Resumen de La subida de clíticos en tiempo real y aparente en el español de Houston
A number of Spanish verbal phrases allow speakers to place clitic forms before the first conjugated form or after the last verbal form. The first situation is known as clitic climbing since the pronoun is placed next to the verbal form that is found in the highest position away from its original position (= cliticized to the non-conjugated verb). This is a variationist study that intends to offer information to help to explain the tendencies that are taking place within the general tendency that favors clitic climbing, which has been occurring for the last several centuries. It examines data from the Mexican-American community of Houston, Texas, and the speakers are part of three different generations according to the years in contact with English. The results indicate that gerund verbal phrases favor clitic climbing almost categorically while those with infinitives offer a continuum from those forms that highly favor the position before the verb that expresses the grammatical categories to others that keep clitic forms next to the verb that expresses the lexical meaning of the periphrasis. The use of two sets of data separated by twenty years allows studying the tendencies also using real time.
