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Grammatical agreement, a property of inflectional languages such as Spanish, consists of a formal association of different syntactic constituents. Even though it is a categorical morphosyntactic phenomenon, in Peruvian Spanish non-agreement occurs in different communicative contexts, due to certain social factors that will be analyzed in this paper. Based on a variationist perspective, we intend to identify and analyze non-concordant (NC) utterances extracted from the PRESEEA-LIMA corpus (directed by the author) in several linguistic contexts related to the constituents of noun phrases and verb phrases. An overview of the quantitative results will be provided in this paper. Moreover, we will approach data from both a heuristic and a hermeneutic point of view, through a reinterpretation of the role of quantitative value in the determination of linguistic variation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to present the social and stylistic variation in the speech prosody of the Spanish of Mérida, Yucatán. Assertive utterances from sociolinguistic interviews and discourse completion tasks are analyzed considering the social variables of age, gender and educational level. The prosodic analysis is carried out within the Autosegmental Metrical model (Pierrehumbert 1980, Ladd 2008) and with the Sp_ToBI labeling conventions (Hualde & Prieto 2015). The results show that this variety of Spanish is characterized by a prominent descent starting from the first tonal peak, the early-peak alignment in some prenuclear positions, and the presence of some non-falling boundary tones. The social and stylistic variation suggests that the last two are features that indicate vernacularity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses concessive resources with a mitigating function which are found in argumentative acts in the PRESEEA corpus from Santiago, Chile. Based on data from 36 semi-structured interviews, the behaviour of concessive-oppositional moves and concessive discourse particles in argumentative acts is analyzed, and their sociolinguistic variation is described in relation to the speakers' gender, age and level of education. The key findings highlight that in Chilean Spanish there are at least 12 strategies that fulfill a mitigating concessive function, among which "sí, pero (yes, but) + negation", "aunque (even though)", "no, pero (no, but) + assertion" and "a pesar (de) que (despite the fact that)" stand out. These strategies are linked to the functions of self-protection and face prevention in the development of the argumentative act. Furthermore, it is also observed that the variation is mostly due to the subject's age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present a study about the process of convergency and divergency in the dialect contact. The pluralization of haber is very widespread in the Spanish of the Dominican Republic, but it is almost non-existent in Madrid. The analysis of these varieties is useful in order to observe and explain the process of international dialect contact. The importance of the study of non-variation within the linguistic of migration is point out. The results of the research highlight two main features: a) Madrilenian variety prestige does not influence some linguistic variables among Dominicans in Madrid; b) the perception and frequency of the variable impacts the process of convergence and divergence of the speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on expressions of age combined with the verbs ser and estar in the Spanish of Guatemala and Mexico. It analyses the linguistic and extralinguistic factors favoring the extension of estar and the process of linguistic change involved in the expression of age in the two dialectal groups. Based on the analysis of three linguistic corpora from these communities (one from Ciudad de México and two from Guatemala), the results show, on the one hand, that estar is the most frequent copulative form, and, on the other, that some age-related adjectives favor the extension of the copulative form: chico, chiquito, grande. The paper concludes that age expressions with ser and estar are a feature of dialectal differentiation and, at the same time, an evolution of estar at the expense of ser. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within a sociolinguistic framework, in this paper, we describe the use of dequeísmo (use of 'de que' instead of 'que') in the utterances of Spanish speakers living in Santiago de Chile. A stratified sample of 120 interviews with people residing in Santiago was utilized for the analysis. The study intended to 1) identify the internal variables that prompted the use of dequeísmo and 2) correlate those variables with sociodemographic of the speakers (gender age and socioeconomic status). The results suggest that the contexts that foster the use of dequeísmo frequently allowed for the replacement of other de prepositions and appositive structures, although most cases occurred in clauses with functions of direct object and subject. Additionally, in the sample, the use of dequeísmo was frequently coincided in the speeches of male and older speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Situated within the variationist sociolinguistic framework, in this paper we analyze the use of de repente as a marker that introduces complication or climax in a sample of 300 personal experience narratives (Labov y Waletzky 1967 y Labov 1972) of Santiago speakers. First, we establish the frequency of use of this particle. Then, we correlate the speakers' sociodemographic factors with the use of this marker, and finally, we describe the functionality of this particle within the narratives that make up the sample. Our hypothesis was that the sociodemographic characteristics of Santiago Spanish speakers would be correlated with the use of de repente as a phrase that introduces complication or climax within the narrative. The data analysis shows that de repente was used a total of 100 times, of which 95 (95%) function in this manner, or as introducing the complicated action of the story. Additionally, we demonstrate that this particle is used most frequently by female informants from the younger age group (20-34 years old). The analysis, in turn, enabled us to determine that a main collocation is that of de repente + historical present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to compile and analyse the most frequent anglicisms in the lexicon used in sports activities offered by Spanish gyms. This domain remains unexplored in the research of the phenomenon of anglicisms in the Spanish language, since the published literature has focused so far on the lexicon of other sports such as football (Fernández 1971; Alonso 1996; Rodríguez González 2012). We have studied a sample of 268 anglicisms taken from the brochures and websites of 15 gyms. Our analysis is not only quantitative but also describes different pragmatic functions of the anglicisms found in the data. This allows us to draw significant conclusions about the evolution of anglicisms as a sociolinguistic and cultural phenomenon in Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tries to quantify the socioeconomic importance of seven phonetic characteristics (seseo, yeismo, /s/-aspiration, /x/-aspiration, /j/-assibilation, /r/-assibilation, and /n/-velarization) whose presence or absence allows distinguishing among twenty-four Spanish dialects. In order to accomplish this goal, we perform a least-square regression analysis to calculate "hedonic prices" for the abovementioned characteristics. The result is that the three more significant characteristics, which seem to operate as signs of a lower per-capita income, are seseo, /x/-aspiration and /r/-assibilation. The first of those characteristics keeps its statistical significance as a sociolinguistic marker when we restrict our analysis to the case of Spain, while /r/-assibilation keeps its statistical significance when we restrict our database to Colombian observations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]