[estar + Adjective]: a view from 19th and 21st century Dominican Spanish
Document Type
Paper Presentation
Presenter Language
English
Research Area
Variation and change, synchronic and diachronic approaches, Language variation and change
Location
MBSC Dodge Room 302A
Start Date
18-10-2024 3:00 PM
End Date
18-10-2024 3:30 PM
Abstract
[estar + Adjective]: a view from 19th and 21st century Dominican Spanish
The diachronic phenomenon of increased usage of [estar + Adjectives] to the detriment of [ser + Adjectives] is known as estar extension (Rivas, 2023). An extensive body of research has explored this development across generations (Silva-Corvalán, 1986), age groups (Díaz-Campos & Geeslin, 2011), different communities of Spanish in contact with other languages (Adamou et al., 2018; Guijarro-Fuentes & Geeslin, 2006; Salazar, 2007), and through the 12th to 20th century (Marco & Marín, 2015). We explore the linguistic and social predictors of [copula + Adjectives] usage in Dominican Spanish during the late 19th and 21st centuries, a time frame motivated by the historical background affecting the linguistic profile of the island: the end of French occupation, the Dominican independence, and the earliest stages of the formation of this variant of Spanish. The following questions guide the study: (1) What are the usage patterns in Dominican Spanish and how do they in compare to other well-studied varieties? (2) Is a change observable within the last 150 years? To answer these questions, we extracted tokens (N = 994) from three late 19th-century literary works and naturalistic speech from the 21st-century Child-caregiver Dominican Corpus (Miller, in preparation). We coded for factors shown to be significant predictors in previous works (e.g., Díaz-Campos & Geeslin, 2011). Results show increased usage of estar in Dominican Spanish over time, favored by individual frame of reference (¡Qué interesante estas hoi! [19th century]), as well as adjective types involving description (Bonito estás para retozos [19th century]) and resultant state (Estaba cerrada [19th century]). Our findings indicate a pattern very similar to what has been observed in cross-generational studies. We take our Dominican Spanish data to support the argument that variation in copula use is not a new phenomenon, but one that has been ongoing for centuries. Nevertheless, our findings also suggest the weakening of some linguistic conditioning factors; in particular, resultant state adjectives seem to have a smaller effect on estar choice in the 21st-century data. Such weakening could be indicative of semantic bleaching of the original lexical meaning of this verbal form, hence generalizing its use to more contexts.
Word count: 350
References:
Adamou, E., DE Pascale, S., García-Márkina, Y., & Padure, C. (2018). Do bilinguals generalize estar more than monolinguals and what is the role of conceptual transfer? https://doi.org/10.1177/1367006918812175
Díaz-Campos, M., & Geeslin, K. L. (2011). Copula use in the Spanish of Venezuela: Is the pattern indicative of stable variation or an ongoing change? Spanish in Context, 8(1), 73–94. https://doi.org/10.1075/sic.8.1.04dia
Guijarro-Fuentes, P., & Geeslin, K. L. (2006). Copula choice in the Spanish of Galicia: The effects of bilingualism on language use. Spanish in Context, 3(1), 63–83. https://doi.org/10.1075/sic.3.1.06gui
Marco, C., & Marín, R. (2015). Origins and development of adjectival passives in Spanish: A corpus study. In I. Pérez-Jiménez, M. Leonetti, & S. Gumiel-Molina (Eds.), Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics (Vol. 5, pp. 239–266). John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.5.09mar
Miller, K. (in preparation). Dominican Republic Child-Caregiver corpus (DRCC), National Science Foundation BCS-1322763, http://childlanguagelab.la.psu.edu/research.html.
Rivas, J. (2023). Ser, estar y los verbos semicopulativos. In G. Rojo, V. Vázquez Rozas, & R. Torres Cacoullos, Sintaxis del español / The Routledge Handbook of Spanish Syntax (1st ed., pp. 327–338). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003035633-28
Salazar, M. L. (2007). Está muy diferente a como era antes. . . Spanish in Contact.
Silva-Corvalán, C. (1986). Bilingualism and Language Change: The Extension of Estar in Los Angeles Spanish. Linguistic Society of America, 62(3), 587–608.
[estar + Adjective]: a view from 19th and 21st century Dominican Spanish
MBSC Dodge Room 302A
[estar + Adjective]: a view from 19th and 21st century Dominican Spanish
The diachronic phenomenon of increased usage of [estar + Adjectives] to the detriment of [ser + Adjectives] is known as estar extension (Rivas, 2023). An extensive body of research has explored this development across generations (Silva-Corvalán, 1986), age groups (Díaz-Campos & Geeslin, 2011), different communities of Spanish in contact with other languages (Adamou et al., 2018; Guijarro-Fuentes & Geeslin, 2006; Salazar, 2007), and through the 12th to 20th century (Marco & Marín, 2015). We explore the linguistic and social predictors of [copula + Adjectives] usage in Dominican Spanish during the late 19th and 21st centuries, a time frame motivated by the historical background affecting the linguistic profile of the island: the end of French occupation, the Dominican independence, and the earliest stages of the formation of this variant of Spanish. The following questions guide the study: (1) What are the usage patterns in Dominican Spanish and how do they in compare to other well-studied varieties? (2) Is a change observable within the last 150 years? To answer these questions, we extracted tokens (N = 994) from three late 19th-century literary works and naturalistic speech from the 21st-century Child-caregiver Dominican Corpus (Miller, in preparation). We coded for factors shown to be significant predictors in previous works (e.g., Díaz-Campos & Geeslin, 2011). Results show increased usage of estar in Dominican Spanish over time, favored by individual frame of reference (¡Qué interesante estas hoi! [19th century]), as well as adjective types involving description (Bonito estás para retozos [19th century]) and resultant state (Estaba cerrada [19th century]). Our findings indicate a pattern very similar to what has been observed in cross-generational studies. We take our Dominican Spanish data to support the argument that variation in copula use is not a new phenomenon, but one that has been ongoing for centuries. Nevertheless, our findings also suggest the weakening of some linguistic conditioning factors; in particular, resultant state adjectives seem to have a smaller effect on estar choice in the 21st-century data. Such weakening could be indicative of semantic bleaching of the original lexical meaning of this verbal form, hence generalizing its use to more contexts.
Word count: 350
References:
Adamou, E., DE Pascale, S., García-Márkina, Y., & Padure, C. (2018). Do bilinguals generalize estar more than monolinguals and what is the role of conceptual transfer? https://doi.org/10.1177/1367006918812175
Díaz-Campos, M., & Geeslin, K. L. (2011). Copula use in the Spanish of Venezuela: Is the pattern indicative of stable variation or an ongoing change? Spanish in Context, 8(1), 73–94. https://doi.org/10.1075/sic.8.1.04dia
Guijarro-Fuentes, P., & Geeslin, K. L. (2006). Copula choice in the Spanish of Galicia: The effects of bilingualism on language use. Spanish in Context, 3(1), 63–83. https://doi.org/10.1075/sic.3.1.06gui
Marco, C., & Marín, R. (2015). Origins and development of adjectival passives in Spanish: A corpus study. In I. Pérez-Jiménez, M. Leonetti, & S. Gumiel-Molina (Eds.), Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics (Vol. 5, pp. 239–266). John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.5.09mar
Miller, K. (in preparation). Dominican Republic Child-Caregiver corpus (DRCC), National Science Foundation BCS-1322763, http://childlanguagelab.la.psu.edu/research.html.
Rivas, J. (2023). Ser, estar y los verbos semicopulativos. In G. Rojo, V. Vázquez Rozas, & R. Torres Cacoullos, Sintaxis del español / The Routledge Handbook of Spanish Syntax (1st ed., pp. 327–338). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003035633-28
Salazar, M. L. (2007). Está muy diferente a como era antes. . . Spanish in Contact.
Silva-Corvalán, C. (1986). Bilingualism and Language Change: The Extension of Estar in Los Angeles Spanish. Linguistic Society of America, 62(3), 587–608.