The role of language contact in linguistic change remains a polemic issue in the field of contact linguistics. Many researchers (Weinreich, Reference Weinreich1953; Lefebvre, Reference Lefebvre1985; Prince, Reference Prince1988; Silva-Corvalán, Reference Silva-Corvalán1994; King, Reference King2000; Sankoff, Reference Sankoff, Chambers, Trudgill and Schilling-Estes2002; Labov, Reference Labov2007) believe that there are limits on the types of linguistic patterns that can be transmitted across languages, while others (Thomason and Kaufman, Reference Thomason and Kaufman1988, p. 14) deem that “any linguistic feature can be transferred from any language to any other language”. Regardless of the differences of opinion on this issue, there is widespread recognition that the social context, including such features as the size and characteristics of the bilingual groups, the attitudes toward the languages spoken, and the intensity and duration of language contact, play an important role in determining the linguistic outcomes of language contact.
One potential consequence of language contact that has not been explored sufficiently to date is the possible acceleration of changes that are occurring internally in the language. For example, Weinreich (1953, p. 25) noted that foreign influence can have a “trigger effect, releasing or accelerating developments which mature independently”. Other researchers have also observed that language contact can accelerate a change already underway (Schmidt, Reference Schmidt1985, for the Queensland Aboriginal language Dyirbal; Maandi, Reference Maandi and Dorian1989, for Estonian in Sweden). Maandi (1989, p. 227), however, specifies that “the results of intensive language contact can have the effect of accelerating internally motivated changes in the system of the less-used language” [emphasis is ours]. Previous research on Spanish/English contact in the United States (Silva-Corvalán, Reference Silva-Corvalán1994) – a context in which Spanish is the less-used subordinate language – has provided evidence that semantic change in Spanish, i.e. the extension of the copulative verb estar, which occurs in monolingual contexts (Gutiérrez, Reference Gutiérrez1994), takes place at an accelerated pace in Los Angeles. Silva-Corvalán attributes this acceleration to a variety of factors, including the lack of access to a formal standard in Spanish for second and third generation speakers, and to the cognitive demands of bilingualism.
Geeslin and Guijarro-Fuentes's research on this issue makes an important contribution to language contact studies by providing insights into the factors that correlate with the extension of estar, including the effects of (i) contact languages that possess a copula contrast, (ii) bilingual situations where speakers have access to formal Spanish, and (iii) the cognitive demands of bilingualism. Geeslin and Guijarro-Fuentes demonstrate that bilingualism per se has differential effects; in some contexts (i.e. Galicia and the Basque Country) internal change is accelerated, while in others (i.e. Catalonia and Valencia) the opposite effect is found, with monolinguals using estar in more contexts than bilinguals. Thus, the acceleration of linguistic change seems not to be a result of the cognitive demands of bilingualism, nor due to lack of access to formal registers as most speakers in their study have had access to post-secondary education, but rather is affected by other factors such as the nature of the contact language (i.e. whether the contact language has a parallel structure or not).
Geeslin and Guijarro-Fuentes provide confirmation of previous studies (see Cameron's (Reference Cameron1993) and Flores-Ferrán's (Reference Flores-Ferrán2004) findings for subject expression) that have found similar rankings of linguistic constraints across seemingly different dialects of Spanish. Specifically, Geeslin and Guijarro-Fuentes found that the linguistic factors that promote a higher frequency of estar are the same for all groups in their study, regardless of the social context or the characteristics of the contact language, although different groups respond to the factors to differing degrees. These findings point to the importance of examining similarities in the constraints on variation across dialects, a finding that can be obscured by simple frequency counts.
Methodologically, the Geeslin and Guijarro-Fuentes' study is innovative in a number of ways. Variation in the use of estar in the four regions is analyzed without defining what constitutes an innovative vs. a standard use. This methodological issue is of particular importance given the fact that normative use for a linguistic change in progress can be quite difficult to define. In addition, the researchers took into account context beyond the sentence level and included semantic and pragmatic, i.e. discourse-level factors in the questionnaire that they developed.
A methodological issue that remains to be resolved is the comparability of Geeslin and Guijarro-Fuentes's results based on data from grammaticality judgments to data from sociolinguistic interviews, as found in Silva-Corvalán (Reference Silva-Corvalán1994), Gutiérrez (Reference Gutiérrez1994), Ortiz López (Reference Ortiz López2000), and Díaz-Campos and Geeslin (Reference Díaz-Campos and Geeslin2004). Sociolinguistic research has established that “style is a pivotal concept in the study of sociolinguistic variation” and that “[s]tylistic variability in speech affords us the possibility of observing linguistic change in progress (Labov Reference Labov1966)” (Rickford and Eckert, Reference Rickford, Eckert, Eckert and Rickford2001, p. 1).While much progress has been made in determining the linguistic constraints involved in the extension of estar, more research on the social and stylistic constraints that favor language change is essential. Studies using naturalistic data and comparing the selection of ser vs. estar with responses to grammaticality judgments are needed to determine if differences in results across studies are due to differing social contexts or to methodological differences.
