Remarks on Pronominal Perseveration and Functional Explanation

• Ricardo Otheguy ^[1]
  1. [1] City University of New York

     City University of New York

     Estados Unidos

     
• Localización: Perspectives in the Study of Spanish Language Variation: Papers in Honor of Carmen Silva-Corvalán / coord. por Andrés Enrique Arias, Manuel J. Gutiérrez, María Alazne Landa Arevalillo, Francisco A. Ocampo, 2014, págs. 373-396
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Priming as the motivation for perseveration has been held up as an instance of mechanical, non-functional explanation in experimental and variationist linguistics. Perseveration due to priming has been claimed to account for, among others, features of morphosyntax such as the variable use of Spanish subject personal pronouns. The proposal is that the use in discourse of a pronoun with a finite verb token tends to lead to the subsequent use of another pronoun with the next finite verb token, and that the omission of a pronoun tends to lead to another omission. This paper makes two points, one theoretical, one empirical. The theoretical point relates to the inadequacy of generative models as accounts of language use, and consequently, their inappropriateness for the study of variation, including Spanish pronominal variation. The empirical point is that perseveration in the use of Spanish subject personal pronouns cannot be replicated in a new corpus to the degree that one might wish. While the omission of pronouns shows evidence of perseveration, their deployment does not. And perseveration in omissions, it is argued, does not require the postulation of structural priming; it can be accounted for by well-established, functional understandings of what subject pronouns do in discourse. Furthermore, even when structural priming is invoked, it does not qualify as a counter-functional explanation, once the boundaries of functionalism are properly delimited.