I think, therefore digo yo: variable position of the 1sg subject pronoun in New Mexican Spanish-English code-switching

• Autores: Nicole M. Benevento, Amelia J. Dietrich
• Localización: International Journal of Bilingualism: interdisciplinary studies of multilingual behaviour, ISSN 1367-0069, Vol. 19, Nº. 4, 2015 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Gauging convergence on the ground: Code-switching in the community), págs. 407-422
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Using the New Mexico Spanish-English Bilingual Corpus, the present paper examines the variable position of the 1sg Spanish subject pronoun yo—pre- versus post-verbal—to consider the effect that code-switching may have on structural change. In an analysis of close to 700 tokens of yo, a rate of 16% post-positioning is found, which is within the range of post-position in non-contact varieties and thus contraindicative of the convergence hypothesis, in accordance with which the almost exclusive use of preverbal subject pronouns in English would predict lower rates of post-verbal yo in a converged contact variety. Moreover, by testing factors hypothesized to account for choice of post-posing yo using multivariate analysis, it is shown that bilinguals display similar constraints on yo post-positioning in New Mexican Spanish as monolingual speakers of Spanish, providing stronger support for an anti-convergence account. Results are discussed in terms of bilingual parallel activation, syntactic priming, and construction grammar.