Clitic Doubling in Majorcan Spanish and Catalan

11 pages•Published: February 23, 2017

Amelia Jiménez, Pedro Guijarro-Fuentes and Acrisio Pires

Abstract

In this study, we focus on clitic doubling with a human or animate referent. We attempt to determine whether or not bilingual Catalan-Spanish speakers (from Mallorca, Spain) employ the corresponding preposition (so-called personal a) in this type of clitic doubling structure in Spanish and in Catalan. In addition, we consider the use of third-person [± human] pronominal, non-reflexive clitics, both for direct and indirect object.
We present results from a study of forty bilingual speakers from Mallorca. The data we analyzed came from spontaneous oral production data from all the participants in the study. Each participant was recorded twice, once in Spanish and once in the Majorcan Catalan variety. Each recording consisted of interviews with the researcher involving a variety of topics and lasted approximately 10 to 15 minutes.
The preliminary results indicate that in Majorcan Spanish there are no substantial differences compared to Peninsular Spanish regarding the use of third person, non-reflexive clitics. Regarding the Majorcan Catalan uses, the results are also not so different in comparison to Peninsular Catalan, but we see a substantial increase in the rate of distinct uses of the neutral clitic ho. However, when third-person clitics are used in a clitic doubling structure in Spanish there is a difference between L1 speakers of Catalan and L1 speakers of Spanish. This is because the former tend to omit the preposition in the corresponding DP.

Keyphrases: bilingualism, catalan, clitics, language contact, mallorca, spanish

In: Chelo Vargas-Sierra (editor). Professional and Academic Discourse: an Interdisciplinary Perspective, vol 2, pages 148-158.

Links:	https://easychair.org/publications/paper/wP
	https://doi.org/10.29007/zdfp

BibTeX entry

@inproceedings{AESLA2016:Clitic_Doubling_Majorcan_Spanish,
  author    = {Amelia Jiménez and Pedro Guijarro-Fuentes and Acrisio Pires},
  title     = {Clitic Doubling in Majorcan Spanish and Catalan},
  booktitle = {Professional and Academic Discourse: an Interdisciplinary Perspective},
  editor    = {Chelo Vargas-Sierra},
  series    = {EPiC Series in Language and Linguistics},
  volume    = {2},
  publisher = {EasyChair},
  bibsource = {EasyChair, https://easychair.org},
  issn      = {2398-5283},
  url       = {/publications/paper/wP},
  doi       = {10.29007/zdfp},
  pages     = {148-158},
  year      = {2017}}

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