Subject pronoun expression in Spanish in contact with Fang in Equatorial Guinea

Resumen

The present study examines subject pronoun expression (SPE) among Fang-Spanish speakers in Equatorial Guinea. The paper also examines whether the SPE of these speakers is in line with the predictions of the interface hypothesis (IH) (Sorace, 2011). The study consists of 24 sociolinguistic interviews, which were transcribed, coded, and analyzed using the mixed-effects software Rbrul. The overt pronoun rate derived from this study is 18.2 %, one of the lowest SPE rates ever recorded. The factors that condition SPE among Fang-Spanish speakers are similar to that of other Spanish varieties-grammatical person and number, ambiguity, reflexivity, the lexical effect of the verb, and reference. Moreover, the low ranking of reference is in line with the IH (Sorace, 2011) prediction of decreased sensitivity to reference among bilingual and second language speakers. The findings underscore the universality of linguistic predictors of SPE. The results also provide evidence that bilinguals decreased sensitivity to reference does not necessarily lead to an increase in overt subject pronouns. A decrease is also possible.