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This paper focuses on a group of Spanish emotion verbs, such as asustar 'to frighten' or asombrar 'to amaze', that takes as grammatical subject the cause which triggers the emotion and as first verbal object the experiencer (El violador asusta a las madres 'The rapist frightens the mothers'). Most of these verbs present an alternance in their superficial syntactic structure in such a way that the referred first verbal object can be interpreted as DO (El violador las asusta 'The rapist frightens them') or as IO (A las madres les asusta el violador 'The mothers are afraid of the rapist'). The goal of this paper is to ascertain whether these two syntactic expressions entail also differences in meaning and whether these differences are important enough to distinguish two lexical units within a polysemous word (lexical ambiguity) or, on the contrary, they can be covered by the same definition (lexical vagueness). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I describe focalizing syntactic structures in which the so-called que galicado (que used instead of the "canonical" relative pronouns or adverbs) is used. I also make reference to its origins, which several scholars of Spanish have attributed to the influence of other Romance languages. Empirical studies, however, show that que galicado seems to relate to a generalized linguistic tendency, even though the contact of Spanish with other languages, especially French, could favor its use. Several studies on the subject show that the occurrence of que galicado seems to be conditioned by dialectal regions (more frequent use in Spanish speaking Latin America than in Spain), speakers' socioeconomic status, and most of all, by the syntactic function of the focalized constituent, its grammatical category and number of syllables. Some recommendations about the use of que galicado are made in the final part of this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on lexical availability intends to have access to the lexicon used by the speech community members in certain communicative situations. The aim of this paper is to account for the foreign lexis found in a corpus specifically built to serve the purposes of a research project on the social conditioning of the available lexicon in Malaga town (Consolex-Project). We identified three different levels of lexical foreignness in accordance with the latest Real Academia Española (RAE) standards: foreign words, accepted foreign words and adapted foreign words. Here, we analyse the use of this particular foreign lexis and examine its correlation with the speaker's background and social stratification. Results tend to confirm both the initial hypothesis of a gradual loss of the traditional dialect lexis and parallel convergence towards the use of standard and even international words, especially by the youngest and most educated speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fact that lexical blending causes shortening is often taken as evidence that this morphological process is subtractive. This paper argues that the classification of lexical blending within subtractive morphology is accurate for syntagmatic blends, but inaccurate for associative blends because, while the shortening of the former is the product of deletion, that of the latter is the result of extensive overlapping. Through the use of faithful and unfaithful multiple-correspondence relationships, it is demonstrated that associative blending consists of superimposing one word upon another one. Although the output word is shorter than the sum of the input words, no part of the input is left completely unrepresented in the output. Associative blends prioritize the prosodic structure of the head, but compensate the non-head by prioritizing its segmental structure. In this way, they manage to balance the faithfulness they owe to both of their etymons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the delimitation between phenomena that concern composition, on the one hand, and phraseology, on the other. By compounding we mean a morphological process that applies strictly inside the wordform. However, phraseology, understood as the set of non-free combination of linguistic signs, cuts across word-formation and phrase formation. We defend the possibility of free and non-free compounds and phrases and argue against the notion of syntagmatic compound. This label covers units such as fin de semana 'week-end', pasta de dientes 'toothpaste' or [un] sin techo 'a homeless person', among many others. As it will be shown, these units have a heterogeneous nature varying from phraseological phrases (idioms and collocations) until phraseological compounds (single wordforms despite their ortography). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the idea that the language used in today's financial press belongs to the speciality language field of Business Spanish, this paper provides a description and systematisation of the lexis used by financial journalists. For this purpose, having analysed a body of texts taken from contemporary financial newspapers, the lexis used is described on the basis of certain theoretical assumptions regarding the origin, security and functionality of this lexis. This analysis points to the conclusion that the lexis used can be divided into two groups: denoted, made up of monosemic lexical units, and connoted, lexical units with a specific meaning in the context of use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper lies in the category of research on sports terminology as a language for specific purposes. Hence, it is a study with a lexicological and lexicographical perspective, concerning the Spanish language and bilingual dictionaries. On this occasion, I will deal with meanings and sports terms in Laura Tam's Grande Dizionario di Spagnolo, distinguishing between terms of a specific nature, entries of a generic nature in the milieu of sports and, finally, non-descript terms. The study concludes with a comparison of terms in the Spanish-Italian section and those in the Italian- Spanish section, with an analysis of the differences. A selection of some of the most representative terms will be presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the impact that a standardized form of Spanish in current media may have on the Spanish-speaking people, especially in linguistic-contact situations in which media may be a crucial factor for both the growth and strength of a language, so that choosing a linguistic standard rather than another may become a major issue. It is concluded that a global, non-local Spanish standard, reflecting the current extension of the language, may serve both as a formal standard and as a learning device for bilingual speakers who lack total command of the language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]