of embedding Lexical class Gender

Presence of SAdv Type of sentence Age

Type of clause Focus vs. no focus Level of formal instruction

Codification

Exclusions:-Idiomatic expressionsi.e. ¡Ya tú sabes!, ¡Imagínate tú!, ¿Qué sé yo?, y ¡Yo qué sé!(You known, Imagine that, What do I know, What do I know)

-Impersonal verbsi.e. Hace frio, hay mucha gente. (It’s cold, there are a lot of people)

-When a participant cites another person

Results and analysis

Interviews93 speakers2968 tokens from Cuba (6005 in total)

Results: subject placement (Cuba)

n= 2699 SV/ 269 VS

Preverbal subjects

(15) a. Mira que tu mamá me bota ¡y yo detrás de ella! (F, 82)Look that your mom throws me out, and me after her!

b. Ella vive aquí en la Habana, hace pocos días estuvo aquí. (M, 28) She lives here in Havana, a few days ago Ø was here.

c. El varón nació allá hace ocho años. (M, 44)The boy was born there eight years ago.

Postverbal subjects

(16) a. Tiene mucho prestigio la universidad cubana. (F, 50)Has a lot of prestige the Cuban university.

b. Cada día llegan más personas inclusive. (H, 62, La Habana)Every day arrive more people even.

c. Muchos más recursos tienen ellos (H, 52, La Habana)Many more resources have they.

Subject Type

Subject type

Type of NP

Type of NP

Subject type (Cuba)

Subject type

(17) Y yo particularmente no soporto el acento puertorriqueño. La onda esa de que se comen las eres y las cambian por eles, me enferma. Sin embargo, tampoco me gusta cuando vienen los grupos de noruegos que son muy fríos y no hablan con nadie. Cuando tú vas a un país se supone que te insertes para conocer. O sea que tú te comuniques con la gente porque es la manera de conocer y aprender ese lugar (F, 35)

(17) And I particularly can’t stand the Puerto Rican accent. That thing that they eat their Rs and change them to Ls, makes me sick. However, I don’t like it either when come the groups of Norwegians that are very cold, and don’t talk to anyone. When you go to a country one supposes that you insert yourself to know more. I mean, that you communicate with the people because that is the way to know more and learn in that place (F, 35)

Subject type

(18). a. Fidel dijo que el país que tenía mayor condiciones para acceder al socialismo eran los Estados Unidos. (M, 70)Fidel said that the country that had better conditions to access socialism was the United States.

b. Mi mamá emigró a EE.UU. hace muchos años. (F, 54)My mom emigrated to the US many years ago.

c. La hija de Alicia Alonso vive aquí en la esquina. (M, 50)The daughter of Alicia Alonso lives here in the corner.

Unaccusativity

Unaccusativity

Unaccusativity(19) a. Ese día que ellos vinieron a la exposición (F, 35)That day that they came to the exposition.

b. Los españoles llegaban porque los sacaban de la cárcel (M, 71)The Spaniards were arriving because they were taking them out of prision.

c. Porque vinieron los niños (F, 66)Because came the children.

d. Na’, ahí no entro yo (F, 50) No, there don’t enter I.

Unaccusativity(20) a. Yo trabajaba en ese departamento (F, 60)I worked in that department.

b. Este muchacho de Calle 13 grita de aquí allá (F, 53)This boy from Calle 13 screams from here and there.

c. Trabaja más gente ahí de lo que realmente se hace (M, 28)Work more people there than what is really done.

d. Entonces cuando se levanta uno temprano a estudiar (F, 19)So then when wakes up one early to study

Sociolinguistic variablesGender

Level of formal instruction

Age

Dialect*

Extralinguistic factors

Variable: Dialect

  SV VSWeight

Dialect No. % No. %

Cuba2699/2698 90,90%269/2968 8,90% 0,578

Dominican Republic499/558 89,40%59/558 10,60%0,542Puerto Rico 899/999 89,90%100/999 10,10%0,589Barranquilla 881/1000 88,10%119/1000 11,90%0,506México 321/480 66,90%159/480 33,10%0,270

Subject position (across dialects)

Subject type (across dialects)

Unaccusativity (across dialects)

Preverbal subjects

(21) a. Donde mi hermana va, hay mucho problema. (RD)Where my sister goes, there are a lot of problems

b. Donde vive mi papá entonces, es diferente. (México)Where lives my dad then, is different.

c. de mi infancia tenía yo como: doce años cuando el roble / y el cedro / que: eso es lo que he visto yo (Barranquilla)Of my childhood I had like: twelve years old when the oak/ and the cedar / that: that is what have seen I.

Postverbal subjects

(22) a. yo traía estudiantes a conciertos al Tapia que contratábamos nosotros para que oyeran los Hermanos Figueroa (PR)I would bring students to concerts in the Tapia that hired we so that they could hear the Figueroa Brothers.

b. que es un poco a veces como digo yo (Barranquilla) That it’s a little bit as say I

c. Eso nos lo creemos los papás (RD)That we believe the parents.

d. Siempre se muere una plantita. (Méx)Always dies a [little] plant.

Hierarchy of constraints (Cuba)

Pronominal Scale (Caribbean)

Review:Caribbean speakers:SV order in ~90% of the casesPrefer preverbal prenominal subjects

slightly more than preverbal NPsDon’t discriminate according to lexical

class of the verb, inaccusativesNo difference presented among

extralinguistic variables

Conclusions

1. Caribbean Spanish, contrary to Mexican Spanish: Fixation of SVO particularly with pronouns (Question #1) Structures traditionally described as ungrammatical are

totally acceptable for these Caribbean varieties

2. Different syntactic-symantic restrictions in the distribution of subjects. The SV order doesn’t respond to semantic criteria such as lexical class (Burzio, 1986; Levin & Hovav, 1995), or or focalized contexts (Sorace 2003, 2005; Ortiz López, 2010)

3. The quantitative data demonstrates that pronouns have lost their informational weight and their features of focus and contrast (Goodall,2008; Camacho 2011, 2012).

Conclusions4. SV order has become fixed in:Simple clausesInfinitive clauses [-inf] (Aponte & Ortiz López, in progress)Relative clausesInterrogative clauses (Comínguez, in progress)Impersonal sentences with ello (RD)

5. Difficult to sustain a linguistic change argument, since the extralinguistic factors were not statistically significant

6. Results appear to corroborate what has been proposed by Toribio (2000, 2001), Caribbean speakers have two co-existing grammars with varied restrictions in terms of the NSP

7. Need to look at this phenomenon within and outside of the Null Subject Parameter.

Limitations and future studiesLack of representativitySocial variablesGrammatical structures

Acceptability Judgement Task

Future studies :Focus on:•Infinitive clauses [-inf] (Aponte & Ortiz López, en progreso)

• Relative clauses

• Interrogatives (Comínguez, 2013)

Future studiesStrengthen instruments used for analysis, acceptability

judgement task

Include phonological and prosodic factors

Include the variable bilingual, look at phenomenon in L2 speakers of Spanish

Diachronic data

Implement the use of eyetracker to measure processing time

Amplify data, including data from other dialects of Spanish and variants of Galician and Portuguese

PRO/pro

Acceptability judgements: structures acceptable in Caribbean Spanish evaluated by speakers of other variants of Spanish

Special thanks go to…The Centro de Estudios Martianos in La

Habana, Cuba

Participants from Cuba for their time

The participants and research involved in the project PRESEEA

Ana Marchena for the data from Dominican Republic

To the Decanato de Estudios Graduados e Investigación de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, for grants to make this study possible (CIPSHI #1314-062)

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