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These past decades have seen an emergence of studies on speech acts. Condolences, however, are among the least addressed out of them. Bibliography on this subject is scarce if compared to that of petitions, promises, offers, and so on, more so in Spanish, where papers on this subject are few and far between. This gap is especially notable in diachronic studies. This paper aims to offer a first approach to strategies for delivering condolences in 18th and 19th century letters written in the Canary Islands, Spain. Its goal is to describe which are the most common semantic formulas used to give condolences, and how much they resemble those described by different authors regarding this speech act in modern languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the historical development of the construction disponerse a + INF is analyzed, as a carrier of an aspectual value of imminence. Specifically, those lexical-grammatical criteria that allow observing the process of grammaticalization and constructionalization of the scheme are explored. In addition, the semantic expansion from the imminent value to the inchoative and causative value is studied. Throughout the paper, contrasts are made with the diachronic trajectory of poner(se), since this form has exerted an analogical influence on disponer(se). From a theoretical perspective, it interacts with the model of grammaticalization and with the constructions grammar applied to the historical study of verbal periphrasis. At the methodological level, the research is based on the elaboration of a database with the integral registry of the examples from CORDE, which allows projecting quantitative as well as qualitative linguistic analyzes. As a result, the grade of grammaticalization and constructionalization of the item is described, the chronology of its imminence, inchoative and causative values are explored, and the proximity of the construction with the paradigm of aspectual verbal periphrasis is reflected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In China the nominal addresses are common elements in the personal interaction. 老 /lao/, 大/da/ and 小/xiao/, indicators of the age of the people, are used to form titles of professions, posts and social status, which have to do with their special signification in the Chinese culture. On the other hand, they are used, with the kinship names and family names, to denote and connote different interpersonal relations, because they are expressions filled with feelings. This paper explores their semantic and pragmatic characteristics with a presentation of the nominal addresses formed with 老/lao/, 大/da/ and 小/xiao/ and their translation into Spanish in La fortaleza asediada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on Applied Cognitive Linguistics, more specifically on how the different areas within this theoretical perspective contributed to the field of the acquisition and teaching of Spanish as a Foreign Language (SFL). Cognitive Linguistics is not a homogeneous approach to language; it includes different perspectives about language that share some theoretical principles, such as the integration of language with other cognitive abilities. In SFL, Cognitive Grammar has received most of the researchers’ attention but the interest in other areas of Cognitive Linguistics is now growing. The main benefits of applying Cognitive Linguistics to SFL teaching are explained in this paper. The focus is on typological contrasts in the area of motion events (e.g. ir ‘go’ vs. venir ‘come’; dejar ‘leave’/poner ‘put on’/meter ‘put in’) and the difficulties they pose to SFL students. Finally, it is explained how Cognitive Linguistics helps with the new challenges of the acquisition and teaching of SFL, particularly in relation to typological contrasts. For ex*ample, the development of mediation and plurilingual competence through the lens of Cognitive Linguistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the notion of linguistic variation in Arabic written sources from the premodern period. More specifically, it examines the two surviving manuscripts (ms. M-O-9 y ms. d3643) of Risāla fī Ādāb al-Ḥisba wa-l-Muḥtasib by ʿAbd al-Raʾūf, an Andalusi ḥisba manual from the 10th c. CE, with the goal of describing the use of non-standard features and identifying the factors that drive this type of alternation. The linguistic description of the ḥisba texts shows that the use of non-standard forms occurs at all levels: orthographic, phonetic, lexical, morphological, and syntactical. In addition, it suggests that there are, at least, four internal and external factors that seem to motivate the appearance of linguistic variation: orthographic conventions of non-classical or non-standard written sources, the dialectal environment surrounding the document’s composition, sociolinguistic context, and, finally, semantic and pragmatic aspects. The analysis reveals that non-standard forms in these documents perform similar functions to those attributed in other oral and written varieties of Arabic. These findings confirm that the linguistic variation shown in ms. M-O-9 and in ms. d3643 is not random; that is, it follows regular patterns of language use, which represents a promising path for future research on non-standard written varieties of Arabic from the Islamic West. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we argue for the suitability of integrating semantic and pragmatic factors in the description of the compound and the simple past of Romance languages, to account for their intra- and interlinguistic functional diversity. Building on the semantic underdeterminacy thesis (Sperber and Wilson, 1995) and on the idea that tenses have procedural meaning (Moeschler, 1994, 1998; Nicolle, 1997, 1998; Saussure, 2003), we develop a description of the compound and the simple past in Romance, based on a limited set of combinations of semantic features. Some of these features are invariant and common to all Romance languages, while others present binary parametric options, whose value varies from one language to another and even, within the same language, from one geolectal variety to another. Our proposal is compatible with the idea of a rigid but underspecified procedural semantics, susceptible to contextual enrichment. The set of features and parametric options we propose account for the interpretations available in each variety. Additionally, semantic features systematically receive contextual enrichment, and this enrichment develops the underspecified semantics of the verb tense in different directions. Competition between semantically close linguistic expressions is also an important factor in the distribution of interpretative routes accessible to each tense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following paper is based on the translative research of the original version, written in English, of the novels The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood) and Never Let Me go (Kazuo Ishiguro), in addition to the short-story Story of Your Life (Ted Chiang), and of the available target texts published in Spain (El cuento de la criada, trans. by Elsa Mateo Blanco; Nunca me abandones, trans. by Jesús Zulaika, and La historia de tu vida, trans. by Luis G. Prado), for which we will examine the fictional lexico-semantic content composed by the authors to build their universes and its reflection in the Spanish language (peninsular variety), with the aim of developing translation strategies for the neologisms of a fictional universe based mainly on lexicality, as it is the one of Ribofunk, by Paul di Filippo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

His paper presents two logographic value proposals for main sign T667. The first proposed value is AY, which have an existential predicate semantics. The second proposed value is LAY, which have a proximal deictic semantics. These logographic value proposals are based both on the phonetic complementation patterns and on the syntactic and semantic analysis of the clauses represented in the hieroglyphic texts where T667 appears in the Dresden Codex (pages 65b-69b, 30c-31c and 29c-30c). For the first case, the complementation patterns seem to be spelling the word ayan, an existential with which locative constructions are formed. In the second case, the complementation patterns suggest that the word alay, a demonstrative pronoun that functions as the core of a predication, is spelled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a previous study, we verified the advantages of learning a set of idiomatic phrases in Spanish through two didactic proposals based on Cognitive Linguistics in which the participants reflected on the connection between the idioms’ literal reading and the idiomatic meaning retroactively (after receiving the meaning) or proactively (before discovering it) (Ureña Tormo et al., 2022). This paper focuses on the incorrect responses of the previous study and identifies four types of errors: a) interference with the meaning of another target idiom; b) literal meaning; c) meaning unrelated to the idiom; d) blank response. Among these, blank responses (d) predominate significantly, especially one week after learning the idioms, while confusion between phrases (a) decreases markedly over time. The results do not allow us to establish whether either of the two methodological proposals is more likely to cause or avoid a certain type of error. However, given that the pedagogical treatment based on reflecting on the literal-figurative link retroactively reports superior results, it is convenient to continue exploring its pedagogical potential, and to relate this to idioms with specific features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the issues addressed in possible worlds semantics is the accessibility relations of fictional worlds, that is, how these worlds relate to the real world. This paper takes the works by authors such as Kendall Walton, Marie-Laure Ryan and Tomás Albaladejo as a starting point to examine those features of the fantastic which constitute accessibility relations in two ways: those that shape the world out of real entities, such as the representation of macrostructural models or the incompatibility of elements, and those that intervene in the access of fictional entities to the real world, such as the presentation of verisimilitude and authentication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the concepts of modality and subjectivity, according to different bibliographic studies. The main purpose of the review is to note the defining flaws of both domains, which cause confusion when it comes to being explained in the uses of different linguistic units (from verbs to adverbs and discursive particles). The approximation carried out shows that the description of both concepts is intertwined from the beginning of the theorizing about it, but, above all, that its descriptive features are eminently semantic, although the grammatical (and functional) categories that mainly manifest these phenomena operate at the pragmatic level. Thus, here we propose new definitions of modality and subjectivity that they are not mutually exclusive nor overshadow either of the two domains. For this purpose, it is proposed a conception of the studied terms based in some definition of last year's cognitive-functional theories (Nuyts and Van der Auwera 2016, Abraham 2020). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an insight on the centrality of two main paradigms of the current linguistic theory in the field of Spanish as a second/foreign language acquisition, and its operative role in teaching. Generative Grammar (GG) as well as Cognitive Grammar (CG) are mentalist models, however, its postulates on the connection between human cognition and non-native linguistic knowledge are, in many cases, opposite; therefore, these models imply different conceptions of a pedagogical grammar. Throughout the paper, it is taken into consideration the way in which they are antagonistic, but also how they can be complementary. Even though GC has been more popular in classroom teaching, current GG may have a relevant impact on the curriculum, as well as on the instruction, by presenting a greater predictive capacity to identify the learner’s difficulties in processing certain linguistic structures. Finally, other key notions on linguistic knowledge, processability, and input, regarding didactic intervention, are also provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some assertions that are not about the meanings of the words used can transmit information about those meanings. In Mena (2022) I offered an explanation of that phenomenon purely in semantic terms. The novelty of that theory consists in including interpretations of language in circumstances of evaluation: the parameters relative to which we evaluate the contents of linguistic expressions. In this paper I argue that assertions of sentences containing indexicals can communicate information about the context of use, even though those sentences are not about contexts. Given this, I offer an extension of my theory of metalinguistic effects to model indexicals in an analogous way. Also, I discuss the many ways in which the theory presented here differs from other two-dimensional semantics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we discuss the notions of adequacy and truth functionality in quantum logic from the point of view of a non-deterministic semantics. We give a characterization of the degree of non-functionality which is compatible with the propositional structure of quantum theory, showing that having truth-functional connectives, together with some assumptions regarding the relation of logical consequence, commits us to the adequacy of the interpretation sets of these connectives. An advantage of our proof is that it is independent of the number of truth values involved, generalizing previous works. We also show the failure of the adequacy of every Nmatrix that is a model of the non-distributive lattice of quantum propositions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to describe the semantic strategies, or cognitive repr, Chilean newspapers, create about mapuche culture, in relation to the press coverage given to the hunger strike organised by prisoners of this ethnic group. For this, the discursive strategies used by the newspapers mentioned before, and the representation of their interrelationship with the macrostructures in journalism, which finally aim to analyze the lexicalization in the configuration of the mapuche otherness, were studied. The methodology consists of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) --in relation to the ideological square (Van Dijk, 1999) and lexicalization-- and the Velazquez' model (2011) for the study of the journalist discourse related to the superstructure and macrostructure of news. As a conclusion, the newspapers analysed use semantic and cognitive strategies to discriminate based on ethnocentrism, giving it a specific ideological square and polarisation between Others and Us. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the paper is to notice the integration of expressions of modernity, the idea of space and language of the subject as representations of the world. The modern is analyzed under the tension of the Latin American and the Eurocentric. The ideological through the idea of space as a cosmological antecedent and language under the figure of reality and its hermeneutical contour. We have called the whole of this relationship the semantics of the representation of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an in-depth morphosyntactic and semantic characterization of Spanish inequality comparatives by taking into account mainly synchronic and some diachronic data. This comprehensive study shows the need to adjust previous analyses of Spanish inequality comparatives. The architecture of these comparatives is shown to be determined by: (i) the size of the comparison standard (phrasal or clausal) and (ii) the type of link between the standard and the comparative cluster (coordination or dependency). Finally, the syntactic and semantic selection restrictions of the Spanish standard markers are defined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents three categories in which the notion of dignity can be used in jurisprudence, depending on the subject to which it is ascribed: as institutional status, as a characteristic of the human being and as a characterization of other elements. In each one of the types, in the first place, a theoretical explanation is made that, although brief, tries to introduce some characteristics about the respective meaning. Second, it describes how the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has used the term «dignity» in the respective sense; that is, a review of the casuistry is included. Finally, some ideas are discussed. The methodology has been analytical regarding the use of the concept and is based on an analysis of the contentious cases and the advisory opinions of the mentioned institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I present an account of the many professional opportunities that today’s society offers to philologists and linguists. Based on real stories –including mine– of people dedicated to linguistics and philology (some of them authentic influencers), I show how language has become a fundamental tool for digital media and technologies, and how its good use and analysis have become essential in many areas of both the business world and research, but also as part of the image of society in general. Among the many professional channels available to philologists of these times, it is possible to highlight the following: proofreader, linguistic advisor, content creator, community manager, forensic linguist or philologist 2.0 (that is, the one dedicated to all issues related to new technologies), not forgetting that of the teacher, a crucial position to train the people of the future. In all cases, the revolutionary possibilities offered by the new media allow professions to be exercised in a completely renewed and modernized manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article raises the need to establish relationships between the discipline of history and the theory of administration in order to think about the development of the latter within the framework of a history of ideas that makes it possible to locate the theory of administration based on its conditions of possibility in every historical moment. Therefore, this work does not intend to treat an internal evolution of ideas about the discipline. Still, the objective is to identify how, from the historical context and the use of the words in each context, it is possible to identify the different meanings of the word administration until its current equivalence with management. In short, this paper seeks to generate a work methodology for the history of administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]