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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]

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]

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]

The present paper analyses the translation of motion events from Spanish novels into German and English. More precisely, it focuses on three translation agents: translation students, professional translators and the neural machine translation tool DeepL. The study, contextualised in the Thinking-for-translating hypothesis (Slobin, 1997, 2000, 2003), aims at investigating whether all the information about the motion events in Spanish novels is transferred or otherwise Manner information is added, as might be expected due to intertypological differences (German and English languages are satellite-framed languages and Spanish is a verb-framed language, Talmy, 1985, 2000) and the data obtained from studies based on professional translation (cf. Slobin, 1996; Cifuentes-Férez, 2013; Molés- Cases, 2019). Overall, the results show that the way students and professionals deal with the translation of motion events is influenced by their mother tongues. However, it seems that, in general, students are more reluctant to add information about Manner in motion events than professional translators. Besides, the most observed translation technique in the case of DeepL corresponds to literal translation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes, from the viewpoint of Systemic-Functional Linguistics (henceforth, SFL), the specific ways in which the structure of the Spanish clause is organized for the realization of basic experiential functions, including Participant, Process and Circumstance. Thus far, SFL-descriptive work on Spanish has given little attention to the ways in which units and classes of units are organized along the rank scale of this language and how this organization contributes to the structural configuration of types of process. Based on the principles derived from the SFL theoretical dimensions of axis and rank, this article accounts for Spanishspecific resources at stake, first, in the realization of nuclear clause functions such as Process and Participant, and then in the realization of peripheral circumstantial elements. The paper finally addresses the key implications of the approach adopted to the account of the Spanish clause as well as to the general criteria involved in the identification of basic functions in its experiential structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study the use of the verbs “poder” and “conseguir” among basic level learners of Portuguese as a foreign language. These verbs in context are discussed from a semantic-pragmatic perspective, in the light of modal theories such as those of Kratzer (1977; 1981; 1991; 2008; 2012) and others, as well as the classical notions of “accomplishment” and “achievement”, according to Vendler (1957; 1967), Dowty (1979), Abusch (1985) and Smith (1997). Since the Brazilian-Portuguese (BP) and South American Spanish language pairs differ in several aspects, the objective is to verify weather or not non-facilitative transfer from Spanish to Portuguese occurs, according to Cabrelli et al. (2020). By analyzing the occurrences of these verbs in oral speech during classroom moments, the study suggests the possibility of adopting practices to raise awareness of these differences between BP and Spanish so that learners can use these forms appropriately according to their context of use. [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]

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]

The purpose of this paper is to model plural nominal concordance errors for a Spanish corpus of four learners of Spanish as a foreign language: SONIA (level A1/A2), NATI (level B1), JAKO (level B2), MIRKA (level C1). In the framework of dynamical systems, it is postulated that "correct" and "incorrect" concordances constitute stable discrete attractors to which the continuous flow of the system converges in three simple simulation models: Lokta-Volterra, coordination game (evolutionary games theory), gradient ascent. As a result, the models better approximate the global error pattern than the session pattern. In the latter, the model based on Lokta-Volterra offers better performance for SONIA, NATI and JAKO. MIRKA obtains the worst performance in all the models, but its error decreases with the gradient ascent model. It is concluded that learning patterns are self-organized and emerge from the dynamics of concordance microsystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phraseology represents a recognized and relevant field in the teaching of the Spanish language and culture. Religion is an essential part of culture and as such it is reflected in many phraseological units (PU) that should have a place in learning a foreign language. Language and culture are inseparable for a native speaker as opposed to a foreign student who needs an integrated teaching of language and culture. For this paper, we have selected a PU with a religious cultural component that may be interesting for students of Spanish as a foreign language (ELE): colgarle a alguien el sambenito 'stigmatise sy' (literally: 'hang the sanbenito on sy'). To justify our choice, we have studied the frequency of this phrase in different situations and socio-cultural contexts during a period of five years (2012-2016) in several Spanish digital newspapers, including El País, El Mundo, ABC, La Vanguardia, Ideal and Marca. For this purpose, it was our initial assumption that a look at the frequency of this phrase in the digital press will help us identify its use. This paper seeks to extrapolate the results to applied linguistics, specifically, applied phraseology in Spanish, since phraseological competence improves not only communicative competence but also knowledge about Spanish culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article serves as an introduction to the special issue on spelling and writing in different orthographies. Most studies and theoretical models of writing are based on the English language, and it is generally assumed that what is true for English is also true for other languages. Further, there are more studies on reading compared to studies of writing and spelling. Considering that 80% of the world's population speaks a language other than English, we need more studies on writing and spelling in languages other than English. With this intention, we are presenting 6 papers on writing and spelling in different languages of different orthographic depth, from highly transparent orthographies like Spanish and Italian to highly opaque orthography like Cantonese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a case study of a 60-year-old Peruvian refugee in some detail, focusing on the importance of building emotional resilience in a patient in Spanish in order to create a space for learning the English language - the patient did not speak English after 20 years of living in Britain. The work was carried out with an interpreter and some of the literature on working with interpreters is referred to. The paper also briefly outlines the refugee journey in broad terms, which is a journey from the culturally known to the culturally unknown. The question of how well the literature on resilience, which sits firmly within a Western developmental perspective, can be applied to refugees, most of whom come from group and family-based cultures dominated by ideas of honour and shame, is discussed. The paper also touches on the importance of the receiving country enabling or not, as the case may be, a transitional space for refugees who have lost their home and are seeking to find a safe haven in a strange culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers the most significant results derived from the preliminary semantic analysis carried out on the 455 Spanish prepositional resultatives headed by the telic preposition hasta that conform our corpus. Specifically, we will show that their meaning is not homogenous since two clear cases are to be differentiated: on the one hand, those which have literal meaning, like hasta la muerte in La misma asesina, por lo tanto, que torturó a Loperena hasta la muerte, and on the other, those with a figurative interpretation, like hasta el agotamiento in La curiosidad lo hizo esforzarse hasta el agotamiento. Though both readings entail a hyperbolic meaning of excess and exaggeration, we will demonstrate, furthermore, that only the latter, called degree resultatives, following Hoeksema and Napoli (2019), have recently developed an intensifying function in the language which is increasingly growing as time goes by. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New technologies are today, in the year 2021, an essential complement in the field of didactics in its broadest sense and, even more so, in the field of foreign language teaching. It is common knowledge that there has always been a deep link between translation and second language teaching, which has led to significant changes in language didactics. The aim of this paper is to explore the pedagogical potential of one mode of audiovisual translation, namely subtitling, in the field of teaching Spanish to Italian-speaking students. Our interest lies in demonstrating that through the process of subtitling it is possible to pedagogically address certain linguistic and cultural aspects that benefit the linguistic-communicative competence of Italian-speaking students of Spanish as a foreign language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Audio description is an access service that translates visuals into words which are then received auditorily by end users. This article aims to compare audio descriptions created by professionals and by students in Spanish, in order to identify commonalities and divergences, if any. Part of the VIW corpus is used to that end. Although limited in size, the VIW corpus is the first open-access multilingual multimodal corpus of audio descriptions, including various audio descriptions of the same visual input, namely the short film "What happens while". The analysis presented in this paper focuses on quantitative data such as the number of words, number of AD units and sentences, as well as on the distribution of word classes. Where relevant, data are compared to general language corpora so as to highlight the specificities of the language of audio description. The paper also compares the most frequent words used by both groups, and a selection of semantic classes automatically retrieved is analysed. This article provides new insights into the language of audio description and shows the research potential of the VIW corpus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a discussion of narrative podcasts based on the analysis of Radio Ambulante, a Spanish language radio show created in the United States in 2011. The research aims to demonstrate that the emergence of the narrative podcast is strongly linked to the tradition of National Public Radio (NPR), the American public radio network founded in 1970. The article presents a brief history and examples of NPR radio shows that became fundamental in the development of the podcast’s journalistic tradition. In addition, it highlights the Radio Ambulante project as one of the most representative examples of this tradition in a foreign language. In this essay, two episodes of this podcast are analyzed: “Las Hijas de Maria Señorina” and “Mais Médicos”, productions of 2018 totally or partially dedicated to Brazil that had their audio transcribed in Portuguese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If heritage languages are defined by their local sociolinguistic status and situation (Montrul, 2016), the case of Latin American Spanish in Switzerland was defined, at the start of this investigation as practically inexistent at the state level. Though Latin Americans in Switzerland seem to be larger in number than Spanish migrants, they face more obstacles when trying to be taken into account by heritage language development policies, especially in early childhood. The reasons are diverse, but perhaps the most important one is that they are not perceived as a group in need of special integration policies. The aim of this paper is to provide evidence of the impact a heritage language and culture development program which includes mixed groups (heritage and foreign language) had on the Swiss society's attitude towards Spanish speakers, especially (but not exclusively) Latin Americans living in the city of Wil and surrounding areas in the canton of St. Gallen. This work also presents evidence of the identity reconstruction process in migrant families. To this end, several impact indicators are defined and the creation process of the program together with the data record that took place between 2013 and 2020 are explained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decade, several studies have shown the polyfunctionality of the particle como in Spanish. Beyond its approximating semantic value, it has been established that como also fulfils pragmaticdiscursive functions, such as retardation, mitigation and introduction of direct speech (Holmvik, 2011; Jørgensen, 2012; Panussis, 2016; Mondaca, 2017; Panussis and San Martín, 2017, Mondaca, 2019). This paper aims to analyze, on the one hand, the relationship between the approximating use of como and its function as a direct speech introducer in Chilean Spanish, in order to establish what types of information are introduced in direct style, through this particle, by the speakers. On the other hand, and from an exploratory perspective, the study pursues to identify the syntactic combinations that como, as a direct speech introducer, presents. To achieve these aims, a corpus of 24 sociolinguistic interviews collected in the Fondecyt Project 11110211 has been used. The distribution of this corpus includes six speakers from each of the four geographical macro-areas of Chile (Wagner, 1998, 2004). The main results show the following: a) The function of introduction of direct speech associated to como is linked to the approximating value of the particle; b) the direct speech introduced by como not only reproduces speech quotes, but also thoughts, hypothetical speech, stereotyped speech, and attitudes; and, c) although como can operate as an only introductory element of direct speech, most frequently it acts in combination with other elements, such as the verb ser and the adverb así. [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]

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]

This paper is a study of the structural and semantic structure of complex sentences in the Spanish language during the period of the XII-XXI centuries. We analyzed revolutionary processes at the level of syndetic coordination, correlation, relation, modal temporal relationship, positional location of the dependent subordinate clause in relation to the main clause. We revealed tendencies in the development of complement object, attributive and adverbial models of sentences, as well as quantitative and qualitative changes of the volume of complex sentences. The results of the study open up prospects for scientific research in the field of evolutionary processes in the communicative separation of complex sentences in Spanish, as well as the implementation of semantic and structural transformations between the components of the functional system of the dependent link, the study of the essence of the latent-predicative link and its formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the main results of the allophonic variation of the consonantal group /tr/ in a variety of Chilean Spanish -that of speakers that have not completed secondary education- obtained from eight cities (Iquique, La Serena, Valparaíso, Santiago, Concepción, Temuco, Coyhaique and Punta Arenas), using two elicitation tasks -semi-spontaneous interview and reading-aloud- completed by male and female speakers. The results showed that the sequence of plosive followed by a tap, that is /tr/, was more frequent. In addition, the independent variables geographic origin, elicitation task and gender were shown to have a statistically significant effect on the phonetic realizations of /tr/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have dealt in this paper, with a non-normative writing for Spanish words which implies exogenous conventions, and we have distinguished it from an intervention which can be considered similar, because it also generates alternating forms separated from the corresponding norm by using non-Spanish conventions, but for writing of words that the speakers recognize as importations from other languages. On data from the commercial domain, obtained in the Buenos Aires dialectal area of Argentine Spanish, we have compared the origin of the resources used in the foreign writing for Spanish words and in the hyperforeign configurations, verifying a disparity that ratifies the characterization that we have tried out for both types of intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study extends our understanding of Chinese university students' motivation to learn languages other than English (LOTEs) by adding a contextual dimension to the L2 Motivational Self System. The study drew on Higgins' ([1987]. "Self-discrepancy: A Theory Relating Self and Affect." Psychological Review 94: 319–340.) original Own-Other standpoints and Lanvers' ([2016]. "Lots of Selves, Some Rebellious: Developing the Self Discrepancy Model for Language Learners." System 60: 79–92.; [2017]. "Contradictory Others and the Habitus of Languages: Surveying the L2 Motivation Landscape in the United Kingdom." The Modern Language Journal 101 (3): 517–532.) Self-Discrepancy Theory for Language Learners to enrich the framework, and recruited two different learner groups with Chinese as their first language and English as their second language – voluntary learners of Spanish as a third language and non-voluntary learners of Spanish. The Q-methodology was applied to profile these two groups' multilingual selves, with four motivational profiles emerging from the analysis: self-motivated with multilingual posture, self-motivated with instrumentality, other-motivated with promotion-focused instrumentality, and other-motivated with prevention-focused instrumentality. The findings revealed that multilingual posture was prominent in the self-motivated learners' investment in learning Spanish, and the other-motivated learners were subjugated to the macro-level sociological influences of global English and the national foreign language policy. Our findings also suggested a potential gate-keeping role of global English in conceptualising non-Anglophone learners' LOTE learning motivation. This paper concludes with some methodological and theoretical implications for future LOTE learning motivation research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that there is nothing "differential" in the licensing conditions of Differential Object Marking and outlines an analysis that unifies dom with dative object marking and with a broader set of "derived object"-marking configurations. We show that neither morphological nor syntactic distinctiveness can be the driving force for dom: accounts of dom as a morphological distinctiveness device are inadequate diachronically and very unefficient functionally. Syntactic analyses that postulate DP-internal differences or construction-specific double-licensing conditions fail to capture the basic fact that dom is a relation between the objects and the predicates selecting them. Precisely, the burden of our unified explanation falls on the checking requirements imposed to the DP complements by the structural heads selecting them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

The spread of Spanish as a foreign language in North America during the 19th century prompted the publishing house Henry Holt and Frederick Leypoldt to edit in 1868 an anonymous handbook of pronunciation, lexicon, phrases, verbs and dialogues to teach Spanish in a short, easy and practical way. ¿Habla Vm. español? or Do you Speak English? collects the rudiments to perform in Spanish, especially through oral language, for those who wished to make a stay in Spain or in Latin America. Although the text is unoriginal in its content and formal presentation, it is part of linguistic historiography and the corpus of Spanish as a Foreign Language materials. This paper focuses on the analysis of ¿Habla Vm. español? or Do you Speak English?, the context in which it was written and the methodology used by Holt and Leypoldt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, linguistic research has been focusing more on the analysis of language usage from various sperspectives. Among those approaches, the socio pragmatic one regards language usage as a real, immediate ephenomenon affected by social context in a given situation. The sestudiesincludethoseon verbal politeness, and also on it so ther face, i.e., impoliteness, violence and aggressiveness, which in creasing levels have fortunately been accompanied by more research on them. A vast number of researchers of the Spanish language have conducted studies on the characteristics of such utterances and the variations in their use through out different regions of the Hispanic world. This paper aims to analyze, from the conversation al analysis perspective, the use of violent forms of address by speakers of the borough of Distrito José Martí Sur A and B; thus, contributing to the study of language usage in the Eastern region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the use of linguistic information for the selection of data to train language models. We depart from the state-of-the-art method in perplexity-based data selection and extend it in order to use word-level linguistic units (i.e. lemmas, named entity categories and part-of-speech tags) instead of surface forms. We then present two methods that combine the different types of linguistic knowledge as well as the surface forms (1, naïve selection of the top ranked sentences selected by each method; 2, linear interpolation of the datasets selected by the different methods). The paper presents detailed results and analysis for four languages with different levels of morphologic complexity (English, Spanish, Czech and Chinese). The interpolation-based combination outperforms the purely statistical baseline in all the scenarios, resulting in language models with lower perplexity. In relative terms the improvements are similar regardless of the language, with perplexity reductions achieved in the range 7.72–13.02%. In absolute terms the reduction is higher for languages with high type-token ratio (Chinese, 202.16) or rich morphology (Czech, 81.53) and lower for the remaining languages, Spanish (55.2) and English (34.43 on the English side of the same parallel dataset as for Czech and 61.90 on the same parallel dataset as for Spanish). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses three Spanish focus constructions: clefts, the Det+N+ SER construction (e.g. la verdad es que...), and the lo+ADJ+SER construction (e.g. lo bueno es que...). Since their status in the oral-written dimension is still ambiguous and it has even been proposed some closeness with the written language, the research focused on their frequency in an oral corpus of Mexican Spanish, as well as their discourse functions. The data collected shows that these constructions are more frequent in the telenovela, while among non-fictional genres they are linked to those situated within the communicative immediacy space (v. Koch y Oesterreicher 1985). Their functions are grouped in two dimensions: micro- and macrotextual; the latter being the prevailing one since by using these constructions the speaker organizes and marks topical lines in discourse. [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]

It is widely accepted that in oral exchanges with, for example, family members, friends, and co-workers, speakers of Chilean Spanish alternate between verbal tuteo and verbal voseo. In this paper, drawing on a corpus of conversational interactions between relatives and friends from Santiago, I examine the relative frequency with which these speakers use verbal voseo in relation to verbal tuteo, and I explore the social and linguistic factors that determine the variation, paying particular attention to the parameters that affect the use of verbal voseo. In addition, I compare the distributions observed here with those observed in previous studies that base their analyses on corpora that contain less natural communicative contexts. The results indicate that, in spontaneous conversational interactions, the speakers use verbal voseo with a frequency much greater than the frequency with which they use verbal tuteo as well as the frequencies observed in previous studies. This, and the fact that verbal voseo is conditioned by an interaction between the gender and the age of the speakers, as well as by the specificity of their interlocutors, shows that speakers of Chilean Spanish born in Santiago assign covert prestige to verbal voseo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of a closed-set recognition task for 80 Spanish consonant-vowel sounds (16 C x 5V, spoken by 2 talkers) in 8-talker babble (–6, –2, +2 dB). A ranking of resistance to noise was obtained using the signal detection d′ measure, and confusion patterns were analyzed using a graphical method (confusion graphs). The resulting ranking indicated the existence of three resistance groups: (1) high resistance: /t∫, s, ʝ/; (2) mid resistance: /r, l, m, n/; and (3) low resistance: /t, θ, x, g, b, d, k, f, p/. Confusions involved mostly place of articulation and voicing errors, and occurred especially among consonants in the same resistance group. Three perceptual confusion groups were identified: the three low-energy fricatives (i.e., /f, θ, x/), the six stops (i.e., /p, t, k, b, d, g/), and three consonants with clear formant structure (i.e., /m, n, l/). The factors underlying consonant resistance and confusion patterns are discussed. The results are compared with data from other languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the ancient Nahua concept of “father,” employing early Colonial sources written in both Nahuatl and Spanish. A careful contextual analysis of the occurrences of various Nahuatl terms for “father” or “parent” leads to the conclusion that the principal criterion for creating their metaphorical extensions differed considerably from parallel Spanish criterion. While the latter referred to the power relationship (“father” is the one who governs), the former was based on the concept of exchange (“father” is the one who gives). This principle has implications for studying many aspects of Nahua culture in which the terms for “father” appear: gender and social roles, political hierarchy, pre-Hispanic religion, or evangelization. The difference in the construction of such basic concepts in Nahuatl and Spanish leads to methodological considerations about studying sources that have arisen from the context of cultural contact. [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]

The present article presents a corpus-based study of two near-synonymous verbs in Spanish: the locative verbs of putting poner and meter. Starting from the universal principle of linguistic economy, the paper aims to empirically identify potentially influencing variables that determine the native speaker’s choice between the two verbs. It is investigated whether and to what extent the choice is governed by a set of variables related to the nature of the locative movement itself and the characteristics of the participants taking part in the event. The difference between the near-synonyms is shown to be determined mainly by the direction of the locative movement, the semantic nature of the participants (animacy, concreteness), the reflexiveness of the event, as well as the cognitive construal of the locative event (the possibility of a container-reading). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) has long been characterized by its openness towards contributions from other fields. However, it has remained virtually uninformed by neuroscience. Such a disconnection has become all the more unfortunate since SFL ventured into the cognitive domain (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999). Opening a new avenue of disciplinary interaction for SFL, this paper reviews experimental studies on the neurocognitive basis of processes and verbs of doing, highlighting their manifold implications for the theory. Available data corroborates the SFL assumptions that these processes and verbs are (i) conceptually different from participants and nouns, (ii) functionally distinguishable from other process and verb types, and (iii) non-arbitrarily related to each other. Moreover, the evidence shows that (at least some of) the conceptual distinctions within semantics are naturally grounded in more basic (motor and perceptual) neurocognitive distinctions. This, we propose, calls for an elaboration of the stratified SFL model via the inclusion of a sensorimotor stratum. More generally, the article seeks to foster an empirically sound and theoretically relevant dialogue between SFL and promising approaches within cognitive neuroscience. [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]

This paper reports the work for the EnConversion of input Punjabi sentences to an interlingua representation called Universal Networking Language (UNL). The UNL system consists of two main components, namely, EnConverter (used for converting the text from a source language to UNL) and DeConverter (used for converting the text from UNL to a target language). This paper discusses the framework for designing the EnConverter for Punjabi language with a special focus on generation of UNL attributes and relations from Punjabi source text. It also describes the working of Punjabi Shallow Parser used for the processing of the input sentence, which performs the tasks of Tokenizer, Morph-analyzer, Part-of-Speech Tagger and Chunker. This paper also considers the seven phases used in the process of EnConversion of input Punjabi text to UNL representation. The paper highlights the EnConversion analysis rules used for the EnConverter and indicates its usage in the generation of UNL expressions. This paper also covers the results of implementation of Punjabi EnConverter and its evaluation on sample UNL sentences available at Spanish Language Server. The accuracy of the developed system has also been presented in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When tackling the issue of translation between Spanish and Catalan, Branchadell and West state that translation into a minority language like Catalan is truly an ill-studied and poorly understood phenomenon (2004:16). This paper aims to start a debate on a language pair that has scarcely been studied and is still poorly known even in the Spanish context: two languages that live together, two close languages, two languages always determined by the socio-political and historical circumstances around them, and, as a result, two languages well understood by all speakers in the crowded Catalan region.We will focus on the contextual factors that take part and determine this translation practice: ­­the linguistic profile of their speakers, the bi-directionality of professional translation, self-translation and the specificity of fields in the professional marketplace. We will also examine the implications that derive from them, especially the implications for teaching. This paper will reopen some interesting theoretical debates, like directionality, self-translation, market relations and power balances between a major and a minor language. For example, the closeness of these two languages does not guarantee success in translation, the concepts of direct and reverse translation are not very useful and precise in this language combination, and the reasons for commissioning a translation are not just to facilitate understanding among the readers of the target language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports an evaluation carried out from 1999 to 2003 in 55 schools in the Basque Autonomous Community involving more than 10,000 secondary school students. The variables measured include achievement in Spanish, metacognitive skills, learning strategies and variables related to the students' family environment. The measurements were made at three different times in the last year of primary, and second and fourth years of secondary school. The main aim of this research study is to conduct a longitudinal study of the students' achievement using a measuring unit which can be used for the three measurements for all the students. The data reported in this paper focus on proficiency in the Spanish language. Data were analysed using a hierarchical linear model (HLM) with three levels: (1) the three students' measures at three different points in time; (2) individual variables related to the students; and (3) the variables related to the schools. The paper presents a model of change in achievement in Spanish by examining the influence of background variables including socioeconomic status (SES) of the family and the school, gender, and type of school (private or public). The results indicate that there is a linear increase of scores in Spanish along the school grades. D model students with Basque as the language of instruction obtain lower results than the rest of the students. Other variables such as gender, SES (family and school) and metacognition also have a significant effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whereas most research on child second language acquisition has focused on the oral production of children, studies are needed to illuminate patterns of literacy development in a second language. This paper aims to shed some light on this process, focusing on the English writing development of a native Spanish speaker, and on the Spanish writing development of a native English speaker, both enrolled in a two-way immersion program in the USA. Data for this particular study come from a longitudinal, national study, involving 484 students in 11 programs across the country. In this paper, we will present a case study of two students in the project, from the beginning of third grade through the end of fifth grade. The students' writing samples will be discussed using an analytic rubric developed for the project. This rubric addresses three major aspects of writing — composition, grammar and mechanics — and provides a clear framework for investigating changes in writing ability over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes that young children who are growing up in a bilingual and biliterate environment may, at a fundamental level, experience their worlds not as separate linguistic and cultural entities but as 'simultaneous'. The data comes from a study of 6-year-olds in London who were learning to write in Chinese, Arabic or Spanish as well as English. Whilst being able to differentiate between their two writing systems, the children also sought connections between multiple systems of representation. They saw graphic symbols as 'signifier material' which could transform in meaning across systems. When making a text, the children had an expanded range of semiotic resources from which they could choose in order to represent and construct their identities as writers. The paper discusses how children's use of graphic representation showed that they were able both to maintain difference and to achieve integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

John Minsheu has long been known to historians of lexicography as the author of an impressive comparative and etymological dictionary, Ductor in Linguas. Less well known is his grammar of Spanish, which is unusual for its time in displaying interest in socio-linguistic issues. This paper is intended to stimulate interest in the neglected grammar and to propose a solution to the mystery of Minsheu's biography--a topic likewise overlooked in the literature. The paper ends with a set of proposals for further research. Historians of English lexicography are generally familiar with the dictionaries of John Minsheu, but the numerous studies of his work, to a large extent by Spanish authors, are usually devoted to commentaries on the etymology of individual words as proposed by Minsheu. What is lacking is any examination of the socio-linguistic context in which he was working as well as any attempt at a biography, however superficial, other than the minimum of information obtainable from the prefaces to his publications. One topic of special interest in Minsheu's grammar is the function of pronouns, Minsheu claiming that it is one of the most difficult things in the tongue to have the true use of them, and whereby a stranger or the unlearned in his speech or writing, shall soonest discover himself to the natural or learned in the tongue.

This research paper examines the narrative accounts of the academic Spanish-language development of four preservice bilingual education teachers of different backgrounds, including Mexican-American, white (non-Hispanic), Mexican immigrant, and the U.S.-Mexico border Hispanic. The purpose of the study is to discover the kinds of educational forces which may impede bilingual education teachers' development of academic Spanish, look at their own perceptions of their Spanish-language proficiency, and consider how student learning might be influenced. The stories illustrate how few meaningful educational opportunities prospective teachers have to develop academic Spanish-language proficiency. They also demonstrate how sociocultural context may impede Spanish-language development. In short, the paper addresses the need for dramatic social and educational changes if bilingual education teachers in the U.S. are to fulfill one of the basic tenets of bilingual education: the provision of native-language instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intonation is the phonologically structured variation in phonetic features, primarily pitch, to express phrase-level meanings. As in other speech sound domains, analyzing intonation involves mapping continuously variable physical parameters to categories. The categories of intonation are organized in a set of relations and rule-governed distributions that define the intonation system of a language. From physical realizations, as shown by pitch tracks, surface or phonetic tonal patterns can be identified in terms of tonal targets. Whether surface patterns correspond or not to categories within a given intonation system requires looking at their distributions and contrastiveness. In this paper, I assume the view that a transcription is an analysis of the intonation system, which ultimately aims to identify the contrastive intonation categories of a given language and establish how they signal meaning. Under this view, it is crucial to discuss the ways surface pitch patterns and structural pitch patterns (or phonological categories) are related. Given that intonational analysis is driven by system-internal considerations and that cues to a given category can vary across languages, it is also important to address the issue of how a language-specific transcription can be reconciled with the need and ability to do cross-language comparison of intonation. Bearing on these two issues, I discuss surface and structure in intonational analysis, drawing on mismatches between (dis)similarities in the phonetics and phonology of pitch contours, across languages and language varieties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the long-standing assumption that (External or Internal) Merge is a necessary condition for theta-role assignment is challenged. It is argued, then, that a theory of thematic assignment which allows for long-distance theta-role assignment under conditions of locality and activity is empirically preferable when it comes to some complex interactions between se and causative constructions in Buenos Aires Spanish. It is also shown that recent arguments against long-distance theta-role assignment do not hold in a theory as the one defended here, which conceives of theta-roles as regulated by conditions generally available in the realm of A-dependencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explaining why the same passage may have different rhetorical structures when conveyed in different languages remains an open question. Starting from a trilingual translation corpus, this paper aims to provide a new qualitative method for the comparison of rhetorical structures in different languages and to specify why translated texts may differ in their rhetorical structures. To achieve these aims we have carried out a contrastive analysis, comparing a corpus of parallel English, Spanish and Basque texts, using Rhetorical Structure Theory. We propose a method to describe the main linguistic differences among the rhetorical structures of the three languages in the two annotation stages (segmentation and rhetorical analysis). We show a new type of comparison that has important advantages with regard to the quantitative method usually employed: it provides an accurate measurement of inter-annotator agreement, and it pinpoints sources of disagreement among annotators. With the use of this new method, we show how translation strategies affect discourse structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]