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Grammatical change in borderlands Spanish: A variationist analysis of copula variation and progressive expansion in a South Texas bilingual enclave community

  • Phillip M. Carter EMAIL logo and Tonya E. Wolford
Published/Copyright: May 1, 2018

Abstract

This study investigates variation in the grammatical system of Spanish in the speech of three generations of Mexican Americans living in a community in South Texas, United States, characterized by high levels of bilingualism and long-term, sustained contact between languages. Two variables are studied using quantitative methods: (1) the extension of the copula verb estar into domains traditionally confined to ser and (2) the expansion of progressive forms at the expense of the simple present. The data reported here suggest changes-in-progress that appear to be accelerated by the linguistic and sociocultural conditions of the community including, especially, lack of access to formal education in Spanish. The sociolinguistic patterning for these variables is compared to patterning for the same variables reported in the literature in both monolingual communities in Spain and Latin America and bilingual communities in the United States.

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Andrew Lynch for his feedback on the manuscript, to Greg Guy for comments provided on a version of this project presented at an NYU Linguistics colloquium, and to Tim Face for his editorial guidance. We are also indebted to the three anonymous reviewers, who provided invaluable feedback on the manuscript. Any errors herein are our own.

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Published Online: 2018-05-01
Published in Print: 2018-04-25

© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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