The unstressed third-person pronominal system in the Spanish spoken by Malecus in Costa Rica

Abstract

In this paper, we describe the unstressed pronominal system of the direct object for the third person, as used by the Malecu of Costa Rica in their Spanish variety, taking into consideration their generational group and their hometown. These two variables have shown correlation to the type of bilingualism in these speakers of Spanish. In the generation with subordinate bilingualism to the Malecu (elders), we found free variation among the clitics lo~la~los~las (and even cases of leísmo, laísmo and loísmo have been reported), as well as reduplication with a correferential nominal group placed to the right of the verb, though the clitic lo seems to predominate. This variation stabilizes in the successive generations with a tendency to the neutralization of the categories of gender and number in favor of the archimorpheme lo. Such change, however, decreases in correlation to the generational factor.