Variation in contemporary Spanish: Linguistic predictors ofestarin four cases of language contact

In some contact situations between Spanish and English there is an acceleration of the process of the extension ofestarthat may be due to lack of access to the formal written standard, features of English in particular or general processes of simplification that result from the cognitive demands of bilingualism (Silva-Corvalán, 1994). In our large-scale analysis of data from a contextualized preference task collected in four areas of the lberian Peninsula where Spanish is in contact with a regional language (Basque, Catalan, Galician and Valencian) and in monolingual regions of Spain, we identify differences in the numbers of unanimous responses, and frequency and predictors ofestarselection across populations. We show that more frequent selection ofestaris not a characteristic of all bilingual groups, and several linguistic predictors ofestarare common to all groups. Additionally, we find that more frequent selection ofestaroccurs in some varieties even among bilinguals with ample access to the formal standard.