Le invariable en Málagaestudio sociolingüístico

Abstract

The following study tries to explain the use of le instead of les in Málaga (Spain), when the clitic is a plural indirect object. The hypothesis is that Spanish language has been undergoing a process of objective conjugation since years, so that the dative clitic is working as a cross-reference mark. The data are taken from the corpus El español hablado en Málaga, which divide the 72 informants in three social parameters: age, gender and educational level. A statistical analysis is performed through SPSS and Goldvarb X programs in order to know what factors are significant and which is the weight of each one. Cataphoric duplication, unstressed pronoun placement and the distance from prototypical features of the indirect object favour the use of le instead of les. It is also more common in basic educational level informants.