Null objects in Paraguayan Spanish and Guarani

Abstract

Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions:

What are the reason(s) for writing the paper. What are the aims and objectives of the research? What are the research questions the research aims to address? The aim of this study is to compare and contrast null objects in Paraguayan Spanish and Paraguayan Guarani to revisit the hypothesis that the high rate of null objects in Paraguayan Spanish is due to contact with Guarani. The study thus aims to address the following questions: How do Paraguayan Spanish null objects compare to null objects in Guarani in spontaneous speech? Do people who code-switch between Spanish and Guarani have a higher rate of null object in their Spanish?

Design/Methodology/Approach:

How are the objectives achieved? What is the scope of the research? What are the main method(s) used for the research? What is the methodological approach to the topic? A usage-based approach to language guides the present study. Proposed linguistic patterns for Spanish and for Guarani emerge from the thorough exploration of authentic naturalistic speech.

Data and Analysis:

What is the database for the research, including sample size? How are the data analyzed? A total of 6,972 transitive sentences were extracted from CEGPA (Corpus del Español y Guaraní Paraguayos de Asunción), a database of 14 speakers of Paraguayan Spanish (25,374 intonation units). The sentences were coded by language, object type, object animacy, verb lexemes, and social factors.

Findings/Conclusions:

What are the key findings of the research? What conclusions can be drawn from the research? Null object patterns in Paraguayan Spanish are almost identical to those in Guarani, a language without object pronouns for inanimate objects. In Spanish, speakers who code-switch between Guarani and Spanish never used the direct object clitic to refer to an inanimate object; they used null instantiation instead. Non-code-switchers preferred null objects over clitics 98% of the time. Animate null objects were rare across languages and speakers.

Originality:

What is new or different in the paper in terms of theory, method, and/or finding? To test the contact hypothesis, the study explores null object rates in both languages and compares them side by side, which has not been previously done in the case of Paraguayan Spanish and Guarani.

Significance/Implications:

What is the theoretical value of the research? What are the methodological implications of the research? What are the implications for policy and practice, if applicable? This research contributes to the understanding of Paraguayan Spanish as a contact variety and to the limited studies on Guarani from a corpus and usage-based perspective. It also shows that an in-depth comparison between linguistic patterns between two languages can elucidate whether or not certain features originate from contact.

Limitations:

What are the limitations of the research? What suggestions for future research can be made? Elicitation tasks can help study more nuances among null objects across languages, for example, the effect of object semantics on animate null objects. More information about the linguistic profile of each speaker can also contribute to better understanding null object phenomena.