Aspects of Spanish deictic expressions in Barcelona: A quantitative examination

Abstract

This sociolinguistic investigation analyzes an innovative usage of Spanish motion verbs, demonstratives, and locatives in Barcelona that involves crosslinguistic pragmatic transfer. Speakers in the two social networks examined (N = 58) use these Spanish deictics following pragmatic rules that generally correspond to the rules for their Catalan counterparts. Quantitative analysis demonstrates that this innovative usage of the Spanish deictics is not predictable from the lexical form of the deictic systems in both languages. Multiple regression analysis (SPSS) demonstrates that as relative exposure to Catalan increases so does the amount of innovative usage observed, although degree of integration into a Catalan social network and degree of Catalanist ideology do not affect such usage. Qualitatively, this innovative usage is a linguistic marker of a unique contact variety of Spanish spoken in Catalonia (i.e., Catalan Spanish). In this variety, such usage represents a potential resource for performing Catalan identity.Linguistic stereotypes associated with Catalan people when they speak Spanish abound in Spain (Badia i Margarit, 1975). One such feature is a marked accent in Spanish pronunciation, which may include any of the following notable characteristics: lowering (opening) of stressed mid vowels / e / and / o / ; reduction of nonstressed / e / and /a/ to schwa; raising of nonstressed / o / to / u / ; confusion of / s / and / 0 / ; and velarization of/I/. Another such feature is extensive code mixing and the use, in Spanish, of lexical borrowings and caiques from Catalan. For example, in Catalonia some people use the Spanish expression por eso to mean 'nevertheless' on the basis of Catalan per aixd, whereas the usual Spanish meaning of por eso is 'that is why'. The Spanish of Catalonia also displays innovative morphosyntactic features. One such feature involves norms for the usage of the subjunctive mood. At times, people in Catalonia use the indicative mood in Spanish where monolingual Castilian Spanish speakers would use the subjunctive. This occurs after i/clauses, temporal adverbs such as cuando 'when', and certain I would like to acknowledge the aid of the Program for Cultural Cooperation between Spain's Ministry of Culture and United States Universities, Subvention No. 1490, whose support helped make this research possible. I would also like to thank two anonymous LVC reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.A related article, "Pragmatic and sociolinguistic aspects of Spanish deictic expressions in

Perspective-Taking With Deictic Motion Verbs in Spanish: What We Learn About Semantics and the Lexicon From Heritage Child Speakers and Adults

“…The first of these three categories presented venir with a null subject, as in (15), the second presented venir in VS word order due to its status as an unaccusative verb (Burzio, 1986 ), as in (16), and the third presented venir in SV word order which was expected to be the least acceptable of the three, as in (17), since this word order is non-canonical with an unaccusative verb. These three categories were based on the productions of the bilingual children vis à vis the literature on the constraints on venir in Spanish (Gathercole, 1978 ; Vann, 1998 ; Lewandowski, 2007 ). Thus, their acceptance could be revealing of patterns not attested in the previous literature.…”

“…In Catalan, venir allows for the speaker or the addressee to be the reference, while European Spanish carries a stricter requirement that it can only be the speaker. Vann (1998) has shown in an elicited production task that for adult bilingual speakers in Barcelona, there is transfer of the Catalan patterns into Spanish. Likewise, judgment data reported in Chui (2016) shows that while adult native speakers of Spanish require the path of motion to be directed toward the speaker, heritage Spanish speakers (native speakers of both English and Spanish) allow for the hearer to fill this role, ostensibly indicating that these bilinguals may have more flexible parameters in Spanish 1 .…”

Heritage, Second-Language and Native Speakers’ Intuitions on Deictic Verbs in Spanish: Beyond the Linguist’s Intuitions

“…Previous works on deictic verbs in Spanish (Gathercole, 1978;Lewandowski, 2007;Vann, 1998;Verde, 2014) have examined the verbs venir, traer, ir, and llevar through the framework established for English come, bring, go, and take by Fillmore in his Santa Cruz Lectures on Deixis (1971). Gathercole (1978, pp.…”

“…These studies have generally regarded the verbal-deictic preferences of Spanish as categorically different from English with regards to the ability of the speaker to utilize the come or bring verbs to describe motion towards the hearer ("I'm coming over right now"). Nonetheless, Vann's (1998) work on the Spanish spoken by bilingual speakers of Catalan and Spanish shows that the deictic system of one language is not always impervious to the influence of competing deictic systems from another language. He found that bilingual speakers of Catalan and Spanish showed novel usages of Spanish motion verbs due to "crosslinguistic pragmatic transfer" (Vann, 1998;263).…”

“…Nonetheless, Vann's (1998) work on the Spanish spoken by bilingual speakers of Catalan and Spanish shows that the deictic system of one language is not always impervious to the influence of competing deictic systems from another language. He found that bilingual speakers of Catalan and Spanish showed novel usages of Spanish motion verbs due to "crosslinguistic pragmatic transfer" (Vann, 1998;263). Whereas an expression like ya vengo 'I'm coming!'…”