Exploring historical linguistic convergence between Basque and Spanish
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Sara Gómez Seibane
Abstract
Null objects, female leísmo, i.e., the use of the dative le/s used as direct object pronouns for female referents, and the OV pattern with new information are frequent in spoken Basque Spanish. These (morpho)syntactic phenomena are absent (or extremely limited) in non-contact Spanish varieties and have their equivalent in Basque. Therefore, these structures are said to have been induced by the long-standing contact between Basque and Spanish. I have explored these phenomena in a corpus of letters written by Basque- Spanish bilinguals during the 18th and 19th century, an important moment in the spread of Spanish to now bilingual areas due to literacy. These data have then been compared to those from personal letters written by Spanish monolinguals. I have performed descriptive and inferential statistical analyses, using IBM SPSS Statistics 22.0, and have also analysed the data qualitatively. Results show that variation is due to internal and external factors, caused by linguistic convergence mechanisms, similar to the processes of contact-induced grammatical replication.
Abstract
Null objects, female leísmo, i.e., the use of the dative le/s used as direct object pronouns for female referents, and the OV pattern with new information are frequent in spoken Basque Spanish. These (morpho)syntactic phenomena are absent (or extremely limited) in non-contact Spanish varieties and have their equivalent in Basque. Therefore, these structures are said to have been induced by the long-standing contact between Basque and Spanish. I have explored these phenomena in a corpus of letters written by Basque- Spanish bilinguals during the 18th and 19th century, an important moment in the spread of Spanish to now bilingual areas due to literacy. These data have then been compared to those from personal letters written by Spanish monolinguals. I have performed descriptive and inferential statistical analyses, using IBM SPSS Statistics 22.0, and have also analysed the data qualitatively. Results show that variation is due to internal and external factors, caused by linguistic convergence mechanisms, similar to the processes of contact-induced grammatical replication.
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- Convergence and divergence in Ibero-Romance across contact situations and beyond 1
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Part 1: Convergence and divergence in contact situations in the Iberian Peninsula
- Gender loss in accusative clitics in Basque Spanish 25
- Exploring historical linguistic convergence between Basque and Spanish 55
- Structural convergence of two Ibero-Romance varieties 87
- Language contact on the Spanish- Portuguese border 115
- Portuguese as a contact language in Galicia 147
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Part 2: Convergence and divergence across Ibero-Romance varieties outside Europe
- Linguistic perceptions on Spanglish discourse settings 179
- Building locations from directional prepositions 209
- Discourse structure, constructions and regional variation 245
- Impersonal se constructions in the Portuguese of East Timor 281
- Index 307
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- Convergence and divergence in Ibero-Romance across contact situations and beyond 1
-
Part 1: Convergence and divergence in contact situations in the Iberian Peninsula
- Gender loss in accusative clitics in Basque Spanish 25
- Exploring historical linguistic convergence between Basque and Spanish 55
- Structural convergence of two Ibero-Romance varieties 87
- Language contact on the Spanish- Portuguese border 115
- Portuguese as a contact language in Galicia 147
-
Part 2: Convergence and divergence across Ibero-Romance varieties outside Europe
- Linguistic perceptions on Spanglish discourse settings 179
- Building locations from directional prepositions 209
- Discourse structure, constructions and regional variation 245
- Impersonal se constructions in the Portuguese of East Timor 281
- Index 307
