CONTACTO DE LENGUAS Y ORDEN DE PALABRAS: OV/VO EN EL ESPAÑOL DEL PAÍS VASCO.

This paper analyzes the percentage of use of VO and OV structures in Spanish oral corpus of Basque Spanish bilingual adults; pragmatic and discourse functions of OV structures are also examined in order to evaluate Basque syntax influence on Basque Spanish variety. Specifically, three aspects of the referent have been explored: given-new information level, the referent function, and its continuity in the discourse. Results suggest VO structure is usedmost frequently in the Basque Spanish bilingual utterances in Spanish, but OV structure is more regular exploited by unbalanced Spanish bilinguals who are dominant in Basque. Results also reveal that new information usually appears in topicalized positions, and the topicalized referent shows low continuity in the discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]