Comparing Verb Use Amongst Spanish-English Bilingual Speakers in the United States

Main Article Content

Benjamin Mota
Anne Lingwall Odio

Abstract

Record ID: 149


Program Affiliation: McNair Scholars Program


Presentation Type: Podium


Abstract: This study investigates Spanish-English bilingual speakers' use of verbs in Spanish and its connection to the speakers' initial age of acquiring English in the United States. Simultaneous bilingual speakers are those who learned Spanish & English at the same time, while sequential bilingual speakers are those who learned Spanish first & later English. In Spanish, one can form a sentence like Ser una buena persona es importante. (Being a good person is important). However, it's expected that simultaneous bilinguals would create the same sentence as, Siendo una buena persona es importante. This phenomenon is likely to occur because in English, our gerunds or -ing verbs don't have an auxiliary verb. The investigation uses a Texas bilingual corpus (a collection of written texts) with 96 participants to answer said question. From the interviews with the participants, their uses of the infinitives ser (to be), estar (to be), tener (to have), querer (to want), hacer (to do) as a gerund  & also their use of siendo (being), estando (being), teniendo (having), queriendo (wanting), & haciendo (doing) without an auxiliary verb are noted. A series of statistical analyses will help determine whether there is a disparity in the use of verb forms amongst speakers. The results of the research will shed light on an understudied area of linguistics & increase existing knowledge about the effects English-Spanish bilingualism has on bilingual grammar.   

Article Details

Section

Interconnectedness of Social and Technical Systems

Author Biography

Benjamin Mota

Major: Spanish