Search

The purpose of this paper is to study the historical contact between Aragonese and Catalan lexicon, in the context of the Romance languages, taking into account the historical influence exerted by the Aragonese on the Valencian language, which is also influenced by other Eastern peninsular dialects. We have used a method based on Geolinguistics and documentation, in order to analyze some words from popular authors from Valencia and Aragon of the XVIIIth, XIXth and XXth centuries. This way, our study provides new data and new interpretations on the study of the linguistic contact between the peninsular languages. Also the study provides Valencian words not included in the dictionaries (coscarrana, a tassament), first documentations (acabacases, bolxaca, cara-sol, cútio, estrela, a la gatamau, monyica) and words used in Aragón not included in the DECH (acabacasas, bolchaco, botinchado, a gatomiau, tasamente), or included in the DECH but not in Aragón (botinchado, carasol). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a long tradition of semantic studies regarding the concept of lexical meaning that reflects the importance of sociocultural factors for its description. Some examples are the study of synonymy, some remarks in dictionaries and the typology of linguistic variation. This paper investigates lexical variants from a sociolinguistic point of view in socially stratified samples. The statistical analysis of the data obtained up to now confirms the relevance of sociolinguistic variables such as the degree of (in) formality, the hearer, the topic of the conversation, the situation where communication takes place, and options offered by the lexicon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of research on the influence of three types of vocabulary learning activities in L2, taking into account four variables related to the learner, which are: the years they have studied the L2; their motivation; their learning context; and their proficiency in any other L2. 150 B1 level students of Spanish, divided into three groups, practised with a different task: writing sentences with a stimulus word; working with samples that include a semantic equivalent; or choosing the appropriate definition. The analysis of results indicates that learners (1) who have studied the L2 for up to six years, (2) those with integrative motivation, (3) those who have studied the L2 only in their own country, and (4) those who do not speak any other L2 manage to recall significantly more words when they practise writing sentences than when choosing definitions. In the subgroups with the above-mentioned characteristics, the activity that requires most mental effort -writing- is also the most effective way of adding new words to the mental lexicon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]