Is Chilean Spanish a Canonical Pro-drop Variety? On Subjecthood in Chilean Spanish
Abstract
The goal of this chapter is to unveil the main properties of syntactic subjects in Chilean Spanish by addressing the following research questions: (i) To what degree is Chilean Spanish similar/dissimilar to Caribbean Spanish? (ii) Is Chilean Spanish a partial pro-drop variety? According to the Null Subject Parameter (NSP, Rizzi L. Issues in Italian Syntax. Foris, Dordrecht, 1982), null subject languages have the following properties: (a) rich verbal morphology, (b) null subjects in finite clauses, (c) postverbal subjects (VS order), and (c) loose locality effects (absence of that-trace effects). Caribbean dialects have received particular attention as they show both pro-drop and non-pro-drop properties. However, it remains an open question to what extent those properties are found in non-Caribbean Spanish and, most importantly, in other linguistic varieties within the so-called Bajeño dialectal area. Data from corpora as well as from acceptability judgments indicate that Chilean Spanish displays some nontrivial overlapping with Caribbean Spanish with respect to pro-drop properties and that it does not fit the partial pro-drop pattern consistently. This conclusion provides support for recent proposals according to which partiality in pro-drop properties is a matter of degree.
Publication Title
Formal Approaches to Languages of South America
Recommended Citation
Ortega-Santos, I. (2023). Is Chilean Spanish a Canonical Pro-drop Variety? On Subjecthood in Chilean Spanish. Formal Approaches to Languages of South America, 203-233. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22344-0_8
