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This paper offers an in-depth analysis of a novel elliptical construction in Spanish, dubbed Topic-Remnant Elided Polar Questions (or polar TREQs in short). A detailed examination of polar TREQs in Spanish will provide evidence for the claim that (a) they are a type of clausal ellipsis, triggered by the presence of an [E]-feature on C, and (b) the remnant is a topicalized XP that undergoes movement out of the ellipsis site. Furthermore, the analysis of polar TREQs in various contexts (in particular, with respect to the so-called connectivity effects) confirms the need of syntactic identity between the linguistic antecedent and the ellipsis site. Moreover, an examination of the patterns related to the presence or absence of an overt complementizer in this elliptical construction provides empirical support for Merchant's (2001) Sluicing-COMP Generalization. In summary, this paper not only provides a comprehensive account of the syntactic intricacies of a new elliptical construction in Spanish, but also provides valuable insights into the broader landscape of elliptical phenomena in this language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper delves into concept extraction and lexical simplification in the financial domain in Spanish. In our approach, concept extraction involves identifying relevant terms and phrases using AI language models, while lexical simplification aims to make complex financial concepts more accessible. For this study, terms were annotated in the FinT-esp financial corpus and the mT5 neural model was used for accurate term extraction. The model yielded remarkable results: 96% of the detected terms had not been manually annotated before, showcasing its noteworthy generative capability. For lexical simplification, the paper proposes three main strategies: paraphrasing, synonym substitution, and translation, all integrated into an interactive interface that addresses the issue of sentence length. This research significantly contributes to financial concept detection and offers an effective method for simplifying financial language in Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyse a corpus of 137 texts published between 1888 and 1899. These texts are included in one of the most successful Spanish-language newspapers published in the United States during the second half of the nineteenth century: Las Novedades (New York, 1876-1918). In the analysis I will determine the linguistic ideologies and the discursive strategies used for the promotion of Hispanism and Spanish language in a sociopolitical context in which the Spanish hegemony was losing all its power at an international level. Thus, the ideologies found are divided in two different categories: the linguistic ideologies that give the language a cultural value and the linguistic ideologies that make reference to the economic and commercial value of the language. The results obtained from this analysis will contribute to understand the role of Spanish language in the United States. Furthermore, this paper presents an unpublished corpus of clear historiographic interest that contributes to clarify the panorama of Hispanism in a country like the United States. [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]

The paper discusses the effect of mood on the availability of an existential interpretation of negative words such as nadie in the complement of affective emotive factive predicates in Spanish. In these contexts, the subjunctive mood allows nadie to function as a NPI, and it may be interpreted either as a non-negated existentially quantified expression, ∃x, equivalent to alguien, or as negative universally quantified expression, ∀x¬, equivalent to the English "nobody". On the other hand, the indicative mood allows only for a negative universal interpretation, as ∀x¬. An account of this phenomenon is proposed in terms of the notion of settledness. A proposition expressed by an indicative complement is asserted, and the speaker is signaling their intention that it be settled in the context set. It is said that the proposition is grammatically settled. By expressing a proposition in the subjunctive mood, the speaker is not intending that it be settled at the time of utterance, and, as a consequence it is in a grammatically unsettled state (p/¬p: a state in which it is undetermined whether p or ¬p). A negative word such as nadie is analyzed as denoting a quantity scale <∀, ∃>. Within an asserted complement, the interpretation of nadie is fixed at the highest, most informative, point in the scale, ∀. On the other hand, within the grammatically unsettled complement of an affective predicate, which allows for scale reversal, the interpretation of nadie is not fixed. This indeterminacy allows it to assume the value of the lowest point, ∃. It is noted that this possibility provides an expressive tool which may be used to add an emphatic hue to an utterance. [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]

Oral and written language are constantly interrelated in literate communities. In this paper, we examine the repercussions of teaching argumentative oral discourse on the development of argumentative writing and vice versa. The participants were seventh-grade students, who were randomly assigned to one of three groups: the Oral-1 group, which received an oral language intervention first, followed by a written language intervention; the Esc-1 group, which received the written language intervention first, followed by the oral intervention, and the control group, who attended regular Spanish Language and Literature classes. We assessed measures of both oral and written argumentative discourse at pretest, posttest-1, and posttest-2 to determine the development of both intramodality and intermodality skills. The results showed that intramodality effects were larger for the written than for the oral language intervention. Both interventions produced intermodality effects. It is concluded that the teaching of argumentative discourse should incorporate the bidirectional influences between the oral and written modalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Spanish-speaking and Italian-speaking linguistic panorama, the subjunctive has been defined mainly from a structural perspective based on the notion of syntactic dependency. From the 19th century became relevant the semantic approach, and the notions of reality / unreality began to predominate in the definition of mode. However, many bibliographic sources such as Vásquez (2013), Stewart (2002) and Haverkate (2002), have revealed that the use of the subjunctive is not only limited to the appearance of a modalizer of possibility, imaginary, or potential fact, but that the intention of the speaker and the presence of inducers without any unreality value can introduce inexplicable forms of the subjunctive from a perspective purely semantic or clearly syntactic. The objective of this paper is to identify the main distributions of the subjunctive in Spanish and Italian. Contrastive, exploratory, descriptive, and documentary analysis is limited to epistemic and deontic completive propositions, relative sentences and adverbial subordinate clauses, given space limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the properties and distribution of the forms ser and estar when combined with adjectival complements in copular sentences in Iberoromance languages. The paper sets a detailed data paradigm that brings into light several differences between Western Iberian Romance languages (Galician, Portuguese, Castilian) and Eastern ones (like Catalan). The explanation relies on the hypothesis developed in Gumiel-Molina, Moreno-Quibén and Pérez-Jiménez 2015a to account for the properties of the «copula + adjective» structure in Spanish. The specificities shown by Catalan can be explained if one auxiliary hypothesis is assumed: a process of linguistic change is taking place in Catalan so that two estar forms coexist synchronically. Moreover, it will be proposed that the form estar in Western Iberian languages underwent a grammaticalization process that accounts for the fact that the so-called «evidential use of estar» is fully extended in these languages, but not in Catalan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I analyze inflected complements of perception, causative and permissive verbs in Spanish in which the null subject is obligatorily co-referent with the matrix object antecedent. Even though these configurations have mostly received a control or a 'pseudo-relative' analysis, I pursue the line of reasoning that finite 'subject-to-object' raising, which has been proposed for languages like Greek, Romanian, Japanese or Korean, might also exist in Spanish. I will argue that this analysis captures several intriguing properties of this configuration which have been noted in the literature, such as temporal anaphoricity, direct perception readings, obligatory co-reference, floating quantifiers, emphatic pronouns, and resumptive pronoun strategies. I argue that left-peripheral as well as temporal deficiency of the embedded clause has the consequence that the CP is not a strong phase and cannot legitimate structural nominative case, enabling A-movement out of the inflected complement. Finally, I discuss some related structures that point to the conclusion that 'finite raising' might exist in the pro-drop language Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

this paper analyzes the significance of the expression "argentino neutro" [neutral Argentinian], used from 2009 to 2015 in official documents on the education portal Educ.ar and on the Ministry of Education's various TV channels ("Encuentro," "Pakapaka" and "DeporTV"). By examining style manuals in detail from Encuentro and Pakapaka, corresponding to the years 2012-2015, we will attempt to show that these documents construct a linguistic model alternate to the various attempts at Spanish language unification, in particular "Panhispanism" or so-called "neutral Spanish." Moreover, this alternative linguistic model was consistently reflected in the Ministry of Education's television programming, which exhibited a much more diverse linguistic representation in Argentinian media than usual. [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]

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 deals with a small set of data from clusters of three clitics in Spanish that questions the empirical adequacy and scope of previous analyses of clitic clusters in Romance. It is shown that the output of the Spurious se Rule is not identical to genuine se, at some level that is relevant for linearization of clitics within a cluster. A proposal is presented to capture the neglected data, and this is done in a way that illuminates the debate on the division of labour in clitic phenomena between phonology, morphology and syntax. Central questions in morphology, such as ordering of operations, syncretisms, linearization principles and consequences of lexical insertion are addressed and re-examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this paper is to present a unified analysis of both ditransitive constructions and transitivity alternations (i.e. dative/accusative alternations) in Spanish and Catalan. Regarding the first of these two phenomena, and more concretely the purported existence in these languages of something comparable to the dative alternation seen in English, we will show the weaknesses of what we consider an analysis that seeks to find phenomena proper to English reflected exactly in Romance languages. Thus, we will refute the hypothesis defended by several authors (Masullo 1992, Demonte 1995, Romero 1997, Cuervo 2003a,b) according to which Spanish ditransitive constructions with dative clitic doubling correspond to double object constructions (DOC), whereas non-doubled constructions correspond to the so-called prepositional constructions (PC), or to-dative, in English. Basing on the careful and exhaustive examination of the data in Pineda (2013a,b), we will argue that Spanish (and Catalan) ditransitive constructions instantiate DOC, whether they bear clitic doubling or not. An analysis of pronominalization in Catalan, a language which preserves prepositional clitics, will support this view, which is based on the postulation of an affectedness/possession relation. As for the second phenomenon under study, the existence of true case alternations in Spanish, it will be argued that we are dealing here with a kind of variation constrained by the same relation (or a version of it) as that which acts in the realm of ditransitive predicates. Again, Catalan data will prove indispensable for our analysis. Crucially, we will show that what lies behind Spanish and Catalan dative/accusative alternation is an instance of Differential Indirect Object Marking (DIOM). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]