Collocations with the verb hacer in the Spanish of Majorca A comparative study of Palma and Alcalá de Henares

Abstract

[eng] Language contact phenomena take place in numerous speech communities around the world. This paper aims to study the effects of language contact on lexical change in the Spanish of Majorca through an analysis of the frequency and use of nonstandard collocations with the verb hacer. The study considers social variables such as age, gender and level of education (or social class). The data comes from the PRESEEA corpora considering two cities: the bilingual community of Palma and the monolingual community of Alcalá de Henares. These corpora include interviews to 54 participants from each community that are equally divided into three age groups (18 to 34, 35 to 55 and above 55 years old), two gender groups (men and women) and three educational level groups (primary, secondary and higher education). In the case of Palma, speakers are classified according to ethnolinguistic groups: Catalan-dominant, Spanish-dominant and balanced bilinguals. After selecting all the relevant examples, a typology of non-standard collocations with hacer in the corpora with number of occurrences was created. Also, a comparative discussion with the linguistic bibliography was made. Although, some Catalan expressions are recognized by Catalan speakers as stigmatized variants, we consider them as innovative. Their Spanish equivalents we accept as influenced by Catalan and we include them in our typology. The quantitative analysis reveals that two variables that influence the use of the verb hacer are the geographical origin and the age of speakers. These results confirm a strong influence of the Catalan language on the use of collocations with hacer in Palma. Also, this shows that younger generations use this verb in collocations more often than older speakers, meaning that the phenomenon is expanding and can be recognized as a change in progress