Properties of Pronominal Subjects

Abstract

The expression and omission of subject personal pronouns-often exemplified by the 1. Introduction: variable expression of pronominal subjects The variable use of subject personal pronouns is among the most widely studied features of Spanish syntax. Pronominal subjects can be expressed by a subject pronoun placed before the verb (example 1a), after the verb (1b) or left unexpressed (1c). 1a. Y yo creo que eso es sano. 'And I think that it is healthy.' b. No creo yo que mañana tengamos reunión. 'I don't think that we have meeting tomorrow.' c. Pues creo que no lo sabía. 'Well I think that he didn't know it.' (CREA) This property distinguishes Spanish from English and some other Western European languages like German and French that have obligatory pronominal subjects. Languages resembling Spanish are frequently referred to as null subject or pro-drop languages. Both terms originate in the Principles and Parameters version of Generative Grammar (see Chapter 1) where the term pro-drop is used of a cluster of syntactic properties including null subjects and "free" constituent order (Chomsky 1981). These terms are widely used in linguistics, although conceptualizing the lack of independent subject personal pronouns as "dropping" or as "null" arguments has also been criticized as linguistic Anglo-centrism (Dryer 2011). In more functionally oriented studies, the term "variable subject expression" has been used instead to better account for the complex nature of the phenomenon (see e.g. Otheguy and Zentella 2012; Travis and Torres Cacoullos 2012; Carvalho, Orozco and Shin 2015). Spanish subject pronoun expression is a textbook example of variable syntax, and exploring what factors condition subject pronoun expression has become a popular topic in studies using variationist sociolinguistic methodology. The first task in variationist studies is to determine the envelope of variation, i.e. the contexts where variation may occur. For example, syntactically impersonal verbs such as meteorological verbs (e.g. llueve 'it rains') and existential verbs (e.g. hay 'there is/are') are excluded from the envelope of variation, as they do not admit pronominal subjects, with the exception of Dominican Spanish where the neuter personal pronoun ello may be

A Variationist Study of Subject Pronoun Expression in Medellín, Colombia

“…In light of previous findings on the verb's effects on SPE (Erker and Guy 2012;Posio 2015Posio , 2018Orozco 2016Orozco , 2018aOrozco , 2019, we tested the verb as a randomeffects predictor with infinitives serving as standalone factors. Although this analytical innovation has been previously called a lexical frequency effect (Orozco 2016(Orozco , 2018b due to having a lexical frequency component, what we measure is rather a lexical effect.…”

influencia del género narrativo y de la función de trasfondo de los verbos en imperfecto de indicativo en la posposición de yo

“…Gracias a esto, se sabe cuáles son las principales restricciones morfológicas, sintácticas, semánticas y pragmáticas que propician su expresión (Flores Ferrán, 2007;Posio, 2018;Martín Butragueño, 2020).…”

Referring to discourse participants in Ibero-Romance languages

“…The variable expression of subjects has received considerable attention in generative syntax as well as functional and constructional approaches. While in generative studies of the so-called pro-drop parameter (Chomsky 1981, Rizzi 1982, Solà 1992, Barbosa 1995, the focus has been on the formal properties of a language system that make null pronouns possible, functional approaches have focused on the conditions under which subjects are expressed in actual language use (see, e.g., Enríquez 1984, Bentivoglio 1987, Cameron 1993, Morales 1997, Otheguy et al 2007, Travis & Torres Cacoullos 2012, Posio 2011, 2018, among many others). Thus, the following represent some of the leading questions in studies approaching variable subject expression:…”