Who are ‘we’ in spoken Peninsular Spanish and European Portuguese? Expression and reference of first person plural subject pronouns

Posio, Pekka

doi:10.1016/j.langsci.2012.02.001

Cited by 22 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 22 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…6 However, this does not mean for the singular first person to be the one most often chosen as clause subject; this place actually corresponds to the plural first person (nosotros, -as 'we'), with no less than 2021 subject items. This is undoubtedly connected with the inherent referential fuzziness of the latter person and its contextual versatility (see especially Serrano 2011Serrano , 2017Posio 2012 on variation and meaning of nosotros). For the purposes of the present study, it is still evident that the singular first person is strongly associated with the syntactic function of subject rather than with that of accusative / dative object.…”

Section: General Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Speaker self-profiling through discursive indexation and syntactic encoding in Spanish radio talk

Oliva

2017

Borealis

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

ABSTRACT. Syntactic and discursive choices in context constitute resources for the interactional profiling of the direct participants. This study analyzes the frequencies with which speakers index themselves, as well as the syntactic functions they tend to accord themselves when doing so, in a corpus of Peninsular Spanish radio discourse featuring a variety of textual genres and speaker socioprofessional identities. The analysis is restricted to indexations of the singular first person in central syntactic functions, i.e. those with the capacity to establish agreement with the verb. A dichotomy is proposed between subject and (accusative or dative) object self-encoding, based on the different morphological means through which verbal agreement is carried out in this language, namely verbal endings and clitics. Both the statistical patterning of variation and the discursive-pragmatic motivations of particular choices are subsequently examined. The selection of a specific syntactic function for the encoding of the speaker is found to serve communicative goals related to the textual genre and to the kinds of socio-professional identities speakers intend to develop within it. Significant correlations are obtained between higher percentages of self-encoding as subject and of discursive self-indexation altogether, although speakers presenting themselves as political representatives diverge from this tendency for particular communicative reasons. The results are interpreted as being parallel to a discursive-cognitive continuum between subjectivity and objectivity that underlies speaker interactional self-profiling and discourse construction.Keywords: Syntactic variation; agreement; interactional profiling; subjectivity; objectivity; radio talk. RESUMEN: Las elecciones sintácticas y discursivas en contexto constituyen recursos para el desarrollo de los perfiles interaccionales de los participantes directos. El presente estudio analiza las frecuencias con las que los hablantes se indexan a sí mismos, así como las funciones sintácticas que se atribuyen preferentemente al hacerlo, en un corpus de español peninsular de los medios de comunicación, el cual refleja una variedad de géneros textuales e identidades socioprofesionales. El análisis se restringe a las indexaciones de la primera persona del singular en funciones sintácticas centrales, esto es, las que poseen la capacidad de establecer concordancia con el verbo. Se plantea una dicotomía entre autocodificación como sujeto y como objeto (acusativo o dativo), teniendo en cuenta los diferentes recursos morfológicos con que se realiza la concordancia verbal en esta lengua: desinencias verbales y clíticos. Seguidamente se examinan los patrones estadísticos de la variación, así como las motivaciones discursivo-pragmáticas de ejemplos específicos. Se comprueba que la selección de una determinada función sintáctica para codificar al hablante obedece a objetivos comunicativos relacionados con el * This paper is part of the research project "Variación gramatical y creación del si...

show abstract

Section: General Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Speaker self-profiling through discursive indexation and syntactic encoding in Spanish radio talk

Oliva

2017

Borealis

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This person is especially complex in its referential variability according to the context; the speaker can use it to index human pluralities where he/she is included, but the addressee or audience may be or not. Serrano & Aijón Oliva (:412, 419) observe that the expression of nosotros / as as a subject is generally associated with more specific groups, and particularly with those excluding the audience (see also Posio :342–343). The tendency is perhaps not so clear with objects, but at least 20 of the 32 cases obtained are clearly audience‐exclusive.…”

Section: The Variable Formulation Of Object Pronounsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The participants as objects: Variation And Meaning Of First‐ And Second‐Person Object Encoding In Spanish

Oliva

2017

Studia Linguistica

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Syntactic functions are best conceptualized as prototypical associations of features at a variety of formal and semantic levels, which elements in actual clauses will match to different extents. In Spanish, the prototypical (accusative) object has a third‐person, inanimate, non‐autonomous entity as its referent. The encoding of the direct participants, i.e. the first and second persons, as syntactic objects will entail a displacement from the prototype that can have significant functional and meaningful effects. Based on a corpus of oral and written Peninsular Spanish, the study addresses the main patterns of quantitative variation and contextual choice of first‐ and second‐person object encoding. Both the differences across syntactic functions, persons and numbers and the main features of formal variability within the clause—explicit formulation vs. morphological indexation, as well as preverbal vs. postverbal placement when formulated—are taken into account. It is concluded that the cognitive salience associated with first‐ and second‐person objects makes them functionally and cognitively similar to syntactic subjects. In turn, the different choices related to their formal configuration can be used to modulate the degree of involvement attributed to their referents in the content of discourse.

show abstract

“…These individualizing impersonal constructions are left out of the present article. Impersonal uses of first person plural are also left out due to space limitations, although first person plural forms may well receive an impersonal reading in EP (Posio 2012). In our Finnish data, such readings are marginal.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 81%

Referential dimensions of human impersonals in dialectal European Portuguese and Finnish

Posio¹,

Vilkuna

2013

Linguistics

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article is a contribution to recent discussion on impersonality. The focus is on speaker-inclusive and speaker-exclusive interpretation of European Portuguese (EP) and Finnish impersonal constructions where the range of potential human referents is left open and, by default, construed as human and plural. These include reflexive-based se-impersonals and the pronoun a gente in EP, impersonal passive in Finnish, and impersonal third person plurals (3PL) in both languages. By investigating these constructions in non-standard data representing a comparable genre (dialectal interviews), we obtain a detailed picture of their functions in actual use and the division of labor of the different constructions. In addition, we point at some problems in their classification. Our data suggest that both languages manifest a division of labor between speakerinclusive and speaker-exclusive impersonals. The distinction is more entrenched in EP than in Finnish, where the productivity of the speaker-exclusive impersonal 3PL is, to a great extent, dependent on the dialect in question.

show abstract

Who are ‘we’ in spoken Peninsular Spanish and European Portuguese? Expression and reference of first person plural subject pronouns

Cited by 22 publications

References 22 publications

Speaker self-profiling through discursive indexation and syntactic encoding in Spanish radio talk

Speaker self-profiling through discursive indexation and syntactic encoding in Spanish radio talk

The participants as objects: Variation And Meaning Of First‐ And Second‐Person Object Encoding In Spanish

Referential dimensions of human impersonals in dialectal European Portuguese and Finnish

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About