CASTAÑER AND WEST-CENTRAL PUERTO RICO

The fieldwork for this study took place between 1993 and 1997 in the community of Castañer (population 3000) and its mountainous environs, on the border between the municipalities of Lares and Adjuntas in west-central Puerto Rico. The houses forming the nucleus of the town of Castañer were built in the mid-1930s on lands of Hacienda Castañer, in the midst of one of the richest coffee-producing regions on the island.

Navarro Tomás (Reference Navarro Tomás1948) characterized the west-central area of the island as highly conservative. Phonologically, features of the region have included the preservation of tense tonic vowels similar to those of Castilian, the use of high final –u and –i (as in lechi ‘milk’ and muchu ‘much’), the preservation of the distinction between final –r and –l, and the use of Puerto Rican velar long rr (Navarro Tomás, Reference Navarro Tomás1948:48–50, 80–81, 95). My research (Holmquist, Reference Holmquist, Westmoreland and Testa2008:28–30) showed that morphosyntactically the west-central highlands have preserved archaic and nonstandard forms as well, particularly the use of the auxiliaries ha and hamos (first-person singular and plural, respectively, of present indicative haber ‘to have’) rather than he and hemos; the use of the first-person plural suffix –nos rather –mos as in trabajábanos ‘we used to work’; and the use of person/number concordance with existential haber, as in hay/hayn/habemos and había/habían/habíanos (third-person singular, third-person plural, first-person plural of present indicative and imperfect, respectively) versus the single forms hay and había. I have also found (Holmquist, Reference Holmquist and Paradis1998, Reference Holmquist and Sayahi2003, Reference Holmquist and Sayahi2005, Reference Holmquist, Westmoreland and Testa2008, Reference Holmquist and Diaz-Campos2011) that the preservation of these regional features, both phonological and morphosyntactic, depends largely on social factors such as age, occupation, and network ties.

Raised by this study is the question of whether or not a region characterized as originally conservative in areas of phonology and morphosyntax may still very generally preserve traditional usage in relation to an aspect of underlying syntax. Is it still characterized by a relatively low rate of personal subject pronoun expression closer to rates associated with the Spanish of central Spain and conservative areas such as Mexico in Latin America (Silva-Corvalán, Reference Silva-Corvalán1977) than to much higher rates observed in linguistically innovative Latin American varieties, in this case, of Puerto Rican Spanish? Moreover, is this true in a region currently characterized by progressively higher rates of s-deletion across progressively younger generations and a high, 69%, overall rate of s-deletion among the same group of speakers sampled for this study (Holmquist, Reference Holmquist and Diaz-Campos2011)?

THE SPEAKER AND SPEECH SAMPLES

The analysis here draws on a speaker sample of 60 persons. All but four are natives of Castañer or the surrounding mountain area; the four non-natives are from other areas of the western highlands. Twenty speakers are drawn from each of three generations, or age groups: 15 to 39 years, 40 to 64 years, and 65 years and older. Each age group is composed of 10 men and 10 women, and each of these groups of 10 men and 10 women includes 5 speakers characterized as having more closed, or local, ties within the community and 5 having more global, or open, ties reaching beyond. The local versus global ties distinction has been made using the criteria of time spent in the community, membership in local organizations, ties to the agricultural economy in the form of participation in the annual coffee harvest, and education, with postsecondary degrees requiring study outside of the community, normally in coastal areas of the island.

Findings presented are based on recorded, semidirected conversations focusing on personal history, the family, the schools, local churches, local cooperatives, and the coffee, and on relations between Castañer and the larger municipal centers of Lares and Adjuntas, the interior of the island and the coast, and the island and the U.S. mainland. All of the conversations were directed by me; the speakers are friends and friends of friends of the local family that I stayed with on my visits to Castañer, including several extended visits prior to the beginning of the recordings. To include balanced representation, I selected the first 50 sites of subject personal pronoun expression or nonexpression in the conversation with each speaker for the analysis. The full data sample includes 3000 tokens.

THE VARIABLE

The variable examined here is the use (or overt expression) in opposition to the lack of use (or nonexpression) of a personal subject pronoun with a human referent in association with a tensed verb whose subject can be either expressed or null. If alternation could not occur, the verb was excluded from the analysis.

The following example presents instances in which a speaker had the option of overtly expressing the subject personal pronoun or omitting it.

1. (1) Yo (a) vivía en Lares. (b) Nací en Lares y (c) vivía en Lares. Entonces, había necesidad de trabajar porque se había muerto mi papá y (d) teníamos una familia de seis personas. Y mi abuela y mi mamá, pues (e) vivíamos todos juntos. Entonces, pues, cuando (f) me gradué de octavo grado … pues (g) me gradué con buenas notas. Entonces (h) ellas me ofrecieron para ir a estudiar pero (i) puse en balance la situación y (j) le dije a mi mamá: (k) yo prefiero trabajar.

   • (Participant #19)

   • I (a) lived in Lares. (b) [I] was born and (c) [I] lived in Lares. Then, there was the need to work because my father had died and (d) [we] had a family of six people. And my grandmother and my mom, well (e), [we] lived all together. Then, well, when (f) [I] graduated from the eighth grade … well (g) [I] graduated with good grades. So (h) they offered me (the chance) to go to study but (i) [I] weighed the situation and (j) [I] told my mom: (k) I prefer to work.

The speaker had the option of using all of the verbs, (a) through (k), with an overt subject personal pronoun, but she has done so only for (a), (h), and (k). The subject personal pronoun has been expressed in 3 of 11 opportunities.

Environments in which subject personal pronouns are obligatorily expressed or not expressed were excluded from this analysis. Exclusions of obligatorily expressed pronouns include:

1. (2) Phrasal idioms, as in:

   • Que yo sepa. (Participant #10)

   • As far as I know.

2. (3) Emphatic uses with mismo/s or misma/s, such as:

   • Yo mismo quería ayudarlo. (Participant #25)

   • I myself wanted to help him.

   • Yo misma … ha viajado mucho. (Participant #43)

   • I myself … have traveled a lot.

3. (4) Equational sentences, as in:

   • El problema es él. (Participant #18)

   • The problem is him.

4. (5) Instances of contrasting usage, such as:

   • Ella era distante pero él rindió una labor muy buena. (Participant #9)

   • She was removed but he produced very good work.

In the last case, although the use of ella is open to variation, the context presented by rindió is excluded from analysis because of the need to use él to preserve the contrast with the preceding subject of the same grammatical person and number.Footnote ¹ Excluded as well from the analysis are nonspecific uses with uno and all nonpersonal uses with demonstrative pronouns, as for example in Uno no se imagina … ‘One doesn't imagine …’ and Eso duró tres años ‘That lasted three years’, respectively.

Cases in which the use of a null subject pronoun was the only option were also excluded from the analysis. These include the following:

1. (6) Nonspecific third-person plural subjects, as in:

   • ¿Le han hablado del café gourmet?Footnote ² (Participant #21)

   • Have they spoken to you about the gourmet coffee?

2. (7) Nonpersonal subject pronouns, such as:

   • Yo visitaba mucho la iglesia Episcopal porque (*) nos quedaba más cerca. (Participant #5)

   • I visited the Episcopal church a lot because it was closer for us.

3. (8) Subject-headed restrictive relative clauses, such as:

   • Un señor que (*) era vecino mío y compañero … (Participant #15)

   • A señor that was a neighbor and companion …

4. (9) Existential verbs:

   • (*) Hay un muchacho afuera.

   • There is a boy outside. (Participant #59)

   • (*) Habían guaguas para transportarlos. (Participant #5)

   • There were buses to transport them.

5. (10) Verbs with impersonal se, such as:

   • (*) Se empezó con la cooperativa. (Participant #9)

   • It began with the cooperative.

6. (11) Verbs referring to time or weather conditions:

   • (*) Hace cien años, hace setenta años … (Participant #21)

   • One hundred years ago, seventy years ago.

   • En Camuy (*) hace un calor … (Participant #35)

   • In Camuy it is hot.

7. (12) Discourse markers occurring obligatorily without a subject pronoun, such as:

   • (*) Digo, esa es mi opinión. (Participant #7)

   • I say, that is my opinion.

   • Nadie se dedicaba a sembrar, (*) digamos, yautía, ñame, batata. (Participant #10)

   • Nobody was dedicated to planting, let's say, cocoyam, yam, sweet potato.

Discourse markers employing the second person, familiar or formal, are included in the analysis, primarily because they did exhibit variation-yielding forms such as: tú sabes ‘you (sing. fam.) know’ and sabes ‘[you (sing. fam.)] know’, Ud. sabe ‘you (sing. formal) know’ and sabe ‘[you (sing. formal)] know,’ and ¿entiende? ‘[you (sing. formal)] understand?’ and ¿Ud. entiende? ‘you (sing. formal) understand?’.

OVERALL RATES AND RATES FOR SINGULAR VERSUS PLURAL

As indicated, existing studies have found overall rates of subject personal pronoun expression in data based on Puerto Rican speakers in other locations to be high in comparison with the rates of more conservative dialectal regions, such as in central Spain or Mexico. It should be noted, nevertheless, that, even among Puerto Rican speakers who have been found to produce relatively high rates of subject pronoun expression, the rates do not reach the majority of the cases, a finding that may reflect the status of the null subject as the older, underlying form.

The findings presented here for the Castañer sample will be based on 2882 sites of potential subject personal pronoun expression, after excluding 118 cases of nonspecific third-person plural subjects. The rate of subject personal pronoun expression in these data from the interior of Puerto Rico is relatively low at 28%. Table 1 presents findings for the overt expression of subject personal pronouns for six samples of Puerto Rican Spanish, three samples from Castile and Madrid, and the finding for Castañer. The findings of five of the six Puerto Rican samples are in a 40% to 46% range: Morales (Reference Morales and Morales1986), Cameron (Reference Cameron1992), and Ávila-Jiménez (Reference Ávila-Jiménez1996) in San Juan; Hochberg (Reference Hochberg1986) in Boston; and Flores-Ferrán (Reference Flores-Ferrán2004) in New York City.Footnote ³ The study of Otheguy et al. (Reference Otheguy, Zentella and Livert2007) in New York City reports a rate of 35% for overt expression for Puerto Rican speakers.

Table 1.

Overall rates of subject personal pronoun expression by study

In Table 1, the rates of overt expression for central Spain are all in the low 20% range. Rosengren's (Reference Rosengren1974) study was based on a corpus of written Castilian Spanish in contemporary plays and Enríquez's (Reference Enríquez1984) study was based on a spoken corpus gathered in Madrid, whereas Cameron's (Reference Cameron1992) study in Madrid was based on a sample that he developed based on transcribed interviews found in El habla de la ciudad de Madrid (Esgueva & Cantarero, Reference Esgueva and Cantarero1981). The overall rate of 28% in Castañer is more similar to the rates of the Castilian studies than to those of the Puerto Rican studies in San Juan and on the mainland.

When rates of personal pronoun expression are broken down for usage with singular and plural verb forms, the findings from Castañer, once again, are lower than those of the other Puerto Rican varieties, particularly for use with singular forms. Table 2 shows that subject pronouns are expressed more with singular verbs than with plural verbs in all of the varieties for which data are reported here.

Table 2.

Subject personal pronoun expression for singular and plural verb forms by study

Although somewhat higher, the frequency of use with singular verbs in Castañer, which is 32%, is closer to the frequencies reported for Castile, which are 23%, 25%, and 26%, than to those of the other sampled Puerto Rican varieties. With one exception, the 17% expression rate for plurals in Castañer is also lower than the plural rates for the other Puerto Rican varieties, although the differences are small. This indicates that the difference with other Puerto Rican varieties lies primarily in the lower Castañer rate with singular verbs. The difference of 15 percentage points separating overt expression for singular versus plural verbs is, nevertheless, much smaller in Castañer than for the other Puerto Rican samples, where the difference is in the 30-percentage-point range, and it is more in line with the differences between singulars and plurals reported for Castile.

GRAMMATICAL AND FUNCTIONAL CONSTRAINTS

In his discussion of subject personal pronoun expression in his own data from San Juan and Madrid dialects, Cameron (Reference Cameron1994) concluded that, although rates of use distinguish the Madrid and San Juan dialects, similar patterns of pronominal expression are found not only in relation to grammatical constraints but also in functional, discourse-oriented conditioning. Cameron's remarks referred specifically to the grammatical categories of ambiguous verbs and unambiguous verbs and to the functional constraint of switch versus same reference with respect to the subject of the preceding sentence. Although a wider range of independent variables, including semantic class of verb, clause type, and priming effects, has been examined in association with personal pronoun subject expression, here I examine the grammatical variables of verb category in relation to ambiguity and person-number of the pronoun in question, and the functional variables of switch versus same reference and position in the discourse of information clarifying the subject. I have selected these variables for purposes of ready comparison with other varieties of Puerto Rican Spanish, particularly in the cases of the first three. I will show that, although lower rates distinguish Castañer usage in the interior of Puerto Rico from the usage of San Juan and mainland varieties, here too patterning is often very similar. In one notable instance, however, where patterning in Castañer is different, it will be shown to be similar to patterning in other conservative varieties in Madrid and Castile, in central Spain.

A series of studies have examined subject personal pronoun expression in –s-deleting dialects with respect to potential ambiguity of verbs. In present indicative, present perfect, and future indicative forms, deletion of second-person singular –s creates potential two-way ambiguity with third-person singular forms. For example, the verb forms in (él/ella) come ‘(he/she) eats’ and (tú) come(s > Ø) ‘(you) [sing. fam.] eat’, (él/ella) ha ido ‘(he/she) has gone’ and (tú) ha(s > Ø) ido ‘(you) [sing. fam.] have gone’, and (él/ella) trabajará ‘(he/she) will work’ and (tú) trabajará(s > Ø) ‘(you) [sing. fam.] will work’ become indistinguishable. In a variety of forms that include the imperfect, the conditional, and both present and past subjunctives, upon deletion of second-person singular –s, potential three-way ambiguity results with first- and third-person forms. For example, in the imperfect the verb forms in (yo) comía ‘(I) used to eat’, (él/ella) comía ‘(he/she) used to eat’, and (tú) comía(s > Ø) ‘(you) [sing. fam.]) used to eat’ are indistinguishable. The distinctiveness of other verb classes including singular forms of ser ‘to be’ and singular preterits and all plural forms is not affected by final –s-deletion.

Table 3 shows findings given as both rates and Varbrul weights (Pintzuk, Reference Pintzuk1988) for singular verb classes in the data from Castañer. For Varbrul binomial analysis, progressively higher weights above .50 are progressively more favorable to the occurrence of a variant, progressively lower weights under .50 are progressively less favorable, and .50 is neutral.

Table 3.

Subject personal pronoun expression by verb class (Castañer data, singular verbs only)

Note: Factor groups included: verb class, person-number, same versus switch reference, and position of clarification in discourse.

In her pioneering study of subject personal pronouns in relation to verb classes in mainland Puerto Rican Spanish in Boston, Hochberg (Reference Hochberg1986) found rates of 48% for two-way ambiguity and 53% for three-way ambiguity, and in his subsequent study of San Juan speakers Cameron (Reference Cameron1992) found rates of 50% and 55% for the same classes. In Table 3, the rates for two-way and three-way ambiguity are 34% and 37%, or markedly lower than those reported in the aforementioned studies. Nevertheless, the trend of factor weights is in the same direction. In other words, greater potential ambiguity favors a higher rate of usage. However, whereas Hochberg hypothesized the unambiguous verb forms promote lower rates of subject pronoun usage, Cameron (Reference Cameron1992:198) found this to be true of preterit forms but not the singular forms of ser; in fact, he found the singular forms of ser to promote personal pronoun use most, a finding repeated here as well.Footnote ⁴

Subject personal pronoun expression has also been described in correlation with the person and number of pronouns. Again, both rate differences and similarities with respect to several major constraints characterize the Castañer findings in relation to findings for other Puerto Rican varieties, as may be seen in Table 4.

Table 4.

Subject personal pronoun expression by person-number (Castañer data)

Note: Factor groups included: person-number, same versus switch reference, and position of clarification in discourse. The verb category factor group has been excluded from this analysis because of interaction with the pronoun person and number factor group when both are run with same or switch reference and position of clarification in the discourse. The low Varbrul weight for Ud. reflects the low number of cases and the fact that most are found in situations of same reference.

The rates seen here for the yo, tú, and él/ella forms in the Castañer data are markedly lower than those reported by Cameron (Reference Cameron1992:233) and Ávila-Jiménez (Reference Ávila-Jiménez1996:97) for San Juan and Flores-Ferrán (Reference Flores-Ferrán2002:85) for New York City. The rates reported by these investigators are, for first-person singular, yo, 50%, 51%, and 52%, respectively, whereas the rate for the Castañer sample is 34%; for second-person singular familiar, tú, 60%, 61%, and 57%, whereas the rate here is 47%; and for third-person, él/ella, 39%, 38%, and 48%, respectively, whereas for the Castañer sample the rate is 29%.

Despite the difference in rates, there are similarities in the application of constraints connecting usage in Castañer and in these other Puerto Rican varieties. They include the higher rates for singular forms than for plurals, the pattern of favorability, tú > yo > él/ella, and the lower rates of expression for Ud. (second pers. sing., formal) than tú, reported by Avila-Jiménez, in San Juan, and Flores-Ferrán, in New York City.

Not coinciding with other varieties of Puerto Rican Spanish, however, is Castañer's usage in relation with the distinction between specific and nonspecific tú. For specific tú (as in espero que tú vengas mañana ‘I hope you come tomorrow’), Cameron (Reference Cameron1992:235), Ávila-Jiménez (Reference Ávila-Jiménez1996:97), and Flores-Ferrán (Reference Flores-Ferrán2004:85) reported rates of 48%, 59%, and 53%, respectively. The rates they report for nonspecific tú (as in es la carretera que tú sigues para llegar a Ponce ‘It is the highway that you take to get to Ponce’) are even higher, 69%, 63%, and 60%, respectively. In the Castañer data, although the numbers are very small, the trend appears to be reversed; the rate is 52% (17/33) for specific uses of tú and 29% (2/7) for nonspecific uses. This finding coincides with the direction of more favorability for specific versus nonspecific reported by Cameron (Reference Cameron1994:324) for his Madrid sample as well as for Enríquez's Madrid sample. Although the difference is smaller and again, token counts are very low, the direction of favorability is the same for specific versus nonspecific uses of Ud. in the Castañer data, 33% (21/64) for specific Ud. and 29% (2/7) for nonspecific.Footnote ⁵

With respect to subject expression in the context of the discourse, Flores-Ferrán (Reference Flores-Ferrán2004:61) observed that the constraint of switch versus same reference in relation to the subject of the preceding clause has been shown to condition subject personal pronoun expression across Spanish dialects. This is also the case in the findings from Castañer in west-central Puerto Rico, as is seen in Table 5.

Table 5.

Subject personal pronoun expression by same and switch reference (Castañer data)

Note: Factor groups included: person-number, pronoun category, same versus switch reference, and position of clarification in discourse.

In Table 5, same reference, or coreferentiality, with the subject of the preceding clause (as in [Yo/Ø] hablo bien el español, pero el inglés [yo/Ø] lo hablo muy mal ‘[I/Ø] speak Spanish well, but English [I/Ø] speak poorly’) inhibits overt expression of the subject in the second clause. A change of subject (as in [Yo/Ø] estoy en la cocina y [ella/Ø] contesta el teléfono ‘[I/Ø] am in the kitchen and ([she/Ø] answers the telephone’) promotes the overt identification of the switched subject. Once again, although the direction of the effect is the same, rates of expression are much higher in San Juan and in the Puerto Rican Spanish of New York City, at 31% and 57% for same and switched in San Juan (Cameron, Reference Cameron1992, Reference Cameron1994) and at 38% and 54% in New York City (Flores-Ferrán, Reference Flores-Ferrán2004). The Castañer rates of 17% and 42% are more similar to the 11% for same reference and 30% for switch in Madrid (Cameron, Reference Cameron1992).

Although the rates of expression are very different, the Varbrul weights underscore the parallel effects of this factor in San Juan and Madrid, as reported by Cameron (Reference Cameron1992), and Castañer. The probability weights for the overt expression of the personal subject pronoun by same and switch reference reported by Cameron for San Juan are .34 and .64, and .34 and .65 for Madrid; in Castañer, as reported in Table 6, they are .34 and .70.

Table 6.

Subject personal pronoun express by position of clarifying information in conversation (Castañer data)

Note: Factor groups included: verb class, person-number, same versus switch reference, and position of clarification in discourse.

Cameron (Reference Cameron1992) also examined the effects of change of reference in relation to broader discourse context, both in reference chains and in terms of distance from the affected, or target, subject. He found that the number and location of subject changes in a chain including the affected subject and the two preceding subjects affect the use of overt pronouns in the target. More changes over more positions result in increased use of pronouns (Cameron, Reference Cameron1992:247). Distance of “set-elements,” or clarifying information, from the target subject in terms of numbers of clauses also affects overt pronoun use (Cameron, Reference Cameron1992:249). These findings are true for both Cameron's data drawn from San Juan speakers and his data drawn from Madrid speakers, although the frequencies in specific contexts are always lower in the second case.

Here, I will examine the broader conversational context in terms of the positioning of information clarifying the referent of a focus subject, whether in the discourse prior to a current turn, in the current turn prior to the sentence in which a subject pronoun is expressed or not expressed, or in the target sentence itself. The target sentence, here, includes compound and complex sentence structures. In example (13), the speaker (C) [Participant #1], talking to me, refers to members of the Castañer family, owners of Hacienda Castañer, for which the town of Castañer is named. Hacienda Castañer actually consisted of several large farms.

1. (13) C: … Los Castañeres tenían tres fincas, pues, fincas de miles de cuerdas. ¿Ve? (Participant #1)

   • … The Castañers had three farms, well, farms of thousands of acres. You see?

   • H: ¿Las fincas tenían café, china, guineo, igual que hoy?

   • Did the farms have coffee, oranges, bananas, like today?

   • C: No antes. Cuando se establecieron bastante fuertes ellos, pues sembraron mucho plátano.

   • Not before. When (they) established themselves sufficiently well they, well (they) planted a lot of plantain.

The clarification, or referent, of the subject of the verb establecieron ‘established’ is Castañeres, found as the subject in C's earlier turn in the discourse, not in the turn or sentence in which establecieron occurs. The subject of establecieron, ellos ‘they’ is expressed, in this case, after the verb. The referent of the verb sembraron ‘planted’, however, is the subject pronoun ellos, found in the adverbial clause of the same sentence, and the subject of sembraron is not expressed. Clarification is also found within the sentence in example (14).

1. (14) Poco a poco al dueño le quitaban los hombres fuertes un pedazo, cantito de ese terreno que tenía …

   • Little by little from the owner the strong men took a large part, a chunk of the land that (he) had.

In this case, the clarifying referent of the unexpressed subject of tenía, which is dueño, is not a subject, but the object of the preposition a, within the same sentence. In example (15), the clarification of the subject of dieron lies not in the same sentence nor in the discourse preceding the turn, but earlier in the turn, in the form of the object of the preposition de ‘of’, or Ramos, of the preceding sentence.

1. (15) C: … el papá mío se había casado con una hermana de los Ramos. Después, pues, le dieron a ella un terrenito a ojo.

   • My father had married a sister of the Ramos. Later, well, (they) gave her a small plot of select land.

When clarifying information occurs in the turn or the discourse outside of the sentence, it may occur in more extended discourse or turns than is indicated in the examples given here.

Table 6 shows that position in the conversation, or discourse, construed in this way is indeed relevant in the examination of the recorded conversations from Castañer.Footnote ⁶ Although the frequencies are all low as is expected for the Castañer data, the same sort of incremental increase found by Cameron for reference chains and distance is found here as well for clarifying information in increasingly more removed discourse positions: in the sentence, the turn preceding the sentence, and discourse preceding the turn. The progression from 12% to 26% and 36% is confirmed by the progression of Varbrul weights, from .30 to .50 and .62.

Social Factors

Although meaningful and statistically significant patterns are clearly present for linguistic constraints on the appearance of subject personal pronouns in the Castañer data, in other Puerto Rican varieties, and beyond, social constraints may be much more difficult to identify. In fact, Silva-Corvalán (Reference Silva-Corvalán2001:131) stated “no ha sido fácil asignar valor social y/o estilístico a los casos de variación sintáctica estudiados en diversas comunidades. Más bien, la mayor parte de la variación sintáctica parece estar condicionada por factores sintácticos, semánticos y pragmáticos …” ‘it has not been easy to assign social and/or stylistic value to the cases of syntactic variation studied in diverse communities. Rather, the majority of syntactic variation appears to be conditioned by pragmatic, semantic, and syntactic factors …’. This includes factors such as those reviewed herein. Flores-Ferrán (Reference Flores-Ferrán2002:642) indicated that findings of investigations of sociolinguistic stratification vary according to regional dialect and have not been consistent. For example, Cameron (Reference Cameron1992) reported no systematic social effects on the overt and null categories in his study in San Juan, whereas Ávila-Jiménez (Reference Ávila-Jiménez1996), in a study of speakers drawn largely from the same variety, found effects for age and occupation level. Morales (Reference Morales and Morales1986) did not find support for the hypothesis of English influence on subject expression among Spanish/English bilinguals, whereas Flores-Ferrán (Reference Flores-Ferrán2002) showed a mild effect, but contradictory findings are later documented in Flores-Ferrán (Reference Flores-Ferrán2004).

Rates of subject expression by social factors are shown in two figures for ease of exposition. Figure 1 shows age, time in Castañer, and level of education.

Figure 1.

Subject personal pronoun expression by age, time in Castañer, and education.

The findings for all of the subgroups hover around the level of 28% (793/2882), which is the overall rate of expression for the full sample, and Varbrul rejects each of these factor groups as a possible contributor to the probability of overt pronoun use. Growing up before, during, or after the period of the formation of the town (with rates of 27% [259/949], 28% [266/965], and 28% [268/968], respectively); time spent in the community as determined by a formula combining time of residence with time of absence (with rates of 28% [416/1483], 27% [142/531], and 27% [235/868] for “much,” “less,” and “little,” respectively); and education level (with rates of 28% [254/906], 29% [257/644], and 26% [282/793] for primary, secondary, and postsecondary, with postsecondary requiring periods of study on the coast) do not have significant effects.

Findings for speaker gender along with two additional factors are presented in Figure 2. The additional factors are the distinction between monolingual Spanish speakers and bilingual Spanish and English speakers as determined by self-reporting and confirmed by observation, and also the distinction between farmers and nonfarmers among the group of participants.

Figure 2.

Subject personal pronoun expression by gender, language status, and farmer status.

Once again, the findings for overt pronoun use are at or near the 28% level. Men have used pronouns in 26% (342/1305) of the eligible sentences and women in 29% (451/1126), and monolinguals in 27% (628/2303) and bilinguals in 28% (165/579), and Varbrul rejects both factor groups. The distinction between farmers and nonfarmers, however, yields a different result. Although the distinction is not great, with farmers expressing the personal pronoun in 25% (268/1062) of eligible sentences and nonfarmers in 29% (525/1820), it is statistically significant in the multivariate analysis. The farmer group, which combines hacienda owners, large and small farm owners, and farm laborers and includes both men and women in all categories, used the pronoun less often. In other words, the generally low rate of personal subject pronoun expression is even lower among farmers.

We may interpret the lack of distinctions among groupings for age, education, time in Castañer, gender, and bilingualism as suggesting a very high level of uniformity in the use of personal subject pronouns in this speaker sample from the community of Castañer, in west-central Puerto Rico. Nevertheless, the distinction that is statistically significant, showing that farmers employ subject personal pronouns even less often than the rest of the population do, may serve to link low usage directly to the land and the economic activity that traditionally have supported this dialectal region.