Bilingual Verb Constructions in Southwestern Spanish

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Spanish of the southwestern United States employs a unique bilingual verb paradigm containing the auxiliary hacer (do) with an English bare infinitive. The discourse motivators for this construction follow what has been reported by other scholars on language contact (e.g. Zentella 1997 and Silva-Corvalan 1983), but the syntactic structure belies any sense of typical borrowing or code-switching. While the geographic distribution of this phenomenon appears be limited sections of the southwest United States (unlike other similar bilingual phenomena) and its explanation as a product of English or Spanish syntax proves problematic, parallel constructs occur in other language-contact situations throughout the world. The hacer verb is a morphosyntactic dummy auxiliary in these constructions, yet its repeated presence in different bilingual periphrases appears be a function of its lexical nature. Introduction Discussions on verb usage in Spanish/English bilingual settings generally focus on three types of bilingual strategies: calquing, verbal borrowing, and code-switching. Calquing involves the use of an existing word in a new semantic environment, such as correr para presidente, taking the English meaning of the verb to run (for office) and extending it the Spanish verb correr, which in monolingual Spanish does not carry such meaning. Borrowing generally occurs when the English verb is phonologically and morphologically adapted Spanish in cases like taipear (to type), huachar (to watch/see), liquear (to leak), mapear (to mop), etc. Valdes (1988) notes that verbal borrowing can also occur without adaptation in cases where the English verb conveys a more direct meaning, as is the case with weld, since soldar can mean to solder as well as to weld: 1. Necesito weld esos fierros. (Valdes 1988:123) (I need weld those pieces of metal.) While on the one hand this example illustrates a borrowed verb from English, the fact that the verb is unincorporated makes this sentence an example of code-switching, i.e. switching between Spanish and English, in its simplest form. While code-switches can occur at the word, phrase, or sentence level for a variety of reasons (see Zentella 1997, Silva-Corvalan 1983), when they occur as a single, word-level it is often because the verb is unknown the speaker or because it conveys a special meaning not expressed in Spanish, as is the case with weld, or specialized English-language terms such as hanging out: 2. No tengo tiempo ni para estar hanging out con los amigos. (Valdes 1988:125) (I don't even have time be hanging out with friends.) While cases of bare English verbs are not uncommon in Spanish/English bilingual communities, this paper will focus on a structurally unique form that also appears be relatively limited in its distribution. In the Spanish of the southwest United States, hacer (do) is used as an auxiliary verb with an English bare infinitive form a bilingual periphrastic construction: 3. Tengo otro hermano que hizo RETIRE. (I have another brother who did RETIRE. (I have another brother who retired.) In this bilingual compound verb, the infinitive serves only carry lexical value, whereas all of the verbal morphological markers (tense, mood, aspect, subject) are found in the auxiliary hacer. This type of construction does not fit into the general definition of borrowing since the English infinitive is not phonologically adapted. Additionally, labeling this as code-switching does not paint the whole picture since the morphological markers are carried by the Spanish auxiliary hacer and the switch does not happen before or after the verb, but rather within the verb structure. Finally, given the fact that hacer does not function as a non-causative auxiliary in monolingual Spanish, this innovative verbal paradigm is truly unique. …

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