Cerca mío/a or cerca de mí ? A variationist analysis of Spanish locative + possessive on Twitter

Abstract

Abstract Spanish locative adverbs may be followed by either a prepositional phrase (PP) (e.g. cerca de mí ‘close to/(of) me’) or, nonstandardly, a tonic possessive (TP) (e.g. cerca mío ‘lit. close mine’). Some also take feminine forms (e.g. cerca mía, detrás mía). Using R, I analyze 16,809 tweets representing 14 locatives from Buenos Aires, Madrid, and Mexico City and demonstrate that, although dialects and individual locatives vary widely in their rates of TP use, the person, number, and animacy of the possessor significantly predict PP/TP selection across varieties. Also, feminine possessives are used almost exclusively in Spain, and the seemingly feminine morphology of locatives ending in –a (e.g. encima) and subsequent extension to other locatives via analogy is the most plausible explanation for their use. Further evidence of analogy is TP use in non-locative contexts (e.g. Arg. pensás mío ‘you think of me,’ Sp. enamorado tuyo/a ‘in love with you’). These findings illuminate the interactions between avoidance of ambiguity, form-based analogy, and speakers’ conceptualization of possession. My findings regarding animacy, which find parallels in research on English dative and genitive constructions, highlight the utility of both cross-linguistic and cross-constructional comparisons in analyzing morphosyntactic variation.