VARIATION OF THE SECOND PERSON SINGULAR OF THE SIMPLE PAST fileVARIATION OF THE SECOND PERSON SINGULAR OF THE SIMPLE PAST TENSE IN TWITTER: HICISTE VS. HICISTES ‘YOU DID’1 Antonio

Dialectologia.Specialissue,VII(2017),149-167.ISSN:2013-2247

149

Received20September2017.

Accepted30October2017.

VARIATIONOFTHESECONDPERSONSINGULAROFTHESIMPLEPAST

TENSEINTWITTER:HICISTEVS.HICISTES‘YOUDID’1

AntonioRUIZTINOCO

UniversidadSophia*∗

[email protected]

Abstract

Inthisstudy,thegeographicaldistributionofthe-saddedtothesimplepasttenseofindicative

inseveralhighfrequencyverbsisanalyzed,i.e.hicistesvshiciste.Fordoingso,ageocorpusformedby

geolocatedtweetshasbeenused.Thedataobtainedsuggestthatthetraditionalexplanationofaddition

byanalogywithotherverbtensesisstillvalid,especiallyinruralareas,althoughitisnottheonlyfactor.

Inurbanareasofvoseo,asisthecaseoftheRíodelaPlatavariety,thereisnogreatdifferenceinthe

ratioof-saddedwiththesurroundingruralareas,ashadbeenconsideredinpreviousstudies.

Keywords

morphologicalvariation,geocorpus,socialnetworks,GIS

LAVARIACIÓNDELASEGUNDAPERSONADELPLURALDELPRETÉRITOPERFECTO:HICISTEVS.HICISTES

Resumen

Enelpresenteestudioseanalizaladistribucióngeográficadela-sañadidaalpretéritosimplede

indicativoenvariosverbosdealta frecuencia, comoenhicistes vshiciste.Paraello sehautilizadoun

geocorpusformadoportuitsgeolocalizados.Losdatosobtenidossugierenquelaexplicacióntradicional

1ThisstudyisarevisedversionofacommunicationintheXLIIICongressoftheJapaneseAssociationofHispanists held at theUniversity of Kanagawa, Japan, onOctober 7 and 8, 2017. Thiswork has beendeveloped under the FFI2013-41077-P project, funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía yCompetitividadandbyJSPSKAKENHIGrantNumber15K02527.*FacultyofForeignStudiesDepartmentofHispanicStudies,7-1Kioicho,Chiyoda,Tokyo102-0094.

©Universitat de Barcelona


150

de añadidura por analogía con otros tiempos verbales sigue siendo válida, especialmente en áreas

rurales, aunque no es el único factor. En zonas urbanas de voseo como es el caso de la variedad

rioplatense,noseapreciaunagrandiferenciaderatiode-sañadidasconlaszonasruralescircundantes,

comosehabíaconsideradoenestudiosanteriores.

Palabrasclave

variaciónmorfológica,geocorpus,redessociales,SIG

1.Introduction

The formof the2ndpersonof thepast tenseending in -s ashicistes ‘youdid’

occurs frequently and is a phenomenon of variation on which there are abundant

studiesinalmostallSpanish-speakingcountries,suchastheworksbyCharlesE.Kany

(1945) and John Lipski (1994). Lipski considers it themost acceptable non-standard

formintheareasofvoseo.ThephenomenonhasalsobeenstudiedbyMaríaVaquero

(1998). Other more recent quantitative approaches are the works by Sonia Barnes

(2012)andClaudiaParodi (2015) inSpanish-speakingareasoftheUnitedStates,etc.

Ralph Penny (2002) attributes hicistes to the analog extension of the final -s in the

other 2nd person forms. Although this form is not academically accepted, it is

frequently used in the informal style.On the other hand, according to FragoGracia

(2003), it is observed in low and middle social classes in both Spanish and Latin

AmericanSpanish.TheRAE(2010)considersthenon-standardformnon-correcttoday

althoughitmentionsthatitisfrequentinhistoricaltexts.Ingeneral,itisaruralform,

discreditedandstigmatized.Manyofthestudiesofthisphenomenonhavebeenbased

onspokenSpanishindifferentperiods,includinghistoricalSpanishandlimitedtosome

geographicalareas.Thus,itisdifficulttoobtainaglobalvision.

Thiswork analyzes the geographical distribution of the -s added to the simple

pasttenseof indicative inasampleofgeolocatedtweetscontainingformsofseveral

highfrequencyverbsinTwittermicroblogs.Fordoingso,ageocorpusofapproximately

32milliontweetsfromalltheSpanish-speakingareasandcollectedbetweenJanuary

2016andOctober2017hasbeenused.Whencomparingtheoccurrencesofstandard



151

andnon-standardforms,differencesinfrequencyofusedependingoneachverbhave

beenfound.Thesedifferencescannotbeattributedsolelytothespeaker’sperception

of an analogy with the 2nd person of other verbal tenses. Moreover, relative

frequenciesinareasofvoseodonotseemtofavortheiruseespecially.

InCatalan,therearealsoseveralcasesofcontrastbetween-sand∅,inthiscase

in relation to the 2nd person of the plural of the imperative of certain verbs. This

persondoesnotshowtheusual2ndpersonmorpheme -s inmostverbs,although it

appearsinsome(dir‘tosay’,ser‘tobe’,estar‘tobe’,fer‘todo’,etc.).Insomedialects

there isacontrastbetweenthepresenceandthedeletionof -s,especiallywhenthe

verbisfollowedbyaclitic.Thus,“Laflexióverbalenelsdialectescatalans”,byAntoni

M. Alcover & Francesc de B. Moll, records the following forms for the 2nd person

singular of the imperative of the verb dir ‘to say’: digues – dis, according to the

dialects,butdigue’mvsdis-me,digue-livsdigues-li–dis-li,whentheyarefollowedby

apronoun.Theresultsofanongoingresearchwillshowiftheformsaremaintainedin

the respective dialectal areas, if the action of the standardmay have increased the

solutionswith-sandiftherearepossiblepointsincommonwithSpanish.

The data has been inserted into a MySQL relational database. For the

preparationoftherespectivedistributionmapsandthevisualizationoftheresultsof

theanalysis,opensourcesoftwareQGIShasbeenused.

The resulting corpus allows us to compare the use of such forms in the same

periods of time in distant areas, which would not have been possible through

traditionalmethodsofdatacollection. Inthiswaythephenomenoncanbeobserved

fromdifferentperspectives.

2.Geocorpus

The data comes from a geocorpus of collected tweets that have the following

characteristics:



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a.ThedatahasbeenobtainedthroughdirectconnectiontoStreamingAPI1.1of

Twitter,2whichisapproximately1%ofalltweetsthatcanbeobtainedfreely.

b.Onlygeocodedtweets,3whichareafractionofthetotal,havebeencollected,

andforwardedtweets,retweets,havebeenexcludedbecausetheyareduplicatesand

donotnecessarilycoincidewiththeplaceoforigin.

c. From January 1, 2016 to October 1, 2017, 24 hours a day, approximately

32,400,000 tweets have been collected; so, a high degree of synchrony can be

considered.

d. For the preparation of this geocorpus and according to our objectives, a

modifiedversionof140devStreamingAPIFramework,4programmedinPHPbyAdam

Greenhasbeenused.

e. The tweets are arranged in aMySQL database,5accessiblewith a password

overtheInternet.

3.Dataselection

Forouranalysiswehavechosentenverbsinthe2ndsingularpersonalformof

the simple past tense with high frequencies. We have used the corpus of Spanish

(Web-Dialects)6by Mark Davies (2016) applying the search formula “(*ste.[VIS*])”

withwhichweobtainthefrequencyofthestandardverbformsofthesimplepastof

tense indicativeending in -ste,orderedbyfrequency.Theform fuiste,corresponding

tothepasttenseoftheverbsser‘tobe’andir‘togo’,hasbeeneliminated.InFigure1

thelistofobtainedverbsisshown,fromwhichwechoosethetenmostfrequentones:

hiciste‘youdid’,dijiste‘yousaid’,diste‘yougave’,tuviste‘youhad’,dejaste‘youleft’,

llegaste ‘youarrived’,pusiste ‘youput’,escribiste ‘youwrote’,pudiste‘youwereable

to’andestuviste‘youwere’.

2https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/tutorials/consuming-streaming-data3Thatis,containingthefieldsoflongitudeandlatitudeoftheplaceofemission.4http://140dev.com/free-twitter-api-source-code-library/5https://www.mysql.com/6https://www.corpusdelespanol.org/web-dial/



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Figure1.Frequentverbsinthe2ndpersonfromthesimplepast

Although the Corpus of Spanish is lemmatized, it does not distinguish non-

standard forms as hicistes ‘you did’, etc., so they have to be searched individually.

Figure 2 shows the absolute and relative frequencies of hicistes in the Spanish-

speakingcountries.

Figure2.Frequenciesoftheformhicistes‘youdid’intheCorpusofSpanish(Web-Dialects)

383143524607480655785848

71948413

1080014650

23352

0 5000 10000 15000 20000 25000

PERDISTEESTUVISTEPUDISTE

ESCRIBISTEPUSISTE

LLEGASTEDEJASTETUVISTEDISTEDIJISTEHICISTE

Frequentverbs(second-personsingular,preterite）



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Moreover,Figure2showsthatthefrequencypermillionwordsvariesbetween

0.03p.m.fromtheDominicanRepublic,althoughofasingleoccurrence,and0.86p.m.

from Nicaragua. These data suggest that there is a considerable difference in the

extentofthephenomenonamongSpanish-speakingcountries,butitisnotpossibleto

seemoredetaileddistributionsduetothemethodologyusedforthiscorpus.

4.Interface

Tosearchthegeocorpusinthedatabase,theAdminer7interfacehasbeenused,

asshowninFigure3.

Figure3.Adminerinterfaceshowingpartialsearchresults

Adminer has been used because it allows us to easily apply all the formulas

availableinMySQL,includingregularexpressions.Italsoallowstoexporttheresultsto 7https://www.adminer.org/



155

various formats for further processing. In Figure 4 some data and several fields are

showninMS-Excel,includingthetext,theexactdateandthecoordinatesoftheplace

fromwhereeachtweetwassent.

Figure4.Partialdataofdistes‘yougave’inMS-Excel

5.Dataobtained

The data obtained from all the Spanish-speaking countries of the ten selected

verbsisshowninTable1.Thereare33,921standardforms,961non-standard,andthe

ratioperverbvariesbetween1,97%forhiciste/sand4,18%fordiste/s.

VERBFORM without-s with-s ratio%

estuviste/s 1613 49 3.03

pudiste/s 1060 30 2.83

escribiste/s 255 8 3.13

pusiste/s 1290 39 3.02

llegaste/s 6500 229 3.52



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VERBFORM without-s with-s ratio%

dejaste/s 3841 106 2.75

tuviste/s 1570 34 2.16

diste/s 3987 167 4.18

dijiste/s 4603 117 2.54

hiciste/s 9202 182 1.97

Total 33921 961 2.83

Table1.Frequenciesobtainedfromtheformswith-sandwithout-s

ThedistributionofoccurrencesbycountryisshowninTable2.

Table2.Distributionofnon-standardformsbycountry

Table 2 shows that Argentina, Spain and Venezuela have most occurrences;

whereas,CostaRica,ElSalvador,etc.havefewest.Forthatreason,weneedmoredata

2

3

3

4

6

7

12

13

19

22

32

43

49

51

51

76

141

176

229

0 50 100 150 200 250

CostaRica

ElSalvador

Honduras

DominicanRepublic

Paraguay

Guatemala

Nicaragua

Chile

PuertoRico

Peru

UnitedStates

Ecuador

Mexico

Panama

Uruguay

Colombia

Venezuela

Spain

Argentina

Non-standardforms(occurrences)



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sothatthesefigurescanbesignificant.Lowfiguresarenotonlyduetothelowertotal

population,butalsotheymaybeduetothesmallerpopulationthatusesTwitter.

Table3showstheproportionofuseofthetwoforms,whichgivesusanewview

of the phenomenon. Thus, the highest proportion is found in Puerto Rico (18.45%),

Panama(14.74%),Nicaragua(13.33%),Venezuela(7.6%),etc.CountriessuchasSpain

(5.31%)orArgentina(1.51%)havelowerratiosasawhole,asshowninFigure5.

Table3.Distributionbycountryofnon-standardformsvsstandardformsratios

0,77

1,01

1,11

1,16

1,51

2,64

2,67

3,31

3,32

3,61

4,29

4,6

5,31

5,57

6,86

7,6

13,33

14,74

18,45

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20

DominicanRepublic

Chile

Mexico

Paraguay

Argentina

Guatemala

CostaRica

Colombia

Peru

ElSalvador

Honduras

UnitedStates

Spain

Uruguay

Ecuador

Venezuela

Nicaragua

Panama

PuertoRico

StandardvsNon-standardformsratios%



158

Figure5.Absoluteresults(occurrences)vs.relativeresults(ratio)

6.Visualizationofthedata

For the visualization of the data,QGIS8 ver. 2.18, a free and open source GIS

applicationhasbeenused. Itcontainsadatamanagementsystemasadatabase.This

GIS system allows various forms of data selection and visualization. For example,

Figures6aand6bshowasmallreddotforeachoccurrenceofthestandard(6a)and

non-standard (6b) forms, proving that bothoccur in all Spanish-speaking areas,with

higher absolute frequency in the most populated areas, such as Argentina, Spain,

Venezuela,Colombiaandothergeographicalareas.

Figure6a.Standardformswithout-s Figure6b.Non-standardformswith-s



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For a better visualization, the zones of higher absolute frequencies can be

presentedwithheatmaps,asinFigures7aand7b.Thismethodisaformofclustering,

since it distinguishes the zones of higher absolute frequencybymeansof a scale of

colors.Theparametersforthecolorscalecanbeeasilymodifiedbyvaryingtheradius

ofinfluence(bymeters,kilometers,etc.)ofeachoftheoccurrences.Figure7ashows

the heatmap corresponding to the distribution of the standard forms and Figure 7b

showstheformsfinishingwith-s.Inthesemapswecanseesomeareas(inred)where

non-standardoccurrencesare concentrated, suchas southernSpain,Ríode laPlata,

Venezuela,etc.

Tobettervisualizethedatawithgreatergranularitywecanreducethemapto

a specific geographical area as shown in Figures 8a and 8b, of Spain and Argentina

respectively,andfordoingsowehavemodifiedtheradiusofinfluence.

Figure7a.Standardformswithout-s Figure7b.Non-standardformswith-s

Figure8a.Non-standardforms(Spain) Figure8b.Non-standardforms(Argentina)



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Figure 8a shows that the geographical areas in Spain withmost non-standard

forms areMadrid and Seville, as well as the area around the Bay of Cadiz and the

province of Malaga. Although Barcelona, Zaragoza and Valencia have a larger

populationthanthesesouthernareas,itisanindicationoffrequentuse.InCatalonia,

AsturiasandGaliciathereisnonoticeableconcentrationofoccurrences.Analogously,

wecanobserve inFigure8bthat theareaofGreaterBuenosAires (about15million

inhabitants)andMontevideoconcentratemanymoreoccurrencesthancitieswithalso

alargepopulationsuchasSantiagodeChile(approximately5millioninhabitants).

The absolute and relative data for each country can also be visualized using

choropleth maps, with scales of colors like Figures 9 and 10. In Figure 9, Spain,

Argentina,Mexico,Venezuela,Colombia,etc.arethecountrieswiththedarkestblue

color,thatis,withmoreoccurrencesthanothers.Figure10showsthecountrieswith

the highest ratio as shown in Table 3. In the choroplethmaps, the same color or a

graduatedscaleisusuallyusedforeachcountry(province,city,etc.)tomarkregional,

provincialdifferences,etc.Boliviaiswhiteduetothelackofdata.

Figure9.Choroplethmapsoftheoccurrencesofnon-standardforms



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Figure10.Choroplethmapoftheratiosofnon-standardforms

Analogously to Figure 10,we can visualize the ratios by provinces, usingQGIS

withmapswithlessextensiveadministrativedivisions,asshowninFigure11forSpain.

This figure shows that the highest ratios are concentrated in the Southwest of the

country,especially intheprovincesofCordoba,Huelva,CaceresandCadizaswellas

theCanaryIslands,beingvirtuallynon-existentorwithverylowratiosintherestofthe

country. The areas that include cities with a larger population such as Madrid,

Barcelona,ValenciaandZaragozaarenotfoundinzonesthataddthe-s,exceptSeville,

in themiddle of an area that usually adds the -s. These areas coincide largelywith

southernvarietiessuchasAndalusiaandExtremadura,stigmatizedinSpain.



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Figure11.Choroplethmapoftheratiosofnon-standardformsintheprovincesofSpain

Withthehelpofgeographicdata,ofteninshapefile8format,withdetailsofthe

contours of any area, such as countries, cities, neighborhoods, etc., much more

detailedmaps can be prepared such as the following. In Figure 12 of the extensive

provinceofBuenosAires,theFederalDistrict,inredonthemap,containsthehighest

concentrationofoccurrencesofnon-standardforms.However,inthemapofFigure13

thesurroundingareasofferthehighestratioofnon-standardforms,asinSpain,these

beingmorefrequentinruralareasthaninurbanareas.

8https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapefile



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Figure12.Thematicmapofnon-standardformsintheprovinceofBuenosAires

Figure13.Thematicmapoftheratiosofnon-standardformsintheprovinceofBuenosAires

AlthoughLipski(1994)saidthatthenon-standardformwasmoreacceptable,at

present,withdataofdifferentnaturesuchastweets,suchacceptanceisnotobserved,



164

since the ratios are relatively low with exceptions such as Baradero, La Plata, San

Vicente, etc. The data also suggests that the ratio is especially low in the Federal

District, themosturbanareaof theprovince. InBarnes (2012),usingdata fromoral

transcription of the Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual (CREA), 9 the Habla

Popular10byLopeBlanch(1976)andtheCorpusdelEspañolbyMarkDavies,theratios

oscillate between 13% and 16%, whereas in the geocorpus, which is very different

from this last study, the ratios vary between 0.77% in the Dominican Republic and

18.45%inPuertoRico.Itshouldnotbeforgottenthatthereareseveralareasinwhich

dataarescarceandthereforetheyarenotsignificant.

7.Relationshipofform,ratioandfrequency

Accordingtothetheoryoftheadditionof-sbyanalogywithotherverbtensesin

whichaproportionofspeakersusesthenon-standardform,therelationbetweenthe

frequency of the two forms and their ratios should be similar for each verb and for

each geographical area. Figure 14 shows a graph with the linear regression of the

standardformwiththevariantendingin-s.Thepointscorrespondtodifferentverbs.

9http://corpus.rae.es/creanet.html10http://www.iifilologicas.unam.mx/elhablamexico/index.php?page=habla-popular



165

Figure14.Linearregressionbetweenthefrequencyofthestandardandnon-standardforms

Figure15.Variationoftheratiosofeachverbbetweenthetwoforms

The graphs in Figures 14 and 15 suggest that, despite possible differences in

regionalvarieties,theanalogyhypothesisisreasonabletosomeextent,althoughsome

ratiodifferencesalsosuggestthatotherunknownfactorscanintervene.Theycouldbe

related to the coexistence of voseo forms, the degree of stigmatization in different

areas,etc.

4930

8

39

229

106

34

167

117

182

0

50

100

150

200

250

0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000 9000 10000

Non-standardforms

occurrences

frequency--standardforms

frequencyandvariation



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8.Conclusions

The -s added to the 2nd person of the singular of the perfect past tense is a

phenomenon spread throughout the geography of Spanish with different ratios

regardingthestandardform.Thisphenomenonappearsmorefrequentlyinruralareas,

eveninvoseoareas.Theratiosbygeographiczonesaredifferent,butwithinlimitsthat

arenottooextreme.Inaddition,theratiosofsuchformsarealsovariableaccordingto

theverb.

The use of geocorpora of tweets for the study of linguistic variation adds

additionalinformationtotraditionalstudiesbasedonsurveys,etc.Ontheotherhand,

geocoded data allows the quick and accurate preparation of synchronous variants

mapsusingGIStechnology.

References

BARNES,Sonia (2012)“¿Quédijistes?:AVariationistReanalysisofNon-Standard -sonSecond

Singular Preterit Verb Forms in Spanish”, Selected Proceedings of the 2010 Hispanic

LinguisticsSymposium,Somerville,MA:CascadillaPress,38-47.

DAVIES,Mark (2016-)Corpusdel Español: Twobillionwords, 21 countries.Availableonlineat

http://www.corpusdelespanol.org/web-dial/.(Web/Dialects)

DÍAZCOLLAZOS, AnaMaría (2015)Desarrollo sociolingüístico del voseo en la región andina de

Colombia(1555-1976),Berlín:MoutondeGruyter.

FRAGOGRACIA,JuanAntonio(2003)ElEspañoldeAmérica,Cádiz:UniversidaddeCádiz.

KANY,CharlesE.(1945)American-SpanishSyntax,2nded.Chicago:UniversityofChicagoPress.

LIPSKI,JohnM.(1994)LatinAmericanSpanish,LondonandNewYork:Longman.

PENNY,Ralph(2002)AhistoryoftheSpanishlanguage,Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress.

PARODI,Claudia(2015)“DialectosdelespañoldeAmérica:MéxicoyCentroamérica”, inJavier

Gutiérrez Rexach (coord.), Enciclopedia de Lingüística Hispánica, Vol. 2, London:

Routledge,375-386.



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REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA (2010) Nueva gramática de la lengua española. Manual, Madrid:

EspasaLibros,2010.

VAQUERODERAMÍREZ,María(1998)ElespañoldeAméricaII:Morfosintaxisyléxico,Madrid:Arco

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Documents

VARIATION OF THE SECOND PERSON SINGULAR OF THE SIMPLE PAST fileVARIATION OF THE SECOND PERSON SINGULAR OF THE SIMPLE PAST TENSE IN TWITTER: HICISTE VS. HICISTES ‘YOU DID’1 Antonio