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A Cognitive Construction Grammar approach to the pluralization of presentational haber in Puerto Rican Spanish

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 June 2014

Jeroen Claes
Jeroen Claes*
Affiliation:
University of Antwerp
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Abstract

In this paper, I present an analysis of the pluralization of haber ‘there is/are’ in Puerto Rican Spanish (e.g., habían fiestas ‘there were parties’) as an ongoing language change from below in which the impersonal argument-structure construction (<AdvPhaberObj>) is being replaced by a personal variant (<AdvPhaberSubj>). Speakers pluralize presentational haber in about 41% of the cases, and linguistic conditioning factors are ‘typical action chain-position of the noun's referent,’ polarity of the clause, verb tense, comprehension-to-production priming, and production-to-production priming. I argue that the effect of these independent variables can be traced back to three cognitive factors: the preference for unmarked coding, statistical preemption, and structural priming. Social distributions can also be modeled in constructionist frameworks, with results for social class, formality, and gender advocating in favor of considering this variation as an ongoing change from below, which allows speakers to position themselves in terms of gender and social class.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , July 2014 , pp. 219 - 246
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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