Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-ttngx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-07T08:59:37.929Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

13 - Properties of Pronominal Subjects

from Part III - Spanish Morphosyntax and Meaning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2018

Kimberly L. Geeslin
Affiliation:
Indiana University
Get access

Summary

This chapter provides an overview of the on-going debates concerning the study of the verb phrase in Spanish with an emphasis on (i.) verb classes, (ii.) clausal ellipsis, and (iii.) sentential negation. With regard to (i.), particular attention is paid to the linguistic properties of the various verb classes in Spanish and to the lexicon-syntax interface. Study cases such as the syntax of ditransitive verbs, the encoding of path and motion in the verb, the locality properties of the dependents of the verb, and so-called Differential Object Marking help illustrate the discussion. As far as (ii.) is concerned, this chapter will emphasize current theorizing on the content of the ellipsis site and the mechanism involved in the interpretation of the ellipsis. Finally, the chapter focuses on recent approaches to clausal negation, including but not limited to so-called negative concord and its relevance for our understanding of clausal structure.
Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aijón Oliva, Miguel Ángel and Serrano, María José (2012). La posición del sujeto pronominal en las cláusulas no declarativas. Onomázein, 26 (2), 131164.Google Scholar
Alba, Orlando (2004). Cómo hablamos los dominicanos: Un enfoque sociolingüístico. Santo Domingo: Grupo León Jiménez.Google Scholar
Alfaraz, Gabriela G. (2015). Variation of Overt and Null Subject Pronouns in the Spanish of Santo Domingo. In Carvalho, et al. 2015:316.Google Scholar
Ariel, Mira (1994). Interpreting Anaphoric Expressions: A Cognitive versus a Pragmatic Approach. Journal of Linguistics, 30, 342.Google Scholar
Bayley, Robert, Holland, Cory, and Ware, Kristen (2013). Lexical Frequency and Syntactic Variation: A Test of a Linguistic Hypothesis. Penn Working Papers in Linguistics, 19 (2), 2130.Google Scholar
Bayley, Robert and Pease-Álvarez, Lucinda (1996). Null and Expressed Pronoun Variation in Mexican-descent children’s Spanish. In Arnold, Jennifer, Blake, Renee, and Davidson, Brad (eds.), Sociolinguistic Variation: Data, Theory, and Analysis. Stanford, CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information, pp. 8599.Google Scholar
Bentivoglio, Paola (1987). Los sujetos pronominales de primera persona en el habla de Caracas. Caracas: Universidad Central de Venezuela, Consejo de Desarrollo Científico y Humanístico.Google Scholar
Bock, J. K. and Griffin, Z. M. (2000). The Persistence of Structural Priming: Transient Activation or Implicit Learning? Journal of Experimental Psychology, 129, 177192.Google Scholar
Bullock, Barbara E. and Toribio, Jacqueline Almeida (2007). Reconsidering Dominican Spanish: Data from the Rural Cibao. Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana, 7 (2), 4973.Google Scholar
Butt, John and Benjamin, Carmen (2004). A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
Cameron, Richard (1992). Pronominal and Null Subject Variation in Spanish: Constraints, Dialects, and Functional Compensation (Doctoral dissertation). University of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia.Google Scholar
Cameron, Richard (1994). Ambiguous Agreement, Functional Compensation, and Nonspecific in the Spanish of San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Madrid, Spain. Language Variation and Change, 5 (3), 305334.Google Scholar
Cameron, Richard (1995). The Scope and Limit of Switch Reference as a Constraint on Pronominal Subject Expression. Hispanic Linguistics, 6/7, 127.Google Scholar
Cameron, Richard (1997). Accessibility Theory in a Variable Syntax of Spanish. Journal of Pragmatics, 28, 2967.Google Scholar
Cameron, Richard and Flores-Ferrán, Nydia (2004). Preservation of Subject Expression across Regional Dialects of Spanish. Spanish in Context, 1 (1), 4165.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carvalho, Ana M., Orozco, Rafael, and Lapidus Shin, Naomi (eds.) (2015). Subject Pronoun Expression in Spanish. A Cross-Dialectal Perspective. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam (1981). Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Corbett, G. G. (2006). Agreement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Davidson, Brad (1996). “Pragmatic Weight” and Spanish Subject Pronouns: The Pragmatic and Discourse Uses of “tú” and “yo” in Spoken Madrid Spanish. Journal of Pragmatics, 26 (4), 543565.Google Scholar
Davies, M. (2002– ). Corpus del español; 100 million words, 1200s–1900s. Available from www.corpusdelespanol.orgGoogle Scholar
DeMello, George (2000). impersonal en el habla culta. Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica, 48 (2), 359372.Google Scholar
de Prada Pérez, Ana (2015). First Person Singular Subject Pronoun Expression in Spanish in Contact with Catalan. In Carvalho, et al. 2015:121142.Google Scholar
Dryer, Matthew S. (2011). Expression of Pronominal Subjects. In Dryer, Matthew S. and Haspelmath, Martin (eds.), The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Munich: Max Planck Digital Library, Chapter 101. Available from wals.info/chapter/101 (last access January 8, 2018).Google Scholar
Duarte Lamoglia, Maria Eugênia (2000). The Loss of the Avoid Pronoun Principle in Brazilian Portuguese. In Kato, M. A. and Negrão, E. V. (eds.), Brazilian Portuguese and the Null Subject Parameter. Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert Verlag, pp. 1736.Google Scholar
Elinzaincín, Adolfo (1995). Personal Pronouns for Inanimate Entities in Uruguayan Spanish in Contact with Portuguese. In Silva-Corvalán, Carmen (ed.), Spanish in Four Continents: Studies in Language Contact and Bilingualism. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, pp. 117131.Google Scholar
Enríquez, Emilia V. (1984). El pronombre personal sujeto en la lengua española hablada en Madrid. Madrid: Instituto Miguel de Cervantes.Google Scholar
Erker, Daniel and Guy, Gregory (2012). The Role of Lexical Frequency in Syntactic Variability: Variable Subject Personal Pronoun Expression in Spanish. Language, 88 (3), 526557.Google Scholar
Fernández Soriano, Olga (1999). El pronombre personal. Formas y distribuciones. Pronombres átonos y tónicos. In Bosque, Ignacio and Demonte, Violeta (eds.), Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española. Volumen 1: Sintaxis básica de las clases de palabras. Madrid: Espasa Calpe, pp. 12091273.Google Scholar
Flores-Ferrán, Nydia (2004). Spanish Subject Personal Pronoun Use in New York City Puerto Ricans: Can we Rest the Case of English Contact? Language Variation and Change, 16, 4973.Google Scholar
Geeslin, Kimberly and Gudmestad, Aarnes (2016). Subject Expression in Spanish. Contrasts between Native and Non-Native Speakers for First- and Second-Person Singular Referents. Spanish in Context, 13 (1), 5379.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geeslin, Kimberly, Linford, Bret, and Fafulas, Stephen (2015). Variable Subject Expression in Second Language Spanish. In Carvalho, et al. 2015:191209.Google Scholar
Gili y Gaya, Samuel (1964). Curso superior de sintaxis española. Barcelona: Bibliograf.Google Scholar
Givón, Talmy (1983). Topic Continuity in Discourse: A Quantitative Cross Language Study. Typological Studies in Language 3. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Granda Gutiérrez, G. (1972). Transculturación e interferencia lingüística en el Puerto Rico contemporáneo (1898–1968). Puerto Rico: Editorial Edil.Google Scholar
Guirado, Kristel (2011). La alternancia tú~uno impersonal en el habla de Caracas. Revista de Lingüística, 26, 2654.Google Scholar
Hochberg, Judith G. (1986). Functional Compensation for /s/ Deletion in Puerto Rican Spanish. Language, 62 (3), 609621.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hurtado, Luz Marcela (2005). Condicionamientos sintáctico-semánticos de la expresión del sujeto en el español colombiano. Hispania, 88 (2), 335348.Google Scholar
Kluge, Bettina (2010). El uso de formas de tratamiento en las estrategias de generalización. In Hummel, M., Kluge, B., and Laslop, M. E. Vázquez (eds.), Formas y fórmulas de tratamiento en el mundo hispánico. Mexico City: El Colegio de México, Graz: Karl-Franzens-Universität, pp. 11071136.Google Scholar
Lastra, Yolanda and Butragueño, Pedro Martín (2015). Subject Pronoun Expression in Oral Mexican Spanish. In Carvalho, et al. 2015:3958.Google Scholar
Lapidus, Naomi and Otheguy, Ricardo (2005). Overt Nonspecific ellos in Spanish in New York. Spanish in Context, 2, 157–74.Google Scholar
Linford, Bret, Long, Avizia, Solon, Megan, and Geeslin, Kimberly (2016a). Measuring Lexical Frequency: Comparison Groups and Subject Expression in L2 Spanish. In Ortega, L., Tyler, A. E., Park, H. I., and Uno, M. (eds.), The Usage-Based Study of Language Learning and Multilingualism. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, pp. 137154.Google Scholar
Linford, Bret, Long, Avizia, Solon, Megan, Whatley, Melissa, and Geeslin, Kimberly (2016b). Lexical Frequency and Subject Expression in Native and Non-Native Spanish: A Closer Look at Independent and Mediating Effects. In Sessarego, F. and Tejedo, F. (eds.), Spanish Language and Sociolinguistic Analysis. Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 8. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins, pp. 197216.Google Scholar
Lipski, John M. (1996). Patterns of Pronominal Evolution in Cuban-American Bilinguals. In Roca, Ana and Jensen, John B. (eds.), Spanish in Contact: Issues in Bilingualism. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla, pp. 159–86.Google Scholar
Martínez-Sanz, Cristina (2011). Null and Overt Subjects in a Variable System: The Case of Dominican Spanish (Doctoral dissertation). University of Ottawa.Google Scholar
Matos Amaral, Patrícia and Schwenter, Scott A. (2005). Contrast and the (Non-)Occurrence of Subject Pronouns. In Eddington, D. (ed.), Selected Proceedings of the 7th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla, pp. 116127.Google Scholar
Meyer-Hermann, Reinhard (1990). Sobre algunas condiciones pragmáticas de la posición del sujeto en español. ELUA Estudios de Lingüística, 6, 7388.Google Scholar
Michnowicz, Jim (2015). Subject Pronoun Expression in Contact with Maya in Yucatan Spanish. In Carvalho, et al. 2015:101120.Google Scholar
Montrul, Silvina and Sánchez-Walker, Noelia (2015). Subject Expression in Bilingual School-Age Children in the United States. In Carvalho, et al. 2015:231247.Google Scholar
Morales, Amparo (1989). Hacia un universal sintáctico del español del Caribe. El orden SVO. Anuario de Lingüística Hispánica, 5, 139152.Google Scholar
Morales, Amparo (1997). La hipótesis funcional y la aparición de sujeto no nominal: El español de Puerto Rico. Hispania, 80, 153165.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Orozco, Rafael (2015). Pronominal Variation in Colombian Costeño Spanish. In Carvalho, et al. 2015:1758.Google Scholar
Orozco, Rafael and Guy, Gregory (2008). El uso variable de los pronombres sujetos: ¿Qué pasa en la costa Caribe colombiana? In Westmoreland, M. and Thomas, J. A. (eds.), Selected Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Spanish Sociolinguistics. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla, pp. 7080.Google Scholar
Otheguy, Ricardo and Zentella, Ana Celia (2012). Spanish in New York: Language Contact, Dialect, Levelling, and Structural Continuity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Otheguy, Ricardo, Zentella, Ana Celia, and Livert, David (2007). Language and Dialect Contact in Spanish in New York: Toward the Formation of a Speech Community. Language, 83 (4), 770802.Google Scholar
Pešková, Andrea (2015). Sujetos pronominales en el español porteño: Implicaciones pragmáticas en la interfaz sintáctico–fonológica. Berlin: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Posio, Pekka (2011). Spanish Subject Pronoun Usage and Verb Semantics Revisited: First and Second Person Singular Subject Pronouns and Focusing of Attention in Spoken Peninsular Spanish. Journal of Pragmatics, 43 (3), 777798.Google Scholar
Posio, Pekka (2012a). The Functions of Postverbal Pronominal Subjects in Spoken Peninsular Spanish and European Portuguese. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 5 (1), 149190.Google Scholar
Posio, Pekka (2012b). Who are “We” in Spoken Peninsular Spanish and European Portuguese? Expression and Reference of First Person Plural Subject Pronouns. Language Sciences, 34, 339360.Google Scholar
Posio, Pekka (2014). Subject Expression in Grammaticalizing Constructions: The Case of creo and acho ‘I think’ in Spanish and Portuguese. Journal of Pragmatics, 63, 518.Google Scholar
Posio, Pekka (2015). Subject Pronoun Usage in Formulaic Sequences: Evidence from Peninsular Spanish. In Carvalho, et al. 2015:5980.Google Scholar
Posio, Pekka (2016). You and We: Impersonal Second Person Singular and other Referential Devices in Spanish Sociolinguistic Interviews. Journal of Pragmatics, 99, 116.Google Scholar
Ramos, Miguel (2016). Continuity and Change. First Person Singular Subject Pronoun Expression in Earlier Spanish. Spanish in Context, 13 (1), 103127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ranson, Diana (1991). Person Marking in the Wake of /s/ Deletion in Andalusian Spanish. Language Variation and Change, 3 (2), 133152.Google Scholar
Ranson, Diana (2009). Variable Subject Expression in Old and Middle French Prose Texts: The Role of Verbal Ambiguity. Romance Quarterly, 56 (1), 3345.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Real Academia Española (n.d.). Banco de datos (CREA) [en línea]. Corpus de referencia del español actual. www.rae.es.Google Scholar
Roberts, Ian and Holmberg, Anders (2010). Introduction: Parameters in Minimalist Theory. In Biberauer, T., Holmberg, A., Roberts, I., and Sheehan, M. (eds.), Parametric Variation: Null Subjects in Minimalist Theory, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 157.Google Scholar
Sauerland, Uli (2004). A Comprehensive Semantics for Agreement. Paper presented at the Phi-Workshop, McGill University, Montreal, Canada. August 2004. Available from https://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/year/2009/docId/11827 (last access December 30, 2017).Google Scholar
Seo, Seunghyun (2001). The Frequency of Null Subject in Russian, Polish, Czech, Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian: An Analysis according to Morphosyntactic Environments (Doctoral dissertation). Indiana University.Google Scholar
Serrano, María José (2013). Variación sociosituacional de la colocación del sujeto pronominal en textos conversacionales. Spanish in Context, 10 (2), 261283.Google Scholar
Serrano, María José and Aijón, Oliva, Miguel Ángel (2010). La posición variable del sujeto pronominal en relación con la cortesía interactiva. Pragmalingüística, 18, 170204.Google Scholar
Serrano, María José and Aijón, Oliva, Miguel Ángel (2011). Syntactic Variation and Communicative Style. Language Sciences, 33, 138153.Google Scholar
Shin, Naomi and Erker, Daniel (2015). The Emergence of Structured Variability in Morphosyntax. In Carvalho, et al. 2015:169189.Google Scholar
Shin, Naomi and Otheguy, Ricardo (2013). Social Class and Gender Impacting Change in Bilingual Settings: Spanish Subject Pronoun Use in New York. Language in Society, 42, 429452.Google Scholar
Silva-Corvalán, Carmen (1982). Subject Expression and Placement in Mexican-American Spanish. In Amaste, J. and Olivares, E. (eds.), Spanish in the United States: Sociolinguistic Aspects. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 93120.Google Scholar
Silva-Corvalán, Carmen (1997). Variación sintáctica en el discurso oral: Problemas metodológicos. In Moreno-Fernández, F. (ed.), Trabajos de sociolingüística hispánica. Alcalá de Henares: University of Alcalá, pp. 115135.Google Scholar
Silva-Corvalán, Carmen (2001). Sociolingüística y pragmática del español. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Thompson, Sandra A. and Mulac, Anthony (1991). A Quantitative Perspective on the Grammaticalization of Epistemic Parentheticals in English. In Traugott, Elizabeth Closs and Heine, Bernd (eds.), Approaches to Grammaticalization. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins, pp. 313339.Google Scholar
Toribio, A. Jacqueline. (2000). Setting Parametric Limits on Dialectal Variation in Spanish. Lingua, 110, 315341.Google Scholar
Torres Cacoullos, Rena and Travis, Catherine E. (2011). Using Structural Variability to Evaluate Convergence via Code-Switching. International Journal of Bilingualism, 15, 241267.Google Scholar
Torres Cacoullos, Rena and Travis, Catherine E. (2016). Two Languages, One Effect: Structural Priming in Spontaneous Code-Switching. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 19 (4), 733753.Google Scholar
Travis, Catherine E. (2007). Genre Effects on Subject Expression in Spanish: Priming in Narrative and Conversation. Language Variation and Change, 19 (2), 101135.Google Scholar
Travis, Catherine E. and Torres Cacoullos, Rena (2012). What Do Subject Pronouns Do in Discourse? Cognitive, Mechanical and Constructional Factors in Variation. Cognitive Linguistics, 23 (4), 711748.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×