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In research on intra-sentential pronominal anaphora resolution in null subject languages, it has been argued that null pronouns tend to be biased towards subject antecedents, whereas overt pronouns tend to prefer object antecedents, as predicted by Carminati's 'Position of the Antecedent Hypothesis'. However, these studies have mainly focused on only one of the two possible clause orders (main-subordinate or subordinate-main), which have not been overtly contrasted. This paper investigates the effects of clause order on the interpretation of third-person subject pronouns in globally ambiguous intra-sentential contexts by 49 native speakers of Spanish. The results of an acceptability judgment task explicitly comparing both clause orders indicate that relative clause order is a key factor affecting the interpretation of pronouns: while a preference of overt pronouns for object antecedents holds across clause orders, null pronouns show a bias towards subject antecedents only in subordinate-main sequences. These findings refine the Position of the Antecedent Hypothesis predictions by restricting them to subordinate-main complex sentences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a functional account of directives in spontaneous conversations in Spanish. More specifically, we address the use of imperatives and free-standing que-clauses with a directive meaning in interactions among equals. We start our analysis from Searle's Speech Act Theory. The purpose of this paper is to clarify how imperatives and free-standing que-clauses with subjunctive mood function in terms of the range of speech acts and degree of prototypicality within the category of directives. In order to do so, we describe the functional range of both constructions and the syntactic differences among them. It is argued that que-clauses are displaced directives, expressing atypical directivity. We also posit a functional division of labor between prototypical imperatives and free-standing que-clauses with subjunctive mood. The study is based on the analysis of 57 conversations among adolescents from Buenos Aires and Santiago de Chile (COLA corpus). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this paper is to revisit the so-called aspectual se, frequently cited over the last three decades as a new function of reflexive pronouns in Spanish and other languages, which refers to facultative uses of the reflexive pronoun where it has no effect on the valency or diathesis of the verb. I will focus on four empirical problems that such accounts face when dealing with corpus data: the requirement of a delimited object for transitive verbs, the semantic implications of the aspectual function of the reflexive pronoun, the unacceptability of the reflexive pronoun with some predicates, and the fact that these accounts have ignored a number of predicates that also take this facultative reflexive pronoun. I argue that a larger sample of both contexts and verbs, obtained by exhaustively analyzing corpus data, is necessary to improve our understanding of these uses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In several studies on sound change, it has been suggested that change is not possible without allophonic variation; indeed, it appears to be the triggering factor in phonetic evolution. This paper examines the process of yeísmo in Spanish, which is presented in recent research as a change in progress (see Moreno Fernández 2005). Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the lateral palatal /ʎ/ has been gradually merging with the non-lateral palatal approximant /j/, traditionally considered a fricative consonant in spite of its formantic structure. Nevertheless, in this process there is not a real dichotomy between a lateral and an approximant consonant. Instead, there is an array of coexisting allophones of /ʎ/([ʎ], [j], [ʒ]or […] are a few examples). The paper will thus focus on the wide variation in the phonetic representation of /ʎ/ and how it is affecting the Spanish sound system. This will be investigated through experimental means (analyzing speech acoustically) and through the collection of data for different dialects, which will give us information about (i) the existence of intra and inter-speaker variation and (ii) the way this variation functions. The results point to a restructuring of the palatal system of Spanish, at least in some parts of its linguistic territory, which seems to prove that the merger process is still progressing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we analyse Spanish verbal constructions that accept both the clitic se and the prefix auto- in order to determine whether these formations are or are not more agentive than the corresponding non-prefixed constructions (autocriticarse vs. criticarse). The proposal arises from the discussion about the different semantic values observed in formations with auto- and explores the distinctive features of such formations in contrast to those without auto-. We carried out a twofold analysis: first, we applied a set of tests of agentivity and control to a sample of 130 verbs with auto- extracted from the Modern Spanish Reference Corpus (CREA) and compared the sample with its non-prefixed pronominal pairs (i.e. verbs with clitic se). Second, we carried out a series of surveys using similar tests with Spanish speakers to guarantee the acceptability of the corpus interpretations. We argue that prefixed constructions show a higher degree of agentivity and control by external arguments, which results in the impossibility of bidirectionally replacing these constructions with those that only have the clitic se. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Besides their common lexical reading, the Spanish verbs amenazar ‘threaten’ and prometer ‘promise’ can also yield a modal reading. The shift from the former reading to the latter implies a change from a control structure to a raising structure and involves grammaticalization, more specifically auxiliation, which ends up in a layered co-existence of the two (or more) constructions. This paper is mainly concerned with the syntactic and semantic categorization of the grammaticalized quasi-modals amenazar and prometer. Generative accounts have focused on the difference between raising and control, but have not addressed the differences between the two verbs. This paper highlights that modal amenazar faces less constraints than modal prometer . Furthermore, the account presented below will show that epistemic and evidential auxiliaries have scope over the qualification expressed by modal amenazar and prometer, and are therefore not to be called “epistemic”. The paper also deals with the tense restrictions that these verbs undergo. Tenses such as the present perfect are not available in modal constructions with amenazar and prometer because of the activation of agentive patterns inherent to the lexical semantics of the verbs in question. The tense criterion is valid for verbs for which the grammaticalized form is not the most frequent one, but it does not account for true modals in Spanish and other Romance languages. The infinitive criterion turns out to be a good alternative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is generally assumed that grammaticalization is a major process in linguistic change. It is also assumed that grammaticalization does not affect homogeneously all linguistic categories, or even all languages: it has been said, for instance, that some languages are further down most grammaticalization clines than others and, thus, appear to be more grammaticalized than others. In this paper, we illustrate the uneven pace of grammaticalization in Romance by analysing a specific area of language, viz. simple and complex prepositions. Our goal is to establish a list of prepositions which are in actual use in five present-day Romance languages (to wit, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian and Spanish). In order to do so, we check the validity of existing lists against written and spoken corpora, and evaluate the degree of grammaticalization of each morpheme or construction, on the basis of (mainly) morpho-syntactic criteria. Additionally, and most importantly, a corpus-based approach makes it possible to observe these items' frequency. The result offers a clear picture of the degree of grammaticalization of prepositions in present-day Romance, showing that French seems indeed to be the most grammaticalized Romance language, followed by Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the linguistic change whereby Spanish dar prevailed as the default verb to express causation when taking a state noun as its object, displacing alternatives such as hacer vergüeenza 'to cause embarrassment' or poner miedo 'to frighten'. In spite of the seeming regularity of the dar-plus-state-noun pattern, it is argued that this collocational pattern has an idiosyncratic character, since not all combinations of lexical units conveying an equivalent meaning are acceptable in present day Spanish, whilst some alternatives that are currently possible in related languages and were commonly found in previous stages of this language's history (hacer miedo lit. 'to make fear') are no longer available. The study tries to show that the idiosyncratic character of these combinations in present-day Spanish can be explained in diachronic terms and that they are the result of two frequency effects that have been observed in other instances of linguistic change: on the one hand, the prevalence as productive patterns of linguistic structures with a high type frequency and, on the other, the resilience of structures with a high token frequency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We respond to Rodríguez Arrizabalaga's recent claim that Spanish shows genuine cases of strong resultative constructions, e.g. Juan apuñaló a Tomás hasta la muerte 'John stabbed Tom to death', argued to be equivalent to the English construction with the PP to death. This claim is theoretically relevant as it challenges the verb-framed behavior of Spanish with respect to Talmy's typology. Adopting a constructivist view of argument structure, we argue that Spanish hasta la muerte and English to death constructions of this type involve two completely distinct syntactic configurations, and that only the English to death PP can be regarded as a resultative phrase. We claim that the Spanish hasta PP is syntactically computed as an adjunct external to the argument structure of the predicate and provides a boundary to the predicate it merges with. We thus show that the Spanish construction with hasta la muerte fully conforms to the class of Talmy's verb-framed languages in that this type of construction is expected to be fully available and productive in this class of languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes the pragmatics of in-situ wh- and complex bare wh-interrogatives such as ¿de qué? 'of what?' in spoken Spanish, developing a typology of their discourse functions. The interpretation of such postposed wh-interrogatives depends on inference processes by the hearer that take as cues both the degree to which the interrogative proposition and the referent of the interrogative pronoun/adverb are cognitively accessible. This relationship follows from the fact that on the basis of the combination of the information states of the interlocutors (i.e. the degree of accessibility of the proposition and the referent of wh) with the information structure of this type of wh-interrogatives, the utterer of the wh-interrogative can predict the pragmatic effect of a given postposed wh-interrogative token in the hearer. I establish a hierarchy of the different discourse functions on the basis of their potential to change the current 'Question under Discussion' (QuD). In particular, the analysis demonstrates that postposed wh-interrogatives that realize or imply a challenge to a previous utterance by the addressee of the interrogative have weaker pragmatic conditions than other uses. Consequently, I theorize that these uses are crucial for our understanding of the expansion of the use of in-situ wh-interrogatives in languages such as French and Brazilian Portuguese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taxonomic nouns such as Spanish tipo appear in constructions that create ad hoc categories, typically in scientific and academic contexts. Some of them develop further uses, notably an adverbial use as an approximator or hedge, as a result of a reduction of the original construction. The aim of this contribution is to trace the origins of constructions that establish ad hoc categories in the case of Spanish tipo, and in particular the role of genitival constructions and apposition in technological, scientific and generally academic texts in the nineteenth century on the basis of corpora. I will further study the subsequent rise of the adverbial approximating functions used for ad hoc categorization and related pragmatic functions such as the use of tipo as a quotative marker in Argentinian youth language. On this basis, two broader issues will be discussed: (i) the relation between ad hoc categories and ad hoc categorization and a possibly different status of ad hoc categories and ad hoc categorization due to proceduralization; and (ii) the striking parallels with cognates from certain Romance languages (Portuguese and Italian) and from Russian and Swedish, as well as the question of whether there has been a parallel, independent development—and if so, why—or whether contact phenomena explain these similarities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study we analyze ego-documents and metalinguistic texts from nineteenth century and early twentieth century Chilean Spanish showing a number of cases of phonetic-phonological hypercorrections. Our focus is the interaction between language-normative discourses and language use. We work with the assumption that hypercorrections are a symptom of the speakers’ linguistic consciousness regarding the norm and the (overt) prestige associated with certain variants, and thus they reveal the influence that normative ideas exert over language use. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Chilean Spanish underwent a process of linguistic standardization, which manifested itself through a number of ‘disciplinary texts’ (grammars, dictionaries) that offered an exoglossic normative model. Chilean Spanish differed from this normative model in a number of features which were subject to overt condemnation and also were precisely those affected by hypercorrection in our data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present production study investigates the prosodic phrasing characteristic of sentences containing a relative clause with two possible noun phrase antecedents [Noun Phrase 1 Noun Phrase 2 Relative Clause] in the variety of Spanish spoken in the Basque Country. It aims to establish the default prosodic phrasing of these structures, as well as whether differences are found in phrasing between native and non-native speakers. Additionally, it examines the effect on prosodic phrasing of constituent length and familiarity with the sentences (skimming the sentences prior to reading them aloud). To do that, the productions of 8 Spanish monolinguals, 8 first language (L1) Spanish/second language (L2) Basque bilinguals, and 8 L1Basque/L2Spanish bilinguals are examined. A default phrasing consisting of the prevalence of a prosodic break after NP2 ([NP1 NP2/RC]) is obtained, and differences are found between the prosodic contours of native and non-native speakers. Additionally, a constituent length effect is found, with a higher frequency of prosodic boundaries after NP2 as RC length increases, as predicted by Fodor's Same Size Sister Constraint. Last, familiarity with the sentences was found to increase the frequency of occurrence of the default phrasing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses three variable coding properties of Spanish objects: flagging ( a-marking vs. ø-marking), indexing (clitic doubling vs. no doubling), and clitic case form (accusative lo vs. dative le). These properties are essential for the formal identification of grammatical relations. They are triggered by similar parameters that partly overlap and partly show distinct distributions, yet they also challenge the boundaries between direct objects [DO] and indirect objects [IO] and raise the question whether the typological alignment of Spanish (di)transitive clauses is indirective or secundative. The study draws on quantitative and qualitative corpus data on formal, semantic, and discourse properties of core participants in Spanish clauses, relating these properties to the distribution of variable coding. It is concluded that a-marking, clitic doubling, and leísmo are less frequently employed than unmarked objects, no doubling, and accusative case for clitics, that Spanish DO and IO must be taken as extreme points of a more general Object syntactic function, and that, in general, all variable object coding follows an indirective alignment type. Consequently, animate and topical objects are considered as formally and functionally marked atypical objects both in monotransitive and ditransitive clauses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This investigation aims to uncover the variation of the Spanish second-person singular subject pronoun tú 'you.sg' when it displaces its content away from the particular circumstances of the speaker and changes its deictic meaning to a resource for the objectivization of the utterance. The multiple repercussions of the formal variation (expression and omission) of this subject on internal and external levels of meaning will be explored. Essential to understanding this case of variation is the consideration of prominent features of the communicative situation, as well as the social identities and roles assumed by the speakers within it (including professional affiliation, transactional vs. interpersonal communicative stance and gender). The results of the analysis allow us to sketch basic interactional and discursive tendencies governing objectivizing uses of the second-person singular tú along the oral-written continuum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Spanish prepositional phrase hasta la muerte 'to death', in addition to its emphatic and intensifying function (e.g. Hay que animar al equipo hasta la muerte 'The team must be supported wholeheartedly (lit. to death)'), over the last few years developed a resultative function (e.g. Las mujeres fueron torturadas hasta la muerte 'The women were tortured to death'; Lo apedrearon hasta la muerte 'They stoned him to death'), equivalent to the one displayed by the English resultatives dead and to death (e.g. He shot the president dead; He stabbed the president to death). Until recently, however, the construction containing the prepositional resultative hasta la muerte was considered ungrammatical, a literal calque from English. Its attested presence in the Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual, albeit at low frequency levels, and its frequent occurrence nowadays in the Spanish mass media, clearly show that this construction is now making its way into the Spanish language [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The frequency of expressed first-person-singular subjects is significantly higher in European Portuguese (EP) than in Peninsular Spanish (PS). In both languages, subject expression is sensitive to the relative focusing of attention on different participants of the event and same/switch reference. In addition, in both PS and EP, subject-pronoun usage with the most frequent verb lexemes shows a tendency to grammaticalization. The different grammaticalizing constructions account for part of the differences found between the two languages. In addition to examining the variable subject pronoun expression in PS and EP, the article discusses the use of semantic roles in cross-linguistic analysis and the role of frequency and formulaicity in grammaticalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The West-European languages all develop an indefinite article by a grammaticalisation process of the numeral 'one'. The article describes the different outcomes of this process by distinguishing different patterns resulting from the interpretation of the numeral as a quantifier, a classifier or both. The different patterns are examined in their connection and interaction with both the lexical make-up of nouns (homogenous vs. heterogenous nouns) and the category of number (singular, plural and collective) in Germanic and Romance languages. Three different systems are identified: a quantifier system in Germanic, a qualifier system in Modern French and a mixed system in Old French and Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a comparative analysis of word order in Spanish, French and Italian. We first consider word order in general, and show that Spanish has all types of word order except SOV (i.e. SVO, VOS, OSV, VSO and OVS), while Italian lacks SOV and VSO, and French lacks SOV, VSO and OVS. Taking a constructional view on grammaticalization and language change, we argue that the different word order patterns can be accounted for in terms of grammaticalization. We provide evidence for a continuum from Spanish → Italian → French, Spanish being the least grammaticalized, and French the most grammaticalized language. In the second part of the article we provide further evidence for our claim by focusing on the distribution of a particular type of word order shared by all three languages, VOS, where the subject is typically narrowly focused. VOS occurs in four discourse contexts in Spanish and Italian, but it is subject to additional restrictions in Italian. In French it appears only in one of the four discourse contexts of Spanish and Italian. Our hypothesis is that this is a case of progressive grammaticalization with respect to the interface between grammatical structure (the VOS word order) and information structure. Independent evidence for our claim comes from the distribution of clefts in Romance, which are a functional variant of VOS. This phenomenon, which developed in Romance as an innovative mechanism used to narrowly focus a constituent, shows the reversed pattern as the one observed for VOS: it is most developed in French, least in Spanish while it is progressing in modern Italian. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grammaticalization is generally assumed to be a gradual process and languages are thought to be grammaticalized to different degrees. For Romance languages, it has often been claimed that French is far more grammaticalized than Spanish, and that Italian occupies an intermediate position between these two. The aim of this study is to investigate to what extent this claim applies to existential constructions. In present-day French, Italian and Spanish, the most frequent existentials are il y a, c'è and hay respectively, all three being highly grammaticalized expressions. My analysis of these constructions will be based on the six parameters of grammaticalization as defined by Lehmann (1985, 1995), looking at instances drawn from a large newspaper corpus. The discussion will suggest that, as expected, French existential constructions display several signs of a highly advanced grammaticalization process which their Spanish and Italian counterparts lack. Moreover, it will be shown that the existential construction is least grammaticalized in Italian. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As is well known, the possessive paradigms of French, Italian, Spanish and Romanian contain three types of possessive: adjectives, determiners and pronouns. Comparing with the Latin system, from which all Romance possessive systems derive, two tendencies prevail: possessive pronouns tend to be eliminated, and possessive adjectives change into determiners or become defictive adjectives with a restricted distribution. However, the possessive system of each of these four languages appears to be different. The aim of the article is to examine the extent to which these differences are the result of different degrees of grammaticalization. We show that the possessive system in French is in the lead in terms of grammaticalization in that neither of its two paradigms any longer displays adjectival properties. The least grammaticalized system is the Italian, while Spanish and Romanian occupy intermediate positions: Spanish combines the French system of clitic forms with the Italian system of strong forms. As for Romanian, the dependence of the possessive form on the definite article or its substitute AL shows that it is more grammaticalized than the Italian possessive system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article shows that analytic causative constructions are more grammaticalized in French and Italian than in Spanish and Portuguese, both in meaning (semantic bleaching of the verb 'to make') and in synthesis (structural event integration). It is pointed out, moreover, that Italian fare + infinitive is semantically and structurally more grammaticalized than French faire + infinitive, and that the emergence of the inflected infinitive in the clausal complements of causative and perception verbs in Portuguese has made the Portuguese causative constructions less integrated, and thus less grammaticalized, than the Spanish ones. The conclusion of this study is that there exists a decreasing continuum of grammaticalization of causative constructions in Romance languages, that starts with Italian and goes on to French, Spanish and Portuguese, in that order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes gender-agreement variation in the Determiner Phrase (DP) of Afro-Bolivian Spanish (ABS). We claim that this is an instance of crossgenerational change, consisting in the systematic substitution of stigmatized basilectal Afro-Bolivian features with more prestigious Bolivian Spanish ones. In light of recent minimalist models, the variability encountered in the corpus can be accounted for systematically as a by-product of the differential specification of uninterpretable features in a derivation. This study highlights an on-going process of post-bozal Spanish approximation to a more prestigious Spanish variety. Such transition seems to be driven by social factors and is significantly regulated by syntactic constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has often been claimed that certain verb-subject configurations can convey a specificational meaning, but it has not been previously shown that they can also have the same syntactico-semantic and discourse properties as other types of sentences which mainly have a specificational meaning, such as clefts and pseudoclefts. In this article I examine Verb Object Subject (VOS) word order in Romance, and show that it shares the syntactic and semantic properties of specificational sentences. I also provide a description of the discourse functions of VOS in French, Spanish and Italian, and conclude that these differ significantly in each of the three languages. I argue that such differences follow naturally from the specificational nature of VOS clauses, and reflect the different functional types of specificational sentences attested cross-linguistically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I present a unified analysis of long scrambling (LS) (scrambling across sentence boundaries) out of infinitivals in German and Polish and clitic climbing (CC) (clitic movement across sentence boundaries) in Spanish. Infinitives exhibiting LS in German have been termed ‘coherent infinitives’ by Beth (1955) whereas the phenomenon of infinitives allowing for chitic climbing (CC) in Spanish (and other Romance languages) is often named ‘restructuring’ (see for example Napoli 1981, Bordelois 1986, Choe 1988). The terms ‘coherent infinitives’ and ‘restructuring’ refer to the observation that certain control verbs as well as ECM- and raising verbs can take infinitival complements that are not barriers for clause bounded processes. Although these infinitives are usually described in terms of a list of characteristics (see for example Haider 1986), it should be emphasized that a) empirical implications for other languages than German have not been discussed from a comparative perspective and b) the theoretical status of the concept of such infinitives is not clear. Restricting myself to control complements I will show that concerning a) LS in German and Polish and CC in Spanish show up with the same class of control complements, displaying an interesting parallel between the Slavic, Germanic and Romance languages from a typological paint of view. Furthermore, concerning b). I will give a unified analysis of CC and LS by discussing lexically and structurally determined options, that make a bisentential representation behave syntacytically like a monoclausal structure in German, Polish, and Spanish. I will argue that CC and LS are both licensed by the same mechanisms. To account for this fact I will introduce a theory of barriers and incorporation, apply it to the data presented and extend it to the impossibility of LS and CC in the presence of certain islands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The distribution of Spanish focused and depreciative bare plurals presents a problem for standard syntactic accounts within the Government & Binding paradigm, either based on the notion of government or on incorporation mechanisms. It is argued that a minimalist account is superior to the previous ones because the licensing of focused and depreciative bare plurals can be integrated in the general theory of feature movement. This operation takes place in constituent structures allowing multiple specifiers and relating the focus feature with other features of the D and the C systems. Evidence is provided of the checking of a focus feature in these two domains, a fact that supports the symmetric pattern of licensing of focused (and depreciative) hare plurals in matrix and embedded contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on productive processes involved in the adaptation of Spanish loanwords in Basque. It is shown that together with processes that are clearly justified, there are also synchronically unjustified adaptations. It is argued that the motivation for such seemingly anomalous adaptations can be found in earlier stages of the languages in contact. In particular, Spanish words ending in -on replace this ending by -oi in Basque. It is concluded that, in prolonged situations of language, bilingual grammars may contain correspondence rules whose exclusive function is to adapt borrowings from one language to the other.

This article shows that Judeo-Spanish, the language of the Jews expelled from Spain in 1492, is a fused language although it retained remarkably archaic lexical and grammatical features of medieval Spanish. Morphology, which is generally considered the least affected area of grammar, shows this kind of fusion. In most cases, the morphological fusion results in lexicalization: once a word is newly categorized as a noun, adjective, or verb, its inflection follows the grammatical norms of Spanish. The exceptions involve words of Hebrew-Aramaic of origin which might take Hebrew rather than Spanish inflection. The morphological processes are discussed in terms of the Strong vs. Weak Lexicalist Hypotheses.

An analysis of Spanish todavia, ya and German noch, schou (cf. English still, already) in relation to negation is proposed in which expectations and not only lime enter the picture. Used with wide scope, these adverbs apply to descriptions of changes that do or do not take place; it is this change of a given state of affairs that is central to their meaning, which is made up of a presupposition and an expectation. A unified analysis is offered that covers a variety of uses, such as evaluative, epistemic, quantitative, and temporal with narrow scope (including German erst and Spanish solo; cf. English only). The conflicting analyses of the different uses are discarded in favor of asemantic definition procedure where differences are accounted for by appropriate semantic operators. A claim to include in the semantics of the adverbs the components previously considered pragmatic is thus substantiated. since expectations are well-defined linguistic objects, and not the result of inferences of any sort. At the same time, in the semantic definitions of the adverbs a place is secured for inferential access to knowledge used in utterance interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Spanish opposition of a tap [r] and trill [R] is unusual in several respects. Most contemporary phonological analyses postulate a single phoneme /r/, deriving the phonologically distinctive intervocalic trill from geminate /r-r/. This type of analysis fails to address several important issues. These include the fact that [r] is the only Spanish consonant which occurs onset-initially in word-internal position but cannot occur word-initially, and the fact that the intervocalic trill [R] is clearly onset-initial, thus requiring a derivation which radically changes the syllabic structure from an underlying heterosyllabic geminate to a superficial onset-initial trill. In the present study an attempt is made to unify surface [r] and [R] via reference to syllabic templates, which allow a maximum of two consonantal elements in the onset. Manifestations of [R] are analyzed as maximizing the syllabic template, while intervocalic [r] is derived from a more marked underlying structure, preattached to the prosodic skeleton. Non-preattached /r/ is expanded to a dual structure, which ultimately produces [R], in appropriate contexts. The relatively marked nature of the [r]-[R] opposition is demonstrated, and it is claimed that this opposition is not a carryover from Latin quantitative distinctions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts to show that phonotactical patterns that do not exist are relevant for establishing the phonology of languages and, that non-existent phonotactical structures provide an argument against purely formal analyses of phonological structure. The position taken here is that phonotactical analyses should be based on possible syllable types, not on the existing ones and the evidence comes from the Castilian dialect of Spanish. Being fairly conservative, Castilian Spanish provides an adequate source of data for generalizations on syllable structure since syllable and word-final consonants are relatively well preserved. Linguistic structure is a result of several different forces working together. Linguists' formalizations are worked out from a jumble of data in which regularities can be the result of authentic working processes, but also of fossilized restrictions or even mere coincidences. Paradoxically, the only way to make truly relevant, purely synchronic phonological descriptions is to take into account the behavior of the language from the historical and cultural point of view.

This article postulates three grades or types of emphatic meaning in Spanish, Czech and Russian. These are: basic contextual differentiation between rheme and theme; emphasis in the proper sense of the word, i.e. a meaning of the relatively greater importance than usual of either rheme or theme of the sentence; and emotional emphasis. All of the compared languages have a considerable amount of analogical devices: word order, stress, intonation, singling-out-constructions, lexical means, repetition. The different systematic possibilities to be found especially in the use of word order in Spanish on one side and in Russian and Czech on the other, are reflected structurally in the specific functions that are fulfilled by the singling-out-constructions in these languages.

This article explores one case of semantic and syntactic shift of a single word in the Spanish language; namely the development of Latin gustare among the Romanic languages of the Iberian peninsula. In particular, an attempt is made to link, in a partially causal manner, the semantic shift and the syntactic evolution of the various reflexes of gustare, and to outline the possible mechanism of a semantically motivated syntactic change. It was shown that the semantic evolution of a verb resulted in an immediate discrepancy between the deep semantic structure and the surface structure, and required the application of an additional transformation to map between these two levels.

This article discusses the etymology of the Spanish word "baldio." "Baldio" has formed a part of the Spanish lexicon for many centuries, and its source and history have merited the attention of many prominent Hispanists over several generations. Various Spanish definitions of the term are explained further in this article.