Genre effects on subject expression in Spanish: Priming in narrative and conversation

Abstract

Structural priming refers to the process whereby the use of a syntactic structure in an utterance functions as a prime on a subsequent utterance, such that that same structure is repeated. This article investigates this phenomenon from the perspective of first-person singular subject expression in Spanish. Two dialects and two genres of spoken Spanish are studied: New Mexican narratives and Colombian Spanish conversation. An analysis of 2,000 verbs occurring with first-person singular subjects reveals that subject expression undergoes a priming effect in both data sets, but that the effect is more short-lived in the Colombian data. This is found to be attributable to the interactional nature of these data, showing that the need to deal with interactional concerns weakens the priming effect. As the first study to compare priming of subject expression across distinct genres, this article makes an important contribution to our understanding of this effect, and in particular, of factors that play a role in its maintenance or dissipation in discourse. Structural priming refers to the process whereby the use of a certain structure in one utterance functions as a prime on a subsequent utterance, such that that same structure is repeated. This phenomenon has been observed in experimental settings in psycholinguistic research (

Subject pronoun expression in Mexican Spanish: ¿Qué pasa en Xalapa?

“…Moreover, the constraint hierarchy found in Xalapa with (a) grammatical person and number of the subject and (b) prior subject's grammatical person and number being the strongest internal predictors is largely consonant with findings around the Hispanic World including Barranquilla, Colombia (Orozco 2015); Los Angeles (Silva-Corvalán 1982, 1997); Madrid, (Enríquez 1984); Mexico City (Lastra & Martín Butragueño 2015); Puerto Rico (Cameron 1993(Cameron , 1995; New York City , Rivera, Uruguay (Carvalho & Bessett 2015); and Yucatan, Mexico (Michnowicz 2015); inter alia. This finding corroborates that despite varying pronominal rates at the surface level, the grammar underlying SPE across varieties remains essentially the same (Cameron 1993;Michnowicz 2015;Travis 2007;Torres Cacoullos & Travis 2010). A detailed discussion of the effects of the predictors conditioning SPE in Xalapa follows.…”

“…Thus, continuity of a given subject manifested by a subject with the same person and number as its predecessor promotes null subjects while a change in person and/or number favors overt pronominal subjects. These findings confirm that the presence of one form or structure motivates the occurrence of subsequently higher frequencies of the same forms or structures (Bayley & PeaseÁlvarez 1997;Cameron & Schwenter 2013:476;Flores-Ferrán 2002;Shin & Otheguy 2009:128;Travis 2005bTravis , 2007Torres Cacoullos & Travis 2015; among others). Moreover, these results further inform our collective knowledge of the effects of both switch reference and priming since a referential switch goes hand in hand with a change in grammatical subject.…”

“…I based my choice of predictors on the findings of a multitude of previous SPE investigations (cf. Cameron 1992Cameron , 1993Cameron , 1995Enríquez 1984;Flores-Ferrán 2002Lastra & Martín Butragueño 2015;Orozco 2015;Otheguy, Zentella & Livert 2007;Torres Cacoullos & Travis 2010Travis 2005aTravis , 2005bTravis , 2007Travis & Torres Cacoullos 2012;among others). The four internal predictors analyzed here are (1) Verb class, (2) Prior subject's grammatical person and number, (3) Verbal tense, mood and aspect (TMA) of the verb, and (4) Grammatical person and number of the subject.…”

“…In the present analysis verbs of speech (probability value .35) favor null subjects while in Barranquilla, Cali, New Mexico, and among NYC Colombians (cf. Posio 2011Posio , 2015Travis 2005bTravis , 2007; among others imply that verb class, or for that matter another classification based on syntactic or semantic criteria, does not constitute the most accurate way to explore the effects of the verb on SPE. Moreover, our findings appear to suggest that the effect of the verb on SPE may be idiosyncratic.…”

La cláusula como movimiento interactivo: una perspectiva semántico-discursiva de la gramática interpersonal del español

“…Las explicaciones van desde la necesidad de establecer contrastes, recuperar la identidad de los referentes o introducir nuevos referentes, hasta el requerimiento de especificar el significado léxico asociado a un referente no interactuante o el de asignar estatus "topical" a algún elemento (p. ej. Comajoan 2006, Silva-Corvalán 1984, 2003, Travis 2007. Desde la LSF, estos patrones podrían vincularse a sistemas de opciones motivados por otras metafunciones, tanto en el estrato lexicogramatical como en el estrato semántico-discursivo (p. ej.…”