Abstract. This study is the first variationist analysis of subject personal pronoun expression (SPE) in the Spanish of Xalapa, Mexico. The overall pronominal rate (25%)-the highest such rate found in Mexican Spanish so far-also constitutes one of the highest in a mainland Spanish variety. Six predictors-four internal and two external-significantly condition SPE. The internal conditioning-congruent with what occurs elsewhere-reveals grammatical number and person of the subject as the strongest predictor. It also shows that verb class has tendencies similar to those found in other communities. However, further analysis uncovers that lexical frequency provides more definite answers regarding how verbs condition SPE, as within the copulative verb class category ser 'be' favors overt subjects but estar 'be' favors null subjects. Moreover, the unusually robust effect of age sets Xalapa Spanish apart from most other varieties. Interestingly, the pronominal rate among teenagers (11%)-below the lowest overall pronominal rate anywhere-is consistent with what occurs in other Spanish varieties such as Colombian, European, Dominican, and Mexican. These findings call for further research on the effects of verb semantics and age on SPE.

ResumenEste estudio de la expresión de pronombres personales de sujeto entre hablantes del castellano caribeño colombiano en Nueva York revela una tasa pronominal (43 %) significativamente más alta que la existente en el Caribe colombiano. Los resultados descubren que cinco predictores lingüísticos y dos sociales condicionan la expresión pronominal. Los predictores lingüísticos – entre los cuales persona y número del sujeto condiciona más fuertemente el uso pronominal – revelan tendencias similares a las existentes alrededor del mundo hispánico. Los predictores sociales reflejan aumentos significativos en las tasas pronominales tanto de mujeres como de hombres en los diferentes grupos etarios analizados y también entre los recién llegados a Nueva York. Aunque existen similitudes superficiales con el resto del mundo en los efectos condicionantes internos, un análisis minucioso de los efectos del verbo descubre tendencias opuestas entre verbos agrupados en una misma categoría semántica; por ejemplo,irfavorece los sujetos expresos perosalirlos tácitos. Esto implica que clasificaciones basadas en criterios semánticos no constituirían la manera óptima de explorar los efectos del verbo en la expresión pronominal. Además, la tasa pronominal significativamente más alta entre los recién llegados tiene implicaciones metodológicas sugiriendo que estos hablantes no proporcionarían una muestra fidedigna de la expresión pronominal en sus comunidades de origen.

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Abstract. Many applications in science require that computational models and data be combined. In a Bayesian framework, this is usually done by defining likelihoods based on the mismatch of model outputs and data. However, matching model outputs and data in this way can be unnecessary or impossible. For example, using large amounts of steady state data is unnecessary because these data are redundant, it is numerically difficult to assimilate data in chaotic systems, and it is often impossible to assimilate data of a complex system into a low-dimensional model. These issues can be addressed by selecting features of the 5 data, and defining likelihoods based on the features, rather than by the usual mismatch of model output and data. Our goal is to contribute to a fundamental understanding of such a feature-based approach that allows us to assimilate selected aspects of data into models. Specifically, we explain how the feature-based approach can be interpreted as a method for reducing an effective dimension, and derive new noise models, based on perturbed observations, that lead to computationally efficient solutions.Numerical implementations of our ideas are illustrated in four examples.

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This variationist study of subject pronoun expression (SPE) in Medellín, Colombia uses multivariate regressions to probe the effects of ten predictors on 4623 tokens from the Proyecto para el Estudio Sociolingüístico del Español de España y de América (PRESEEA) corpus. We implement analytical innovations by exploring transitivity and the lexical effect of the verb, which we analyze by testing infinitives and subject pronoun + verb collocations, respectively, as standalone, random-effect factors. Our results reveal the highest pronominal rate (28%) found in a mainland Spanish-speaking community. Additionally, we uncover that pronominal rates increase with age, a finding which appears to have cognitive implications. The internal conditioning contributes to pronombrista studies by showing the effects of discourse type and transitivity. Narratives and opinion statements favor overt subjects, but statements indicating routine activities favor null subjects. Whereas unergative verbs promote overt subjects, reflexive verbs favor null subjects. The lexical effect of the verb reveals opposing tendencies between verbs in the same category as well as within different collocations of the same verb, providing more definitive answers than the semantically guided approaches used for the last four decades and showing that verb groupings do not constitute functional categories with regard to SPE. Overall, this study contributes to expand our baseline knowledge of SPE in mainland Latin American communities and opens interesting research avenues.

This paper revisits the treatment of the expression of futurity in Spanish foreign language (FL) textbooks. We analyzed twenty college-level Spanish FL textbooks to determine and quantify how futurity is represented. Variationist research has shown the periphrastic future (PF) to be the most frequent variant of futurity followed by the simple present (SP) and the morphological future (MF). Our findings reveal that, despite over two decades of communicative language teaching, Spanish FL textbooks still do not completely present the reality of the expression of futurity. Introductory texts present all three variants of futurity. However, there is a dramatic difference in the formal representation of these three variants in intermediate texts. The PF is formally presented in only four of the ten intermediate texts analyzed. Interestingly, all ten intermediate textbooks include a formal section on the MF. From a formal treatment perspective and unlike native speaker usage, the MF continues to be the futurity variant most often presented to learners, followed by the PF, and the SP, respectively.

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