MAPAS21
Mapping vernacular universals: dynamic map visualization of language change in 21st century Spanish

Project Hispanoversals catalogue Interactive map Events Team Contacts

Project

The research project “Mapping vernacular universals: dynamic map visualization of language change in 21st century Spanish” founded by Ca’ Focari University (SPIN 2024 - Supporting Principal INvestigators) focuses on how vernacular features arise and develop through Spanish speaking communities shaped by geographical and digital space.
Thanks to the advancement of computer-mediated communication and the constant presence of Internet and social networks in our daily life, the linguists and dialectologists are accessing a huge amount of linguistic data mostly featured as “written colloquial register”. This kind of register offers a perfect landscape to detect and explore the rise of vernacular universals, natural tendencies of a language emerging in registers less inhibited by normative pressure. 

This project attempts to answer the research question posed by the state-of-the-art:

  • do vernacular features diffuse as dialect variables (and, if so, which model of diffusion of morphosyntactic innovations better fits to explain their spatial distribution)?
  • Or, on the other hand, do these features arise independently as natural tendencies of a given language and consequently display a multifocal distribution?

Working with a global language such as Spanish, spoken by almost half a billion people worldwide and national language of more than twenty countries in America, Europe, and Africa, offers a great and challenging chance to face these research questions.

Hispanoversals catalogue

In the first decades of the 21st century, the description of vernacular universals has raised dialectologists’ attention. Vernacular universals are intralinguistic variants emerging in typically oral modalities less inhibited by normative pressure. This kind of colloquial informal speech situations triggers natural tendencies of language development. The study of vernacular universals is based on the analysis of rural dialects, contact varieties or other substandard norms within the framework of linguistic typology and combines, thus, linguistic typology and dialectology.

Vernacular universals are present universally in non-standard varieties worldwide, but every single language can develop vernacular tendencies. One of the objectives of the project consists of establishing a catalogue of vernacular universals in global Spanish (Hispanoversals).The list of Hispanoversals is a far-reaching project, so the Hispanoversals catalogue compiled to date represents an initial proposal and a first step for further research in this field. Having an exhaustive list of vernacular universals should enable comparisons with other languages’ vernacular phenomena. The universals of Spanish can be classified into the following non-exhaustive categories:

A) Externalization of plural features

  1. Transfer of plural marker to the accusative clitic (i.e. “se los digo, se las digo”)
  2. Transfer of “-n” to non-finite verb forms ('anomalous plurals')
    Reference: Heap, D. & Pato. E. (2009). Plurales anómalos en los dialectos y en la historia del español. In “Actas del VIII Congreso Internacional de Historia de la Lengua Española” (829.840). Meubook
  3. Plural inflection of invariable “cada”
    Reference: Pato, E. (2019): 'Cadas cosas se leen' y 'cadas fantasma hay en la red: La 'pluralización' del cuantificador 'cada' en español actual. “Borealis: An International Journal of Hispanic Linguistics”, 8/2, 225-242

B) Visualization of covert features

  1. Locative features in locative pronouns (i.e. “en donde”)
  2. Locative features in locative adverbs (i.e. “en ahí”)
  3. Durative features in simultaneity temporal subordinators (i.e. “por mientras”)
    Reference: Del Barrio, F. (2026). Una relación temporal de “simultaneidad coextensiva delimitada” en las variedades contemporáneas del español: dialectología y análisis de por mientras. “Anuario de Letras. Lingüística y filología”, 14, 41-72
  4. Interrogative marker in embedded wh-questions (i.e. “me preguntó si qué”)
    Reference: Del Barrio, F. (2023). Preguntó (que) si qué quería: si como operador interrogativo en español vernáculo. “Cuadernos de lingüística hispánica”, 42, 1-22
  5. Preposition “de” as complementizer
    Reference: Camus, B. (2013). On Deísmo. Another Case of Variation in Spanish Complementation. “Catalan journal of linguistics”, 12, 13-39

C) Hypercharacterization of gender

  1. Hypercharacterization of feminine gender
  2. Gender agreement on adverbs (i.e. “con mucha mejor intención”)
    Reference: Fábregas, A. & Pérez, I. (2008). Gender agreement on adverbs in Spanish. “Journal of Portuguese Linguistics”, 7/2, 25-45

D) Subjectification of objects

  1. Subjectification of accusative (i.e. “habían niños”)
    Reference: Pato, E. (2016). La pluralización de haber en español peninsular. In “En torno a ‘haber’: Construcciones, usos y variación desde el latínhasta la actualidad” (357-392), Peter Lang
  2. Subjectification of experiencer (i.e. “les encantan el drama”)
    Reference: Del Barrio, F. (2020). (A) ellos les gustan la movida: hacia una nueva codificación sintáctica del experimentante como sujeto del verbo gustar en el español del siglo XXI. “Lexis”, 44/2, 373-406

E) Loss of grammatical features

  1. Loss of agentive features (i.e. “escuchar” 'to hear’)
  2. Lexicalization of synthetic comparatives (i.e. “muy mejor”)
    Reference: Pato, E., & Felíu Arquiola, E. (2021). Es la más mejor. Sobre la lexicalización de los comparativos sintéticos como adjetivos positivos en español actual. “Revista Signos. Estudios ee Lingüística”, 54/106
  3. Non-agreeing dative clitics
  4. Replacement of the subjunctive by the indicative

F) Analogical phenomena

  1. Extension of 2nd person marker (i.e. “dijistes”)

Interactive map
(soon availbale)

In order to come to grips with the rise and diffusion of vernacular universals, the present project proposes the design and development of a dynamic and interactive map for visualizing language change. Besides visualizing ongoing language change, this cartographic tool will bring to light vernacular regularities in Spanish and will allow to record vernacular phenomena of Spanish language (i.e., Hispanoversals). This map is a multidimensional cartographic tool enabling the dynamic and interactive visualization of dialect data. This cartographic tool is dynamic, as it will enable the user to perform ad hoc projections and searches including a phenomenon or a grouping of related phenomena, according to her research interests. It is also interactive, giving different options to the user to visualize the data and the development of a given phenomenon throughout time and space. In fact, the application enables different and combinable searches through several menus:

  1. different statistical measurements (absolute frequencies, percentages, normalized frequencies per million inhabitants in that country);
  2. visualization of data by country, dialect area, and source;
  3. selection of a single phenomenon or a cluster of related phenomena;
  4. the option to build a timeline, so to microdiachronically visualize the development of an innovation.

Finally, this cartographic application is an open-access web resource.

Events

Team

Ca' Foscari University of Venice Department of Linguistics and Comparative Cultural Studies
Global Ibero-Romance Languages (Glibe)
Florencio del Barrio de la Rosa
Florencio del Barrio de la Rosa

Principal Investigator

Tatiana González Ferrero
Tatiana González Ferrero

Short-term research fellow