The use of agarrar ‘grab, take’ verb constructions in Belizean Spanish

An intergenerational analysis

Abstract

This exploratory study sheds new light on the use of two types of agarrar ‘grab, take’ verb constructions that remain virtually unexamined in studies of language contact between Spanish and English; namely, ‘agarrar + NP’ constructions and agarrar y ‘take and’ pseudocoordination. An intergenerational analysis of 313 verb constructions, extracted from interviews, reveals that within the last four to five decades there has been an increase in the production of bilingual agarrar verb constructions among younger age groups in Northern Belize. The verb agarrar co-occurs mainly with abstract nouns and is conducive to Spanish/English code-switching. Notably, agarrar has been generalized along the lines of the English verb ‘take’ rather than ‘get’, as in the case of Texas Spanish. This suggests that agarrar has the grammatical status of a light verb when it co-occurs with nominal complements, contrary to other varieties, which use other verbs of the same semantic family. In contrast to ‘agarrar + NP’ constructions, agarrar y pseudocoordination is less conventionalized, infrequent, and favoured particularly in the preterite and present. Our findings suggest that agarrar is in an advanced stage of grammaticalization in Northern Belizean Spanish compared to other varieties.