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1.Introduction
This article evaluates variation in the gender-agreement system of AfroBolivian Spanish, an Afro-Hispanic vernacular developed from what
was once a bozal language spoken in Los Yungas, Department of La Paz,
Bolivia. We present data showing evidence of cross-generational change,
consisting of the systematic substitution of stigmatized basilectal AfroBolivian features with more prestigious Bolivian Spanish ones. One of the
outcomes of this situation is the transition from one gender-agreement
system to another one. The purpose of this work is to shed light on the
Folia Linguistica 45/2 (2011), 465488.
issn 01654004, e-issn 16147308 Mouton de Gruyter Societas Linguistica Europaea
doi10.1515/flin.2011.017
For the purpose of this article, only tokens involving gender agreement across
the DP (a, c) are analyzed, leaving the study of number marking (b, e) and
bare nouns (d) for further research (Delicado-Cantero & Sessarego 2010).
3.Methodology
Formal syntactic theories have traditionally been built on partly-idealized
standard languages, on the basis of well-formedness judgements from a
limited set of informants. This methodology produced an impressive
amount of data, generalizations and insights, mostly because it abstracted
away from certain kinds of empirical complexities (Barbiers 2009: 1608).
Yet, for these same reasons, such a model has often been criticized by sociolinguists, who instead base their observations on bigger corpora of naturalistic production data, and have developed several techniques to study the
real vernacular, namely, the real language spoken by people when paying
no metalinguistic attention to their speech (Labov 1972).
Recent works on microvariation attempt to combine these previously
contrasting approaches to compare a speakers intuitions with real production data, with the goal of developing more fine-grained, empiricallytestable generalizations (Cornips & Poletto 2005). In collecting data for
microparametric analysis, it is therefore crucial to gather both grammaticality judgments as well as naturalistic data. For this reason, the informants who participated in the study were first interviewed and then asked to
answer grammaticality judgments from an oral questionnaire.
Atotal of 13 recorded interviews, lasting an hour or more each, were
conducted during July 2008 with Afro-Bolivian speakers residing in the
communities of Tocaa, Mururata and Chijchipa, North Yungas. The
informants were native speakers of the dialect who did not speak any other
language spoken in Bolivia, such as Quechua or Aymara. The interviews
were conducted by letting the informant talk about any topic of their liking
and asking them follow-up questions, in line with the principle of Tangential Shift (Labov 1984: 37).1 The goal was reducing the Observers Paradox
(Labov 1972) as much as possible. Only later, usually after one or two days
from the time of the interview, the same informant was asked for grammaticality judgments. This was done in order to not disrupt the outcome
of the interview by telling the speaker the nature of the phenomena under
analysis in advance.
Responses on acceptability-judgment tasks rely at least in part on explicit, prescriptive notions held by the speakers (Cornips & Poletto 2005).
One way of diminishing this effect, which proved successful according to
the experimental methods described in Labov (1984), is to ask for grammaticality judgments in an indirect way. Thus, to discover whether or not a
variable was present in the community, not only the direct intuitions were
elicited: Do you judge X a grammatical/better sentence than Y?; Can you
say X?; also indirect questions were asked: Is variant X present in this
community?; Do you know anybody who can say X?
1
According to the Principle of Tangential Shift, interviews may be arranged into a network
of topics which do not need to be followed according to a prescribed sequence. The conversation between the interviewer and the informant should start with the least personal
questions and progress, step by step, toward more intimate topics. The shift between topics
should be as smooth as possible. It should be based on follow-up questions to what has just
been said by the informant.
The majority of the informants (7/13) used agreement on plural and singular definite articles, demonstratives, pre-nominal adjectives, and also on
weak quantifiers2 (8):
(8) much-a/un-a comida delicios-o
much/a-F.SG food-F.SG delicious-M.SG
much/a delicious food
The last group (5/13) claimed to use gender agreement for all the elements,
including strong quantifiers and post-nominal adjectives (9):
(9) tod-a la
comida delicios-a
all-F.SG the.F.SG food.F.SG delicious-F.SG
all that delicious food
This would intuitively lead us to argue in favor of four different grammars; however, a closer look at the empirical data from the oral interviews
complicates the picture. In fact, it was common for somebody to claim
to speak a certain grammar but use patterns belonging to another. Sometimes, speakers would freely alternate between forms within the same sen2
Since Milsarks dissertation (1974), natural-language quantifiers have been classified into
two different groups, called weak and strong quantifiers. Weak quantifiers (some, many,
etc.) can occur in existential (there) sentences. On the other hand, strong quantifiers (all,
most, etc.) cannot. Milsark suggests that this phenomenon would be due to the fact that
strong quantifiers refer to subsets of previously established sets, while weak quantifiers
establish such sets and for this reason can occur in existential constructions.
e lement. He considers data from several speakers of different ages and levels of education presenting variable gender-agreement configurations, and
he notices that no case of post-nominal gender concord is found unless
pre-nominal elements agree, as shown in (11):
(11) a. un-a curva
anch-a
a-F.SG curve.F.SG large-F.SG
b. un-a curva
anch-o
a-F.SG curve.F.SG large-M.SG
c. un
curva
anch-o
a.M.SG curve.F.SG large-M.SG
d. *un
curva
anch-a
a.M.SG curve.F.SG large-F.SG
alarge curve
Cases like these seem to violate the pre-nominal to post-nominal percolation order, unless we postulate that strong quantifiers are elements external to the DP, and then we argue independently in favor of a different
mechanism for the checking of the gender feature in languages where they
agree in gender and number with N, like Standard Spanish. Additionally,
the feature-percolation account of gender agreement runs into problems
when compared with data from other Romance varieties in which postnominal adjectives may agree with N and disagree with D (cf. Pomino &
Stark 2009 for Fassano Ladin). Alternatively, one might propose a system
with one or more agreement projections inside DP and with the relevant
displacement operations applied to agreeing elements so that they enter
If a goal is valued for F, replacing the token-value of the probe with the
value of the goal results in an instance of valued F substituting for the specification of the unvalued probe. Avalued F may now serve as the goal for
some ulterior operation of Agree triggered by an unvalued, higher instance
of F serving as a new probe. The result is that a single feature F will be
shared by several positions, and the process could iterate further.
If we postulate that an uninterpretable feature such as gender may be present in certain nominal elements but absent in others, and that variation is
the result of lexical differences in the feature specification of certain items,
it follows that contrasts in overt syntax will be the result of differences in
the computation of varying specifications. We propose an account of the
different gender-agreement configurations across DP strings in ABS that
can be summarized in the following fashion:
(15) a. [DP una [NP curva
uG[fem]....... iG[fem]...........
b. [DP una [NP curva
uG[fem]....... iG[fem]...........
c. [DP un [NP curva
no-G[]......... iG[fem]...........
d. [DP a
[NP curve
alarge curve
ancha]
uG[fem]
ancho]
no-G[]
ancho]
no-G[]
large]
Therefore, this approach can account for all the gender-agreement configurations encountered in the ABS Determiner Phrase by postulating the
presence/absence of unvalued gender features on the different DP components. Having clarified this point, we can now proceed to solve a different empirical issue, namely why no instances of post-nominal gender
concord can be found on adjectives unless pre-nominal articles agree (11),
in both Lipskis (2006c) and our corpus.
ABS features are being substituted by more prestigious HBS ones. One
result of this transition is the introduction of a wider range of genderagreement configurations in a language which originally made little use
of it. In minimalist terms, this phenomenon can be seen as the emergence
and development of unvalued features on elements which previously were
not specified for them.
The non-occurrence of strings like (16) might indicate that, cross-generationally, indefinite articles developed an unvalued gender-feature specification before post-nominal adjectives. Therefore, speakers mastering
post-nominal agreement would also present concord on indefinite articles.
(16)
Ahypothesis that emerges from this data is that unvalued gender features
developed gradually in ABS: first on certain elements (e.g. articles) and
only later on others (e.g. strong quantifiers, adjectives). Although this is the
general tendency, different linguistic and social factors may affect the selection of an item or other, and therefore the overt syntax result. Such variation can probably be modeled in sociolinguistic terms. Nevertheless, the
reduced number of participants in our survey does not allow us to conduct
a complete sociolinguistic analysis here. We will leave this study for further
research. In the present article we will only comment on cross-generational
differences and on the probability of nominal gender agreement associated
with different lexical and functional categories.
Findings from grammaticality judgments, oral questionnaires and
indirect questions led to the identification of four different patterns of
agreement (see 610). However, the comparison of such results with the
data recorded by means of sociolinguistic interviews revealed a considerable amount of variability between the grammatical intuitions ideally
assumed or accepted by the speakers and the patterns attested in the actual
survey, thus indicating that agreement paradigms may be not completely
stable in the grammar of these informants. For these reasons, the model
proposed by Adger & Smith (2005) to account for unvalued uninterpreable features seems ideal to capture the nature of the phenomena found
in ABS. The nature of the element occurring with the nominal head (e.g.
articles, adjectives, strong/weak quantifiers, etc.), has a clear effect on the
output; however, not only internal factors condition the agreement operation, there are also external ones playing a crucial role. Acloser look at the
interview transcripts revealed that gender mismatches on adjectives and
determiners between ABS and Standard HBS are common, with the masculine gender prevailing over the feminine one. We claim that these differences are due to two separate factors: (a) Certain words listed in the HBS
lexicon as feminine are listed in the ABS one as masculine and vice versa;
(b) The valuation process of agreement in ABS departs from the standard
Spanish one in that certain ABS elements lack the unvalued features present in their Spanish counterparts.
While grammaticality judgments were discordant for certain syntactic
categories among informants, every participant agreed on the use of el and
la as respectively the masculine singular definite article and the feminine
singular definite one. Lipski (2009) reports no instances in ABS where el is
used with nouns that are grammatically feminine in HBS, while he comments on some cases in which la is used with nouns that are grammatically
masculine in HBS. Compare examples in (17) with their Spanish counterparts: el pulmn the chest, el patio the doorway.
(17) a. Mi quit-a mi
gorro
pa pon- aqu la
pulmn.
to.me take-PRS my.SG hat.M.SG to put-INF here the.F.SG chest.F.SG
He takes off my hat to put it here over my chest.
b. Yo lleg-aba la
patio.
I arrive-PST the.F.SG doorway.F.SG
Iarrived to the doorway.
On the other hand, our corpus includes several cases indicating that agreement mismatches involving definite articles can be found under both conditions, thus suggesting that a differential lexical specification exists and is
bidirectional. Compare the ABS examples in (18) with their Spanish counterparts: la maxima autoridad the top authority, la serpiente the snake; el
problema the problem, el sistema the system.
(18) a. l dic-e que es el
mxim-o
autoridad.
he say-PRS that is the.M.SG maximum-M.SG authority.F.SG
He says he is the top authority.
Factor
weight
%Lack
agreement
%data
Post-Nom. Adj.
Strong Q.
Pre-Nom. Adj.
Indef. Art.
Weak Q
Dem
Def. Art.
.95
.66
.64
.62
.60
.24
.23
Range
72
50
35
14
12
10
3
2
272
275
220
280
102
84
1371
19
11
19
11
4
3
53
Factor weight
%Lack agreement
%data
80+
5180
2150
.67
.56
.35
Range
32
21
11
1
651
927
1026
25
36
39
empirical support for a structural analysis, they also provide more evidence
for microvariation between closely related grammatical systems exhibiting
orderly heterogenity which can, in turn, be correlated with external variables (Cornips & Corrigan 2005: 7). While the reduced number of informants does not allow a complete sociolinguistic analysis, it is worth pointing out that the age factor significantly affects variation in this case (see
Table 2).
Generation is, in fact, a significant factor group (Range 32), with the
oldest group (80+) strongly favoring disagreement (Factor Weight .67) and
the 2150 group disfavoring it (Factor Weight .35). These data reflect the
presence of a cross-generational change, pushing ABS in the direction of
HBS. Young generations did not experience the segregation imposed by
the hacienda system and had more chances to have contact with the Spanish variant spoken outside the community. These conditioning elements,
in addition to the stigmatization attached to the Afro-Hispanic vernacular,
are pushing the younger members of the community to quickly replace the
basilectal features with more prestigious HBS ones.3
3
Processes of this kind have been labeled as cases of decreolization in the literature
(DeCamp 1971; Bickerton 1973; Rickford 1987; Winford 1997). The notion of decreolization
consists of a series of linguistic approximations ranging from the creole to the superstrate
language. This term, therefore, seems to efficiently describe the gradual shift in genderagreement patterns found in ABS. Nevertheless, we would like to point out that the term
decreolization could be a bit misleading in that it might lead people to wrongly assume
that ABS was once a radical creole, a language derived from an earlier pidgin stage (Lipski
2009: 186). On the other hand, in line with the sociohistorical evidence provided by Sessarego (2010a, b), we would like to claim that ABS did not evolve from a pidgin, as it was
probably a language which highly resembled the superstrate from its inception. Obviously,
during the last decades especially after 1952 ABS has approximated standard Spanish
even more. This, however, does not imply that before such date ABS was radically different.
uG[fem]
WEAK Q
81%(95/117)
uG[fem]
PRE-NOM ADJ
74%(42/57)
iG[fem]
no-G[ ]
NOUN
POST-NOM ADJ
21%(21/98)
Figure 1. Gender agreement patterns for the 80+ generation according to
grammatical category (percentages and raw numbers)
uG[fem]
WEAK Q
89%(118/143)
uG[fem]
PRE-NOM ADJ
85%(70/82)
iG[fem]
no-G[ ]
NOUN
POST-NOM ADJ
39%(37/95)
Figure 2. Gender agreement patterns for the 5180 generation according to
grammatical category (percentages and raw numbers)
This hierarchy, in addition to the fact that all singular definite articles agree
uG[fem]
WEAK Q
96%(139/144)
uG[fem]
PRE-NOM ADJ
94%(78/83)
iG[fem]
no-G[ ]
NOUN
POST-NOM ADJ
78%(85/109)
Figure 3. Gender agreement patterns for the 2150 generation according to
grammatical category (percentages and raw numbers)
with the gender of the noun, might indicate that in a previous phase gender agreement was limited to singular definite articles, and it gradually
extended to the rest of the categories.
Interestingly, these findings are in line with SLA research on the acquisition of gender agreement in DP. In fact, Hawkins (1998) showed that
English students speaking French as a second language presented more
agreement on definite articles than on indefinite ones, and also more agreement on determiners than on adjectives; similar findings have also been
reported for English speakers of Spanish by Bruhn de Garavito & White
(2000), and more recently by Franceschina (2005) who tested advanced
speakers of Spanish coming from a variety of backgrounds (Italian, Portuguese, English, Arabic, German and French). All these studies on gender
agreement also share the common view that masculine is the default value,
as it appears significantly more on determiners, and on adjectives in cases
of agreement mismatches. These data indicate that language evolution follows certain hierarchical steps, as proposed by Pienemanns (1998) Pro-
9.Conclusions
This study offers a quantitative approach to variable gender agreement
within the DP in Afro-Bolivian Spanish. Our findings and proposal try
to bridge the gap between the study of variation and general theories
about syntactic structure. Variation is a component of human languages,
and our results confirm that it should be taken into account when analyzing structural properties in specific syntactic domains, such as agreement in the DP. Our goal is to characterize the ingredients of variation
in a structurally systematic fashion, as computationally determined by
differences in the specification of lexical items and by restrictions on syntactic operations, more specifically, as a locality condition on agreement.
Accounts of this sort are now possible after recent developments in the
minimalist (and related) frameworks, which are trying to account for
alternation and variation phenomena affecting syntactic elements (Adger
& Smith 2005).
Our proposal also has important sociolinguistic consequences. The
underlying reasons pushing Afro-Bolivian in the direction of a more prestigious Spanish variety are essentially the stigmatization of the Afro-Hispanic vernacular and the increasing contact with a more prestigious Spanish dialect. Contact with Bolivian Spanish increased substantially after
1952, the year of the Bolivian Land Reform, which freed Afro-Bolivians
from slavery and introduced education in the black communities. These
changes, which have affected the socio-economic scenario of black Bolivia
during the last six decades, are reflected in the speech of the members of its
community. This scenario would explain why generation was proven to be
a significant factor group affecting the studied variation.
Moreover, the different factor weights displayed within the factor group
grammatical category suggest that different grammatical elements have
different probabilities of agreeing with the gender feature of N. This fact,
in addition to the constant ranking showed cross-generationally and to the
100 percent agreement for singular definite articles, might indicate that in
a previous stage of development agreement was limited to these elements,
and then it gradually spread to other categories. The nature of this transition is shown to be gradual, thus containing much alternation between
forms.
From a theoretical perspective, this work sheds some light on the linguistic constraints regulating gender agreement in an Afro-Hispanic vernacular approximating to a more prestigious Spanish dialect. The process
is driven by social factors through a path that is highly constrained by syntactic restrictions and configurations (cf. also Cornips & Corrigan 2005).
Abbreviations
ABS
Afro-Bolivian Spanish
D Determiner
DEF ART Definite article
DEM Demonstrative
DP
Determiner Phrase
F Feminine
G
Gender feature
HBS
Highland BolivianSpanish
HPSG Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar
i Interpretable
INF Infinitive
M Masculine
N Noun
NP
Noun Phrase
PST Past
PL plural
POST-NOM ADJ Post-nominal adjectives
PRE-NOM ADJ Pre-nominal adjectives
PRS Present
PST Past
REFL Reflexive
SG Singular
SLA
Second langage acquisition
STRONG Q Strong quantifier
u Uninterpretable
Val Value
WEAK Q Weak quantifier
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