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This paper attempts to explain the alternation between the prepositions a and de when used as complements to the adjectives contrario 'contrary', diferente 'different', and distinto 'distinct', as illustrated in Yo no fui distinta __mi madre 'I wasn't different __my mother', where both prepositions can be inserted. Relying on Langacker's3 notion of construal, the hypothesis is that a construes the comparison in the sense of 'direction toward' while de construes it in the sense of 'separation' or 'point of departure', and that these senses should be reflected in the usage contexts of the two prepositions. The quantitative analysis of some 800 cases extracted from Davies'4 two billion word Corpus del español, however, shows no indication of a and de setting up different construals. This lack of correlation between usage and semantics appears to be due to the diachronic generalization of a as complement of the three adjectives, thus relegating the use of de to specific collocations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to explore the properties of preceding pronominal subjects in Caribbean Spanish and to provide an appropriate syntactic analysis for them. On the basis of the Head to Spec movement hypothesis proposed by Matushansky, Vicente and Citko, among others, we propose a novel analysis con cerning the conventional assumption in licensing null subjects. Concretely, it is assumed that the preceding pronominal subject is a spelled out element of the verb that has moved to Spec-IP, and this operation is realized as a clause-level compensation for the weakening of verbal inflection in Caribbean Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After careful consideration of the need to update the term "cultura" (one of the most consulted words in the online DLE), a detailed, diacronic and comparative analysis is made of this and other current dictionaries in order to point out posible lexicographic shortcomings that would justify updating their microstructures. As a result, a better selection of lexicographic sources, as well as the need to provide adequate cultural information as demanded by the type of dictionary users, are some of the remedies recommended in this paper. Finally, a proposal is put forward exemplifying the meaning of lexicographic culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper intends to analyze, quantitatively, the contiguity relations that are established among the words appearing in the individual lists from which the lexical availability glossaries are created. To do so, a contiguity index has been developed; it allows measuring the relevance of the association between two given words when they appear together in the above mentioned lists. The paper shows the calculation of this index and offers a way to graphically represent the net of words that derives from the analysis of the individual lists of a given center of interest. The corpus that has been used for the calculation is the Léxico Disponible de la Comunidad the Madrid, which surveyed 600 informants on 20 centers of interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper exposes the theoretical foundations of a research conducted by the author and two other colleagues whose papers on empirical findings are included in this journal too. It is supposed that the mental networks that underlie words and those that underlie their corresponding concepts are partly shared. In order to support this hypothesis some tests of word and referent association and ordering were realized by assuming that the mental image of a referent reminds us of its corresponding concept in the brain. Experimental results confirm this hypothesis in the domain of Spanish at least, some interesting conclusions on the development of verbal processing in the brain being drawn at the same time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the early 1900s, the linguistic theory has found support in the concept of objective conjugation to explain the clitic doubling structures in Spanish. Nevertheless, these examples are not all regarded as falling within that label, and indeed only a small number manifest the properties of this phenomenon in a robust way. From this perspective, this work analyses the contexts in which the category objective conjugation is relevant under the terms that will be judged here as generally accepted by the Grammar today. Given its contrastive approach, this paper first examines the compliance of those requirements in the Spanish peninsular standard. The aim is to transfer then this analysis to the variety spoken in the Basque Country, whose pronominal system and particular clitic doubling processes suggest, as it will be corroborated here, a stronger stability in the manifestation of the objective conjugation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociodemographic conditions of rural Castilian regions have undergone many changes in the last 80-90 years. If one or two surveys in a rural nucleus were sufficient to describe at large the local language at the time of the ALPI, due to the relative homogeneity of the peninsular rural counties, at present, if we want to make a detailed linguistic study of a rural region we could not ignore neither the heterogeneity of its inhabitants and their forms of life nor the growing urban influence. This paper describes the way of proceeding to prepare a corpus and comment its data in the specific case of Sierra de Francia, a rural region located in the mountainous south of Salamanca. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the organization of the morphological families as networks. There are three types of families -lexical, functional and affixal- and we use, as analysis method, the concepts and tools of the Graph Theory. We analyze a sample of eight families (ancho-ensanchar, estrecho, gordo, delgado-delgazar, caliente y frío) that have an adjectival root and are antonymous. We take the families from the Base de datos de morfología del español (BDME) and we complete them with Internet searches of non-frequent or simply sporadic words. We study the centrality and clustering measures in networks: first, in lexical families, second, in the merge of lexical families with their functional and affixal families. We demonstrate how the Graph Theory is useful to analyze the organization of morphological families and their differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade, morphological studies have started to focus again on compounding, from a crosslinguistic point of view as well as for the particular case of Spanish. In this paper, we will first review a number of classifications of Spanish compounds, with special attention to coordinative compounds. Then we will focus our attention on a particular kind of construction which has been sometimes included among coordinative compounds: the nominal combination (madre-hija) that appears in the relación madre-hija ('mother-daughter relationship') structure. It will be shown that there are formal characteristics which take these structures away from compounds and bring them closer to free syntactic structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on a group of Spanish emotion verbs, such as asustar 'to frighten' or asombrar 'to amaze', that takes as grammatical subject the cause which triggers the emotion and as first verbal object the experiencer (El violador asusta a las madres 'The rapist frightens the mothers'). Most of these verbs present an alternance in their superficial syntactic structure in such a way that the referred first verbal object can be interpreted as DO (El violador las asusta 'The rapist frightens them') or as IO (A las madres les asusta el violador 'The mothers are afraid of the rapist'). The goal of this paper is to ascertain whether these two syntactic expressions entail also differences in meaning and whether these differences are important enough to distinguish two lexical units within a polysemous word (lexical ambiguity) or, on the contrary, they can be covered by the same definition (lexical vagueness). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for the consideration of determiners (including articles) as an adjectival category, i.e. determining adjectives, within the context of Spanish Grammar. Determiners, it is claimed here, do not constitute an independent word category. The paper analyses terminological problems posed by terms such as determinante, actualizador, presentador etc. and discusses the different theories on determiners and their classifications. The author proposes a differentiation between intensifying and non-intensifying determiners and suggests different subcategories for each group. The last section of this paper deals briefly with multi-word determiners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on linguistics does not have a tradition of research into the so-called repeated discourse units. What is more, some aspects of this domain of speech have scarcely been studied. Binomials are one of such neglected phenomena. The present paper shows some characteristics of binomials and provides a considerable corpus in Spanish. Binomials may form part of idioms, fixed expressions, sayings, etc., but they do not constitute either idioms or sayings. Malkiel is credited with writing the first and only remarkable work on binomials. That work contributed brilliant ideas but also contained some mistakes. Here, I shall comment on both the positive and the negative aspects of Malkiel's paper. I hope that the data and the hypotheses presented in this article will prompt experts to analyse and discuss these issues on binomials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we focus on several Spanish and Catalan idiomatic constructions which are the result of the grammaticalization of different lexical items, but which share the expression of an emphasized or intensified quantification. These idiomatic constructions are the colloquial equivalent of quantifiers such as esp. mucho(s) / mucha(s) «many» or muy «very». For example, the exact equivalent of a sentence like María is very beautiful would be María es muy guapa, but there are many expressions in colloquial Spanish which can substitute this standard structure. For instance, one can say Mira que María es guapa, where an imperative of verb mirar («to look at») is used. The imperative mira can adopt this quantitative function because it has experienced a process of grammaticalization. In our paper we will analize the syntactic properties of these constructions, contrasting Spanish and Catalan forms, and we will study in detail the syntactic uses of the grammaticalized forms mira, cuidado and vaya. The latter is a subjunctive form of Spanish verb ir «to go» [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Automatic Term Recognition from technical texts has mainly two applications: on one side, assistance to lexicographers and documentalists; and on the other side, identification of key concepts for machine translation and information retrieval. Term recognition depends on the subject domain and the lexical patterns of a given language, in our case, Spanish. In this article, we present an evaluation of three different strategies for selecting candidates to term. In a second step, each list is filtered by a set of medical affixes to provide a final proposal of terms. This paper also discusses the problems of recall and precision of each strategy and shows how these techniques have been used to compile a lexicon of medica terms and an ATR system for Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modality appears in conversational Spanish markers vamos and vaya as a result of their modal origin from subjunctive forms. Some of their implicit modal values are gone conventionalizing because of their continued interaction with certain contexts, while other ones have weakened as the textual values of these elements were strengthened. In this paper, we focus on one of the modal functions of these markers that has barely been addressed in the literature, despite its considerable functional performance. This is reaffirmation propositional function, which presents distinctive formal and functional features that allows it to be considered as an independent (sub)function of these conversational markers, and in particular, their constructional derivatives and . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with a topic to which not much attention is usually paid in the studies on phonetic variation in Spanish, since these investigations are much more frequently dedicated to syllable-final s, a variable which serves as one of the most important criteria for the classification of the varieties of Spanish. Syllableinitial s, however, in the author's opinion, deserves a more detailed study, which is why both its geographic boundaries and the conditioning factors for its appearance are studied in this paper. Moreover, different theories on the origins of this phenomenon were considered, and, based on the available data, an effort was made to establish the mechanism governing this change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of the experiment of association of a number of items of color images -color names and locomotion images - locomotion names as a test to validate two hypotheses: a) if there is a ordering relationship between the cognitive domain (of images, concepts) and the semantic field of words in Spanish language (H1), and b) if a relationship exists, it is stronger in the cultural fields than in natural areas (H2). The results do not confirm that there is a close relationship between concepts and terms in Spanish language; seems to be some gradual in concepts and in terms in a cultural field such as locomotion field but this correlation is not given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the linguistic mitigation strategies employed by universitylevel speakers from Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, who were interviewed within the framework of the "Project for the Sociolinguistic Study of Spanish from Spain and America (PRESEEA)". This first approach to the subject in the above-mentioned city includes an analysis of the most frequent strategies and their distribution according to the variables 'gender' and 'age', as well as a comparison with the results of parallel studies carried out in Madrid and Valencia, within the framework of the same pan-Hispanic research project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to present an empirical study that explores the linguistic and discursive mechanisms which are used in digital journalism so that citizens have access to the language of the law and to the legal terminology used by jurists and can, therefore, properly understand what happens in courts. The research is based on a corpus of news and reports about legislative and judicial subjects, selected from leading Spanish digital newspapers and broadcasted between the years 2008-2012. The corpus has gone through textual analysis with 3.4W AntConcconcordance program (2). The results point to the need to invest greater efforts in the use of clarifying strategies, taking profit of the multimodal and hypertextual dimension of digital journalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is no chapter devoted to discourse markers in the new grammar published by the Real Academia Española (NGLE), which is coherently structured according to lexical categories. However, these units are described in the chapter devoted to the adverb. In this paper, we present some thoughts on the way discourse markers are described in this work: to what extent the recent proposals that have been made in this field of study have been subscribed by the academics and whether the authors of the grammar have included some novelties regarding more traditional descriptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The feminization of nouns denoting professions and positions held by women is a gradual process that is influenced by different areas: linguistic, social and institutional. The media reflect a daily variation that occurs between the resources used for the formation of the feminine gender of nouns of this type. In this paper we have analyzed the way this phenomenon is manifested in the field of journalism, which is the filter for general linguistic habits and one of the main references for shaping the current purism. To achieve this objective we have selected a representative group of professions, with particular emphasis on the analysis of those cases where linguistic variation was found and comparing the results obtained with their lexicographic treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the analysis of the locution gracias a Dios, this article provides a model for the linguistic description of Spanish evaluative expressions according to the objectives that should be considered in an exhaustive study of this kind of modal words. To this end, this paper offers some observations on the categorial characterization of gracias a Dios, the discursive instructions that make up its semantic information and ultimately the pragmatic effects favoured by its meaning. Furthermore, the linguistic study of gracias a Dios can explain relations with other emotive expressions in Spanish that can evaluate a discourse positively, but that offer some differences concerning its distributional properties, its semantic values and the communicative intentions which can be used nowadays. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The six particles dis–, ex–, abs–, de, des–and desde constitute the relational subsystem of the “movement of separation” with heterogeneous vitality and profitability in Spanish language. This paper analyzes the issue of invariant signification in each of those particles, the senses they develop in preverbal or compositional position and the degree of vitality they show in contemporary speech. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses some verbs with the –izar suffix based on names of current politicians. Its aim is to determine their semantic schema and some of the factors guiding their interpretation. The analysis takes as a base the semantic classification of denominal verbs, the semantic peculiarities of proper names and some syntactic constructions in which those verbs can participate. The article concludes that these verbs encode a causative meaning, but not a similative one; it also concludes that, although the semantic properties of the base noun contributes to the imprecision of the meaning of these verbs, their semantic properties are similar to those that some researches attribute to denominal verbs in general: they have an underspecified meaning that involves the notion of ‘change'; their senses are modulated by sublexical or encyclopedic information related the verbal arguments and the base noun. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been traditionally assumed that the negation expressed by the Spanish negative prefix des- is a stronger, more marked negation than the standard propositional negation conveyed by the adverb no. The aim of this paper is to connect the subjective values associated to des- with a general trend consisting in turning contradictories into contraries due to a pragmatic principle of reinforcement. Specifically, this article focuses on verbal derivation, i. e., on those cases in which des- is adhered to verbal bases to conformnew verbs. As a consequence of this pragmatic reinforcement, it will be shown that incorporated negation exhibited by des- increases the subjective presence of the speaker, which can be considered as an example of subjectification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the percentage of use of VO and OV structures in Spanish oral corpus of Basque Spanish bilingual adults; pragmatic and discourse functions of OV structures are also examined in order to evaluate Basque syntax influence on Basque Spanish variety. Specifically, three aspects of the referent have been explored: given-new information level, the referent function, and its continuity in the discourse. Results suggest VO structure is usedmost frequently in the Basque Spanish bilingual utterances in Spanish, but OV structure is more regular exploited by unbalanced Spanish bilinguals who are dominant in Basque. Results also reveal that new information usually appears in topicalized positions, and the topicalized referent shows low continuity in the discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is part of the Panhispanical Project of Lexical Availability in Spanish, directed by the professor Humberto López Morales. This fact has been determinant to delimitate the methodological bases and the criteria of edition. Only few projects in the field of Hispanic linguistics have a common basis so ambitious that make possible the establishment of successful comparitions between different sintopies. In the present article we are focused in the nomina of foreign words consigned in the available lexicon of pre-universitary students from Seville. We part from the results obtained from four hundred informants and we describe the differences found after the analisys of four variables: 'sex', 'tipe of school', 'sociocultural level' and 'geographical area'. Finally, we compare the Anglicisms provided by the eight provinces of the Autonomous Comunity of Andalusia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fact that lexical blending causes shortening is often taken as evidence that this morphological process is subtractive. This paper argues that the classification of lexical blending within subtractive morphology is accurate for syntagmatic blends, but inaccurate for associative blends because, while the shortening of the former is the product of deletion, that of the latter is the result of extensive overlapping. Through the use of faithful and unfaithful multiple-correspondence relationships, it is demonstrated that associative blending consists of superimposing one word upon another one. Although the output word is shorter than the sum of the input words, no part of the input is left completely unrepresented in the output. Associative blends prioritize the prosodic structure of the head, but compensate the non-head by prioritizing its segmental structure. In this way, they manage to balance the faithfulness they owe to both of their etymons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with syntactic, semantic-denotative and terminological criteria used in attempt to characterize and classify several types of Spanish nominal combinations. We are going to revisite such criteria in order to propose some guidelines on delimiting free syntax constructions from phraseological ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a critical review of the so-called Verbal Government Complement (VGC), arguing, with Demonte, that two types of VGCs must be distinguished: the insist type, and the consist type. An analysis will be proposed according to which the former is formed by a small clause selected by a light verb (which explains their obligatory presence, e.g., The exam consists *(offive questions)), the latter being a variety of adjunct (in particular, a "lexical adjunct", in Mateu's sense, which will explain the possibility to suppress them: The witness insisted (that he is innocent)). Besides providing additional evidence to differentiate two types of VGCs, the analysis has the more general goal of discussing the traditional distinction between arguments (participants obligatorily selected) and adjuncts (or circumstantial complements). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the semantic and syntactic properties of the Spanish lexical markers of difference distinto/diferente 'different' and diverso 'diverse'. It analizes, in particular, their behaviour as adjectives and determiners with respect to the selection of an overt item of comparison, the expression of either non-identity or qualitative differences between the entities being compared, and the (anaphoric, NP-internal and sentence-internal) readings they may have depending on how the things to be compared are determined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a contrastive study about the verbal mood (indicative and subjunctive) in the relative clauses in Spanish and Italian languages, specifically in the restrictive relative clauses introduced by que/che or /. At first it is necessary to remember some fundamental concepts that can help to understand the dynamic of the selection of the mood in those relative clauses such as the distinction between definite/undefinite and specific/non-specific antecedent. The aim of this work is to analyze, supported by examples, two of the factors that affect the verbal mood in the relative subordinates: (i) intensional verbs in the main clause (ii) future and imperative verbs in the main clause. The contrast between Italian and Spanish relative clauses will allow to determine the most relevant divergences. The results will be applicable in the teaching of Spanish as a foreign language and in the field of translation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the distributional restrictions of elatives in negative contexts. First, I will show that elatives can appear in a negative sentence if they are not within the scope of negation. Second, I will study the behaviour of these modifiers in other negative environments. In order to describe the distribution of elatives, I will adopt the characterisation of negative environments put forward by Ladusaw (1979) and van der Wouden (1997), among others, who distinguish between downward entailing contexts, anti additive contexts and antimorphic contexts. I will show that elatives do not have a uniform behaviour as regards their distribution in negative environments. In this sense, it is possible to distinguish three classes of extreme degree modifiers. The first class cannot appear in downward entailing contexts; the second class is sensitive to the focus of negation; and the third class is compatible with all the negative environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work studies three 'denominal' verbs which has been classified as 'agentive': protagonizar, fiscalizar and tiranizar. The paper examines the relationship between the nominal bases and the meaning of these verbs. It also analyses some of their syntactic and semantic properties: the semantic role of their arguments, their participation in diathesis alternations, some of their aspectual characteristics. The analysis allows to conclude that fiscalizar and tiranizar are 'activity' verbs with a 'similative' meaning, but protagonizar differs from them in many ways. This verb does not seem to be specified with respect to 'agency' or 'activity', and the (sub)lexical, encyclopedic or 'frame' properties of its complements are clearly relevant for the semantic composition of the sentence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper lies in the category of research on sports terminology as a language for specific purposes. Hence, it is a study with a lexicological and lexicographical perspective, concerning the Spanish language and bilingual dictionaries. On this occasion, I will deal with meanings and sports terms in Laura Tam's Grande Dizionario di Spagnolo, distinguishing between terms of a specific nature, entries of a generic nature in the milieu of sports and, finally, non-descript terms. The study concludes with a comparison of terms in the Spanish-Italian section and those in the Italian- Spanish section, with an analysis of the differences. A selection of some of the most representative terms will be presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Spanish language, the "proportional correlation" is expressed by different syntactic forms depending on the type of discourse, the geographic areas, etc. This paper deals with the semantic-linguistic differences --in many cases, very large-- between these particular forms and the varied senses which they acquire in the speech uses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spanish concessive clauses usually are constructed with the indicative when they refer to facts and with the subjunctive when they apply to hypothetical or future objections. However, the prototypical marker of counterarguments, "aunque," often appears with the subjunctive in merely factual contexts, like in the statement "No soy nacionalista, aunque sea vasco", pronounced by a Basque politician. The traditional explanations of this phenomenon are based upon factors like information structure (the subjunctive is supposed to convey more topical and less relevant information) or the speaker's attitude (the subjunctive is thought to reflect a more polemic and less cooperative behaviour). The aim of this paper, inspired by textual linguistics, is to connect the "aunque"-subjunctive in factual contexts with the underlying textual sequence. Numerous examples obtained from the Real Academia corpus show that the "aunque"-subjunctive plays an important part in polite argumentation and can be considered as a case of what I would like to call "argumentative subjunctive". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is fourfold: (1) to point out the existence of two types of atypical verb+noun collocations in Spanish, that are the concealing collocations and the metaphorical collocations; (2) to describe their main semantic characteristics; (3) to analyze two semantic processes in the selection of the collocator in these collocations; and (4) to study the distinction between metaphorical collocations and verbal idioms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes, in the frame of the Metrical and Autosegmental Phonology, the prosodic descriptions of some discourse markers that presents tonematics structures that would allow us (if it was the case) to differentiate them of morphophonologically identical forms with different function in the text. We study acoustically the Spanish discourse markers o sea, este, pues ¿no?, claro, ahora, bueno and pero. The conclusions of the study seems to show that the analyzed discourse markers present an own prosodic configuration that could work as approach for their description and categorization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to test the adequacy of the politeness approach for the study of variation in morphosyntactic structure. Synchronically, variation may be seen as the possibility of choice among different alternatives to code the same descriptive meaning; the existence and diachronic maintenance of such alternatives is often justified by the fact that they can convey subtle differences in other levels of meaning -particularly the discursive and cognitive ones. We will propose that such meaningful potential of grammatical variants can be exploited (in conjunction with many other linguistic features) as an interactional resource for the management of personal faces and interpersonal relationships. This hypothesis will be tested on three variables pertaining to the paradigm of Spanish verbal clitics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the use of the expression hasta las trancas --originally hasta las trencas-- which is widely used in modern colloquial Spanish in Europe and to a lesser extent in Mexico, but not included in the DRAE nor in most other dictionaries. A corpus of examples has been collected based on questionnaires and sampling in the provinces of Almería, Granada and Málaga, in Internet discussion forums, the daily press and periodicals and literary texts. In the study the different meanings of this expression are listed, and the different uses of each semantic value are tabled (e.g. predicative and attributive verb combinations, and noun and adjective modifications). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is intended to verify the nature of dialectal variations found in the spoken Spanish present in three geographical areas of the Araucania region, along side with the degree of the mapudungun influence considered the native language in contact. It is also intended to recognize both the most frequently used speech markers present in the oral level shown by local residents as well as its functions seen in superior levels of the sentences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on conversation analysis and sociopragmatics, this paper examines the procedures employed by speakers of Ecuadorian Spanish, corresponding to one particular social group, to open 'personal' telephone conversations. These procedures are analyzed against the canonical model that has been described for North American English (Schegloff, 1986), and for which claims of universality have been made. Deviations from the canon are highlighted. It is proposed that some of these deviations constitute instances of situational variation and that others can possibly be regarded as examples of cultural variation. The need for more studies on telephone conversations in different contexts in Ecuadorian and other varieties of Spanish (and other languages) to facilitate cross-cultural comparisons is emphasized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Temporal distance and modality have been proposed as core meanings of the indicative (simple and periphrastic) future tense forms in Spanish. In general, the research carried out on the topic has prioritized the first meaning over the second. This paper claims that it is the semantic feature of modality that organizes the contrast between those forms. It also argues that temporal distance simply emerges as an epiphenomenon or byproduct of the main semantic value. These statements are supported by evidence based on oral speech samples of 65 Cuban American living in Miami, Florida. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we provide a synchronic and diachronic analysis of an instance of so-called «xpletive» negation in the Spanish approximative adverb por poco. Synchronically, we show that this adverb, when combined with the sentence negator no, is ambiguous between ∼p («expletive») and ∼∼p («canonical») meanings. Diachronically, we show that this ambiguity arose due to a change in the negation system of Spanish around the 15th century. As a result, the supposed instances of «expletive» negation found in present-day uses of por poco are not really expletive at all, but rather are a holdover from the Old Spanish requirement of preverbal negative concord. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]