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This article deals with the form and use of reformulation markers in research papers written in English, Spanish and Catalan. Considering the form and frequency of the markers, English papers tend to prefer simple fixed markers and include fewer reformulators than Spanish and Catalan. On the contrary, formal Catalan and Spanish papers include more markers, some of which are complex and allow for some structural variability. As for use, reformulation markers establish dynamic relationships between portions of discourse which can be identified in our corpus with expansion, reduction and permutation. The analysis of the corpus shows that English authors usually reformulate to add more information to the concept (expansion), whereas Catalan and Spanish authors reduce the contents or the implicatures of the previous formulation more frequently than English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the case of Spanish Perfecto simple and Imperfecto from the perspective of the cross-linguistic proposal in Altshuler's () 'A typology of partitive aspectual operators', pointing to ways in which the Spanish data suggests refinements for Altshuler's proposal. In particular: (i) the paper provides evidence from Spanish that sheds doubts on Altshuler's proposal that temporal asymmetry should be built into the semantics of Landman-style partitive operators in a manner that guarantees that the worlds quantified over match the actual world in the past; (ii) following Altshuler's observations regarding differences between events being 'completed' vs. events 'not continuing', the paper provides a comparison between examples from Spanish and Russian to argue that more than one notion of 'complete-event' is actually needed; (iii) expanding on Altshuler's proposal to link habitual readings to plural events, the paper examines the case of Spanish Perfecto vs. Imperfecto, showing that both modality and plurality play a crucial role in generating habitual readings. The paper also discusses the relative role of semantics and pragmatics in the interpretation of aspectual operators, comparing some aspects of Altshuler's proposal to Arregui et al. (). Together, the various examples strengthen the case for a semantics of aspect grounded on a fine-grained ontology that brings together both temporal and modal dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the investigation and analysis of speech accommodation effects in data obtained from Spanish learners of German with varying proficiency levels. The production data were recorded during a collaborative map task of the Spanish learners of German among each other and with a native speaker of German. The map task was designed to target words and phrases with specific segmental and suprasegmental characteristics. These characteristics were derived from contrastive analyses of Spanish and German. The main objectives of the paper were to investigate whether segmental and suprasegmental characteristics of the target language German are affected by phonetic accommodation to varying degrees and whether these differences depend on the proficiency level of the speaker or the interlocutor. The statistical analysis, using regression analyses, revealed inconsistent accommodation effects across learners of different proficiency levels as well as different linguistic phenomena. In line with previous findings the results can best be accounted for by an adaptation of a dynamic system approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Pragmalingüística is the property of Facultad de Filosofia y Letras, Universidad de Cadiz and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Multilingualism and multiculturalism are verbally and visually recurrent in the sitcom Family Guy (1999-in production) through a combination of a main language of communication (L1) and other languages (L3) in the source language (SL) or source text (ST). The use of L3 is tantamount to tokenism and stereotyping characters, especially those whose recurrence is incidental and part of jokes. This paper compares two versions of the episode "Road to Rhode Island" (American and Spanish DVDs) and addresses a scene to analyze the linguistic challenges and lexical choices in dubbing and subtitling L1 and L3 in two geographical varieties of Spanish: Latin American Spanish and Peninsular Spanish. In this regard, this study focuses on the role and function of L3 in translation, the techniques to represent L3 in translation, L1 and L3 translation techniques, and which techniques are used in translation. Overall, this paper explores how the Spanish DVD adds a new L3 in the target text (TT) to maintain its original function in subtitling and dubbing, and the differences in the American DVD: L3TT omission in subtitling and L3TT change of function and meaning in dubbing, which ultimately accentuates linguistic and cultural misrepresentation and stereotypes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Bridging Cultures is the property of Pontificia Universidad Catolica Argentina and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The papers in this volume examine how Spanish speakers express attention to their interlocutors (or co-participants) verbally. It is now generally accepted that subjective expressions have interactional functions, encouraging the flow of discussion and creating cohesive discourse and that there are several ways of dealing with the intersubjective or dialogic nature of language: (i) studying heteroglossia or dialoguing voices in monologic texts, (ii) focusing on how in talk-in-interaction speakers refer to information held by the co-participant, (iii) examining intersubjective markers that encode the speaker's assumptions about the co-participant. Concepts such as politeness, argumentation structure, attenuation and hedging are being used to account for the interactional dynamics examined. Moreover, several papers analyze the difference between spoken and written registers and some offer new evidence for functional paths of linguistic change. In doing so, they enrich previous accounts of modality, discourse markers, person referencing, spatial deixis and connectives in Spanish and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

La orientación en el uso de la lengua es un tema central tanto para los estudiosos como para los propios hablantes del español. Esta orientación la proveen la Real Academia Española (RAE), en conjunto con la Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (ASALE), así como los investigadores de la lingüística hispánica. El objetivo de este trabajo es discutir la confiabilidad que tiene esta orientación evaluando no solo cuán policéntrico es el punto de vista de la RAE-ASALE, sino que también cuán acertada es la orientación que tanto la RAE-ASALE como los estudiosos ofrecen. Language guidance is a central issue among scholars and the Spanish speakers themselves. This guidance is provided by the Spanish Language Academy (RAE) and the Association of the Spanish Language Academies (ASALE) as well as by researchers in Hispanic linguistics. This paper aims to discuss the authoritativeness of that guidance. It evaluates not only how polycentric is the RAE-ASALE's point of view, but also if RAE-ASALE and scholars' language guidance is always accurate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As in other countries, bilingual/multilingual education has become widespread in Spain. However, research either focuses on Spanish programs' implementation, students' performance or teacher training, but not on their contribution to graduates' self-perceived linguistic success (understood as a combination of intercultural competence, international mobility and employability). Therefore, this paper studies whether Spanish bilingual education results in higher self-perceived competences. An instrument examining these three elements is applied, and Facebook Audience Insights is used for sample targeting. Findings prove that Spanish bilingual education graduates have higher self-perceived intercultural competence and international mobility. In terms of gender, women who have participated in Spanish bilingual education show higher self-perceived intercultural competence, whereas men who have studied in these programs consider themselves more interculturally competent and mobile. Conversely, there is no evidence of more positive self-perceived employability than in monolingual education. All in all, participation in a Spanish bilingual program is demonstrated to be an influential factor in self-perceived global linguistic success, employability, and intercultural competence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coda-final consonant deletion has been extensively documented in Eastern Andalusian Spanish; however, its effects on neighbouring segments is still unknown. Scholars working on consonant deletion in Eastern Andalusian Spanish have mainly focused on /s/, given the semantic importance of this consonant in Spanish. As a result, other consonants which are often deleted syllable-finally in this geolect have been studied to a much lesser degree. The present paper aims to expand the traditional view on vowel doubling by analysing /-s/, /-r/, and /-Ɵ/ deletion before /a/. Firstly, the speech of 24 speakers from El Ejido (Eastern Andalusia) is analysed to ascertain how the deletion of word final /s/, /r/, and /Ɵ/ changes the quality of a preceding /a/. Secondly, a perception test is carried out with native speakers from the local area to confirm whether these speakers can differentiate perceptually between word-final /a/ and /a/ preceding underlying /-s/, /-r/, or /-Ɵ/. This paper presents two main conclusions: 1) /-s/, /-r/, and /-Ɵ/ deletion changes the quality of a preceding /a/ to different degrees; 2) EAS speakers can identify whether /a/ is followed or not by an underlying /-s/, /-r/, or /-Ɵ/, but they cannot identify which consonant has been deleted in each case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

So far, in science, the process of learning foreign languages and the process of development for individuals' communicative culture has been considered separately. In this study, the possibility of communicative culture development in teaching Spanish was defined. In the national tradition the methods of teaching Spanish are not represented as widely as, for example, the methods of teaching English, German, and French. There is a need for research on this topic. In this paper the process of learning was studied, not only from the point of view of linguistics properly but also from the point of view of the development of culture, in particular the communicative culture of students. The aim of this research was to study the theoretical literature on the stated topic, to conduct an ascertaining experiment using a questionnaire among students studying Spanish as a specialty, on the topic "Student's communicative culture". According to the results of the experiment we succeeded: - to establish the content of the concept of communicative culture in the understanding of students; - find out which of its components have greatest importance from their point of view; - to determine the students' opinion on the existence of a connection between learning Spanish as a specialty and the development of a communicative culture, and also to establish how this relationship is expressed; - check whether students are aware of the methodology by which they are taught Spanish, and whether they know that this technique is a communicative technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revisits the study of linguistic variation within the Government and Binding approach to parameters, pointing out some limitations of parameter schemata in language contact scenarios. Discussion is focused on the possibility that clustering effects (the schemata themselves) are more complex than conventional approaches suggest. We outline an alternative approach, directly connected to Uriagereka's typology or parameters, which is itself based on Chomsky's Theory of Formal Languages. Empirically, we focus on language contact situations, as they provide cases where variation by contact operates under what we call an Excess of Stimulus, whereby access to the relevant data is overwhelming, but somehow ignored by learners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Latino youth experience unique stressors as they navigate two cultural contexts. While a substantial amount of research has been conducted investigating Latino youths' experiences of acculturation, most have been conducted in cities with a substantial Latino community, with less research focusing on emerging communities, or areas with small, but growing cultural communities. The aim of this study was to understand Latino youths' experiences of acculturation stressors when living in an emerging Latino community. To achieve this aim, 30 youth (ages 7–16) living in an emerging Latino community were recruited to participate in a creative-arts based research method in which they were placed in groups based on developmental stage and participated in six dialogue sessions. During sessions, youth were asked to paint a picture based on prompts and then discuss the topics that emerged in their paintings in small groups. Prompts were designed to illicit youths' experiences with acculturation stress and Latino identity. Thematic analysis of qualitative data indicated that the role of language was featured prominently in youths' experiences. In this paper, we discuss the role of bilingualism in multiple contexts in Latino youth experience of acculturation when living in an emerging Latino community. The results suggest that bilingualism is central to the identity of Latino youth in this context and may be essential to incorporate into interventions that aim to facilitate positive youth development among Latino youth living in emerging Latino communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the phenomenon of clitic duplication in Spanish as seen in the sentence Te voy a pegarte (‘I’m going to hit you’). Structures like these have several interesting implications for the Spanish language and generativist syntax. Neverthelesss, clitic duplication has not been extensively examined in the generativist literature. This working paper will critically review the small body of existing work on clitic reduplication. Furthermore, based on data gathered from native speakers of Chilean Spanish, it will provide some preliminary evidence for strengthening the argument that Spanish clitics are object agreement morphemes. Ultimately, this paper aims to provide a base to further pursue the topic of Chilean clitic reduplication to make more theoretically sound claims, provide more robust empirical data, and to propose a more formalized argument of the phenomena. Pedagogical implications of the argument are also considered.

Copyright of Hispanic Research Journal is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this paper we analyse Spanish verbal constructions that accept both the clitic se and the prefix auto- in order to determine whether these formations are or are not more agentive than the corresponding non-prefixed constructions (autocriticarse vs. criticarse). The proposal arises from the discussion about the different semantic values observed in formations with auto- and explores the distinctive features of such formations in contrast to those without auto-. We carried out a twofold analysis: first, we applied a set of tests of agentivity and control to a sample of 130 verbs with auto- extracted from the Modern Spanish Reference Corpus (CREA) and compared the sample with its non-prefixed pronominal pairs (i.e. verbs with clitic se). Second, we carried out a series of surveys using similar tests with Spanish speakers to guarantee the acceptability of the corpus interpretations. We argue that prefixed constructions show a higher degree of agentivity and control by external arguments, which results in the impossibility of bidirectionally replacing these constructions with those that only have the clitic se. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Borealis: An International Journal of Hispanic Linguistics is the property of Nordic Council for Reindeer Husbandry Research and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this paper, we study the nuclear configurations of declarative broad focus utterances in Yucatecan Spanish, a Mexican variety spoken in southeast Mexico in contact with Yucatec Maya, from a sociolinguistic perspective. We draw on a corpus of 276 utterances elicited from 16 speakers, eight Maya–Spanish bilinguals (four female/four male) and eight Spanish monolinguals (four female/four male). We particularly concentrate on the roles of bilingualism, gender, and their relationship to local (Hispanic) identity. Although the intonation of Yucatecan Spanish is known to be very different from Central Mexican Spanish, we find in our data a considerable number of contours that Martín Butragueño (2017) refers to as typical "Central Mexican circumflex intonation" (p. 153). What is more, this feature is distributed unevenly among speaker groups in our data. First of all, it is much more frequent in the bilingual than in the monolingual group. We suggest that this is due to the monolinguals' higher degree of identification with the local Spanish language and culture (whereas the bilingual speakers are more oriented toward the Mayan language and culture and less toward the local Spanish ones; see Uth, 2018b). Secondly, as regards gender, there are many sociolinguistic works that suggest that women tend to be less oriented toward local vernaculars than men. Building on that, we argue that a greater decrease of the supraregional circumflex configuration within the monolingual male group than within the monolingual female is to be expected. However, this hypothesis is not confirmed by our data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Encuentros is the property of Universidad Autonoma del Caribe and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper explores the ideological principles upheld in Nueva Granada with respect to the Spanish language in the late eighteenth century immediately before the independent movement of the colonies. Late standardization, the stage of historical evolution examined in Colombia, is related to the Borboun Reforms implemented in South America in order to revamp the economy and lifestyle of some areas formerly neglected by the Spanish Crown. Bogotá was enormously benefited by these Reforms and, as a result, changed its status from audiencia to Viceroyalty. One of the outcomes of these significant changes is the boom of language studies (e.g. grammar, philology, and guides to "good" linguistic usage). The concern for language appeared consistently in the nascent journalism of the times. A sample of seven papers from Bogotá (1765-1810) serve as coitus to examine the attitudes of linguistic purism, which gravitate toward Metropolitan Spanish. The attitudes of the status quo reflect, too, the desires to suppress lexicon originated in the indigenous languages and features of popular Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we argue that in analyses of discourse interaction the relationship between participants must be considered as a parameter that conditions their linguistic behavior. A relationship is the result of the experiences shared by partners which create a "cultural code" between them. Each relationship brings a set of circumstances into play that regulates how members behave and how they interpret each other's words and actions. Our proposal stems from observing how Spanish speakers who hold different types of relationships handle opposing points of view in conversation. Our results show that the expression and interpretation of dissent is linked to the interlocutors' need to maintain the relationship in good terms. In order to protect relationships, the basic principle guiding interaction is to reach consensus. Additionally, the type and strength of the relationship condition the impact of expressions. Strong disagreement is allowed in strong relationships, as the risk for its affecting the relationship is low. Conversely, weak disagreement is preferred in weak relationships, since opposing views may result in higher impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Signos is the property of Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper focuses on the role of voice quality variation in the system of a contact language, Afro-Yungueño Spanish, a restructured variety of Spanish spoken in the Bolivian Yungas valleys. Based on case studies of naturally occurring conversation between multiple speakers, we show that certain non-modal phonation types, in this case falsetto and breathy voice, are used to index expressiveness, intensification, or emphasis. We argue that these practices have discursive meaning that could otherwise also be encoded by means of grammatical and lexical resources, and that they are an integral part of the linguistic system of this variety. We claim that these practices may have resulted from the specific socio-historical context in which this variety evolved. This suggests that voice quality and ecological factors should not be underestimated in order to reach a more complete picture of how meaning is conveyed in apparently simplified contact languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we analyze the contemporary uses of three equivalent adverbs in French and Spanish (sérieusement, seriamente and en serio) in order to characterize them by some salient linguistic properties. We will also establish the emergence of these uses in the history of the French and Spanish languages and try to determine the historical links between them. To achieve these goals we have created a personal corpus with more than 200 occurrences of each adverb from very diverse types of texts (novels, journals, Internet, oral, data bases such as Frantext, Corpus Le Monde Diplomatique, Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual and Corpus Diacrónico del Español, etc.). Our main hypothesis is that those three adverbs are the result of a similar complex process of grammaticalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to prove that the German preposition is a grammatical category that, from a structural-functional perspective and also from a discursive one, is nothing to sniff at. This is so due to the treatment it has received for the last 80 years or so by traditional grammar. It has been undervalued by considering it a tiny item (Hoffmann, 2010: 52) with an aspect of minor category (Bednarský, 2002: 85) and atony (Alcina & Blecua, 1991: 496). In line with this we believe that its importance should be nuanced for the progress of the discipline. So this paper will focus on defining and systematizing prepositional constructions from a syntactic, pragmatic-discoursive perspective. This should be useful to Spanish speakers to better understand the functioning of the German language in this aspect. To fully configure its sense, our emphasis will be in the selective relations steered by the verb valency and the speaker's intention alluding to the Spanish language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Spanish language is known for its widespread phenomenon of Differential Object Marking (DOM). A particularly interesting feature of DOM in contemporary Spanish relates to the obligatory use of a double system of marking -- a "flagging" preposition and an "indexing" clitic (Haspelmath 2005) -- in the domain of the full personal pronouns. The prepositional marker goes back to the very beginnings of the language, whereas the cross-referencing strategy, also called clitic doubling, is the product of a much later development, which joining forces with the existing older form gave rise to the twice-marked pronouns. In this paper I focus on the origin of Spanish indexing DOM and, through a careful examination of the first contexts of use, I propose that the relevant notion of "topicality" implicated in the evolution of indexing DOM is not animacy, but has to do with the role participants play in the event structure and the organization of these roles into a topical case hierarchy (Givón 1976). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing literature on Philippine languages is rife with references to Chavacano, the hypernym for Spanish-based creoles spoken in various parts of the archipelago. Variants of Chavacano are characterised in historical accounts as 'a corrupt Spanish dialect' with depreciative labels such as español de tienda 'hawker Spanish' or español de cocina 'kitchen Spanish'. The concerted assertion of this creole's degeneracy is a legacy of colonial knowledge production. Since the genesis of the Philippine creoles, much has changed as to their usage both from a linguistic and a social viewpoint. It is in this social dimension that we locate the present study. Of the three main varieties of Chavacano, spoken in Cavite City, Ternate, and Zamboanga respectively, this paper zeroes in on the third as the Mindanaoan variety is the healthiest to date. We wish to interrogate the trajectory of its social status, from its characterisation as a degenerate variant of Spanish to its privileged position in contemporary Zamboanga City as a Hispanic identity marker (Chavacano un poquito español 'Chavacano slightly Spanish'). Nuancing the role played in language preservation efforts by Zamboangueño elites, this study highlights the singularity of a creolophone community, who, through the politicisation of heritage, has subverted the ideological marginality of their Creole mother tongue and appropriated it to be the hallmark of their ethnic identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have previously shown that bilingual Spanish and English-learning infants can segment English iambs, two-syllable words with final stress (e.g., guiTAR), earlier than their monolingual peers. This is consistent with accelerated development in bilinguals and was attributed to bilingual infants' increased exposure to iambs through Spanish; about 10% of English content words start with an unstressed syllable, compared to 40% in Spanish. Here, we evaluated whether increased exposure to a stress pattern alone is sufficient to account for acceleration in bilingual infants. In English, 90% of content words start with a stressed syllable (e.g., KINGdom), compared to 60% in Spanish. However, we found no evidence for accelerated segmentation of Spanish trochees by Spanish-English bilingual infants compared to their monolingual Spanish-learning peers. Based on this finding, we argue that merely increased exposure to a linguistic feature in one language does not result in accelerated development in the other. Instead, only the acquisition of infrequent patterns in one language may be accelerated due to the additive effects of the other language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Spanish grammatical tradition, it was long noticed that certain demonstratives and tenses show a high degree of concomitance in Peninsular Spanish written and spoken discourse. Nevertheless, the mechanisms underlying this phenomenon had not been exhaustively described or quantified to date. The purpose of this paper is to test whether the alleged correlation tense-demonstratives can be sustained on empirical grounds and an adequate explanation be provided for this phenomenon. Based on a detailed analysis of naturally occurring examples from a corpus of modern Spanish I draw three principal conclusions. First, the aforementioned correlation actually occurs but it is restricted to the distal demonstrative element aquel in both determiner and pronominal forms, whereas the other two demonstrative elements este and ese do not show any particular preferences regarding the tenses they are combined with in discourse. Secondly, the phenomenon is restricted to cases of temporal deixis whereby the demonstrative is used to refer to times. Finally, and more importantly, a necessary condition for the use of the demonstrative aquel as a temporal deictic element lies in that it requires a past time linguistic expression in its immediate textual environment. Thus, the observed correlation tense-demonstration should be more accurately referred to as the contextual congruence past_ time-aquel in Peninsular Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Talmy’s (e.g., 1985, 2000) seminal work has engendered a great deal of research and debate in the literature on motion event descriptions over the last decades. Despite the vast amount of research on the linguistic expression of motion events, the fact that motion verb roots might encode information apart from Path and Manner of motion is often overlooked. The present paper addresses the semantics of 376 English and 257 Spanish motion verbs by exploring the general conflations which are conveyed by these verbs. In this regard, both crosslinguistic similarities and differences will be pointed out. My research concludes that path-conflating and manner-conflating verbs amount to the largest part of their lexicons but that other minor patterns such as ground conflations, in contradiction to Talmy’s speculations on the lack of ground-conflating verbs, are present as well. Taken as a whole, this paper provides a rich and detailed account on the semantic nature of the English and the Spanish motion verb lexicons, and emerges as a helpful reference for researchers in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of ditransitivity is explored at the lexical, syntactic and surface levels. By focusing on several types of ditransitive sentences in Spanish it is revealed that there is a triple dissociation between these levels. First, it is shown that the availability of a ditransitive structure (syntactic level) for a certain verb does not depend on the verb being ditransitive (lexical level). Second, causative structures with dative arguments are shown to be ditransitive at the surface level, but not to have an underlying ditransitive structure. Finally, cases of unaccusative sentences with dative arguments are analysed as instances of ditransitive structures without lexical or surface ditransitivity. The paper argues that ditransitivity is at best a pre-theoretical, descriptive notion, and that ditransitive verbs in fact belong to Levin's (Papers from The Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society 35: 223-247, 1999) non-core transitives: ditransitives are just transitives compatible with taking a relation between two individuals as complement. This analysis accounts for the intralinguistic and crosslinguistic variation in the expression of the relation, both in terms of type (two DPs related by a transitive preposition or an applicative head) and number of objects realized or omitted. Although the idea that there is no syntactic ditransitivity - that is, that no single verbal head can take two complements - has been implicit in most generative work of the last two decades, it has not been directly explored. This investigation leads to the conclusion that a syntactic property, binary branching, is at the basis of the impossibility of syntactic and lexical ditransitivity. Thus, this result suggests that syntax restricts not only possible structures but possible lexical meanings as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an analysis for the use of the clitic se in transitive constructions, as in Juan se leyó un libro 'John se read a book'. It argues that se is an underspecified eventive verbal head which takes a bounded path as a complement. In the transitive construction, se first merges with a verb that provides the manner description for the event that se introduces. The direct object then serves as the path complement. This analysis of se is then extended to anticausative and inchoative uses of se, as in La comida se enfrió 'the food cooled down' and Juan se durmió 'John fell asleep'. Here, se does not merge with a verb but merges directly with an acategorial Root, and the Root provides the path complement. This study further supports the notion that scalar structure is important to understanding the relationship between argument structure, event structure, and syntactic structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until recently, dialectologists and general linguists with an interest in Hispanic or Lusophone studies essentially ignored pidgin or creole languages (for example, Bozal Spanish, Palenquero, Papiamento, São Tomense, and so on), several of which may be key for an understanding of the evolution of Spanish and Portuguese, especially as regards vernacular registers (including vernacular Brazilian Portuguese, popular Caribbean Spanish, and so forth). This paper first provides an overview of the rise of creolistics as a well-organized subdiscipline of linguistics from the 1980s to the present. In so doing, the study examines principal theoretical issues and major themes, and shows how several of these are of relevance to Hispanic and Lusophone linguistics. Explanations are offered as to why the two subfields were originally slow to interface with each other, and how and why this state of affairs has recently changed for the better. Section 5 --the core of the paper--reviews a selection of contemporary research endeavors (2005-2010) that have either successfully interfaced Hispanic and Lusophone linguistics with pidgin and creole studies (or vice versa), or concentrated on creole speech areas where Spanish or Portuguese has historically had a significant impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The benefactive construction dar + gerund is used in the North Andean region only and is unknown elsewhere in the Spanish-speaking world. Based on the analysis of spontaneous data from Ecuadorian Highland Spanish, this paper provides a linguististic description of dar + gerund and of the social and pragmatic conditions of its use. Departing from this description, I explain that the construction originates through contact with Ecuadorian Quechua. It is shown that the geographical restriction of the use of dar + gerund is directly related to the specific characteristics of Ecuadorian Quechua. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents two new corpus-based studies of feedback in the domain of teaching Spanish as a foreign language, concentrating on the type and frequency of different feedback moves, as well as what happens in the moves that follow the feedback. In particular, as well as looking at positive feedback, it concentrates on two general kinds of negative feedback strategies: (1) Giving-Answer Strategies (GAS), where the teacher directly gives the desired target form or indicates the location of the error, and (2) Prompting-Answer Strategies (PAS), where the teacher pushes the student less directly to notice and repair their own error. Investigating the GAS/PAS distinction sheds light on the relative importance for Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language Learning (ICALL) systems of knowledge construction from interaction, which many believe is crucial for effective learning from ITS. The main finding here is that, although GAS occur more frequently than PAS in both corpora, it is the PAS that are more effective, in terms of eliciting explicit repairs by the students. The first study takes place in a classroom context, whereas the second, smaller, study looks at tutorial interactions. This makes it possible to investigate the extent to which the mode of interaction influences the frequency and effectiveness of feedback moves, as well as to look at how concepts such as "wait time" are relevant to explain moves that are ineffective. The paper concludes by using these results to make recommendations about how to choose appropriate feedback moves in ICALL systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to provide a unified account of the behavior of wh-in-situ questions in Spanish (i.e., non-neutral word order and the Sentence Final Requirement). The analysis presented argues that phonological properties govern the distribution of in-situ wh-phrases. More precisely, in-situ whphrases in Spanish need to appear last within their intonational phrase. Following insights from Stjepanovi (1999, 2003) on the interaction between stress assignment (Zubizarreta 1998) and the Copy Theory of movement (Chomsky 1993), I argue that in-situ wh-phrases need to appear in final position to receive main stress via the Nuclear Stress Rule. I show that in-situ wh-phrases are spell-outs of lower copies. This analysis captures the behavior of all in-situ wh-phrases in Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract  This paper deals with a number of facts related to the word order of Spanish declarative clauses and develops an analysis where the unmarked word order of Spanish clauses with different classes of verbs is not determined by syntactic conditions such as Case or agreement, but rather by structural conditions that are closely related to the thematic role of the different arguments of the verb. The analysis is based on a set of data that point to the conclusion that even though unmarked word order in Spanish is not determined by Case or agreement considerations, it is still mostly regulated by the EPP. However, these same data indicate that (a) the EPP is a requirement operative in some constructions but not in others, and (b) phrases other than the subject DP can satisfy the EPP. This paper develops an Optimality Theoretic account of these facts where the core of the analysis consists of introducing the notion of the Pole of the clause, defined as the highest specifier of the inflectional layer, and developing a set of markedness constraints whose interaction determines when and whether this specifier position is occupied. Central to this analysis are the characterization of the EPP as a violable constraint that requires the Pole specifier to be filled, and the use of Harmonic Alignment to formalize a hierarchy of markedness constraints that target the relative markedness of an argument or adjunct when it occupies the Pole specifier, independently of the grammatical relation it bears. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present paper, we adduce further evidence for the reality of grammatical constructions by focusing on a highly idiosyncratic configuration from Spanish, which we call the reduplicative-topic construction. This construction is a productive syntactic pattern that functions as a “constructional hedge”. The grammatical behaviors of this construction cannot be captured by syntactocentric approaches to grammar. Instead, co-ocurring multiple constraints must be taken into account, including phonological (intonation and rhythm), morphosyntactic and semantic factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper it is argued that Langacker’s definition of grounding predications is problematic for languages other than English. The idea that in English tense and modal auxiliaries are mutually exclusive grounding elements leads Langacker (1990, 2003) to consider both deontic and epistemic modal auxiliaries as grounding predications, whereas he excludes German modals from being so on the basis of their tense inflection. In this paper I contend that, unlike the deontic modal verbs, and despite their tense marking, Spanish epistemic modals deber ‘must’, poder ‘may’ and tener que ‘have to’ are certainly appropriate for modal grounding due to their reference point function and to the subjectification they undergo. I show that deontic modality is more affected by temporal grounding than epistemic modality. Moreover, the impossibility of inserting an inchoative verb such as ir a ‘to be going to’ corroborates the theoretical underpinning that Spanish epistemic modals effect an epistemic grounding similar to that of the grounding predications in English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that Spanish ni siquiera is like other n words in that it is ambiguous: it can have a genuinely negative interpretation and one where it is not by itself negative but requires a negative context to be licensed as a NPI. The ambiguity of ni siquiera is reduced w an ambiguity of ni, which is shown to also appear in other contexts, namely when ni combines with a minimizer and when it functions as a conjunction. The semantics of ni siquiera is argued to be relevant to the debate of whether English even is ambiguous. It also bears on a recent proposal whereby NPIs are limited to downward entailing contexts because they contain a tacit 'even'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the Spanish of Catalonia and the treatment it has received in the professional literature on linguistics written in Spain in the late 20th century. I argue that hegemonic linguistic ideologies relating to notions of linguistic correctness (Woolard and Schieffelin 1994) within Spanish academia have led to a lack of recognition of the Spanish of Catalonia as a legitimate dialect of Spanish. Such language ideologies are revealed through discourse analysis of several influential academic texts in Spanish linguistics of the late 20th century. Works front the Spanish linguistics 'canon' (such as Zamora Vicente 1989) and the Jew investigations actually written in Spain about the Spanish of Catalonia (such as Badia 1980) are considered in light of the cultural, political, linguistic, and geographic contexts in which they were written. In the late 20th century, Spanish academics repeatedly analyzed the stereotypical Spanish of Catalonia in terms of linguistic interference and prescriptive errors. In addition to consideration of the ideologies guiding such research, my paper presents an alternative analysis in which the innovative linguistic forms that actually appear in an oral corpus of Spanish spoken in Barcelona are seen not as deviant but rather as potential carriers of sociolinguistic and cultural significance. I conclude that for contact dialects of Spanish associated with ethnic minorities to be scientifically investigated in Spain, they must first be recognized as legitimate in the academic literature. Such recognition depends on a reinterpretation of the body of doctrine that continues to guide academic discourse in Spain and the devices that maintain its operation. The professional 'overlooking' of the Spanish of Catalonia in descriptions of Spanish dialectology and sociolinguistics in Spain continues to be a matter of power... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Puerto Rico is today by and large a monolingual Spanish-speaking society. This is so despite 100 years of political and economic subordination to the United States, and despite intense exposure to the English language and American culture. Meanwhile in other populations and areas that have come under US control, language shift into English appears to be the norm. This paper analyzes the variables and circumstances that have allowed Puerto Rico to resist the imposition and encroachment of English on the island. Special emphasis is given to the development and adoption of an ideology of Hispanicity as a reaction to colonial administrators' attempts at imposing the ideology of Americanism. An equally important factor has been the island's already dense population, which supports deep-rooted Spanish-speaking social networks that have not been threatened by the relatively few English-speaking immigrants and residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studying dialectal contact offers linguists an opportunity to critically examine some of our most basic assumptions about language. In particular, careful consideration of geographically constrained patterns of linguistic variation highlights the limitations of named language varieties as tools for linguistic inquiry. Ultimately, the locus of contact is not to be found in the interaction of such abstractions, but rather in the individual minds of those who live in contact communities. The present paper highlights these issues through a discussion of Spanish dialectal contact in the U.S., with a special emphasis on the variable social salience of regionally differentiated features. Work reviewed here is consistent with previous research that finds the relative salience of features to be a key determinant of their trajectory in situations of contact. Change in the use of high salience features is likely to be the result of direct accommodation between speakers, while change in low salience features is likely to arise by other, indirect mechanisms. The role of salience in shaping the outcomes of contact reinforces its inherently social nature, reminding us that what we hope to understand are not the results of dialects in contact, but rather, those of people in contact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an empirical study on the prosody of clitic left-dislocations (CLLDs) in Spanish and offers new perspectives on how the phenomenon of inter-speaker variation in linguistic data can be integrated into formal grammatical theory. Results from a production experiment based on scripted speech show that CLLDs have an obligatory left and right boundary (typically a high edge tone at the intermediate phrase level), while other sentence-internal boundaries are subject to inter-speaker variation. The hypothesis presented here suggests that prosodic boundaries which mark information structural (IS) categories are more necessary than boundaries which satisfy alignment constraints; only the latter can show inter-speaker variation ( IS-over-Alignment Hypothesis). A modified version of the Stochastic Optimality Theory (SOT) is proposed to account for the attested inter-speaker variation. By assuming that the degree of constraint overlap can vary between individual speakers while the underlying hierarchy remains invariant, the modified version of SOT is applicable beyond variation in the output structure of a whole population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this case series was to demonstrate a communitybased sociolinguistic approach to language sample analysis (LSA) for the evaluation of Spanish–English bilingual preschoolers acquiring Black language (BL). As part of a comprehensive bilingual speech-language evaluation, we examined sociolinguistic variables in the context of the children’s English language samples. Specific emphasis is placed on sociolinguistic information to account for all language(s) and dialect(s) in each child’s environment, BL feature patterns, and appropriate scoring procedures for characterizing language use. Method: This case series includes four monolingual English-speaking and four bilingual Spanish-English–speaking 4-year-olds in a linguistically diverse preschool program. Play samples were collected from each child and coded for morphosyntactic features across three categories: BL, Spanish-Influenced English, and shared. Measures derived from the language samples include percent grammatical utterances, mean length of utterance in words, and number of different words. The children’s language is characterized within a communitybased sociolinguistic approach that combines three culturally responsive methods for assessment found in the speech-language pathology literature in addition to a novel sociolinguistic questionnaire. Results: We explain how conducting LSA using a community-based sociolinguistic approach yields diagnostically relevant information that is pertinent to conducting a comprehensive and accurate evaluation of preschoolers in linguistically diverse settings without the use of standardized assessments. Conclusion: A community-based sociolinguistic approach to LSA is a useful procedure for mitigating misdiagnosis in preschoolers reared in linguistically diverse environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This explorative study examines intonation contours in neutral and non-neutral statements of Paraguayan Spanish, a variety shaped by extensive contact with Guarani, a co-official language of Paraguay. Paraguayan Spanish displays both lexical and syntactic borrowings from Guarani, along with innovative intonation patterns not found in other Spanish varieties. Previous but still limited research on yes/no and wh-questions in this variety suggests the emergence of a unique intonational system, possibly of a hybrid nature, in both Spanish monolinguals and Spanish–Guarani bilinguals. To date, no comprehensive description of intonation patterns in Paraguayan Spanish statements exists. The present study addresses this gap by analyzing data obtained through a Discourse Completion Task, covering broad-focus statements, contrastive focus, exclamatives, and statements of the obvious. Data were collected in 2014 from two monolingual speakers, eleven bilingual Spanish-dominant speakers, and eight bilingual Guarani-dominant speakers. The intonation is formalized using the Autosegmental–Metrical model of intonational phonology and the Spanish Tones and Break Indices labeling system. The findings reveal three main realizations of nuclear accents (L+H*, H+L*, and innovative >H+L*) in neutral and non-neutral declarative sentences, lengthening of syllables, diverse syntactical strategies, and lexical borrowings. The study contributes to the understanding of a lesser-studied Spanish variety and offers insights into theoretical aspects of contact linguistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some linguistic structures found in Amazonian Spanish tend to be associated by and large with a rural variety spoken by people frequently depicted as indigenous. However, direct observations indicate that most of these features are pervasive among speakers across the social spectrum. What, then, are the parameters of linguistic variation in Peruvian Amazonian Spanish? Is there any social and/or linguistic meaning associated with the attested variation? This paper looks at data from ten monolingual speakers, five born and raised in Iquitos, and five born and raised in Kokama indigenous villages. The linguistic variables examined are: (i) permutation j/f, (ii) possessor/noun number agreement, (iii) double possession, and (iv) genitive fronting. This study concentrates on one social variable, place, which is found to significantly impact language use. City-speakers emphasize or downplay their category membership through the quantitative manipulation of markers; village-speakers show less variability in their language use. In addition, certain possessive constructions seem to be undertaking specialized functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present a framework for the analysis of effects of language policies on the competition between languages. At the core of this framework is a language competition model that takes into account four pivotal factors for the evolution of the linguistic composition of a society: intergenerational language transmission, formal language education, adult language learning and migration. In contrast to the majority of models available in the literature, our model operates with parameters that can be estimated from empirical socio-linguistic data. It allows the reconstruction of past and simulate future dynamics. Language policies can be modeled as changes in model parameters. Therefore, projections derived from the model can be utilized to compare the effects of different policy options. We use Basque and Spanish within the Basque Autonomous Community in Spain to illustrate the application of the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study examines the effects of the frequency of phoneme, syllable, and word units in the Granada corpus of Spanish phonological speech errors. We computed several measures of phoneme and syllable frequency and selected the most sensitive ones, along with word (lexeme) frequency to compare the frequencies of source, target, and error units at the phoneme, syllable, and word levels. Results showed that phoneme targets have equivalent frequency to matched controls, whereas source phonemes are lower in frequency than chance (the Weak Source effect) and target phonemes (the Davideffect). Target, source, and error syllables and words also were of lower frequency than chance, and error words (when they occur) were lowest in frequency. Contrary to most current theories, which focus on faulty processing of the target units, present results suggest that faulty processing of the source units (phonemes, syllables, and words) is an important factor contributing to phonological speech errors. Low-frequency words and syllables have more difficulty ensuring that their phonemes, especially those of low frequency, are output only in their correct locations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]