Estudio diacrónico del sujeto variable de 3^a persona en El Habla de Caracas

The purpose of this research is to analyze the variation in the presence or absence of an overt 3rd person singular subject in the Corpus Diacrónico del Habla de Caracas 1987-2013. I have analyzed speech samples from two periods, 1987 and 2013. The linguistic variables are: i. conversational turn, ii. ambiguity, iii. discourse connectivity, and iv. verb typology. The extralinguistic variables are participants'age, gender, socio-economic level, and time period. The findings indicate that: i. The frequency in the use of overt subjects is similar in 1987 and in 2013; ii. A higher number of explicit subjects can be found when there is a change of turn, when the verb is morphologically ambiguous and when the discourse connectivity is weak; iii. the analysis with GoldVarb X indicates that the variables discourse connectivity and participant's gender are the ones that condition the presence of the overt 3rd person singular subject.