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Variable Object Clitic Placement: Evidence from European and Brazilian Portuguese

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Variable Object Clitic Placement: Evidence from European and Brazilian Portuguese Variable Object Clitic Placement: Evidence from European and Brazilian Portuguese Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Hannah Beth Washington Graduate Program in Spanish and Portuguese The Ohio State University 2015 Dissertation Committee: Professor Scott A. Schwenter, Advisor Professor Janice M. Aski Professor Terrell A. Morgan Copyright by Hannah Beth Washington 2015 ABSTRACT Variation in object clitic placement in Ibero-Romance has been of great interest to researchers working on Spanish and Portuguese (cf. Davies 1995, Davies 1997, Andrade 2010a, Andrade 2010b, Andrade 2010c, Schwenter & Torres Cacoullos 2010, Schwenter & Torres Cacoullos 2014a, Barnes, González López & Schwenter 2014, inter alia). Among these, European Portuguese (EP) alone displays generalized postverbal pronominal object clitic placement, with preverbal placement licensed in the presence of proclisis triggers. These triggers include negation, subordinating conjunctions, quantifiers, WH operators, and certain adverbs (Barrie 2000, Cunha & Cintra 2002, Perini 2002, inter alia). However, these normatively proclisis environments are loci of considerable variation in clitic placement, as seen below in (1) and (2). (1) Não o podia ter esquecido. [UHPVC-Simões] She couldn’t have forgotten him. (2) Não podia deixá-lo assim, morto e esquecido de todos. [ANT-Carvalho] She couldn’t leave him like that, dead and forgotten by everyone. Brazilian Portuguese (BP), on the other hand, is a predominantly proclitic variety with variation largely related to the form of the object clitic (Simões 2006), possibly influenced by the same proclisis triggers affecting EP (cf. Cunha & Cintra 2002, Perini ii 2002). The present study builds on prior work to determine the factors governing the variation in placement of object clitics in the presence of three trigger words that reflect different categories of phonologically strong function words (cf. Vigário & Frota 1998)— que ‘that’, não ‘no; sentential negation’, and talvez ‘perhaps’—with a focus on non- normative enclisis, as seen in example (2). Using data collected from written and oral sources found in the Corpus do Português (Davies & Ferreira 2006-), I examine 2554 tokens from EP and 810 from BP following one of the three trigger words using mixed effects regression. The results suggest that complex multi-verb predicates positively correlate with non-normative clitic placement in EP, while in BP clitic placement before the auxiliary verb is preferred when the object is human. Oral modes of communication also show the most non-normative enclisis in EP, while source document year is a key factor affecting clitic placement in BP. Furthermore, structural priming affects the selection of enclitics in BP and anaphoric direct object enclitics in EP, with the proclisis triggers displaying very little effect on BP clitic placement. In EP, clitic placement in complex predicates is also strongly correlated to frequency: highly frequent governing verbs result in normative proclisis and less frequent finite forms result in non-normative enclisis. Unlike in Spanish, the effect of verbal frequency in EP—and to a lesser extent BP—points toward analogical change resulting in the generalized placement found in the language at large. In essence, the findings of this dissertation suggest that EP, BP, and Spanish are all moving toward stabilization of clitic placement, but in Portuguese the mechanism causing the change is analogy, while in Spanish it is grammaticalization. Furthermore, unlike Spanish varieties, constructional iii effects rather than discourse pragmatic factors strongly influence clitic placement patterns in Portuguese. iv DEDICATION To L, L (S), M, and K – for all your support and companionship. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I have received a great amount of support from others while working on this project. First and foremost, I would like to extend my gratitude to my advisor, Dr. Scott Schwenter, whose work in variationist sociolinguistics inspired me early in my graduate studies. I am grateful for his encouragement and inspiration throughout my graduate career, which led to my interest in this topic. Our weekly meetings, during which I could toss around ideas and receive his guidance, insight, and feedback throughout the data analysis and writing process, were especially helpful. I owe much of my academic formation and scholarship to his support, and for that I am eternally grateful. I would also like to thank Drs. Terrell Morgan and Janice Aski, both of whom asked important questions early on as I was planning this study. Without their prompting to consider the theoretical concerns and the connections to other Romance varieties, as well as their detailed feedback at various points in this process, this project would not have been as fruitful. My colleagues and peers in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese have also been invaluable to my development and accomplishments as a scholar. I extend my thanks first to Mary Beaton, who has been a wonderful research partner since very early in our graduate careers. Our domestic and international travels together for data collection and conference presentations, as well as our collaborations for publications, vi have been very important in my development as a traveler, presenter, scholar, and writer. Christy García has been a great source of positivity and support throughout my graduate career, always willing to help in any way she could. Becca Mason has always had some humor to share with me and has celebrated each step of my progress, however small. I am also appreciative of the support of my colleagues around Hagerty Hall, especially Sonia Barnes, Meghan Dabkowski, Mary Johnson, Jenny Barajas, Whitney Chappell, and Justin Peake, who have helped with me resolve issues in R, given me feedback on projects, and offered advice throughout my time at Ohio State. Finally, I would like to thank my family for their encouragement through the years. My parents, who have always been my biggest supporters in academic pursuits, have given me the best educational opportunities possible and have helped me navigate the system when I was unable to do so alone. My brother, Jonathan, who as a fellow linguist shares my passion for the field, has joined me in interesting late-night conversations about this dissertation and other linguistic topics. And last but not least, I owe enormous gratitude to Lizzie Gordon, who has been my rock at every step of my graduate education and who has always shown unwavering belief in me. vii VITA 2008................................................................B.A. Linguistics, Middlebury College 2011................................................................M.A. Hispanic Linguistics, The Ohio State University Publications Washington, Hannah B. Forthcoming. The effects of lexical frequency on object clitic placement in European Portuguese. To appear in Estudos Linguísticos/Linguistic Studies. Washington, Hannah B., and Mary Elizabeth Beaton. Forthcoming. Pragmatics and Indexicality: The case of favelado. To appear in Estudos Linguísticos/Linguistic Studies. Beaton, Mary Elizabeth, and Hannah B. Washington. 2014. Slurs and the Indexical Field: The pejoration and reclaiming of favelado ‘slum-dweller’. Language Sciences. DOI: 10.1016/j.langsci.2014.06.021. Fields of Study Major Field: Spanish and Portuguese viii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT'................................................................................................................................................'II! DEDICATION'............................................................................................................................................'V! ACKNOWLEDGMENTS'.........................................................................................................................'VI! VITA'.......................................................................................................................................................'VIII! TABLE'OF'CONTENTS'..........................................................................................................................'IX! LIST'OF'TABLES'...................................................................................................................................'XII! LIST'OF'FIGURES'..................................................................................................................................'XV! CHAPTER'1.'INTRODUCTION'.............................................................................................................'1! 1.1!DESCRIPTION!OF!THE!PHENOMENON!.............................................................................................................!1! 1.2!FOCUS!OF!THE!STUDY!........................................................................................................................................!2! 1.3!RESEARCH!QUESTIONS!......................................................................................................................................!5! CHAPTER'2.'CLITICS,'OBJECTS,'AND'VARIATION'........................................................................'9! 2.1!CLITICS!IN!ROMANCE!LANGUAGES!...............................................................................................................!10! 2.1.1$Affix$or$independent$syntactic$form?$.............................................................................................$11!
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