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The aim of this paper is to study how three loanwords from Arabic fixed in six idioms in Spanish as idiomatic words have been adapted (balde, [h]erre and guájete). To do this, first the concepts of idiomatic word and Arabism are delimited, and the three idiomatic loanwords from Arabic origin to be studied are exposed. They are the result of a lexicographical compilation rehearsed in previous papers. The lexical analysis focuses on the adaptation that they have experienced when accommodating to graphic, phonological, phonotactic, and morphological patterns from Spanish. Thus, it will be verified whether through these various procedures they have been incorporated as crude or adapted loanwords. It will be verified how these three idiomatic words, whose appearance is only possible within the fixed structure of the idioms that contain them, have been transferred into Spanish as fully adapted loanwords, without a native user being aware of their foreign origin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the evolution of loanwords from the end of the 19th century to modern Spanish on the basis of columns on the language (CSL). The main objective is to study the tensions between norm established by Spanish language institutions or their representatives and the actual use of loanwords by Spanish speakers. We start from the idea that language is closely related to nationalist ideology, near purism. If we relate loan, dictionary and columnism, we can reflect on how ideological positions and norm conceptions have evolutioned in lexical creation. To this end, we will establish four periods by selecting several columnists, we will contrast their opinion with the academic norm through the contemporary dictionary and we will check the actual use in the academic corpus. The results will show whether the norm, in principle always on alert and resistant to the incorporation of foreign words, and the real use of the speakers are contrary or converge. Finally, the ideological implications of this type of attitude on the part of both the Academy and the columnists will be reflected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to analyze the history of the presence of neologism in the language columns from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the second half of the 20th century in order to settle the evolution of the treatment of this concept and the links it sets up with the dictionary of the Real Academia Española. The texts that have been studied are Valbuena (1887-1896), Commelerán (1887), Atrián Salas (1887), Álvarez Sereix (1889), Martínez Abellán (1896), Echegaray (1905), Cavia (1922) and Casares (1918, 1941, 1944, 1961, 1965), in addition to the section «Revista de Revistas» of La España Moderna. The main results of the analysis show that, although the criticism of the neologism focuses on linguistic borrowings, it also concerns other types of lexical innovations and that the dictionary is the object of very different regards, some of them closely related to the neologism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Columns on language (CSL) are texts published periodically in the press through which expert knowledge about the language is transmitted. In this paper we focus specifically on the columns published in the Spanish press that deal with some aspect of women and language (CSLM). The objectives are to establish the different stages of the feminization of language through linguistic columnism, to determine which columnists write CSLM in each stage and which topics are recurrently dealt with in each of them. To do so, we follow the theoretical framework of Pragmatic Linguistics, with approaches and assumptions from Discourse Analysis. The corpus consists of 338 CSLM from 22 columnists. The analysis allowed us to distinguish three stages: 1. From the end of the 19th century to the end of the 1970s. 2. From the end of the seventies to the end of the twentieth century. 3. The 21st century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyse the discursive construction of Standard Spanish in a corpus of language columns written in Spain during the 19th and the 20th centuries. Drawing on the framework of glottopolitics, we examine the socalled «Standard Language ideology» (Milroy/ Milroy [1985] 1991, 1), according to which one specific variety is intrinsically superior to the rest, one that is «correct» and should thus be prioritised as a model for language performance and «good» usage, in this case, in the Hispanic world. The relevance of metalinguistic discourse in the analysis of language columnism lies not only in the existing debates concerning the prestigious and stigmatised linguistic uses, but also in its contribution to the construction of an ideological scenario regarding what a language must be. In this respect, the texts of the selected columnists contribute to the construction of Spanish as the only national, common and standard language on both sides of the Atlantic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Columns on language are characterised by the fact that they are discourses in which a problem related to language is discussed. They are argumentative texts in which subjectivity and scientific explanation are combined to influence groups of readers with whom they share broad areas of agreement. The aim of this paper is to analyse the topics on which the discourse on language in linguistic columnism is based from its origins to the present day. Based on Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (2015) typology of the places of argumentation quantity, quality, order, and essence a corpus of columns on language is analysed in order to find the argumentative correlates of these topics in the discourse on language. Their continuity over time and their relevance as characterizing elements of the metalinguistic discursive tradition they form will be shown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of a pragmalinguistic analysis of the manifestations of polyphony through reported speech, and oralization within a corpus of Columns about Language published in the Spanish press between 1960 and 2020. Based on the polyphonic theory and oralization in the media, as well as in previous studies on linguistic ideologies in the press, this mixed analysis aims at finding the most frequent reported speech and oralizing mechanisms present in the corpus, and identifying their discursive functions within these texts. The results show that, with few differences and throughout the period considered, the columns favor direct speech and interrogative statements. These strategies allow, in most cases, to reproduce other people’s discourses that are critically evaluated, and to establish a relationship of complicity with the readers of the column. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the reinterpretation of two Greco-Latin topoi (locus amoenus and beatus ille) in recent Spanish poetry. If locus amoenus has been considered the representation of the idyllic landscape since classical antiquity, beatus ille stands as the paradigm of an austere existence, far from the vanities of public life. The texts included here, written at the end of 20th and beginning of 21st centuries, show that the current effectiveness of the aforementioned topics depends on their ability to adapt to the values of nowadays culture, through strategies of aesthetic relocation and ironic dislocation. In fact, locus amoenus and beatus ille emerge from the literary tradition, come across the historical context, and interact with contemporary identity. More generally, it is argued that the expectations traditionally associated to nature-based topoi can be reactivated in today's society according to the new expressive needs, cultural conventions and environmental approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the tragedy El Philoctetes, adaptation of the Sophoclean play by the Jesuit José Arnal (1729-1790), teacher, translator of classical authors and poet. This tragedy is classed in some places as translation; however, it was an adaptation that was made of the Greek drama to be represented by students of classical languages in Zaragoza at the beginning of the decade of 1760; it was published in Zaragoza in 1764, before the expulsion of the Society of Jesus, and doubly reissued, years later, in Barcelona. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to study the syntactic structure of a paroemiac subcategory: tautologies. We will observe the diachronic evolution of this type of formulas from the Middle Ages to the present day. The diachronic study confirms the idea according to which sententious phrases, in this case tautologies, are not transmitted in the same form from generation to generation. They adapt to the times in which they are uttered. The structures are reduced over the centuries in both French and Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines evidential hashtags on Twitter. The analyzed hashtags contain constructions of the verb decir (‘to say’) that are preceded by the hash symbol (e.g., #dicen, #sedice, #esodicen, #dicenporahí), which have not been analyzed from the perspective of evidentiality. An exploratory and qualitative study was performed using a sample of 94 tweets that were published over six months. The analysis addresses structural and semantic-pragmatic parameters. According to the results of the analysis, evidential hashtags can transmit reportative, quotative and folklore evidentiality. Furthermore, the evidential meaning of the hashtags is accompanied by pragmatic functions such as attenuation, ironic dissociation and argumentative strengthening. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the acoustic characteristics of sound [s] in the cities of: Medellín and Apartadó and explores the hypothesis that the articulation of /s/ will serve to distinguish between the dialects spoken in these two areas. The study analizes 943 [s] produced by a total amount of 32 speakers. The following parameters were considered in the analysis: Center of gravity, spectral peak, standard deviation of the spectrum, skewness, kurtosis, zero crossings and harmonic-noise ratio. Results suggest that: in syllable onset [s] is more apical in Medellín and more dentalised in Apartadó. Also, Medellín's onset [s] is more sibilant. In coda position, there is no difference between the two dialects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines evidential hashtags on Twitter. The analyzed hashtags contain constructions of the verb decir ('to say') that are preceded by the hash symbol (e.g., #dicen, #sedice, #esodicen, #dicenporahí), which have not been analyzed from the perspective of evidentiality. An exploratory and qualitative study was performed using a sample of 94 tweets that were published over six months. The analysis addresses structural and semantic-pragmatic parameters. According to the results of the analysis, evidential hashtags can transmit reportative, quotative and folklore evidentiality. Furthermore, the evidential meaning of the hashtags is accompanied by pragmatic functions such as attenuation, ironic dissociation and argumentative strengthening. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers the notion of semantic attenuation (Langacker 1985, 1990) as a bleaching process that involve subjectivity and thus can operate as the basis for the formation of cierto 'certain' as an attenuative marker where assertiveness is downplayed. The notion of intersubjectivity proposed by Delbecque for cierto (2009) is revised based on the range of meanings attested in discourse in Mexican Spanish. Intersubjective-objective uses are to be distinguished from intersubjective-interlocutive ones as the second type depends crucially on the interaction between speech participants. The study shows that the attenuative uses of cierto do not come from the adjectival intersubjective uses but from the fuzzy specific-indefinite determination of cierto and other fixed constructions (en cierta manera 'in some way', hasta cierto punto 'up to some degree/point') which diminish the degree of assertiveness of a sentence. The first samples of attenuation come from modifying scalar properties with negative associations and, from those uses, other assertive reducing effects take place. Finally, the paper shows that the digressive marker por cierto which operates at the level of discourse continuity lacks the semantic properties to fully operate as an attenuative marker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the current Spanish, there are different examples of infinitives introduced by a seemingly superfluous preposition: the infinitives can be preceded by the preposition de (Le dijo de ir), by the preposition a (Lo mandó a callar) and by the preposition para (Le dijo para ir de inmediato). The aim of this paper is to show that the presence of this preposition is intimately linked to the original final value of the infinitive and that this origin is translated in the current syntax of the exhortative and volitive verbs and in the lexical and grammatical aspect that the infinitive can express, according to the syntactic context. From the history of the language, it is intended to explain the current state of the infinitive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the use of Spanish nominal address terms in Mexican literary works: Los bandidos de Río Frío (1892-1893), by Manuel Payno, Los de abajo (1915-1920), by Mariano Azuela, and the play Los albañiles (1969), by Vicente Leñero. The quantitative and qualitative analyses are based on the occurrence of address terms types with two grammatical (Spanish second-person systems and the grammatical category of the corresponding nominal phrase head) and two pragmatic variables (the interpersonal relationship of the speaker with the referent of the address term and the evaluation that the first attributes to the second). It is observed that the use of nominal address terms does not follow a stable pattern based on these variables, among other factors that intervene in communicative contexts. Instead, variability is the most common situation. In addition, the same type of address term may undergo changes in dialogic dynamism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of this paper are the conditions of use and discourse functions of nominal forms of address (NFA) in dialogical interactions. The corpus includes Cervantes's six Entremeses and two Novelas Ejemplares. In the first part, we analyse the sociopragmatic conditions for NFA selection. We highlight the relevance of adding a third variable, status, to the classic ones: power and distance, in order to adequately explain the selection of forms in both asymmetric or hierarchical relationships and symmetric ones in different social groups. This variable is associated to the acknowledgement of social identity and position, which lies at the foundation of social rganization of European modern societies. It also advocates for the convenience of including discursive factors such as genre constraints and interaction dynamical development. In the second part, we analyse the functioning of NFA at two discourse levels: conversational organization and turn management and rapport management and linguistic politeness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the personal style of the Count of Tendilla, captain-general of the kingdom of Granada, in his last collection of letters (1513- 1515). Specifically, the study focuses on an analysis of the changes in forms of address, depending on the image the Count wished to project of himself and the effect he wished to have on the recipient. The letters show two basic patterns in the forms of address: 1) etymological voseo -or use of "vos" as a second person singular pronoun; and 2) indirect forms of address (vuestra merced, vuestra señoría, vuestra alteza) in semantic and syntactic concordance, depending on the social value and emotional tone of the letter. The study unveils a widely varied repertory of grammatical and discourse strategies, such as the direct nature of vos, which makes it possible to bridge the gap between the interlocutors, the use of the vocative señor as a means of deference and attenuation, along with the use of indirect forms of address to acknowledge the noble status of the interlocutor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to analyse the Spanish construction resulta que + [clause] from a discourse syntax approach, a macro-syntax. The current use of the structure shows that its conceptual meaning fades and acquires a procedural one related to discourse’s informative dimension; mainly, the characterisation of the information introduced as “surprising” or “not expected”: resulta que mis amigos nunca quisieron que me fuera [“as it turns out, my friends never wanted me to leave”]. Resulta que + [clause] is not as fixated as other discourse elements, such as discourse operators or markers. However, it belongs to the same category of other syntactic constructions which trigger a wide range of discursive values and are not usually tackled by traditional syntactic studies. This research analyses its internal structure and its discourse functioning in order to embed it in a framework which takes into account the potential of this kind of structure in grammar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyze the expressions formed by ni with non clausal phrases (noun phrase with preposition, adjective phrase, adverbial phrase, infinitive, gerund). From this structure come several expressions of rejection very common ones in the current colloquial Spanish, like ni hablar, ni pensarlo, ni queriendo, ni soñando, ni de coña, etc. emerge from this structure. The starting hypothesis is that these expressions, despite coming from different base categories, have a very similar discursive behavior in conversational discourse and show a high level of grammaticalization. To carry out this research, we use the communicative exchanges included in the Corpus MEsA, which includes discourse from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, YouTube, blogs, digital forums and web pages of diverse themes. The methodology followed is the Macrosyntax model of Fuentes Rodríguez (2019a), developed from Pragmatic Linguistics (Fuentes Rodríguez 2000). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes a kind of discourse operator insufficiently studied: the operators that indicate deontic modality, especially those introduced by modal operators in Spanish like por fuerza, in order to locate the insertion of elements belonging to the plane of the modality in the structure of sentence. Checking characteristics of these terms: its distribution, its incidence, its grammaticalization, it can contribute, on the one hand, to its categorical and functional definition and, on the other hand, to development of discourse grammar or macrosyntax. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyze the expressions formed by ni with non clausal phrases (noun phrase with preposition, adjective phrase, adverbial phrase, infinitive, gerund). From this structure come several expressions of rejection very common ones in the current colloquial Spanish, like ni hablar, ni pensarlo, ni queriendo, ni soñando, ni de coña, etc. emerge from this structure. The starting hypothesis is that these expressions, despite coming from different base categories, have a very similar discursive behavior in conversational discourse and show a high level of grammaticalization. To carry out this research, we use the communicative exchanges included in the Corpus MEsA, which includes discourse from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, YouTube, blogs, digital forums and web pages of diverse themes. The methodology followed is the Macrosintaxis model of Fuentes Rodríguez (2019a), developed from Pragmatic Linguistics (Fuentes Rodríguez 2000). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Micro-discourses are blocks of text that enjoy unity of meaning. A new hypothesis holds that micro-discourses also enjoy syntactic unity. The syntactic structure of micro-discourses is formed by pragmatic statements that have functions and are combined through relationships. This paper tries to test if the syntactic structure of microdiscourses is kept in their translations. A positive result would be empirical proof that the aforementioned hypothesis is true. Our analysis compares the syntactic structure of different translated micro- texts (exposition, enumeration, conversation, etc.) and shows that their syntagmatic structure is almost the same when translated, thus confirming the initial hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents certain cases in which the Spanish discourse marker por (lo) tanto connects non-phrasal utterances, in a type of contexts that we propose to call "reduced contexts". This marker takes part in consecutive structures and in most cases alternates with other expressions, such as por consiguiente, en consecuencia, así que and conque. This study aims to analyze the syntactic, semantics and macrosyntactic features of the structure introduced by the form marker, in both prototypical and reduced contexts, with the goal of considering possible differences when comparing it with examples in which the latter expressions introduce an illative relation. This study was preceded by a previous one in which the quantitative and formal features of this discourse marker were analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes a kind of discourse operator insufficiently studied: the operators that indicate deontic modality, especially those introduced by modal operators in Spanish like por fuerza, in order to locate the insertion of elements belonging to the plane of the modality in the structure of sentence. Checking characteristics of these terms: its distribution, its incidence, its grammaticalization, it can contribute, on the one hand, to its categorical and functional definition and, on the other hand, to development of discourse grammar or macrosyntax. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to analyse the Spanish construction resulta que + [clause] from a discourse syntax approach, a macro-syntax. The current use of the structure shows that its conceptual meaning fades and acquires a procedural one related to discourse's informative dimension; mainly, the characterisation of the information introduced as "surprising" or "not expected": resulta que mis amigos nunca quisieron que me fuera ["as it turns out, my friends never wanted me to leave"]. Resulta que + [clause] is not as fixated as other discourse elements, such as discourse operators or markers. However, it belongs to the same category of other syntactic constructions which trigger a wide range of discursive values and are not usually tackled by traditional syntactic studies. This research analyses its internal structure and its discourse functioning in order to embed it in a framework which takes into account the potential of this kind of structure in grammar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerning to a group of words included in Diccionario de la lengua española, whose definition is headed by expression "En Marruecos...". The historical context in which this incorporation occurs is analyzed here and reveals the causes of its inclusion, promoters and sources. Evolution of this group of words is studied since their admission to the Suplemento 14th edition of Diccionario de la lengua castellana (1914) until the 23th edition of Diccionario de la lengua española (2014). This analysis demonstrates that presence of these words in the dictionary is related to Spanish policy in Morocco in the early twentieth century, whose responsible person for the inclusion of these words was Julian Ribera y Tarragó, academic, arabist, and deeply involved in the management of cultural and educational aspects of Spanish Protectorate in Morocco. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to revalue the importance of González de Mendoza's bilingual dictionary (1761-1763) in the history of Spanish-French lexicography. Through its analysis and comparison with other similar dictionaries of his century, we show that its claimed defect of composition -the great disproportion between the Spanish-French part and the French-Spanish part- is precisely its best asset. This disparity stems from the adaptation of the author to two objectives: firstly, to provide a dictionary responding to the real needs of the majority of its potential readers; secondly, to ensure the sale of his work thanks to a moderate price. We conclude that the dictionary of González de Mendoza is a very original proposal for its time, mainly because of its Spanish-French part, forerunner of the manual dictionaries that will succeed since the early nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the results of a contrastive analysis of the instances of attenuation occurring in a set of Argentine and Spanish colloquial conversations. Attenuation -understood as a pragmatic phenomenon reducing the illocutionary force of communicative acts, which involves face and the speakers' responsibilities for their messages (Caffi 1999, 2007; Thaler; Albelda 2016)- has been studied to a significant extent in the Spanish language, beginning in the 1990s, from the perspective of politeness studies (Haverkate; Briz 1995, 2007), pragmatics (Schneider) and sociolinguistics (Samper Hernández; Cestero). However, studies concentrating on the comparison between its diatopic varieties are scarce (Briz 2007; Albelda 2008). This study quantitatively and qualitatively analyses the attenuation resources utilized in colloquial conversations between speakers aged 20-34 at the higher and middle social strata in the cities of Tucumán (Argentina) and Valencia (Spain). The analysis was based on a methodological data sheet (Albelda/ others) with the aim of finding the main similarities and differences between both diatopic varieties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large part of the bibliography on evidential markers in Spanish points to mitigation of commitment (or responsibility) for what has been said as one of their defining features. However, the notion of mitigation and that of speaker commitment have both been used in different senses in different studies. In this paper, the meanings assigned to these terms are reviewed and, following Cornillie/Delbecque, the notions of speaker commitment and speaker involvement are distinguished. These operate in opposite directions in some evidential uses: (i) from reportative evidences to conjectural inferentials, there is a scale of lesser to greater speaker involvement; (ii) among the inferentials, a scale of greater to lesser speaker commitment ranging from circumstantials to conjecturals can be observed. This proposal is then applied to the evidentials por lo visto and se ve (que). The corpus shows that compared to por lo visto, se ve (que) indicates more mitigation of speaker commitment but greater speaker involvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to reflect about the relationships between lexicalization and grammaticaiization in the emergence of Spanish verbal periphrases. We will analyse the evolution of three verbal periphrases (venir + a + infinitive, tener + de + infinitive, ir + y + verbal finite group) and we will try to demonstrate that there is a first stage that can be defined as lexicalization in its formation, because three different collocations are formed. In a second step, grammaticaiization takes place, since these collocations evolve to routinized verbal constructions fully productive specialised In expressing modal and temporal values. In this paper we will follow a usage-based approach to language change, combined with the assumptions of the theory of grammaticaiization and with Construction Grammar. We will base our study on data extrated from consulting the RAE corpora (CREA Y CORDE). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new edition of the Diccionario de la lengua española (DRAE) usually raises numerous questions, both among the language user and the language scholar, about the changes that the Real Academia introduces. In this paper I examine a group of lemmas in italics, as established in academic dictionaries from 2001 up to the 23rd edition of the DRAE in 2014: the raw foreign words, characterized by not following the graphic-phonic rules of Spanish, the number of which increases to 344 in the new dictionary. On the basis of certain criteria set out in the preamble to the DRAE (those related to foreign words and variants), my aim is to assess how they are applied in the body of work and if a consistent treatment of these words is achieved. Simultaneously, I compare the latest two editions of DRAE in respect of these parameters. The analysis demonstrates that it remains difficult to understand the reasons why the Academy chooses to use italics or roman in certain lemmas, a difficulty increased by the lack of information on their pronunciation. Furthermore, there is an increase in foreign words that refer to an adaptation or to an equivalent. As for variants, some changes in the choice of the preferred form are observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I present a brief historical overview of the studies of intonation which seeks to show the noticeable and persistent ambiguity of the concept. I will focus my attention in the theoretical and analytical model of Cantero Serena (2002). I will also include, in a second part of the paper, a number of objections to this theory: personal reflections that seek to establish a theory of the detached tone of semiology of Saussure and point out some clues that will bring us to achieve complete and complex descriptions of intonation. In the third part of the paper, I offer the melodic profile of speakers from Navarre. The data provided are based on the acoustic analysis of an oral corpus of spontaneous speech, developed ad hoc, whose characteristics are also discussed in the document. The characterization we offer is the result of the implementation of the method of melodic analysis that suggested Francisco José Cantero Serena (1995) and that was implemented by Dolors Font-Rotchés in an investigation about Catalan intonation. [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]

The present paper belongs to a series of two articles devoted to the study of the Spanish discourse particle "por cierto". "Por cierto" undergoes two grammaticalizations, each one resulting in a different meaning of the particle: an epistemic meaning ('certainly') and a digression meaning ('by the way'). This first contribution will focus on the epistemic value, the oldest and less frequent in present-day Spanish. The aim of this research is twofold: on the one hand, the paper attempts to fill an empty slot in the diachronic description of "por cierto"; on the other hand, taking written corpora as its primary source, it aims to rethink some theoretical assumptions made by grammaticalization studies, such as divergence or layering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discourse labels are anaphoric noun phrases with an abstract head noun which encapsulate the meaning of a previous or subsequent discourse segment. This cohesive device has received many names in the literature, which generally correspond to slightly different conceptions of the phenomenon. The aim of this paper is to identify the features that distinguish discourse labels from the rest of referential cohesive devices, specially, from superordinates, which share some of its semantic features. In order to do this, the main contributions from the literature are examined and confronted with the analysis of examples from a corpus of newspaper editorials. The analysis leads to a proposal to extend the classification of referential cohesive devices, which takes into account not only reiteration but also encapsulation devices and considers discourse labeling as an independent and distinct cohesive function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the functions of the discourse marker en efecto. The main aim is to prove the hypothesis of frequently en efecto, works either as a modal marker or as a connective of confirmation, that is, it acts of a different way spite of sharing the same core meaning. However, this point is obscure in the literature, in which even it is mixed examples of other functions less frequent in the explanations. With the aim of proving this proposal, I have analyzed several traits of each distinguished function on the basis of corpus data. Therefore, we raise the study of corpus from a polifunctional point of view (paradigmatic and syntagmatic). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diachronic research has often made use of metalinguistic remarks made by "prestigious" speakers as a way to reconstruct past stages of a given language. The question arises as to what point these remarks can be considered objective. This issue is addressed here by paying attention to the time span between 1940 and 1960 and to Emilio Lorenzo's remarks about the evolution of Sp. o sea. Lorenzo's intuitions can be (dis)confirmed by checking them against the rae CORDE corpus. Building on the conclusions extracted from o sea, the last part of this paper establishes some methodological remarks regarding the diachronic study of the 20th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of no obstante ('notwithstanding') has been affected by some theoretical preconceptions, which have influenced both the explanation of its emergence as a grammatical device in Castilian language and its description in contemporary Spanish. These misguided descriptions have been motivated by the use of our current grammatical intuition, which considers no obstante the result of a Latin heritage. The entailment to Latin has supported, also, the description of no obstante + NP as an absolute construction. Moreover, the influence of the Theory of Grammaticalization, which usually does not pay much attention to the textual conditions of grammatical forms production, has favoured the neglect of textual contexts that give rise to the Castilian discourse marker no obstante. In this paper, we try to demonstrate that, in the sequences no obstante + NP and no obstante que, no obstante has been reanalyzed as being only a grammatical element with a prepositional function. Further, we deal with the evidence that, in spite of its Latin form, no obstante was introduced into Castilian language via Catalan or Aragonese languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a new framework for the grammaticalization of the Old Spanish manner adverb sí so / yes' as a positive polarity item. My proposal is that Old Spanish and Modern Spanish display different syntactic structures to convey positive polarity; in Old Spanish it involves not only the adverb sí, but it is related to verb movement, focus, clitic placement, VP-ellipsis and the properties of the Po/(arity) Head. I claim that the restructuring of the Left Periphery in Renaissance Spanish set the scenario for the reanalysis of sí as a polarity item and led to the emergence of previously unknown syntactic structures related to the expression of positive polarity, such as sí que or bare sí. Since the strong or weak features of the Pol Head is what regulates whether sí was a polarity item or not, strong features of Pol appear to be the underlying factor which determines the syntactic properties of positive polarity in Old Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the Caribbean Islands were conquered, there began a time of contact between the Spanish language and consolidated native languages, which would result in the linguistic settlement in the American continent. This paper focuses on the analysis of a selection of works dating between 1518 and 1559, and which have been selected on the basis of the following variables: the author's level of experience in the Indies and the use of communicative strategies in each document. This study is centred on analyzing quantitatively the words included in the chronicles, the tendencies observed, and their interpretation. The resulting textual types show a direct relationship with both the addition of indigenous neologisms and the authors' field of knowledge, through which they filter their personal experience and add the new words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to provide a descriptive panorama of the different approaches to verbal impersonality in the Spanish grammatical tradition, from very primitive testimonials of the Latin-Romance scholastic grammar to the end of the Spanish "Siglo de Oro". Once the specific phenomena of verbal impersonality are collected and interpreted, results about the linguistic conception underlying the analyzed grammars will be generated. It is particularly interesting to know how an adequate terminology was being the semantic and morphosyntatic maps of language was studied in-depth. At the same time, the difficulties of some grammarians to establish a Latin independent grammatical model are confirmed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the functioning and evolution of the adverbs demás, además, and encima from the first existing texts until the 15th century. Our purpose is double: on the one hand, to describe the process that conforms the adverbs into discourse markers specialized in an additive meaning; on the other hand, to contribute to their lexicographical description in a historical dictionary. We analyze their grammaticalization processes and verify in texts the loss of demás, the advance of además--which will become the prototype item of this sort of connectors--, and the acquisition by encima of a subjective meaning --the most important feature as an additive connector--, may be connected with the meaning of the substantive cima in certain contexts during the Middle Ages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]