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This paper explores the procedural meaning of the Spanish adverb apenas , proposing that it carries the procedural meaning of right-hand APPROACHING. This procedural meaning effectively accounts for various interpretations and argumentative orientations of apenas in different contexts. The analysis demonstrates that apenas consistently implies a closeness or minimality, whether in quantitative or temporal domain. The procedural meaning also explains the negative argumentative orientation of apenas. Therefore, the different meanings of apenas can be analyzed in a holistic way. Through this analysis, the study aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of adverbial usage in Spanish and potentially guide analogous investigations in other languages. • The Spanish adverb apenas carries a procedural meaning. • The procedural meaning can offer a holistic analysis of this adverb. • The procedural meaning also explains the negative argumentative orientation of apenas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most approaches to discourse markers tend to rely on observation on the behavior of monolingual classes of markers. In this paper, we offer a detailed analysis of the behavior and function of a single Spanish discourse marker, namely bueno , in bilingual discourse as opposed to its bilingual counterpart well. In particular, we compare pragmatic factors, and namely fine-grained differences between Spanish bueno and English well , with interactional factors such as the position of the marker in monological vs. dialogical sequences. Finally, we also take into account the impact of individual linguistic choices by comparing the behavior of different speakers when using the scrutinized discourse marker. Thus, we do not only contribute to and expand on previous literature on the behavior of discourse markers, but we also offer a new perspective to further study discourse markers in situations of language contact. • The paper explains the behavior of a single Spanish DM and its English counterpart in bilingual discourse. • A methodology based on online focus groups is used to explore the functionality of the discourse marker in interactions. • The paper finds a broad range of interpersonal functions that explain the use of bueno in bilingual discourse. • An underexplored community is proposed as a focal point in the study of contact and pragmatics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate to what extent there is rhetorical variation between the research article abstracts written in English for international journals and those written in Spanish and published in Spanish journals in the area of experimental social sciences. To this end, the structural units that constitute the macrostructure of these texts have been analysed comparatively. The results show that the Spanish abstracts in this field largely follow the international conventions based on the norms established by the English-speaking international academic community, as they present the four basic structural units (Introduction, Methods, Results, Conclusion) which constitute the different sections of the underlying research article. However, some degree of divergence has been found, mainly in the frequency of occurrence of the Results unit, and Move 2 in the abstract introductions, which is where writers justify their work in their research field as a way of creating a niche. The rhetorical variables found across the two languages may be mainly explained by the different expectations that the members of the international and Spanish scientific communities have. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• Si -future exclamatives in Spanish shed new light into the notion of insubordination. • Mirative future emerges as a result of successive emancipations. • Mirative future is compatible with the 'distance-forward' deictic template. • Mirative future represents a further step into the process of grammaticalization. • Mirative future exemplifies the range of mirative meaning conveyed in Spanish. This paper examines si -future exclamatives in Spanish, both synchronically and diachronically, with the aim not only of identifying their possible contexts of use but also of distinguishing their various semantic interpretations. In addition to permitting the redefinition of the space of insubordination and assessing the role of analogy in the continuing independence of the marker si , this proposal provides an explanation of Spanish mirative future as emerging from the emancipation of a previous structure, albeit that it retains the deictic value of morphological future –which becomes a functional feature in its new discursive meaning. From this perspective, the grammaticalization of morphological future in Spanish is not contemplated as a closed cycle, but rather as a still ongoing process. More broadly speaking, this paper helps outline the semantic array of mirative meanings through providing evidence about the type of mirativity that can be conveyed in Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• End-to-end lite-transformer for full pages handwritten text recognition. • The curriculum learning strategy allows the model to be trained using limited data. • The model can be easily adapted to other scripts by a simple transfer-learning process using only page-level labeled images. • Extensive comparative experiments are conducted on multiple languages: English, French, Spanish, and Arabic. The Transformer has quickly become the dominant architecture for various pattern recognition tasks due to its capacity for long-range representation. However, transformers are data-hungry models and need large datasets for training. In Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR), collecting a massive amount of labeled data is a complicated and expensive task. In this paper, we propose a lite transformer architecture for full-page multi-script handwriting recognition. The proposed model comes with three advantages: First, to solve the common problem of data scarcity, we propose a lite transformer model that can be trained on a reasonable amount of data, which is the case of most HTR public datasets, without the need for external data. Second, it can learn the reading order at page-level thanks to a curriculum learning strategy, allowing it to avoid line segmentation errors, exploit a larger context and reduce the need for costly segmentation annotations. Third, it can be easily adapted to other scripts by applying a simple transfer-learning process using only page-level labeled images. Extensive experiments on different datasets with different scripts (French, English, Spanish, and Arabic) show the effectiveness of the proposed model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes impoliteness-related language in response to a season's greeting posted by the Prime Ministers of Spain and the UK on December 2022 to wish Twitter users a Felices Fiestas/Merry Christmas. A corpus made up of the first 500 tweet events mentioning Sánchez and Johnson with the @ feature was analyzed through the combination of qualitative and quantitative tools and an impoliteness2 approach to compare the most commonly deployed impoliteness strategies in response to what is felt as an offense by respondents from the two cultures. Previous impoliteness taxonomies inform the analysis (Culpeper, 1996 , 2011). Findings reveal a preference for on-record strategies vs. off-record ones in both corpora. Whereas the English respondents oriented themselves towards attacking the negative face of the Prime Minister and that of other participants with sarcasm and implicated impoliteness, the Spanish group deployed impoliteness-related language to disparage the Prime Minister's positive face through insults and the rectification of his words. The hostile acts and explicit metalanguage about emotional states in the replies to the expressive speech act corroborate the perceived breach of some aspects of the moral order on the part of the Twitter users in the out-group, hence aiding the already observed polarization of political discussions. • Impoliteness is analyzed in replies to the season's greetings of Pedro Sánchez and Boris Johnson on Twitter. • Findings indicate that on-record impoliteness strategies are more frequent than off-record ones in both groups. • English respondents use negative-face attacking strategies, sarcasm, and implicated impoliteness in their replies. • Spanish respondents deploy insults and attacks on the positive public face of the Prime Minister as favored strategies. • Impoliteness-related discourse is multifunctional and aims to restore the moral order that is perceived as altered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People formulate places for different interactional goals (e.g., arranging meeting up with one another, giving directions). Although most research agrees that using names or numbers for streets is common, there are cultural realities that imply using other resources accessible to participants. This paper examines place formulation when there are not street numbers available. Data come from audio-recorded telephone calls to 911 Costa Rica. The study uses the method of Conversation Analysis combined with ethnography. Findings show that participants use three formulations: geographical, landmarks and "other signs". This paper shows that such formulations correspond to levels of granularity, and that there is cultural diversity when formulating place. • Participants use three interactional practices when formulating place. • Geographical formulations use the country's division: province, county, district. • Landmark formulations are comprised of the landmark, distance and direction. • "Other signs" formulations describe details or physical characteristics of places. • These formulations correspond to different levels of description used by callers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Chinese should be categorized as a discourse-configurational language, namely a Category III language under Miyagawa's typology. • Several compelling empirical facts are presented to demonstrate that the δ-feature lowers to T in Chinese. • Chinese wh -adverbial zenme 'how come' is not base-generated in the CP periphery, but rather inserted in the TP. Assuming the Strong Uniformity Principle, Miyagawa recently proposed a typology of languages based on distinct patterns of Feature Inheritance at Phase C. In this typology, Chinese is identified as a Category II language (with the δ-feature on C and the φ-feature on T). That is, Chinese is regarded as a non-discourse-configurational language similar to English. This paper aims to review Miyagawa's discussion of Chinese and argue for its reclassification as a Category III language, that is, a discourse-configurational language like Spanish. I contend that Miyagawa's discussion of Chinese only pertains to Aboutness-shift topic, a type of topic base-generated in the CP domain across languages; as a result, his conclusions are unsustainable. On the other hand, I show that phenomena like Object Preposing, forced A-focalization, and the distribution of Familiar and Contrastive topics in non-assertive embedded clauses provide compelling evidence that the δ-feature has lowered to T in Chinese. Finally, I address a potential counterargument presented by the Chinese wh -adverbial zenme 'how come'. I argue that zenme is not base-generated in the CP periphery, but rather inserted in the TP layer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Author profiling consists of extracting their demographic and psychographic information by examining their writings. This information can then be used to improve the reader experience and to detect bots or propagators of hoaxes and/or hate speech. Therefore, author profiling can be applied to build more robust and efficient Knowledge-Based Systems for tasks such as content moderation, user profiling, and information retrieval. Author profiling is typically performed automatically as a document classification task. Recently, language models based on transformers have also proven to be quite effective in this task. However, the size and heterogeneity of novel language models, makes it necessary to evaluate them in context. The contributions we make in this paper are four-fold: First, we evaluate which language models are best suited to perform author profiling in Spanish. These experiments include basic, distilled, and multilingual models. Second, we evaluate how feature integration can improve performance for this task. We evaluate two distinct strategies: knowledge integration and ensemble learning. Third, we evaluate the ability of linguistic features to improve the interpretability of the results. Fourth, we evaluate the performance of each language model in terms of memory, training, and inference times. Our results indicate that the use of lightweight models can indeed achieve similar performance to heavy models and that multilingual models are actually less effective than models trained with one language. Finally, we confirm that the best models and strategies for integrating features ultimately depend on the context of the task. • Study of large language models for conducting Author Profiling in Spanish. • Feature integration improves the performance of large language models. • Interpretability of profiles using linguistic features. • Hyperlinks and hashtag are strong features when discerning between bots and humans. • Stylometry is the linguistic category most relevant in Author Profiling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This research focuses on the structural construction of scientific titles in English and Spanish in research papers (RP) and review papers (RVP) in the biological and social sciences. The questions raised were (i) whether structural construction is a key distinctive feature between RP and RVP titles; (ii) whether the inherent peculiarities of scientific disciplines imprint differences on the structural constructions of RP and RVP titles; and (iii) whether language-specific differences can be identified. To this end, a total of 1140 titles were analyzed, words per title were counted to measure their length and all structural constructions detected were registered. The major findings are: (a) the prevalence of nominal-group titles as a linguistic strategy of scientific discourse rather than as a disciplinary, generic or language characteristic; (b) the frequency of full-sentence construction in RP titles of the biological sciences; (c) the predominance of RP compound titles in the social sciences, and more flexibility of Spanish in the use of punctuation marks for the division of this title type; and (d) statistically significant differences in the length of RP titles in terms of discipline and language. Lines of evidence from this research contribute to underlining suggestions on how to guide novice scientists to write titles appropriately. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

English vague language (VL), as in general noun phrases, general extenders and general verbs, is central to casual conversation. It can have discourse functions and create an informality and solidarity. The rationale for the study described here was a gap in the literature vis-à-vis language learner metapragmatic awareness of VL in their L1. It was hypothesised that attitudes towards VL vary from language to language. This paper describes a comparative questionnaire study of German, Spanish and Mandarin speakers' attitudes to VL in their languages. Subjects were invited to translate English VL to their languages and to think of other vague forms: German speakers volunteered 'Dingsbums' and 'und so'; Spanish speakers suggested 'cómo se llame' and 'o algo así; Mandarin speakers noted 'na ge dong xi'. Subjects were also asked to describe social variables, domains and functions associated with their VL: German speakers saw VL as creating closeness but many felt that it made addressors sound unreliable and mildly impolite; Spanish speakers mostly saw VL as a way of showing a relaxed, close, comfortable, friendly, but a few saw it as an sign of laziness and impoliteness; Mandarin speakers responded that VL was a marker of friendly informality and solidarity but they mostly associated it with indifference, laziness, impatience, irritation, anger, disappointment, contempt and dishonesty. The paper concludes with suggestions of ways to incorporate tasks on VL into English language teaching classrooms, and to raise language teachers' awareness of English L2 users' beliefs and intercultural differences in terms of VL. • Vague language forms, functions and variation. • Close with family and friends. • Indifference, impoliteness with strangers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the U.S. Utilizing family health history in cancer prevention holds promise in lessening the burden of cancer. Nevertheless, family health history is underutilized in public health and preventive medicine. Community health workers, also known as lay health educators, are ideal candidates to offer basic cancer family history-based education and services to the general public. The authors developed the first cancer family history-based genomics training program in cancer prevention tailored for community health workers. This paper details the development and pilot testing findings of the training. Specifically, a multidisciplinary research team of geneticists, genetic counselors, health educators, community health workers, and community health worker instructors developed a 7-module, 6-hour, bilingual (English and Spanish) cancer family history-based training focusing on cancer family history-based risk assessment, lifestyle recommendations, and genetic evaluation and testing. The curriculum was based on an integrated theoretical framework, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network guidelines, the community health worker core competencies, and the 4MAT instructional model. The Texas Department of State Health Services approved and certified the curriculum with 2 delivery formats: in-person/face-to-face workshops and online training. A total of 34 community health workers completed the pilot training in person (n=17) and online (n=17) in 2018 and 2019. Participating community health workers' knowledge, attitudes, self-efficacy, and intention in delivering basic cancer family history-based genomics education and services significantly increased on the immediate post-test measures compared with their pretest data. Positive ratings and feedback were also reported by the community health workers. Findings from this pilot study suggest that wider training is warranted for educating more community health workers in the U.S. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the Natural Language Processing community have been moving from uncontextualized word embeddings towards contextualized word embeddings. Among these contextualized architectures, BERT stands out due to its capacity to compute bidirectional contextualized word representations. However, its competitive performance in English downstream tasks is not obtained by its multilingual version when it is applied to other languages and domains. This is especially true in the case of the Spanish language used in Twitter. In this work, we propose TWiLBERT, a specialization of BERT architecture both for the Spanish language and the Twitter domain. Furthermore, we propose a Reply Order Prediction signal to learn inter-sentence coherence in Twitter conversations, which improves the performance of TWilBERT in text classification tasks that require reasoning on sequences of tweets. We perform an extensive evaluation of TWilBERT models on 14 different text classification tasks, such as irony detection, sentiment analysis, or emotion detection. The results obtained by TWilBERT outperform the state-of-the-art systems and Multilingual BERT. In addition, we carry out a thorough analysis of the TWilBERT models to study the reasons of their competitive behavior. We release the pre-trained TWilBERT models used in this paper, along with a framework for training, evaluating, and fine-tuning TWilBERT models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work introduces a subset of informational features (termed core intentional features ), different from standard pragmatic features such as topic and focus. Adopting the basic tenets of the Minimalist program, core intentional features are defined as edge features which sit in the relevant phases and are subject to parametric variation. They are assumed to drive the derivation of the sentence so that it constitutes an intentionally-adequate object (i.e. a categorical or a thetic statement) even in the absence of a particular communicative situation. The paper specifically focuses on one of these features, [DI] ( discourse intention ), and on how it determines the eventual position of the subject in a discourse-prominent language such as Spanish. A preliminary distinction is made between sentences that inaugurate the discourse (d-sentences) and sentences which are integrated in a particular context (context-dependent sentences). It is argued that the SV/VS order in Spanish follows from the conditions of valuation of [DI] in each case; in particular, valuation of [DI] in d-sentences will be a matter of structural and semantic prominence whereas in context-dependent sentences it will depend on pragmatic conditions. The paper also addresses a number of significant contrasts in the much-debated issue of the placement of the subject in Spanish, which receive a principled explanation under the theory of core intentional features proposed here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the intersection between gender and foreign language education with specific reference to subject choice, motivation, and achievement. The study was carried out at a Ghanaian public university, amongst students of the following Bachelor of Arts foreign language programmes: Arabic, Chinese, French, Kiswahili, Russian and Spanish. Through a thematic analysis of transcribed focus group discussions and desk-research of relevant administrative documents, the authors inquire why a gender enrolment gap exists in the foreign language programmes and if indeed, certain languages are perceived as more masculine than others. The findings of the study confirm the existence of a gender gap in foreign language education. Participants also considered some languages such as Spanish and French as more feminine. Regarding their motivation, participants noted both integrative and instrumental factors that motivated them to study the foreign language. Additionally, the study found no statistical significance between the performance of females and males. However, males performed slightly better than females in Arabic, French, Kiswahili and Russian whereas females performed better in Spanish and Chinese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The wide adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) offers immense potential as a source of support for clinical research. However, previous studies focused on extracting only a limited set of medical concepts to support information extraction in the cancer domain for the Spanish language. Building on the success of deep learning for processing natural language texts, this paper proposes a transformer-based approach to extract named entities from breast cancer clinical notes written in Spanish and compares several language models. To facilitate this approach, a schema for annotating clinical notes with breast cancer concepts is presented, and a corpus for breast cancer is developed. Results indicate that both BERT-based and RoBERTa-based language models demonstrate competitive performance in clinical Named Entity Recognition (NER). Specifically, BETO and multilingual BERT achieve F-scores of 93.71% and 94.63%, respectively. Additionally, RoBERTa Biomedical attains an F-score of 95.01%, while RoBERTa BNE achieves an F-score of 94.54%. The findings suggest that transformers can feasibly extract information in the clinical domain in the Spanish language, with the use of models trained on biomedical texts contributing to enhanced results. The proposed approach takes advantage of transfer learning techniques by fine-tuning language models to automatically represent text features and avoiding the time-consuming feature engineering process. • A deep learning-based approach for extracting breast cancer information from clinical narratives written in Spanish. • A comprehensive annotation scheme to represent medical concepts in the breast cancer domain. • A corpus manually annotated by clinicians for supporting clinical named entity recognition in the breast cancer domain. • Experiments on transformer-based language models to extract information using a breast cancer corpus. • A method to exploit transfer learning to perform cancer named entity recognition using language models that avoids feature engineering processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Detecting and normalizing temporal expressions is an essential step for many NLP tasks. While a variety of methods have been proposed for detection, best normalization approaches rely on hand-crafted rules. Furthermore, most of them have been designed only for English. In this paper we present a modular multilingual temporal processing system combining a fine-tuned Masked Language Model for detection, and a grammar-based normalizer. We experiment in Spanish and English and compare with HeidelTime, the state-of-the-art in multilingual temporal processing. We obtain best results in gold timex normalization, timex detection and type recognition, and competitive performance in the combined TempEval-3 relaxed value metric. A detailed error analysis shows that detecting only those timexes for which it is feasible to provide a normalization is highly beneficial in this last metric. This raises the question of which is the best strategy for timex processing, namely, leaving undetected those timexes for which is not easy to provide normalization rules or aiming for high coverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The development of the Individual Growth and Development Indicators-Español (IGDIs-E) involved over 900 preschool aged children in five states. • Using Rasch modeling the IGDIs-E were found to be psychometrically sound and robust measures of Spanish oral language ability. • IGDIs-E were designed for the diverse range of Spanish-speakers in the US. The population of Spanish-speaking preschoolers in the United States continues to increase and there is a significant need to develop psychometrically sound early language and literacy screening measures to accurately capture children's ability in Spanish. In this paper, we describe the innovative design and calibration process of the new Individual Growth and Development Indicators-Español (IGDIs-E). We developed and tested two Spanish oral language measures: Identificación de los Dibujos/Picture Naming and Verbos (Expresivo)/Expressive Verbs with 976 Spanish-speaking preschoolers (4–5-years old; 50% female) across five states. Children were tested in Spanish in fall, winter, and spring across two academic years. Results provide evidence that the new IGDIs-E are psychometrically sound with no significant bias between genders and dialects of Spanish spoken in the United States. Cumulative results, the utility of the final measures, and the implications for data-based decision making with Spanish-speaking preschoolers is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper introduces the melodic characterisation of spontaneous Spanish presented by speakers from two regions in the north of Spain: Asturias and Navarre, based on a conversational corpus composed of 100 utterances emitted by 62 participants. It focuses on the intonation of the dialects, an aspect which is poorly investigated but highly relevant for characterising and distinguishing one from the other. The study is based on the Melodic Analysis of Speech method, a meticulous acoustic analysis through which exact values are obtained from spontaneous speech, which can then be compared. In short, the most notable coincident and divergent melodic features between the two dialects are: (1) the tendency of the two to present a first peak, more frequently tonic in Asturian Spanish and atonic in Navarrese; (2) an almost flat or slightly falling body of the contour with abundant internal inflections, which are also distinguished by the syllable where the rise ends: tonic in Asturian Spanish, and tonic and atonic in the final position of the word in Navarrese; and (3) more pronounced final inflections, with five different endings, and tonal fields, in the region of Navarre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Emoji are a set of pictographs available on several electronic platforms and applications, which are gradually replacing emoticons (sequences of punctuation marks representing facial expressions). Over the last decade, researchers have proposed that emoticons not only convey emotional content in computer-mediated communication, but they may also perform pragmatic functions, such as signaling the illocutionary force of the utterance (Dresner and Herring, 2010), mitigating threatening formulations (Wilson, 1993), or strengthening expressive speech acts (Skovholt et al., 2014). Despite their growing popularity, little pragmatic research to date specifically addresses emoji. The present paper bridges this gap by exploring the functions of emoji in a corpus of WhatsApp chats written in Spanish. Drawing on Spencer-Oatey's (2000, 2005) rapport management framework, the analysis shows that emoji are used across different domains in the corpus: they not only upgrade or downgrade different speech acts (illocutionary domain), as pointed out by previous research, but they also contribute to achieving a successful interaction by signaling closing sections or by helping to negotiate openings (discourse domain), as well as serving as a way to frame playful interactions (stylistic domain). This study also shows that some practices related to the use of emoji may be influenced by Spanish culture. Highlights • Analysis of some of the functions of emoji in WhatsApp chats written in Spanish. • Emoji upgrade or downgrade different speech acts. • Emoji help to manage the conversation, e.g. in openings and closings. • Emoji are also a stylistic choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Se ve (que) 's 7 values include physical and cognitive perception and evidentiality. • In a large study of spoken Spanish corpora, its most frequent value was evidential. • Behavioral Profiles show affinities of form-function combinations with evidentiality. • Those with most affinity were indirect physical perception and cognitive perception. • Constructionalization of se ve (que) generates a fully abstract sense: evidentiality. Abstract The Spanish sequence se ve (que) presents intricate functional polysemy, including constructionalization as an evidential. The present paper investigates its different formal-functional combinations and degrees of specialization as an evidential construction. The following questions were addressed: (1) How many different senses can be distinguished in the sequence se ve (que) and what are their respective frequencies? (2) How do these senses correlate with the morphosyntactic behavior of the sequence se ve (que)? (3) Which senses of se ve (que) are more closely related to each other, and how does the evidential construction relate to this polysemous network? The semantic and formal affinities of se ve (que) were studied through the Behavioral Profiles method developed by Gries and Divjak (2009), which provides an empirical, systematic and verifiable approach to studying lexical phenomena. Its application to a pragmatic phenomenon is a new departure. The results show seven senses of se ve (que), ranging from the lexical value of direct physical perception to the more abstract and evidential value of 'source of information'. According to the corpus analysis, the closest senses to the evidential pole are indirect physical perception and cognitive perception. These all introduce an inflected verb clause, possess propositional scope and are morphosyntactically frozen.. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Bilinguals with or without early Galician experience merge Galician mid vowels. • Galician and Spanish mid vowel contrasts occupy the same acoustic space. • Production of Galician and Spanish mid vowels is unaffected by code-switching. Abstract This paper examines the vowel productions of three groups of adult Galician-Spanish bilinguals: Spanish-dominant (SD) bilinguals, Galician-dominant (GD) bilinguals, and Dual Switch (DS) bilinguals who had early experience with Galician in the home, predominantly used Spanish upon school entry, but in adolescence/adulthood switched to Galician for ideological reasons. To examine how linguistic experience with Galician and Spanish affected the participants' speech, a cued picture-naming task, conducted in unilingual and code switched conditions, was used to elicit the Galician mid vowel contrasts /e-ɛ/ and /o-ɔ/ and the Spanish mid vowels /e/ and /o/. The results revealed no difference in either condition in normalised F1 and F2 across the front and back vowels in the two languages. These patterns not only held for the SD bilinguals, for whom vowel mergers were expected, but also the DS and GD bilinguals. As such, the study is the first to document widespread mergers of Galician mid-vowels in bilinguals with extensive early Galician language experience and regular use, and to demonstrate overlap with Spanish mid-vowel categories. The findings suggest that psycholinguistic factors, such as age of acquisition or language use, can only partially explain the data and that input-related and socio-indexical factors are equally critical in understanding the acquisition and maintenance of language-specific speech patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In his study of "forms of discourse", Bernstein (1999) differentiates what he refers to as horizontal discourse (everyday, commonsense knowledge) and vertical discourse (uncommonsense knowledge). He further distinguishes in vertical discourse two distinct modalities: "hierarchical knowledge structures" and "horizontal knowledge structures". The first of these corresponds to what Maton (2014) calls "scientific culture", and the second to "humanistic culture". Bernstein proposes that knowledge in the sciences is constructed by the integration of meanings, while in social sciences and the humanities by the segmented accumulation of different "languages". In a tradition of dialogue between systemic functional linguistics and Bernstein's sociology of knowledge, and later with its further development in Legitimation Code Theory (Maton, 2014; Christie and Martin, 2007; Hood, 2010; Christie and Maton, 2011), this paper explores how the kind of knowledge structures underlying different disciplines is revealed in differences in specific discourse semantic features of comparable texts written in Spanish. The features explored in the texts of the corpus are options of the system of appraisal (Martin and White, 2005; Hood and Martin, 2005). This system provides resources to negotiate feelings, values and different voices in discourse. Analyses apply the tools of the discourse system of appraisal to explore the ways in which knowledge claims are negotiated in a set of eight discussion sections from research articles in two disciplines, Microbiology and Sociology. The findings reveal interesting disciplinary differences that haven't been explored before in the frame of the dialogue of the two theories mentioned above on texts in Spanish. These findings can inform programs of support for academic Spanish across disciplines. Highlights • Knowledge construction. • Systemic functional linguistics. • System of appraisal. • Discussion section of research articles. • Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper presents a semantic analysis for Spanish ya , translated roughly into English as already. Ya has been treated in the literature in a diversity of ways: mostly as an adverb of time, but also as an aspectual marker, as a presuppositional adverb, as a focus marker, as a modal adverb, as an epistemic operator and as a conceptual anchor (Bosque, 1980; Löbner, 1989, 1999; Girón Alconchel, 1991; Garrido, 1993; García Fernández, 1999; Fernández and De Miguel, 1999; Pavón Lucero, 1999 ; Delbecque and Maldonado, 2009). We propose that the semantic content of this lexical item is better explained in procedural terms. We suggest that ya encodes in its semantics two semantic procedures: an instruction to incorporate in the interpretation an assumption about the transition from a previous state of affairs ([+DYNAMICITY]), and an instruction to incorporate in the context of interpretation a mutually manifest assumption about the previous continuity ([+DURATIVITY]) of that state of affairs. We will show how this semantic content operates along different cognitive domains to produce the wide variety of uses and pragmatic effects displayed by ya. Our results show the advantages of considering that semantic features such as dynamicity and durativity can be encoded in linguistic items either conceptually or procedurally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to examine the connection between Spanish concessive future and evidentiality. More specifically, it is argued that concessive future does not merely represent a contextual variant of conjectural future ( Escandell, 2010 ) but a new use ( Squartini, 2012 ) which is restricted by the activated status of the proposition ( Dryer, 1996 ). Unlike conjectural future, concessive future does not have an inferential purpose; instead, it plays a role within the (counter) argumentation process. It actually develops a déréalisant function ( Ducrot, 1995 ). Therefore, although conjectural use and concessive use share the deictic value of future, they are the projection of this value over different levels of meaning. More generally, this paper shows that future in Spanish may intersect with several semantic and discourse categories, including – but not limited to – evidentiality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Linguistic domains (vocabulary, phonetics, syntax) do not change independently in the development of languages. • Relationships among linguistic domains do not follow a uniform or universal pattern. • Linguistic distances between all of the modern languages predict traditional phylogenetic trees to a high degree. Languages differ along multiple dimensions (lexis, phonology, morphology, syntax). Related languages descend from a common ancestor language but have diverged over time. This paper asks whether languages diverge equally along all dimensions, and, to the extent that they do not, which dimension reflects the traditional language family tree best. We computed measures of (i) lexical distance (ii) phonetic distance, and (iii) syntactic distance. The measures were computed on all words and sentences extracted from a corpus of translations of four relatively short English texts into another four Germanic languages (Danish, Dutch, German, Swedish), five Romance languages (French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish) and six Slavic languages (Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Polish, Slovakian, Slovenian). We examined the correlation structure of the distances for all pairs of Germanic (10), Romance (10) and Slavic (15) languages (i.e., within-family comparisons only). The results indicate that the linguistic dimensions are generally correlated (weakly but significantly), and that the correlations are stronger for pairs within families than when all 35 pairs are examined together. Cladistic family trees correlate best with the lexical distance (0.851 < r < 0.887). This confirms that the genealogical language trees are predominantly based on lexical rather than phonetic or syntactic considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effects of lexical stress and speech rate on vowel quality and duration in Central Catalan and Iberian Spanish and compares the patterns of phonetic variation caused by these two factors. For Catalan, with phonological vowel reduction, both absence of stress and fast speech rate result in vowel centralization and shorter durations, consistent with findings reported for other languages. For Spanish, the effects of speech rate are in line with those found for Catalan. Vowel quality is also sensitive to the absence of lexical stress in this language without phonological vowel reduction, however, not in a homogeneous and consistent way across speakers. The important individual variation observed suggests that the effect of stress on vowel quality is not conventionalized in Spanish. In addition, the durational difference between stressed and unstressed vowels is smaller in Spanish than in Catalan and less stable. This paper contributes data from two closely-related Western Romance languages (with important phonological differences) to a body of cross-linguistic research dealing with the influence of prosodic factors at the segmental level. Results show a link between temporal and spectral reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much has been written about the Spanish marker ‘se’ and its functions, the conclusions suggest that aside from its function as a reflexive pronoun it is a pragmatic marker not following a homogeneous structure ( Azpiazu Torres, 2005; Aarón and Torres Cacoullos, 2006 ; Maldonado, 1999 ). We propose that additional information on the function of ‘se’ is provided by the hand gestures co-occurring with ‘se’. This paper adds to the existing body of knowledge by taking a multimodal approach to investigate the uses of ‘se’ by two groups of speakers, one Spanish and one Mexican, by adding gestures to the linguistic analysis. Our results confirmed the various functions highlighted by linguistic analysis and point to the importance of including the gesture when interpreting the various meanings of ‘se’. In particular we observed that in verbs like ‘comer’ or ‘tragar’ (to eat, to swallow), ‘se + ingest’ is the preferred form, the gesture marking the subject, not the object. This is significant as studies of ‘se’ indicate that its use is to provide a telic aspect to the action indicating the whole object has been ingested ( Sánchez López, 2002 ), yet the gesture highlights the subject. With intransitive verbs, the gesture stresses or adds information related to the path or manner of the action, suggesting that one of its main function is to energize the action, as suggested by Maldonado (1999) . Our results indicated that Mexicans are more likely to use the marker ‘se’ but there were no differences in terms of functionality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to advance theory on how speakers of different languages perceive the act of placement. German and Spanish verbs for example, differ in the specification of object position (e.g., He stands/lays-puts the binoculars on the shelf ). Do speakers of these languages perceive placement events differently? This question relates to the notion of linguistic relativity. We report empirical data obtained with methods not yet applied to placement. These methods stem from three popular theoretical paradigms on language and thought. We examine whether placement verbs affect how speakers categorize (Experiment 1); memorize (Experiment 2) and mentally simulate (Experiment 3) object orientation. For three behavioral tasks, we compare accuracy and reaction time data of native speakers of German ( N = 80) and Spanish ( N = 50). Results suggest that German speakers do not categorize object position differently or make mental simulations of object orientation. They do show that German speakers have better recognition memory for object position than Spanish speakers. These findings suggest that language-specific effects may occur for some but not all mental processes. Future work should fine-tune reported methods to advance theory on perception of placement and should strive to combine methods to gain a multifaceted perspective on linguistic relativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I raise the question of how the concepts of speaker commitment and speaker involvement can be applied to evidential expressions. I therefore explore the distinction between commitment and non-commitment as a binary opposition (cf. Katriel and Dascal, 1989; Kissine, 2008 ) and show that a choice for a binary opposition leads to a clear differentiation of epistemic and evidential markers. Speaker involvement is different from speaker commitment, in that it is gradable. This notion will be relevant at both a propositional and an interactional level of analysis. At the propositional level, I claim that speaker involvement refers to the speaker’s processing of the evidential qualification when presenting a state of affairs. At the interactional level, speaker involvement will be shown to play a role in the online planning of the flow of discourse. In my corpus analysis of the Spanish evidential adverbials al parecer ‘apparently’ and por lo visto ‘seemingly’, I will argue that the coparticipant’s reply to evidentially qualified propositions is an important methodological tool to examine speaker involvement. Moreover, the monitoring of the evidential dimension in interaction will shed new light on non-commitment (cf. Déchaine et al., 2017 ). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at showing the relevance of cognitive semantics in the study of linguistic units whose conceptual import tends to be underresearched within formalist frameworks. Specifically, I focus on the alternation between the prepositions con ‘with’ and de ‘of’ in the change-of-state variant of the locative alternation (e.g., cargar el camión con/de heno , lit. load the truck with/of hay). I show that although the con - and the de -constructions share many semantic properties and they can refer to the same conceptual content, experimental-based cognitive semantics offers powerful tools to elucidate subtle shades of meaning that might remain opaque in formal semantic theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an analysis of Chocó Spanish (CS) neutral declarative intonation. Results show that this Afro-Colombian dialect, in line with other black vernaculars spoken in Latin America and other cases of Spanish in contact, presents a reduced inventory of pitch accents when compared to other varieties of Spanish. Specifically, L+H* (i.e., peak alignment within the stressed syllable) predominates in both prenuclear and nuclear phrase positions, which deviates quite significantly from common Spanish trends, where there is often a distinction between nuclear L+H*/L* and prenuclear L+>H* (i.e., peak displacement to a post-tonic syllable). Conversely, at the intermediate and intonational phrase levels (ip and IP, respectively), CS appears to reflect other native (non-contact) varieties of Spanish, showing H- ip boundaries to indicate the continuation of a thought and L% IP boundaries to signal the conclusion of an idea. Our findings are further compared with results from other contact varieties to show that certain aspects of CS intonation may be conceived as the byproduct of the transmission of second language (L2) intonational features to following generations of first language (L1) speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theories that plantation creoles were all born as pidgins at West African coast slave castles, including that proposed in McWhorter (2000) , have not fared well among creolists, amidst a preference for supposing that creoles are born, or not, according to factors local to a given context. In this paper I spell out why, especially in light of research since, the “Afrogenesis” paradigm is still worth serious consideration. A key fact is the following. Many creolists argue that a creole did not appear when there was extensive black-white contact and many slaves were locally-born, a scenario most often associated with the Spanish Caribbean and Reunion and now proposed for South American colonies by Sessarego (2014) and Díaz-Campos and Clements (2008) . However, conditions were of just this kind in early St. Kitts and Barbados, where most scholars now locate the birth of English-based and French-based plantation creoles. The disparity in outcomes between these locations means that after fifty years, there is no coherent theory of how or why creoles come to be. I argue that only Afrogenesis shows the way out of this conundrum. I further discuss why the idea that creoles result from individual blendings of “features” in each location (Mufwene, 2011, 2008) is incommensurate with creole linguistic data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A tutor for learning the Spanish Sign Language basic hand configurations. • Hand landmark extraction from a sequence of images. • Similarities between configurations using Procrustes analysis. • Multidimensional scaling analysis of the clustering of the hand configurations. Communication between people from different communities can sometimes be hampered by the lack of knowledge of each other's language. A large number of people needs to learn a language in order to ensure a fluid communication or want to do it just out of intellectual curiosity. To assist language learners' needs tutor tools have been developed. In this paper we present a tutor for learning the basic 42 hand configurations of the Spanish Sign Language, as well as more than one hundred of common words. This tutor registers the user image from an off-the-shelf webcam and challenges her to perform the hand configuration she chooses to practice. The system looks for the configuration, out of the 42 in its database, closest to the configuration performed by the user, and shows it to her, to help her to improve through knowledge of her errors in real time. The similarities between configurations are computed using Procrustes analysis. A table with the most frequent mistakes is also recorded and available to the user. The user may advance to choose a word and practice the hand configurations needed for that word. Sign languages have been historically neglected and deaf people still face important challenges in their daily activities. This research is a first step in the development of a Spanish Sign Language tutor and the tool is available as open source. A multidimensional scaling analysis of the clustering of the 42 hand configurations induced by Procrustes similarity is also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The present paper deals with the requestive development of a consecutive trilingual boy from ages 3.6 to 5.6. To the best of our knowledge, no previous study has accounted for the requestive development (i.e. use of directives) of successive trilinguals in early childhood. Yet, in previous analyses of our data involving years 2.6–3.6, we identified an increase in the use of conventionally indirect forms and a decrease in the production of direct request types coinciding with the introduction of a third language. On account of our results, we wondered whether the act of requesting would evolve differently or similarly in the three languages involved. The goal of the present paper is thus to further examine the direct, conventionally indirect and indirect forms employed during preschool years, that is, from ages 3.6 to 5.6. We hypothesized that while the three pragmatic systems were closely linked during ages 2.6 and 3.6 (e.g. indirectness in English requests affected Catalan and Spanish request forms) (i) requestive behaviour would vary across languages in line with Pau's sociolinguistic development (Barnes, 2001, 2006), and (ii) the addressee's perceived status will affect the choice of pragmalinguistic routines employed (Peccei, 1999, 2006). Data were obtained from audio and video-recordings while Pau was playing at home and there was interaction with the mother-researcher. The corpus we have analyzed includes 45 scripts of 30–60min each. The time period between recordings was 30 days. Results from our analysis confirm our two hypotheses and they shed new light on early multilingual pragmatic development by providing a multilingual focus. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Past perfective on the Spanish possibility modal poder (“can”, “be able to”) can trigger either an actuality or a counterfactuality effect on the prejacent. This is surprisingly different from other languages with an overt perfective vs. imperfective distinction (French, Hindi, Greek, etc.), where past perfective morphology on a possibility modal leads to actuality entailments ( Bhatt, 1999; Hacquard, 2006 ). Contrary to previous work ( Borgonovo and Cummins, 2007; Borgonovo, 2011 ), in this paper I argue that the effects observed in Spanish are best characterized as arising pragmatically from the interaction between the discourse model of the Question Under Discussion ( Büring, 2003 ) and the Levinsonian maxims of Quantity and Informativeness. I propose that constructions with past perfective poder can be potentially ambiguous between the two readings, whereas those with past imperfective poder are just vague. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Insubordination studies often refer to some prosodic features of insubordinated constructions but, to date, no systematic research has been carried out on the effects of insubordination on prosody. This paper analyzes the prosody of both independent and semi-dependent clauses, with subordination marks, using a corpus of 1,230 utterances. The data show that while subordinate and elliptical clauses that can recover the elided clause show prosodic markings of continuation (rising boundary tones), insubordinated clauses do not. In a word, the level of dependence of a grammatical construction with subordination marks is reflected in its prosody. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Faculty members are key players in promoting the inclusion of students with disabilities. • We propose guidelines for faculty members to carry out an inclusive pedagogy in their classes. • Relationships, resources, methodologies, adjustments, mentoring and evaluation are indispensable. • The guidelines improve the quality of teaching and will benefit all students as a whole. This paper provides a useful guide of recommendations drawn from the experiences described by 25 Spanish inclusive faculty members of the area of Social and Legal Sciences. We used a qualitative methodology and data was gathered using interviews. The action guidelines and recommendations obtained are based on the implementation of an inclusive pedagogy that prioritises the participation and success of all students. The results are divided into six categories: faculty-student relationship, resources, methodology, reasonable adjustments, mentoring and evaluation. Lastly, this study shows that the teaching strategies that promote inclusion do not only benefit students with disabilities, but have a general positive effect on all students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Purpose: Citations received by papers published within a journal serve to increase its bibliometric impact. The objective of this paper was to assess the influence of publication language, article type, number of authors, and year of publication on the citations received by papers published in Gaceta Sanitaria, a Spanish-language journal of public health. Methods: The information sources were the journal website and the Web of Knowledge, of the Institute of Scientific Information. The period analyzed was from 2007 to 2010. We included original articles, brief original articles, and reviews published within that period. We extracted manually information regarding the variables analyzed and we also differentiated among total citations and self-citations. We constructed logistic regression models to analyze the probability of a Gaceta Sanitaria paper to be cited or not, taking into account the aforementioned independent variables. We also analyzed the probability of receiving citations from non-Spanish authors. Results: Two hundred forty papers fulfilled the inclusion criteria. The included papers received a total of 287 citations, which became 202 when excluding self-citations. The only variable influencing the probability of being cited was the publication year. After excluding never cited papers, time since publication and review papers had the highest probabilities of being cited. Papers in English and review articles had a higher probability of citation from non-Spanish authors. Conclusions: Publication language has no influence on the citations received by a national, non-English journal. Reviews in English have the highest probability of citation from abroad. Editors should decide how to manage this information when deciding policies to raise the bibliometric impact factor of their journals. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper analyzes the coded meaning of the Spanish particle si (< conditional ‘if’) when it occurs with independent, asserted clauses. While previously analyzed as a marker of contrast, adversativity and/or discursive opposition, I show that these meanings are actually contextually-determined interpretations which arise in situated discourse, most typically in dialogic discourse between two interlocutors. The coded, non-truth-conditional meaning of si is argued instead to be epistemic in nature, marking the proposition that it accompanies as one that is obviously true to the speaker. This analysis allows for a unitary and unifying account of a number of diverse examples that are problematic for prior analyses. The analysis also permits a straightforward understanding of discourse patterns surrounding independent si -clauses, as well as their functional similarity to certain uses of conditional sentence structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses anaphoric reference to clausally introduced propositions in Spanish. Although Spanish “canonically” uses the clitic lo as the direct object pronoun referring to these kinds of entities, its omission is also possible. This paper offers evidence showing that (lack of) knowledge on the part of the speaker about the full content of the proposition plays a role in the choice between the clitic lo and its omission: omission is possible (although not necessary) when the speaker lacks knowledge of the complete content of the proposition, whereas the opposite situation favors the use of the clitic lo . Quantitative and qualitative data supporting this idea come from the distribution of lo and its omission in the no (lo) sé (‘I don’t know’) expression, the constructions no poder decir and no saber decir (‘can’t say’) and the expression quién (lo) sabe (‘who knows’). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this paper we offer a panoramic overview of the development of Andean Spanish and Andean Linguistics, from a theoretical point of view of language contact and universal grammar. We discuss how the notion of Andean Spanish came into existence, the issues under debate, and the consequences of different theoretical positions. We also introduce the contents of the papers included in this special issue, and highlight their key points, framing them in the context of the research on universal grammar. The following five areas are covered: (1) the convergence of Quechua and Aymara, (2) the impact of bilingualism on intonation, (3) the sharing of suffixes in contact situations, (4) the modification of the present perfect tense in Spanish in contact with Quechua, and (5) the properties of the Quechua case system from the point of view of contact varieties. Finally, we provide some remarks on bilingual education, and some suggestions for further directions for future research. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In this paper we will account for the semantic composition of a productive class of predicates in Mexican Spanish formed by lexical verbs that combine with a defective morphosyntactic clitic. Our analysis is that le corresponds to a lexical affix that is syntactically analysed as a defective High Appl head that selects for intransitive roots or intransitivized verbal bases, and projects a LeP. Semantically, le encodes an intensive meaning and imposes certain restrictions on the specific event schemas denoted by the V it may combine with. We show that le modifies the selected event by classifying it as an Action; and, in addition, the whole modified event may intersectively combine with a locus or goal property denoted by an external locative or oblique topic adjunct. Le is not an argument of the predicate, and therefore can be associated neither with a referential nor with a coreferential interpretation, but is not expletive either. This paper is relevant for showing how morphosyntax feeds semantics. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper focuses on the nominal system of Catalan and Spanish, two Romance languages that have both a morphologically binary number distinction and a determiner system, but which still allow bare singular count nominals (BNs) in internal argument position. In particular, this paper investigates the structure and meaning of these nominal expressions. It shows that BNs in object position are not singular, and do not denote individual entities, either object-level individuals or kinds. Instead, they denote properties of kinds. This denotation conveys a number-neutral (NN) interpretation that is compatible with atomicity as well as non-atomicity entailments, a reading that can lead to either an enriched singularity or a plurality interpretation in appropriate contexts. The paper also highlights the differences between BNs and bare plurals, and between BNs and mass nouns. From a lexical perspective BNs have neither cumulativity nor divisivity of reference, but involve atomic domains. A Number projection is conceived as a realization function (from properties of kinds to either object individuals or sum entities). A definite Determiner is interpreted as the iota-operator, which can apply directly to a Noun and instantiate a kind-denoting expression; if it applies to a Number projection, it selects the unique satisfier or maximal object that has the property denoted by the nominal expression. An operation of quantification excludes a NN interpretation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Main clauses in Spanish optionally include a root complementizer. The presence of the complementizer adds a reportative component to the meaning of the clause. This paper attempts to characterize more precisely the kind of grammatical object represented by those reports. It argues that the Spanish main clause reports must be analyzed as instances of quotative constructions, and that the latter must be represented as involving an underlying predication between a clausal constituent and a quotative predicate. This predicate is overt in many languages, but silent in Spanish. The paper provides syntactic arguments in support of this hypothesis, as well as a comparison between the properties of those constructions and hearsay evidentiality, which is argued to be a different phenomenon. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Drawing on naturally-occurring data extracted from the British National Corpus (BNC) and the Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual (CREA) in conjunction with data elicited from native speakers by means of questionnaires, this paper provides a bottom-up, usage-based analysis of instances of depictive secondary predicates involving mainly verba cogitandi (e.g. “considerar”/“consider”, “encontrar”/“find”, etc.) in English and Spanish. Building on Gonzálvez-García [Gonzálvez-García, F., 2006a. Passives without Actives: Evidence from Verbless Complement Constructions in Spanish. Constructions SV1-5/2006; Gonzálvez-García, F., 2003. Reconstructing object complements in English and Spanish. In: Martínez Vázquez, M. (Eds.), Gramática de Construcciones (Contrastes entre el Inglés y el Español). Grupo de Gramática Contrastiva, Huelva, pp. 17–58], these configurations are argued to be constructions in their own right, viz. the subjective–transitive construction. The main focus of this paper is on the investigation of the most salient semantico-pragmatic hallmarks of four lower-level configurations of the subjective–transitive construction in the light of coercion [Michaelis, L.A., 2003a. Word meaning, sentence meaning, and syntactic meaning. In: Cuyckens, H., Dirven, R., Taylor, J., (Eds.), Cognitive Approaches to Lexical Semantics. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin and New York, pp. 163–209; Michaelis, L.A., 2003b. Headless constructions and coercion by construction. In: Francis, E., Michaelis, L.A., (Eds.), Mismatch: Form-Function Incongruity and the Architecture of Grammar. CSLI, Stanford, pp. 259–310; Michaelis, L.A., 2004a. Type shifting in construction grammar: an integrated approach to aspectual coercion. Cognitive Linguistics 15 (1), 1–67; Michaelis, L.A., 2004b. Why we believe that syntax is construction-based. Unpublished plenary delivered at the Third International Conference on Construction Grammar(s), Université de Provence, Marseille, July 9, 2004.] via (i) obligatory reflexive pronouns in the object slot, (ii) a progressive verb form with an inherently stative situation/state of affairs, (iii) an imperative verb with a prima facie non-controllable situation/state of affairs, and (iv) an imperfect tense with a counterfactual interpretation. It is shown that while the first three types of coercion are observable in both English and Spanish, type (iv) points to an interesting asymmetry between these two languages, thus lending further credence to the assumption that argument structure is construction-specific as well as language-specific. Moreover, it is demonstrated that these configurations can be aptly regarded as a family of constructions and that a non-monotonic, default inheritance system of the type invoked in the cognitively-influenced strand of Construction Grammar [Goldberg, A.E., 1995. Constructions. A Construction Approach to Argument Structure. University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London; Goldberg, A.E., 2006. Constructions at Work: The Nature of Generalization in Language. Oxford University Press, New York] can capture the commonalities and the idiosyncratic particulars of these conventional extensions in the construct-i-con. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper examines three sources of knowledge in the acquisition of English articles by second language (L2) learners: L1-transfer, L2-input and Universal Grammar (UG). The paper examines patterns of English article (mis)use among L2-English learners whose L1 either has articles (Spanish) or lacks articles (Russian). It is shown that L1-Spanish learners of English transfer the semantics of Spanish articles onto English, and thus correctly categorize English articles on the basis of definiteness. In contrast, L1-Russian learners of English exhibit fluctuation between the concepts of definiteness and specificity, consistent with earlier findings by . It is shown that the L2-learners’ performance cannot be a result of domain-general statistical learning: despite a large hypothesis space for what English articles might mean, learners of English entertain only those hypotheses that involve semantic universals. It is argued that while L1-Spanish speakers rely on transfer, L1-Russian speakers, in the absence of transfer, have direct access to semantic universals, and fluctuate between them. The learners’ difficulty in choosing the appropriate semantic universal for English (definiteness) is argued to stem from problems generalizing from input triggers. Thus, all three factors – L1-transfer, access to semantic universals through UG, and input triggers – are shown to be relevant for the acquisition of English articles. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper analyzes the spontaneously produced intonation of Afro-Bolivian Spanish (ABS) declaratives. ABS is an Afro-Hispanic language of the Americas (AHLAs) spoken in the region of Los Yungas, Department of La Paz, Bolivia. The main findings indicate the presence in ABS of certain intonational features that diverge from those of other native varieties of Spanish. In line with recent hypotheses on the genesis and evolution of ABS and other AHLAs ( Sessarego, 2013a,b ), we propose that our results reflect advanced second language acquisition processes, which do not imply any previous (de)creolization phase for these Afro-Hispanic varieties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a quantitative and qualitative study of the relationship between discourse positions and pragmatic functions of the Spanish discourse markers derived from motion verbs, namely anda , vamos , vaya and venga . These discourse markers are highly polyfunctional and concurrently have a high degree of positional freedom. The results show, first, that the position of a discourse marker and the discourse unit in which the marker is inserted restrict or activate its pragmatic functions. More particularly, discourse markers with an expressive, conative or discourse structuring function present a more increased pragmatic scope than those with a textual function operating at a more profound level of the discourse. Second, the degree of distributional freedom is related to the potential semantic-pragmatic autonomy of the discourse markers, rather than to the degree of functional diversity. In other words, discourse markers that do not necessarily depend on other discourse units (within the same turn) to convey their communicative intentions show a higher degree of positional freedom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]