On the hypothesis of permeable adult syntactic systems

Carmen Lizardi-Rivera

Sun. 9-10:40 A

The claim that adults retain the phonetic/phonological systems from youth (Labov, 1981; Guy et al., 1986) is strongly supported by the gradient age distributions repeatedly found in the literature on sound change. On the other hand, as far as lexical change is concerned, it seems intuitively clear that adult systems do show permeability. Although not explicitly based on the trends observed for lexical change, Labov (1981) has suggested a parallel analysis for syntactic change. Interpreting Sankoff and Laberge's (1974) findings on Tok Pisin, where flat age distributions obtained for a syntactic variable (but not for the morphophonemic alternations assessed), Labov observed the following: if the age factor is not an indicator of syntactic change, that could explain why change in progress is seldom reported in the literature.

Results from several studies point to the idea that the internalization of syntactic change by adults is a far more complex issue than in the case of sound change. In fact, Silva-Corvalan (1989) has observed that some syntactic variables (e.g. those with strong discourse-pragmatic correlates) show a lesser manifestation of social correlates than others, thus suggesting that further distinctions need to be made within the area of syntactic variation.

This paper reviews studies from French (Roy, 1981; Ashby, 1988; Coveney, 1990), Spanish (Silva-Corvalan, 1977, 1981; Morales (1988), and Brazilian Portuguese (Naro, 1981) in an attempt to assess both Labov's and Silva-Corvalan's ideas. In addition, it presents the results of a quantitative and qualitative analysis of a corpus of wh-questions from spoken Puerto Rican Spanish, where the alternation between postverbal, preverbal, and null subjects was studied.

The Caribbean dialects, unlike general Spanish, allow preverbal subjects when the wh-fronting involves arguments. According to Navarro (1948) only pronominals were found preverbally in the 1930's (see 1); in the present study, however, complex nominal NP's were attested (see 2):

(1) [[questiondown]]Qué tú dices? / 'What are you saying?'

(2) [[questiondown]]Qué ese hombre le ha quitado a eso? / 'What has that man taken away from there?'

The main finding within this corpus, despite clear quantitative evidence for age grading, was the discovery of substantial qualitative proof that both older men and women have incorporated the change in its most advanced manifestations (see 2). Crucially, this supports the notion of permeability, which would point to some parallelism between syntactic and lexical change in terms of their internalization by adults.

The second main finding is evidence for Silva-Corvalan's claim about the predominant role of discourse in some cases of syntactic variation. The analysis of a separate corpus of wh-questions embedded in the es que construction (see 3) revealed a strong dependence on discourse-pragmatic factors and a virtual absence of social as well as syntactic correlates.

(3) [[questiondown]]Qué es lo que tú dices? / 'What is it that you're saying?'