Gender Agreement in Correntino Spanish

Abstract

This article provides qualitative and quantitative analyses of variable gender agreement in Correntino Spanish, the variety of Spanish spoken by both Spanish-Guarani bilinguals and Correntino Spanish monolinguals in the province of Corrientes, Argentina. Drawing on data collected from fieldwork in the province, it will be shown that this variation is conditioned by distance effects and modifier class. Synchronic gender agreement variation in Correntino Spanish is attributed to diachronic source language agentivity effects (Van Coetsem, 1988) given the lack of gender inflection in Guarani. This phenomenon would be unsurprising as a contact effect if found synchronically only in bilinguals; however, its occurrence in monolinguals sets it aside as a rare instance of variable gender agreement in monolingual Spanish. This loosening of gender agreement mirrors the development of gender in Argentine Guarani (Cerno, 2010), and these phenomena taken together shed light on the malleability of gender systems under situations of intense language contact. Together they provide a valuable example of mutual contact-induced changes in gender systems.

Correntino Spanish Memes and the Enregisterment of Argentine Guarani Loanwords

“…The most common location for the production of these memes, as previously shown in Table 1, is Corrientes City, which is a virtually entirely monolingual space. As seen in Figure 2, even the memes that come from outside the provincial capital all come from population centers on the geographic periphery of the province, i.e., regions where Guarani has limited presence (Cerno 2013;Pinta 2022).…”

“…In Corrientes as elsewhere, internet culture is seen as aligned with modernity, technology, and urban lifestyles, and the content of the memes directly reflects this. Argentine Guarani is often portrayed as being in conflict with such things, being largely associated with tradition, agriculture, and rural lifestyles (Pinta 2022), a depiction of indigenous languages which is found throughout Latin America (Canessa 2012;French 2000). While there is a growing kind of cultural nostalgia in urban areas such as Corrientes City for things associated with the campo ('countryside') as being emblematic of the province in general, and while such topics do surface in the memes produced there, the use of Argentine Guarani in an overt way, even in a codeswitching context, is simply not an available linguistic resource for the younger, monolingual speakers of Correntino Spanish who are producing and consuming these memes.…”

“…Due to a complex mixture of sociohistorical and ideological factors, Correntinos find themselves situated geographically, culturally, and linguistically between Paraguay and Buenos Aires, the latter being the perceived core of Argentine culture throughout Latin America. The linguistic hallmarks of the province-Spanishinfluenced Guarani and Guarani-influenced Spanish-are in many ways maligned by non-Correntinos and Correntinos alike, with Argentine Guarani characterized as an illegitimate variety of Guarani, not as "pure" as the variety spoken in Paraguay, and Correntino Spanish similarly characterized as an "impure" variety of Spanish (Pinta 2022). This overtly linguistic discrimination of Corrientes and its inhabitants, discursively justified on grounds of language purism, is inevitably linked to the social characteristics of the province, which is seen by many non-Correntino Argentines-in particular by porteños, i.e., citizens of Buenos Aires-as a socially backwards province characterized by poverty and superstition.…”

The influence of Guarani on gender agreement in Paraguayan and Correntino Spanish: A contrastive analysis

“…The influence of Guarani on this variety is mostly historical, being reflective of widespread bilingualism in earlier periods of the province's history. Having acknowledged that, Spanish/Guarani bilingualism is still common in the rural provincial interior, where the local variety of Guarani is still prevalent (Pinta 2022a), and synchronic Guarani influence in these communities is still notable. Guarani speakers constitute likely around 10% of the provincial population (Cerno 2013:35), extremely few of whom are found in urban centers such as the provincial capital of Corrientes City.…”

“…Additionally, there is no variation in agreement between nouns and articles, but variation does occur between nouns and all non-article modifiers (i.e., adjectives, demonstratives, quantifiers, and possessives). Thus, while casa rojo 'red house' (canonically casa roja), este casa 'this house' (canonically esta casa), muchos casas 'many houses' (canonically muchas casas), and nuestro casa 'our house' (canonically nuestra casa) are all possible, *el casa 'the house' and *un casa 'a house' are not(Pinta 2022b).…”