This study incorporates insights from Usage Based Grammar (UBG) into variationist research on morphosyntactic variation in Spanish. Specifically, this dissertation investigates the impact on pronoun use of lexical frequency, or the number of times a finite verb appears in a large data set based on spontaneous speech from 221 speakers in two locales (New York City, NY and Boston, MA), as well as a series of context-based frequency metrics in a Variationist study of Spanish Subject Personal Pronoun (SPP) variation (e.g. Yo creo vs. creo ‘I think’). This investigation elucidates the nature of frequency effects (both lexical and contextual) on pronoun use and on the other linguistic factors that have been shown to impact pronoun use. Through this investigation, this dissertation is able to draw conclusions on the nature of linguistic variation and make inferences surrounding the mental representations underlying sociolinguistic patterns. In the past, frequency has been investigated in subject pronoun production as it pertains to the rate of the finite verb, with researchers counting the instances of each verb's occurrence within a corpus. This approach has produced mixed results. One study has shown that frequency modulates or amplifies the effects of other linguistic predictors, providing evidence that suggests lexical frequency does not directly impact pronoun use in a uniform or monotonic way (Erker & Guy, 2012). A few studies have replicated some version of these modulating effects, though they have not found as consistent amplification effects across linguistic constraints. Other studies have found contradictory frequency effects, showing only a main effect of frequency (high frequency corresponding to high pronoun use in some studies and low pronoun use in others) with no amplification effects, or no frequency effects at all. Further, Usage Based Grammar frameworks, which are often referenced in studies exploring lexical frequency, posit that speakers are not only sensitive to the rate of use of linguistic forms, but also the detailed contexts in which these forms appear. Such “rich memories”, as they are referred to in UBG, are said to constitute the mental representations of these forms. The mixed results in the literature, together with the UBG notion of rich memories, motivate the current study, which investigates the relationship between contextual frequency and pronoun use, since contextual frequency metrics (as opposed to overall frequency) might shed more light on frequency effects in morphosyntactic variation. The contextual frequency metrics analyzed in the current dissertation consist of the frequencies at which finite verbs appear in four combinations of the factor values of two variables, referred to as Switch Reference (i.e. whether the previous verb has a different referent or the same referent as the target site of variation) and Preceding Pronoun (i.e. whether the immediately preceding site of pronominal variation has a pronoun present or absent). The four combinations on which contextual frequency metrics are based are therefore: (1) ‘Different Referent/Preceding Pronoun Present’, (2) ‘Different Referent/Preceding Pronoun Absent’, (3) ‘Same Referent/Preceding Pronoun Present’, or (4) ‘Same Referent/Preceding Pronoun Absent’. Analysis of 88,001 tokens of pronominal presence or absence generally replicate the modulating effects of overall verb frequency observed by Erker & Guy (2012), i.e. the effects of several linguistic factors are amplified for frequent verb forms. Moreover, the analysis of contextual frequency reveals that verb forms must reach a certain overall frequency threshold in order for contextual properties to impact pronoun use. This finding aligns with the UBG prediction that the most frequent context in which a verb appears will dominate the overall pronominal tendencies of the verb, as long as that verb is sufficiently frequent in discourse. Overall, this study concludes that the linguistic variation observed in language use aligns with the usage-based approach that contextual frequency effects accumulate in the mental representations that underlie sociolinguistic patterns.

This study is part of the IN.MIGRA-2 CM project, which studies the sociolinguistic integration of the immigrant population of Madrid. The present study focuses on the language attitudes of 16 residents of Alcalá de Henares, a community of Madrid. The participants were asked to rate their level of agreement with the following affirmations: (1) The Spanish of Madrid is more correct than the forms of speech of Latin American immigrants; (2) Mastery of the Spanish language is the principal demonstration of the integration of immigrants; (3) Immigrants of Latin American origin are integrated because they speak the same language. The study finds a connection between higher levels of contact with immigrants and lower ratings of agreement with the affirmations. This investigation supports others that show connections between social networks and language attitudes, and it adds to the sparse research on language attitudes in Madrid. Adverbial adjectives modify both a verb and the subject of that verb. Their purpose is to describe a quality that pertains to both the subject and the way the subject is performing the verb. Because they modify both the verb and the noun, adverbial adjectives agree with the noun in number and gender. The generativist approaches to this linguistic phenomenon do not provide a sufficient explanation of verb + adverbial adjective constructions nor do they predict which subjects and predicates that can be used in these constructions. This paper takes a usage-based approach to adverbial adjectives. It explores the token frequencies of use of different verb + adverbial adjective phrases and attempts to categorize the components of these phrases based on these frequencies.

This research investigated the effect of frequency of language use on the production of consonant gradation by non-dominant speakers of Finnish in the immigrant community of Sointula, BC. Three types of frequency – word-frequency, suffix-frequency, and stem-frequency – were tested. It also investigated whether quantitative or qualitative gradation is more successful in producing gradation than the other and, finally, whether immigrant generation can explain the variation between participants. A translation task was administered to the six participants across three generations. Based on the framework of exemplar-driven cognitive grammar (Bybee 2001; Pierrehumbert 2001), the frequency-effects were assumed to be contingent upon the mode of lexical access; frequent complex words, presumably accessed as wholes thanks to frequent usage, would not exhibit as many gradation errors as infrequent words, which would be accessed via their composite parts due to infrequency. The anticipated frequency-effects were not found. Both frequent and infrequent words manifested some gradation loss as an analogical change. This suggests that all words are infrequent. While Bybee’s model assumes high-volume language use over time in dominant language contexts, lack of volume appears to suppress the differential behavior between frequent and infrequent words in Sointula. However, correct gradation was predictable based on suffix-use, which in turn was determined partly by semantics of suffixes; those Finnish suffixes that are semantically mappable to equivalent morphemes in English were better preserved than GEN object-markers, which do not have corresponding morpheme in English. With the atrophy of the GEN object-marker also gradation becomes redundant. This may arise from the tendency to mark syntactic constituency with word-order alone in English-influenced Finnish. Thus, semantics of suffixes proves to be a better predictor of gradation than frequency. Gradation loss increased with each generation born abroad; by G3, it has all but disappeared. Consonant gradation is not preserved through the generations. Qualitative gradation disappears before quantitative gradation. The above findings are sensible in a context of reduced language-functionality. Against expectation, little evidence for storing sub-word morphemes and decomposed access was found. Instead, the data suggests that most stored lexical items are whole words and that gradation is associated with whole complex forms.