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Cohesion in a text can occur through different linguistic devices. Some of these package the propositional content of whole previous stretches of text. In the absence of terminological unanimity, in this paper they will be analyzed under the label nominal encapsulation. The aim of this paper is thus to qualitatively examine the discursive shifts taking part in the translation of encapsulating mechanisms in parliamentary discourses having Spanish as target language and any other of the main European languages (namely English, French, German, Italian) as source language. For this purpose, a corpus-assisted analysis has been carried out. We have studied a parallel corpus containing the Proceedings of the European Parliament between the years 1996 and 2009, called Europarl5 (Koehn, 2005). The results obtained reveal that most of the shifts pertaining to encapsulating devices embody an explicitation process which tends to make the target text in Spanish more evaluative than the source text through discourse labels. This may be partially explained by the conventions that seem to underlie parliamentary discourses in Spanish and partially by the general tendency to explicitation in the translation process that has been traditionally hypothesized in Translation Studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I examine the function and the use of un poco and of its morphological alterations (un poquito, un poquitín, etc.) in different levels: in speech acts, in propositions, in speech, in social relationship established between speaker and hearer, and, finally, in context. Theoretical framework of the analysis is, primarily, modality, a notion applying to utterances and indicating the compromise level which the speaker maintains in respect of the utterance faithful. Secondly, I refer to mitigation within the most general theory of Politeness, in which this is a strategy to modulate speech act effects (Lakoff, 1972; Caffi, 1999, 2002, 2007). Here I examine the function of un poco from a semantic-pragmatic perspective also taking into account discourse's dimensión and the situations in which they occur. To study the phenomenon, I use real conversations' data proceeding by the Corpus de Conversaciones Coloquiales Val.Es.Co and by the Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual CREA, to which I add some fragments proceeding by conversations that I recorded and transcribed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the use of expressions of exemplification in the Spanish spoken in Caracas. The purpose of this study is to determine what aspects motivate the non-canonical use of por lo menos in place of por ejemplo. For the analysis of this particular use, I have used 24 interviews of Corpus Sociolinguistic of Caracas (1987). The parameters selected are of two types: i) linguistic -values of the expressions of exemplification and of por lo menos ('al menos','como minimo'), evidentiality, and topic proposed in the preceding sentence and in the sequence introduced by expressions of exemplification and by por lo menos-, and ii) social The results show that the use of expressions of exemplification is determined by social factors. Likewise, the use of por lo menos as an expression of exemplification has been motivated by certain semantic-pragmatic and discourse features shared by por lo menos ('al menos', 'como mínimo') and por ejemplo: generalization-particularization relationship, first-hand information and maintenance of the topic addressed in a previous generalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on two of the major problems that have traditionally hindered the study of the so-called 'colloquial Spanish', namely (i) terminological hesitation and lack of consensus in referring to this linguistic form (designated indistinctly by terms such as 'language', 'speech', 'discourse', etc., on one side, and 'colloquial', 'spoken', 'conversational', etc., on the other side) and (ii) the lack of a clear and unitary definition of the object of study. For this purpose, first the most common designations and the conditions which make it possible to use them as synonymous are identified. Secondly, the conceptual structure of the most famous definitions and the linguistic and extralinguistic features of the object of study which each one of them emphasizes are analyzed. Finally, reasons for the perpetuation of the terminological and conceptual vagueness in the history of Spanish Linguistics are mentioned and a theoretical frame for a better definition of spoken or colloquial Spanish is suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]