Characterizing Frequency Shifts in Bilingual Expressions of Futurity among US Spanish Speakers

Author ORCID Identifier

0000-0003-3294-9029

Document Type

Paper Presentation

Presenter Language

English

Research Area

Sociolinguistics

Location

MBSC Dodge Room 302

Start Date

19-10-2024 12:00 PM

End Date

19-10-2024 12:30 PM

Abstract

Studies on both bilingual and monolingual Spanish speakers have described a growing preference for the Periphrastic Future (PF) and the decline of the Morphological Future (MF) and Present Indicative (PI) over time (e.g., Orozco 2007; Jaque 2012). 1a-1c below shows examples of these forms to express futurity. This change has been proposed as accelerated in in regions of contact with English (Téllez-Pérez 2019) as well as among younger speakers (Orozco 2007). This study utilizes data from two online corpora to address demographic gaps left by previous studies on bilingual expressions of futurity by featuring data from Caribbean and Central American speakers. Furthermore, whereas previous studies have focused on analyzing the speech of older participants, this data characterizes the speech practices of younger (age) participants to add additional support to the hypothesis that preference for PF is a change in progress among bilingual US speakers (Orozco 2007).

  1. (a) Correré mañana. (MF)

Run-FUT tomorrow

‘I will run tomorrow.’

(b) Voy a correr mañana. (PF)

go-PRS to run-INF tomorrow

‘I’m going to run tomorrow.’

(c) Corro mañana. (PI)

Run-PRS tomorrow

‘I run tomorrow.’

Data were collected via Corpus: MIAMI and the Corpus of Spanish in Southern Arizona. 1025 tokens of future expression were extracted, identified as MF, PF, or PI and coded for: (1) temporal distance, (2) presence or absence of a temporal adverb, (3) verb type, (4) grammatical person and number, (5) clause type, (6) speaker age and (7) speaker heritage/nationality. Data were analyzed using mixed-effects logistic regression analysis in R and compared to previous studies examining both bilingual and monolingual expressions of futurity.

My findings reveal verb type and presence or absence of a temporal adverb to be significant linguistic factors predicting expression of futurity with a possible interaction between the two factors. Comparisons of the frequencies of PF, MF, and PI to previous studies suggest that MF and PI are becoming increasingly restricted in their use to express future time while PF appears to be undergoing a process of grammaticalization to become the unmarked form of future time expression in the speech of US Spanish-English bilinguals.

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Oct 19th, 12:00 PM Oct 19th, 12:30 PM

Characterizing Frequency Shifts in Bilingual Expressions of Futurity among US Spanish Speakers

MBSC Dodge Room 302

Studies on both bilingual and monolingual Spanish speakers have described a growing preference for the Periphrastic Future (PF) and the decline of the Morphological Future (MF) and Present Indicative (PI) over time (e.g., Orozco 2007; Jaque 2012). 1a-1c below shows examples of these forms to express futurity. This change has been proposed as accelerated in in regions of contact with English (Téllez-Pérez 2019) as well as among younger speakers (Orozco 2007). This study utilizes data from two online corpora to address demographic gaps left by previous studies on bilingual expressions of futurity by featuring data from Caribbean and Central American speakers. Furthermore, whereas previous studies have focused on analyzing the speech of older participants, this data characterizes the speech practices of younger (age) participants to add additional support to the hypothesis that preference for PF is a change in progress among bilingual US speakers (Orozco 2007).

  1. (a) Correré mañana. (MF)

Run-FUT tomorrow

‘I will run tomorrow.’

(b) Voy a correr mañana. (PF)

go-PRS to run-INF tomorrow

‘I’m going to run tomorrow.’

(c) Corro mañana. (PI)

Run-PRS tomorrow

‘I run tomorrow.’

Data were collected via Corpus: MIAMI and the Corpus of Spanish in Southern Arizona. 1025 tokens of future expression were extracted, identified as MF, PF, or PI and coded for: (1) temporal distance, (2) presence or absence of a temporal adverb, (3) verb type, (4) grammatical person and number, (5) clause type, (6) speaker age and (7) speaker heritage/nationality. Data were analyzed using mixed-effects logistic regression analysis in R and compared to previous studies examining both bilingual and monolingual expressions of futurity.

My findings reveal verb type and presence or absence of a temporal adverb to be significant linguistic factors predicting expression of futurity with a possible interaction between the two factors. Comparisons of the frequencies of PF, MF, and PI to previous studies suggest that MF and PI are becoming increasingly restricted in their use to express future time while PF appears to be undergoing a process of grammaticalization to become the unmarked form of future time expression in the speech of US Spanish-English bilinguals.