Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-qsmjn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T21:16:28.868Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Two languages, one effect: Structural priming in spontaneous code-switching*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 April 2015

RENA TORRES CACOULLOS  and
CATHERINE E. TRAVIS
RENA TORRES CACOULLOS*
Affiliation:
Penn State University
CATHERINE E. TRAVIS
Affiliation:
The Australian National University
*
Address for correspondence: Rena Torres Cacoullos, Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, Penn State University, University Park, PA 16802, USArena@psu.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We investigate here the contribution of code-switching and structural priming to variable expression of the Spanish first person singular subject pronoun in the New Mexican bilingual community. Comparisons with both Spanish and English benchmarks indicate no convergence of Spanish toward English grammar, including in the presence of code-switching, where the linguistic conditioning of variant selection remains unaltered. We find a language-internal and cross-language priming effect, albeit of differing strength, such that speakers’ preceding coreferential (Spanish and English) subject pronouns favor subsequent pronouns, whereas unexpressed subjects tend to be followed by unexpressed subjects. Given the rarity of unexpressed subjects in English, in the presence of code-switching fewer tokens occur with unexpressed primes. Thus, code-switching has no intrinsic effect. Instead, it results in associated shifts in the distribution of contextual features relevant to priming, contrary to the convergence-via-code-switching hypothesis and in accordance with the contextual distribution-via-code-switching hypothesis, which we put forward here.

Keywords

bilingual speechstructural primingvariable subject expressioncode-switchingbilingual contextual distribution hypothesis
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 19 , Special Issue 4: Cross-language Effects in Bilingual Production and Comprehension , August 2016 , pp. 733 - 753
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

The order of authors is alphabetical; both contributed equally to this work, which was made possible by funding from the National Science Foundation (1019112/1019122; http://nmcode-switching.la.psu.edu) and by the NMSEB Corpus teams at the University of New Mexico and the Pennsylvania State University. Thanks to Margaret Deuchar and three anonymous reviewers for their comments on the paper.

References

Aaron, J. E. Lone English-origin nouns in Spanish: The precedence of community norms. International Journal of Bilingualism. doi:10.1177/1367006913516021 Published online by Sage, January 14, 2014.Google Scholar
Amaral, P. M., & Schwenter, S. A. (2005). Contrast and the (non-)occurrence of subject pronouns. In Eddington, D. (ed.), Selected proceedings of the 7th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, pp. 116–127. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Backus, A. (2005). Codeswitching and language change: One thing leads to another? International Journal of Bilingualism, 9, 307–340.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benevento, N., & Dietrich, A. I think, therefore digo yo: Variable position of the 1sg subject pronoun in New Mexican Spanish–English code-switching. International Journal of Bilingualism. doi:10.1177/1367006913516038. Published online by Sage, January 14, 2014.Google Scholar
Bentivoglio, P. (1987). Los sujetos pronominales de primera persona en el habla de Caracas. Caracas: Universidad Central de Venezuela.Google Scholar
Bernolet, S., Hartsuiker, R. J., & Pickering, M. J. (2012). Effects of phonological feedback on the selection of syntax: Evidence from between-language syntactic priming. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 15, 503–516.Google Scholar
Bills, G. D., & Vigil, N. A. (1999). Ashes to ashes: The historical basis for dialect variation in New Mexican Spanish. Romance Philology, 53, 43–66.Google Scholar
Bills, G. D., & Vigil, N. A. (2008). The Spanish language of New Mexico and southern Colorado: A linguistic atlas. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Cameron, R. (1992). Pronominal and null subject variation in Spanish: Constraints, dialects, and functional compensation. Ms., University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Cameron, R. (1993). Ambiguous agreement, functional compensation, and nonspecific tú in the Spanish of San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Madrid, Spain. Language Variation and Change, 5, 305–334.Google Scholar
Cameron, R. (1994). Switch reference, verb class and priming in a variable syntax. Papers from the Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society: Parasession on Variation in Linguistic Theory, 30, 27–45.Google Scholar
Carvalho, A. M., Orozco, R., & Shin, N. L. (eds.) (2015). Subject pronoun expression in Spanish: A cross-dialectal perspective. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Chociej, J. (2011). Polish null subjects: English influence on heritage Polish in Toronto. Ms., University of Toronto.Google Scholar
Cifuentes, H. (1980–1). Presencia y ausencia del pronombre personal sujeto en el habla culta de Santiago de Chile. Homenaje a Ambrosio Rabanales: Boletín de Filología de la Universidad de Chile, 31, 743–752.Google Scholar
Clyne, M., Eisikovits, E., & Tollfree, L. (2001). Ethnic varieties of Australian English. In Blair, D. & Collins, P. (eds.), English in Australia, pp. 223–238. Amsterdam & Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Croft, W. (1995). Intonation units and grammatical structure. Linguistics, 33, 839–882.Google Scholar
Dryer, M. S. (2011). Expression of pronominal subjects. In Dryer, M. S. & Haspelmath, M. (eds.), The world atlas of language structures online. Munich: Max Planck Digital Library. [http://wals.info/chapter/101, retrieved July 20, 2013].Google Scholar
Du Bois, J. W., Chafe, W. L., Myer, C., Thompson, S. A., Englebretson, R., & Martey, N. (2000–5). Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English, Parts 1–4. Philadelphia, PA: Linguistic Data Consortium.Google Scholar
Du Bois, J. W., Schuetze-Coburn, S., Cumming, S., & Paolino, D. (1993). Outline of discourse transcription. In Edwards, J. & Lampert, M. (eds.), Talking data: Transcription and coding in discourse, pp. 45–89. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Enríquez, E. V. (1984). El pronombre personal sujeto en la lengua española hablada en Madrid. Madrid: ConsejoSuperior de Investigaciones Científicas, Instituto Miguel de Cervantes.Google Scholar
Erker, D., & Guy, G. R. (2012). The role of lexical frequency in syntactic variability: Variation subject personal pronoun expression in Spanish. Language, 88, 526–557.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fernández-Gibert, A. (2010). From voice to print: Language and social change in New Mexico, 1880–1912. In Rivera-Mills, S. & Villa, D. J. (eds.), Spanish of the U.S. Southwest: A language in transition, pp. 45–62. Madrid: Iberoamericana.Google Scholar
Fleischer, Z., Pickering, M. J., & McLean, J. F. (2012). Shared information structure: Evidence from crosslinguistic priming. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 15, 568–579.Google Scholar
Givón, T. (1983a). Topic continuity in discourse: An introduction. In Givón (ed.), pp. 1–41.Google Scholar
Givón, T. (1983b). Topic continuity in spoken English. In Givón (ed.), pp. 343–363.Google Scholar
Givón, T. (ed.) (1983c). Topic continuity in discourse: A quantitative cross-linguistic study. Amsterdam & Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Gonzales, M. D. (1999). Crossing social and cultural borders: The road to language hybridity. In Galindo, L. & Gonzales, M. D. (eds.), Speaking Chicana: Voice, power and identity, pp. 13–38. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
Gonzales-Berry, E., & Maciel, D. R. (eds.) (2000). The contested homeland: A Chicano history of New Mexico. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Gonzales-Berry, E. (2000). Which language will our children speak? The Spanish language and public education policy in New Mexico, 1890–1930. In Gonzales-Berry & Maciel (eds.), pp. 169–189.Google Scholar
Granda Gutiérrez, G. de. (1972). Transculturación e interferencia linguistica en el Puerto Rico contemporáneo (1898–1968). Puerto Rico: Editorial Edil.Google Scholar
Gries, S. T. (2005). Syntactic priming: A corpus-based approach. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 34, 365–399.Google Scholar
Grosjean, F. (1998). Studying bilinguals: Methodological and conceptual issues. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 1, 131–149.Google Scholar
Gullberg, M., Indefrey, P., & Muysken, P. (2009). Research techniques for the study of code-switching. In Bullock, B. E. & Toribio, A. J. (eds.), The Cambridge handbook on linguistic code-switching, pp. 21–39. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gumperz, J., & Wilson, R. (1971). Convergence and creolization: A case from the Indo-Aryan/Dravidian border in India. In Hymes, D. (ed.), Pidginization and creolization of languages, pp. 151–167. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hartsuiker, R. J., Pickering, M. J., & Veltkamp, E. (2004). Is syntax separate or shared between languages. Psychological Science, 15, 409–414.Google Scholar
Helasuvo, M.-L. (2014). Searching for motivations for grammatical patternings. Pragmatics, 24, 453–476.Google Scholar
Holmquist, J. (2012). Frequency rates and constraints on subject personal pronoun expression: Findings from the Puerto Rican highlands. Language Variation and Change, 24, 203–220.Google Scholar
Hopper, P. J., & Thompson, S. A. (2008). Projectability and clause combining in interaction. In Laury, R. (ed.), Crosslinguistic studies of clause combining: The multifunctionality of conjunctions (TSL 80), pp. 99–123. Amsterdam & Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Jia, L., & Bayley, R. (2002). Null pronoun variation in Mandarin Chinese. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 8, 103–116.Google Scholar
Labov, W. (1969). Contraction, deletion, and inherent variability of the English copula. Language, 45, 715–762.Google Scholar
Labov, W. (1972). Sociolinguistic patterns. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Labov, W. (1984). Field methods of the project on linguistic change and variation. In Baugh, J. & Sherzer, J. (eds.), Language in use: Readings in sociolinguistics, pp. 28–53. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Labov, W. (2001). Principles of linguistic change: Social factors (vol. 2). Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Labov, W. (2005). Quantitative reasoning in linguistics. In Ammon, U., Dittmar, N., Mattheier, K. J. & Trudgill, P. (eds.), Sociolinguistics/Soziolinguistik: An international handbook of the science of language and society (vol. 1), pp. 6–22. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Lastra, Y., & Butragueño, P. M. (2015). Subject pronoun expression in oral Mexican Spanish. In Carvalho et al. (eds.), pp. 41–60.Google Scholar
Lausberg, H., & Sloetjes, H. (2009). Coding gestural behavior with the NEUROGES-ELAN system. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 41, 841–849.Google Scholar
Lee, D.-Y., & Yonezawa, Y. (2008). The role of the overt expression of first and second person subject in Japanese. Journal of Pragmatics, 40, 733–767.Google Scholar
Lipski, J. M. (2008). Varieties of Spanish in the United States. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
McKee, R., Schembri, A., McKee, D., & Johnston, T. (2011). Variable “subject” presence in Australian Sign Language and New Zealand Sign Language. Language Variation and Change, 23, 375–398.Google Scholar
Meyerhoff, M. (2009). Replication, transfer, and calquing: Using variation as a tool in the study of language contact. Language Variation and Change, 21, 297–317.Google Scholar
Nagy, N. G., Aghdasi, N., Denis, D., & Motut, A. (2011). Null subjects in heritage languages: Contact effects in a cross-linguistic context. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 17, Article 16. Available online at http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1202&context=pwpl.Google Scholar
Napoli, D. J. (1982). Initial material deletion in English. Glossa, 16, 85–111.Google Scholar
Ono, T., & Thompson, S. A. (1997). Deconstructing ‘zero anaphora’ in Japanese. Berkeley Linguistics Society, 23, 481–491.Google Scholar
Otheguy, R., & Zentella, A. C. (2012). Spanish in New York: Language contact, dialectal leveling, and structural continuity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Otheguy, R., Zentella, A. C., & Livert, D. (2007). Language and dialect contact in Spanish of New York: Toward the formation of a speech community. Language, 83, 770–802.Google Scholar
Owens, J., Dodsworth, R., & Kohn, M. (2013). Subject expression and discourse embeddedness in Emirati Arabic. Language Variation and Change, 25, 255–285.Google Scholar
Parkinson, D. B. (1987). Constraints on the presence/absence of ‘optional’ subject pronouns in Egyptian Arabic. 15th Annual Conference on New Ways of Analyzing Variation, pp. 348–360.Google Scholar
Payne, T. E. (1997). Describing morphosyntax: A guide to field linguists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Poplack, S. (1993). Variation theory and language contact: Concepts, methods and data. In Preston, D. R. (ed.), American dialect research, pp. 251–286. Amsterdam & Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Poplack, S. (1998). Contrasting patterns of code-switching in two communities. In Trudgill, P. & Cheshire, J. (eds.), The sociolinguistics reader: Multilingualism and variation (vol. 1), pp. 44–65. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
Poplack, S., & Dion, N. (2012). Myths and facts about loanword development. Language Variation and Change, 24, 279–315.Google Scholar
Poplack, S., & Levey, S. (2010). Contact-induced grammatical change: A cautionary tale. In Auer, P. & Schmidt, J. E. (eds.), Language and space: An international handbook of linguistic variation (vol. 1), pp. 391–419. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Poplack, S., & Meechan, M. (1998). Introduction: How languages fit together in codemixing. International Journal of Bilingualism, 2, 127–138.Google Scholar
Poplack, S., Zentz, L., & Dion, N. (2012a). Phrase-final prepositions in Quebec French: An empirical study of contact, code-switching and resistance to convergence. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 15, 203–225.Google Scholar
Poplack, S., Zentz, L., & Dion, N. (2012b). What counts as (contact-induced) change. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 15, 247–254.Google Scholar
Ranson, D. L. (1991). Person marking in the wake of /s/ deletion in Andalusian Spanish. Language Variation and Change, 3, 133–152.Google Scholar
Roberts, I., & Holmberg, A. (2010). Introduction: Parameters in minimalist theory. In Biberauer, T., Holmberg, A., Roberts, I. & Sheehan, M. (eds.), Parametric variation: Null subjects in minimalist theory, pp. 1–57. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sankoff, D. (1988a). Sociolinguistics and syntactic variation. In Newmeyer, F. J. (ed.), Linguistics: The Cambridge survey (vol. 4), pp. 140–161. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sankoff, D. (1988b). Variable rules. In Ammon, U., Dittmar, N. & Mattheier, K. J. (eds.), Sociolinguistics: An international handbook of the science of language and society (vol. 2), pp. 984–997. Berlin & New York: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Sankoff, D., Tagliamonte, S., & Smith, E. (2012). Goldvarb LION: A variable rule application for Macintosh. University of Toronto. [http://individual.utoronto.ca/tagliamonte/goldvarb.htm]Google Scholar
Silva-Corvalán, C. (1982). Subject expression and placement in Mexican-American Spanish. In Amastae, J. & Elías Olivares, L. (eds.), Spanish in the United States: Sociolinguistic aspects, pp. 93–120. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Silva-Corvalán, C. (1994). Language contact and change: Spanish in Los Angeles. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Silva-Corvalán, C. (2001). Sociolingüística y pragmática del español (Georgetown Studies in Spanish Linguistics). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Silva-Corvalán, C. (2003). Otra mirada a la expresión del sujeto como variable sintáctica. In Fernández, F. Moreno, Menéndez, F. G., Samper, J. A., Gutiérrez Araua, M. L., Vaquero, M. & Hernández, C. (eds.), Lengua, Variación y contexto: Estudios dedicados a Humberto López Morales (vol. 2), pp. 849–860. Madrid: Arco Libros.Google Scholar
Stammers, J. R., & Deuchar, M. (2012). Testing the nonce borrowing hypothesis: Counter-evidence from English-origin verbs in Welsh. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 15, 630–643.Google Scholar
Szmrecsanyi, B. (2005). Language users as creatures of habit: A corpus-based analysis of persistence in spoken English. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 1, 113–149.Google Scholar
Thomason, S.G. (2001). Language contact: An introduction. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Torres Cacoullos, R., & Aaron, J. E. (2003). Bare English-origin nouns in Spanish: Rates, constraints and discourse functions. Language Variation and Change, 15, 289–328.Google Scholar
Torres Cacoullos, R., & Travis, C. E. (2010). Variable yo expression in New Mexico: English influence? In Rivera-Mills, S. & Villa, D. J. (eds.), Spanish of the U.S. Southwest: A language in transition, pp. 185–206. Madrid: Iberoamericana.Google Scholar
Torres Cacoullos, R., & Travis, C. E. (2011). Using structural variability to evaluate convergence via code-switching. International Journal of Bilingualism, 15, 241–267.Google Scholar
Torres Cacoullos, R., & Travis, C. E. (2014). Prosody, priming and particular constructions: The patterning of English first-person singular subject expression in conversation. Journal of Pragmatics, 63, 19–34.Google Scholar
Torres Cacoullos, R., & Travis, C. E. (2015a). New Mexico Spanish–English Bilingual (NMSEB) Corpus, National Science Foundation 1019112/1019122. [http://nmcode-switching.la.psu.edu/]Google Scholar
Torres Cacoullos, R., & Travis, C. E. (2015b). Assessing inter-linguistic (dis)similarity via intra-linguistic variability for subject expression. In Carvalho et al. (eds.), pp. 83–102.Google Scholar
Torres Cacoullos, R., & Travis, C. E. (to appear). Gauging convergence on the ground: Code-switching in the community. International Journal of Bilingualism 19.Google Scholar
Torres Cacoullos, R., & Walker, J. A. (2009). On the persistence of grammar in discourse formulas: A variationist study of that . Linguistics, 47, 1–43.Google Scholar
Travis, C. E. (2007). Genre effects on subject expression in Spanish: Priming in narrative and conversation. Language Variation and Change, 19, 101–135.Google Scholar
Travis, C. E., & Torres Cacoullos, R. (2012). What do subject pronouns do in discourse? Cognitive, mechanical and constructional factors in variation. Cognitive Linguistics, 23, 711–748.Google Scholar
Travis, C. E., & Torres Cacoullos, R. (2013). Making voices count: Corpus compilation in bilingual communities. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 33, 170–194.Google Scholar
Travis, C. E., & Torres Cacoullos, R. (2014). Stress on I: Debunking unitary contrast accounts. Studies in Language, 38, 360–392.Google Scholar
Travis, C. E., Torres Cacoullos, R., & Kidd, E. (to appear). Cross-language priming: A view from bilingual speech. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition.Google Scholar
Travis, C. E., & Villa, D. J. (2011). Language policy and language contact in New Mexico: The case of Spanish. In Norrby, C. & Hajek, J. (eds.), Uniformity and diversity in language policy: Global perspectives, pp. 126–140. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Weiner, E. J., & Labov, W. (1983). Constraints on the agentless passive. Journal of Linguistics, 19, 29–58.Google Scholar
Weinreich, U. (1963). Languages in contact: Findings and problems. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Weinreich, U., Labov, W., & Herzog, M. I. (1968). Empirical foundations for a theory of language change. In Lehmann, W. P. & Malkiel, Y. (eds.), Directions for historical linguistics: A symposium, pp. 95–188. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Weir, A. (2012). Left-edge deletion in English and subject omission in diaries. English Language and Linguistics, 16, 105–129.Google Scholar
Winford, D. (2005). Contact-induced change: Classification and processes. Diachronica, 22, 373–427.Google Scholar
Witteman, M. J., & Van Hell, J. G. (2009). Triggered codeswitching: An experimental test of the triggering hypothesis. Presented at the 7th International Symposium on Bilingualism, Utrecht, The Netherlands, July 8–11, 2009.Google Scholar