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Article published In: Spanish in Context
Vol. 14:3 (2017) ► pp.413–439

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Lexical frequency and morphosyntactic variation

Evidence from U.S. Spanish

 | University of California, Davis
 | Washington University
 | Colorado State University
Published online: 30 December 2017
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/sic.14.3.04bay
Abstract
The role of frequency in language variation has received a great deal of attention in recent years, especially in phonology. Recently, Erker, Danny, and Gregory R. Guy. 2012. “The Role of Lexical Frequency in Syntactic Variability: Variable Subject Personal Pronoun Expression in Spanish.” Language 881: 526–557. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar extended the analysis of frequency to morphosyntactic variation and examined frequency effects in variation between null and overt subject personal pronouns (SPPs) in New York City Spanish. Their results suggest that frequency activates or amplifies the effects of other influences on speakers’ choices between overt and null pronouns, such as person and number. Here we attempt to replicate their study. Analysis of more than 8,600 examples of possible sites of SPP variation collected from Mexican immigrant and Mexican American Spanish shows that frequency has only a small effect on a speaker’s choice between an overt and a null pronoun. The results presented here suggest that factors such as a change in reference from the subject of the preceding tensed verb or the person and number of the verb operate independently of frequency effects and provide a better explanation of observed patterns of variation than frequency.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Previous research
    • 2.1The study of subject personal pronouns
    • 2.2Frequency in language variation and change
  • 3.Methods
    • 3.1Speakers
    • 3.2Transcription and coding
      • 3.2.1Co-reference
      • 3.2.2Person and number
      • 3.2.3Ambiguity with respect to person
      • 3.2.4Tense, mood, and aspect
      • 3.2.5Verb semantics
      • 3.2.6Lexical aspect
      • 3.2.7Social factors
    • 3.3Atypical pronominal subjects
    • 3.4Exclusions
    • 3.5Frequency
    • 3.6Analysis
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Co-reference
    • 4.2Person and number
    • 4.3Semantic class
    • 4.4Tense/mood/aspect and ambiguity
    • 4.5Lexical aspect
    • 4.6Combined analysis
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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