A Variationist Study of Subject Pronoun Expression in Medellín, Colombia

Abstract

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.

Variable subject pronoun expression revisited: This is what the <em>Paisas</em> do

“…Stative and activity verbs register neutral effects whereas verbs of emotion and volition (.47,), motion (.47) and physical perception (.41) promote null subjects. Our findings appear to concur with previous findings reporting that overt pronominal subjects are favored by verbs of cognition (Carvalho et al 2015:xv) and speech (Orozco 2018a:112 (Orozco 2015(Orozco , 2016(Orozco , 2018aOrozco & Hurtado 2020 ), we also probed the lexical effects of the verb, whose findings are presented in the next section. 5.6.…”

“…Introduction. This paper expands on recent research on the variable alternation between null and overt pronominal subjects in Spanish (Hurtado & Ortega-Santos 2019;Orozco 2016Orozco , 2018aOrozco , 2018bOrozco & Hurtado 2020;inter alia). Pronombrismo, the study of subject pronoun expression (SPE), was pioneered by Barrenechea & Alonso (1973) with their analysis of the Spanish of Buenos Aires, Argentina.…”

“…Yet, SPE remains understudied in Andean Spanish despite being the variety spoken by most Colombians. With this study of SPE in Medellín, we seek to answer some questions opened by Orozco & Hurtado (2020). Among other things, this analysis explores the role of uno 'one' as a subject pronoun and the effect of kinesis as a verb classification.…”

“…Among other things, this analysis explores the role of uno 'one' as a subject pronoun and the effect of kinesis as a verb classification. Moreover, employing an analytical approach motivated by recent findings revealing opposing tendencies between verbs in the same lexical category (Orozco 2016(Orozco , 2018a(Orozco , 2018bOrozco & Hurtado 2020) and with the multiprong goal of gaining a more detailed understanding of how verbs condition SPE and further informing linguistic theory, we explore the lexical effect of the verb.…”

La expresión del sujeto pronominal en el español hablado del Caribe colombiano

“…Así, el código (CA-10-12M) deberá leerse: Cartagena, entrevista 10, informante con educación básica, de la segunda generación, mujer. Hurtado, 2021). De esos trabajos, solo los de Barranquilla y Medellín analizan todos los pronombres sujetos, mientras que los trabajos sobre Cali investigan la ESP yo.…”