ABSTRACT
This chapter starts with what the author regards as misapprehensions in sociolinguistics concerning linguistic theory and moves on to an account of the obstacles that these misapprehensions have placed on the path to understanding Spanish pronominal perseverative use. It also notes that counter-functional interpretations of the facts of perseveration often rest on an over-narrow definition of functionalism. The narrower empirical study deals with structural perseveration in the use of Spanish subject personal pronouns and with 'structural priming', the cognitive mechanism said to explain perseveration. The chapter deals with the unresolved issue of the theoretical platform on which variationist research is built. It shows that perseveration obtains only to a small extent and to argue that the priming explanation is of limited applicability. The discussion covers only Spanish pronouns. The constructs of the variationist are best conceptualized as preference schemas. The schemas register information about linguistic environments, communicative contexts, and socio-personal circumstances where the speaker favors one or the other variant.
