Structural and sociolectal limits of variability of que in Mexican Spanish noun clefts

Abstract

This paper investigates the structural and sociolectal limits of the use of non-standard “plain” que instead of the standard relativizer DET+que in Mexican Spanish noun clefts. Although plain que in Spanish noun clefts is considered ungrammatical by reference grammars, we find it in data from Felipe Carrillo Puerto (Quintana Roo, Yucatan) and Mexico City (CDMX). Among the speakers from CDMX, only younger speakers use plain que in our data, suggesting that it might be a more recent innovation in this variety. Among Yucatecan speakers, we find that bilingual speakers (Spanish-Maya) tend to use more plain que than monolingual Spanish speakers, and only bilingual speakers show similar age effects to those found in CDMX, whereas older monolingual Yucatecan speakers use more plain que than younger YS monolinguals. Structurally, plain que is limited to canonical clefts, which we interpret as an indication that clefts with plain que constitute functionally reanalyzed headed relatives. Moreover, we find that those speakers that use plain que do so mostly when the antecedent is specific and carries a determiner. If the antecedent is either non-specific or does not carry a determiner, DET+que is generally preferred.