Chapter 4

Variable subject personal pronoun expression

This chapter explores the linguistic conditioning on variable subject personal pronoun expression (SPE). Tendencies in Barranquilla and New York are largely congruent with those throughout the Hispanic World, with Subject Person & Number and Switch Reference exerting the strongest pressures. The effects of verb semantics are particularly meaningful as they evince inconsistent tendencies within single lexical categories. Findings show that, by grouping verbs according to semantic categories, we leave important differences uncovered. Instead, a lexical frequency-based analysis that shows the effects of lexical idiosyncrasy increases our understanding of how verbs condition SPE.