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.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/49365 |
| Date | 01 October 2024 |
| Creators | Dionne, Danielle |
| Contributors | Erker, Daniel |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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