A functional-typological analysis of a morphosyntactic feature of Spanish in contact with Mapudungun

Abstract

This paper compares the use of unaccented pronouns in accusative and dative function in the narrative production of three groups of students monolingual in Spanish: (a) rural Mapuche, (b) rural non-Mapuche and (c) urban. Our assumption is that the use of clitics is different according to the situation of contact between languages. In this context, we establish three types of uses: “standard use”, “rural use” and “ethnical use”. The Mapuche group uses the pronouns in different forms from the other two groups. This difference is discussed in the frame of contemporary contact linguistic and functional and typological linguistic. This approach allows us to attribute this uses to indirect transfer porduced by the intense and historical contact between the Mapudungun and Spanish