Research project Pathways of development around the Spanish-speaking world
This project investigates cross-varietal diachronic variation and change in 19th-21st century Spanish morpho-syntax.
All languages change over time and across space, and the same goes for the dialects of a language. Importantly, varieties of a language may not only undergo change that are dialect-specific, but also changes that are common to multiple dialects of a language. This project aims to establish if dialects that undergo a common instance of change tend to converge or diverge in how linguistic change diffuses throughout the grammar, as well as the mechanisms that condition said cross-dialectal convergence or divergence. The project focuses on Latin American and European Spanish from the 19th century onwards in order to identify the factors that help explain the emergence and diffusion of different phenomena of linguistic change and how these evolve in a transatlantic context.
Project description
How consistent are pathways of linguistic change? That is, when the same instance of language variation and change takes place in multiple varieties of a language spoken across the globe, do these varieties coincide in terms of the factors that determine the progression of linguistic change in each? This project seeks to shed light upon this unresolved question through a large-scale study that traces how historical grammatical change unfolds in different varieties of Spanish. In doing so, the project proposes an entirely original approach to the study of language variation and change, which aims at determining to what extent variation and change evolve along similar developmental trajectories in different varieties of a language, and the possible reasons for (not) doing so.
Within usage-based theories of language, it is widely acknowledged that the effects of linguistic change diffuse gradually rather than abruptly. Importantly, before a change is completed, different variants may compete to convey the same meaning. During such states of variation, speakers choose between two variants on the basis of abstract rules that regulate in what contexts one variant is more aptly used as opposed to its competitor. Generally, over the course of decades or centuries, different intralinguistic, social and cognitive mechanisms steer the variation in one direction or the other so that one variant eventually “prevails” over the other: thus, a linguistic change is completed.
These processes of variation and subsequent change constitute the main focus of variationist studies. The present project combines diachronic variationist approaches (which are typically single-variety focused) with the (usually synchronic) comparative sociolinguistic approach in order to map out how change unfolds in real time across varieties of a language. In doing this, the project aims at addressing two central research questions:
- Do grammatical variation and change in different varieties of a language tend to evolve along the same historical trajectory of change cross-varietally?
- What are the possible reasons for which different varieties of a language converge or diverge in their historical trajectories of change?
In order to bridge this gap in knowledge, the project draws on quantitative variationist corpus-based methods and investigates the diachronic development undergone by three phenomena of grammatical variation around the Spanish-speaking world. The temporal scope is set to focus on the era following Latin America’s independence from Spain (approximately mid-19th century and onwards), a critical period for processes of variation and change in Spanish since it constitutes the starting point from which American varieties of Spanish were autonomously developed from European Spanish. The selected phenomena are all variable under the studied timespan in large portions of both Latin America and Spain. These phenomena are
- the grammaticalization of tonic possessive pronouns as person-referential complements in adverbial phrases (e.g. delante de mí / mío ‘in front of me’)
- variation in the use of the definite article in prepositional relative phrases (e.g. la casa en [la] que nací ‘the house in which I was born’)
- indicative ~ subjunctive mood alternation (e.g. dudo que venga / viene ‘I doubt that [s]he will come’).
This cross-varietal diachronic project has widespread implications for usage-based theories of both historical linguistics and variationist sociolinguistics. Most importantly, its original approach provides a systematic and holistic examination of how grammar change proceeds in different varieties of a language. This, in turn, has implications for linguistic theory more generally, as it contributes to identifying which mechanisms are ultimately responsible for grammar change.
Project members
Project managers
Matti Marttinen Larsson
postdoc
