Frequency and phonological effects on variable noun-adjective order in a spontaneous-speech corpus of VenezuelanSpanish

Abstract Adjective position in Spanish offers a window into how multiple levels of the grammar interact in shaping variable structures. Using a corpus of spontaneous Venezuelan speech, we extracted all noun-adjective pairings for 10 adjectives that permitted variation between pre- and post-position in prior research, yielding 928 variable tokens. Tokens were coded for differences in the syllable length and lexical frequency of the adjective relative to the noun, in addition to the adjective’s semantic class. Results showed that for these adjectives pre-position occurred at a rate of 44.94%, consistent with prior cross-dialectal trends. Mixed-effects modeling demonstrated that adjectives lighter and more frequent than the modified noun significantly favored pre-position, and there was no significant difference across these semantic classes. These findings highlight the interplay of phonological and frequency factors in adjective placement and suggest that frequent pairings may have been reanalyzed as entrenched units, consistent with usage-based approaches to grammar building.