Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Home
  • Home
Hostname: page-component-559fc8cf4f-s65px Total loading time: 0.294 Render date: 2021-03-06T16:02:13.742Z Has data issue: true Feature Flags: { "shouldUseShareProductTool": true, "shouldUseHypothesis": true, "isUnsiloEnabled": true, "metricsAbstractViews": false, "figures": false, "newCiteModal": false, "newCitedByModal": true }
EnglishFrançais
Language Variation and Change Language Variation and Change

Article contents

A Cognitive Construction Grammar approach to the pluralization of presentational haber in Puerto Rican Spanish

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 June 2014

Jeroen Claes
Jeroen Claes
Affiliation:
University of Antwerp
Get access
Rights & Permissions[Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this paper, I present an analysis of the pluralization of haber ‘there is/are’ in Puerto Rican Spanish (e.g., habían fiestas ‘there were parties’) as an ongoing language change from below in which the impersonal argument-structure construction (<AdvPhaberObj>) is being replaced by a personal variant (<AdvPhaberSubj>). Speakers pluralize presentational haber in about 41% of the cases, and linguistic conditioning factors are ‘typical action chain-position of the noun's referent,’ polarity of the clause, verb tense, comprehension-to-production priming, and production-to-production priming. I argue that the effect of these independent variables can be traced back to three cognitive factors: the preference for unmarked coding, statistical preemption, and structural priming. Social distributions can also be modeled in constructionist frameworks, with results for social class, formality, and gender advocating in favor of considering this variation as an ongoing change from below, which allows speakers to position themselves in terms of gender and social class.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , July 2014 , pp. 219 - 246
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below.
If you should have access and can't see this content please contact technical support.

References

Allen, Kachina, Pereira, Francisco, Botvinick, Matthew, & Goldberg, Adele. (2012). Distinguishing grammatical constructions with fMRI pattern analysis. Brain & Language 123(3):174–182.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ashby, William J., & Bentivoglio, Paola. (1993). Preferred argument structure in French and Spanish. Language Variation and Change 5(1):61–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baayen, Rolf H. (2008). Analyzing linguistic data: A practical introduction to statistics using R. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bencini, Giulia M., & Golberg, Adele. (2000). The contribution of argument structure constructions to sentence meaning. Journal of Memory and Language 43:640–651.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bentivoglio, Paola, & Sedano, Mercedes. (1989). Haber: ¿Un verbo impersonal? Un estudio sobre el español de Caracas. In de Granda, G. (ed.), Estudios sobre el español de América y lingüística afroamericana: Ponencias presentadas en el 45 Congreso internacional de americanistas. Bogotá: Instituto Caro y Cuervo. 59–81.Google Scholar
Bentivoglio, Paola, & Sedano, Mercedes. (2011). Morphosyntactic variation in Spanish-speaking Latin America. In Díaz-Campos, M. (ed.), The handbook of Hispanic sociolinguistics. Oxford: Blackwell. 123–147.Google Scholar
Blas-Arroyo, José L. (1995–1996). A propósito de un caso de convergencia gramatical por causación múltiple en el área de influencia lingüística catalana. Análisis sociolingüístico. Cuadernos de investigación filológica 21–22:175–200.Google Scholar
Bock, Kathryn, Dell, Garry S., Chang, Franklin, & Onishi, Kristine. (2007). Persistent structural priming from language comprehension to language production. Cognition 104:437–458.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brown, Esther L., & Rivas, Javier. (2012). Grammatical relation probability: How usage patterns shape analogy. Language Variation and Change 24(3):317–341.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan. (2003). Mechanisms of change in grammaticization. In Joseph, B. D. & Janda, R. D. (eds.), The handbook of historical linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell. 602–623.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan. (2006). From usage to grammar: The mind's response to repetition. Language 82(4):711–733.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan, & Beckner, Clyde. (2010). Usage-based theory. In Heine, B. & Narrog, H. (eds.), The Oxford handbook of linguistic analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 827–856.Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard. (1989). Language universals and linguistic typology. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Croft, William. (2003). Typology and universals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Croft, William, & Cruse, Alan. (2004). Cognitive linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
D'Aquino Ruiz, Giovana. (2004). Haber impersonal en el habla de Caracas. Análisis sociolingüístico. Boletín de lingüística 21:3–26.Google Scholar
D'Aquino Ruiz, Giovana. (2008). El cambio lingüístico de haber impersonal. Núcleo 25:103–123.Google Scholar
Davies, Mark. (2002). Corpus del español. Available at http://www.corpusdelespanol.org. Accessed June 10, 2013.Google Scholar
DeMello, George. (1991). Pluralización del verbo haber en el español hablado culto de once ciudades. Thesaurus 46(3):445–471.Google Scholar
Díaz-Campos, Manuel. (2003). The pluralization of haber in Venezuelan Spanish: A sociolinguistic change in real time. IU Working Papers in Linguistics 3(5):1–13.Google Scholar
Du Bois, John. (1987). The discourse basis of ergativity. Language 63(4):805–855.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eckert, Penelope. (2008). Variation and the indexical field. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12(4):453–476.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fauconnier, Gilles. (2007). Mental spaces. In Geeraerts, D. & Cuyckens, H. (eds.), The Oxford handbook of cognitive linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 351–376.Google Scholar
Fontanella de Weinberg, María B. (1992a). El español de América. Madrid: Mapfre.Google Scholar
Fontanella de Weinberg, María B.. (1992b). Variación sincrónica y diacrónica de las construcciones con haber en el español americano. Boletín de filología de la universidad de Chile 33:35–46.Google Scholar
Freites-Barros, Francisco. (2004). Pluralización de haber impersonal en el Táchira: Actitudes lingüísticas. Boletín de lingüística 22:32–51.Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele. (1995). Constructions: A Construction Grammar approach to argument structure. Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele. (2006). Constructions at work: The nature of generalization in language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele. (2009). The nature of generalization in language. Cognitive Linguistics 20(1):93–127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldberg, Adele. (2011). Corpus evidence of the viability of statistical preemption. Cognitive Linguistics 22(1):131–153.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldberg, Adele, Casenhiser, Devin, & Sethuraman, Nitya. (2004). Learning argument structure generalizations. Cognitive Linguistics 15(3):289–316.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hernández-Díaz, Axel. (2006). Posesión y existencia: La competencia de haber y tener y haber existencial. In Company-Company, C. (ed.), Sintaxis histórica de la lengua española. Primera parte: La frase verbal. Vol. 2. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México/Fondo de Cultura Económica. 1055–1160.Google Scholar
Johnson, Daniel E. (2009). Getting off the GoldVarb standard: Introducing Rbrul for mixed-effects variable rule analysis. Language and Linguistics Compass 3(1):359–383.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keenan, Edward. (1976). Towards a universal definition of subject. In Li, C. N. (ed.), Subject and topic. New York: Academic Press. 305–333.Google Scholar
Kroch, Anthony. (2001). Syntactic change. In Baltin, M. & Collins, C. (eds.), The handbook of contemporary syntactic theory. Oxford: Blackwell. 699–729.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (1972). Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (1994). Principles of linguistic change. Vol. 1. Internal factors. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (2001). Principles of linguistic change. Vol. 2. Social factors. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Lakoff, George. (1987). Women, fire, and dangerous things. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langacker, Ronald W. (1987). Foundations of cognitive grammar. Vol. 1. Theoretical prequisites. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Langacker, Ronald W.. (1991). Foundations of cognitive grammar. Vol. 2. Descriptive application. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Lavandera, Beatriz. (1978). Where does the sociolinguistic variable stop? Language in Society 7(2):171–182.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
López-Morales, Humberto. (1992). El español del Caribe. Madrid: Mapfre.Google Scholar
Lyons, John. (1967). A note on possessive, existential and locative sentences. Foundations of Language 3:390–396.Google Scholar
Meulleman, Machteld, & Roegiest, Eugène. (2012). Los locativos en la valencia de la construcción existencial española. ¿Actante o circunstante? Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 128:57–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moreno-Fernández, Francisco. (2003). Metodología del proyecto para el estudio sociolingüístico del español de España y América (PRESEEA). Available at www.linguas.net/portalpreseea. Accessed April 9, 2008.Google Scholar
Prince, Ellen. (1992). The ZPG letter: Subjects, definiteness, and information-status. In Mann, W. C. & Thompson, S. A. (eds.), Discourse description: Diverse linguistic analyses of a fund-raising text. New York: John Benjamins. 295–326.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quintanilla-Aguilar, José R. (2009). La (des)pluralización del verbo haber existencial en el español salvadoreño: ¿un cambio en progreso? PhD dissertation. Miami: University of Florida.Google Scholar
Real Academia Española. (2008). Corpus diacrónico del español (CORDE). Available at http://corpus.rae.es/cordenet.html. Accessed June 10, 2010.Google Scholar
Real Academia Española & Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española. (2009). Nueva gramática de la lengua española. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.Google Scholar
Rivas, Javier, & Brown, Esther L. (2012). Stage-level and individual-level distinction in morphological variation: An example with variable haber agreement. Borealis: An International Journal of Hispanic Linguistics 1(2):73–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. (2003). Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. Language & Communication 23:193–229.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali A. (2006). Analysing sociolinguistic variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vaquero, María. (1978). ¿Enseñar español, pero qué español? Boletín de la Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua Española 6:127–146.Google Scholar
Waltereit, Richard, & Detges, Ulrich. (2008). Syntactic change from within and from without syntax: A usage-based analysis. In Detges, U. & Waltereit, R. (eds.), The paradox of grammatical change: Perspectives from romance. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 13–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ward, Gregory, & Birner, Betty. (1995). Definiteness and the English existential. Language 71(4):722–742.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Full text views

Full text views reflects PDF downloads, PDFs sent to Google Drive, Dropbox and Kindle and HTML full text views.

Total number of HTML views: 27
Total number of PDF views: 171 *
View data table for this chart

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between September 2016 - 6th March 2021. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

5 Cited by

Send article to Kindle

To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@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 sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle.

Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent 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.

A Cognitive Construction Grammar approach to the pluralization of presentational haber in Puerto Rican Spanish
Available formats
×

Send article to Dropbox

To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and 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 <service> account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox.

A Cognitive Construction Grammar approach to the pluralization of presentational haber in Puerto Rican Spanish
Available formats
×

Send article to Google Drive

To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and 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 <service> account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive.

A Cognitive Construction Grammar approach to the pluralization of presentational haber in Puerto Rican Spanish
Available formats
×
×

Reply to: Submit a response

Your details

Conflicting interests

Do you have any conflicting interests? *