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This paper intends to analyze, quantitatively, the contiguity relations that are established among the words appearing in the individual lists from which the lexical availability glossaries are created. To do so, a contiguity index has been developed; it allows measuring the relevance of the association between two given words when they appear together in the above mentioned lists. The paper shows the calculation of this index and offers a way to graphically represent the net of words that derives from the analysis of the individual lists of a given center of interest. The corpus that has been used for the calculation is the Léxico Disponible de la Comunidad the Madrid, which surveyed 600 informants on 20 centers of interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the main objective is to continue the study of the most important means of grammatical assimilation of anglicisms in present-day Spanish, starting from a colloquial language corpus-based data. Therefore, in this second paper we shall examine the devices of plural formation of anglicisms belonging to noun class, by focusing on the disagreement between norm and usage in current Spanish. We will also analyze both the poor grammatical assimilation of English adjectives (quantitatively scarce but a good sign of the strong influence of Angloamerican mentality in modern Spanish society) together with the adjectivation of nouns, and the assimilation of verbs by means of verbal endings of the first conjugation in Spanish. Finally, we will draw up a balance of the distribution of anglicisms in word classes, a topic with regard to which it is worth mentioning the relatively high percentage of adjectives and interjections in spite of dealing with a cultural borrowing situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to explain the alternation between the prepositions a and de when used as complements to the adjectives contrario 'contrary', diferente 'different', and distinto 'distinct', as illustrated in Yo no fui distinta __mi madre 'I wasn't different __my mother', where both prepositions can be inserted. Relying on Langacker's3 notion of construal, the hypothesis is that a construes the comparison in the sense of 'direction toward' while de construes it in the sense of 'separation' or 'point of departure', and that these senses should be reflected in the usage contexts of the two prepositions. The quantitative analysis of some 800 cases extracted from Davies'4 two billion word Corpus del español, however, shows no indication of a and de setting up different construals. This lack of correlation between usage and semantics appears to be due to the diachronic generalization of a as complement of the three adjectives, thus relegating the use of de to specific collocations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the meaning and uses of o así in the Spanish, and in the Spanish in contact with the Basque language. In the latter, some uses of o así attenuate the illocutionary force of the speech act, which is explained by grammaticalization. This process occurs taking into account a) the use of the Spanish o así as a reformulator for expressing attenuation; and b) the modality and evidentiality categories in the Basque conjunction edo, triggered by inferential and subjectification processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compounding is, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the most fruitful word-formation mechanisms language has in order to produce new lexical units, words and turns of phrase. Technological and scientific progress, together with the proliferation of online social networking services and multi-platform information services, has brought about a process of lexical expansion in Spanish, which favours the creation of morpho-syntactic neologisms and, more specifically, composite neologisms. In spite of the transcendence of this situation, no reference works have been found in the field of automated compounding in this language. This circumstance has prompted the need for automated processes capable of recognizing any such words and place them in the appropriate morphological/semantic context. It is hence necessary to define automatic processes capable of identifying and creating compounds, as well as placing them in the correct linguistic context. It present an investigation based on information obtained from the BOBNEO neologisms database, in order to establish what the most successful training procedures in creating neologisms. This paper reports on the monitoring of ARGCoS -Automatic Recognition and Generation Compounds in Spanish-, a tool that allows for the identification of groups of two or more simple forms that function as a compound lexical unit, and also for the combination of two or more specific simple/compound forms in order to produce new compounds. It includes a rule dependency graph which enables the user to analyze the compounds' morpho-syntactic behaviour whilst it reflects the variety of mechanisms that activate in the formation of compounds in Spanish. Our research tool ARGCoS takes as a starting point approximately 11 000 compounds gathered from a number of lexicographical sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The exceptive hypothesis is expressed in current Spanish through different conjunctive phrases. The main aim of paper is to identify the discursive values and argumentative functions performed by them, highlighting the differences and similarities between them. This completes the formal description of these units. The study relies on analysis of two hundred examples of each of these phrases, taken from the CREA and CORPES XXI. Methodologically, we follow the signs of pragmatic Linguistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade, morphological studies have started to focus again on compounding, from a crosslinguistic point of view as well as for the particular case of Spanish. In this paper, we will first review a number of classifications of Spanish compounds, with special attention to coordinative compounds. Then we will focus our attention on a particular kind of construction which has been sometimes included among coordinative compounds: the nominal combination (madre-hija) that appears in the relación madre-hija ('mother-daughter relationship') structure. It will be shown that there are formal characteristics which take these structures away from compounds and bring them closer to free syntactic structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The alternation in Spanish of más with negative adverbs in sequences like nada más vs. *más nada, nunca más vs. *más nunca has been frequently noted by different authors as a characteristic of some dialects. In this paper, we use several corpus prepared with data collected from Twitter through its public API. Thanks to this method, complementary to traditional techniques in dialectology, data are strictly synchronic for all of the Spanish-speaking areas. We selected only georeferenced data and gathered it in a MySQL relational database. Therefore, our corpus contains geographical information. Using GIS techniques for spatial analysis and open source software such as QGIS, a linguistic atlas can easily be prepared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Automatic Term Recognition from technical texts has mainly two applications: on one side, assistance to lexicographers and documentalists; and on the other side, identification of key concepts for machine translation and information retrieval. Term recognition depends on the subject domain and the lexical patterns of a given language, in our case, Spanish. In this article, we present an evaluation of three different strategies for selecting candidates to term. In a second step, each list is filtered by a set of medical affixes to provide a final proposal of terms. This paper also discusses the problems of recall and precision of each strategy and shows how these techniques have been used to compile a lexicon of medica terms and an ATR system for Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to grammaticalization theory, this paper seeks to explain how lo único que (the only thing that) locution turned to a marker discourse in current Spanish, which can reach the pure discursive connection. We conclude that: a) this recently connector does not merely derive in the deletion of equational-existential constructions of the type "lo único que pasa/sucede/ocurre es que", but also that it has decisively influenced in a contrastive contrast; b) it is documented from the second half of the 20th century often in the conversation language or in writing contexts imitating spoken language, and c) this structure in these contexts can be displaced to an illative marking, especially in the shortened form, without "que" element. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the analysis of the locution gracias a Dios, this article provides a model for the linguistic description of Spanish evaluative expressions according to the objectives that should be considered in an exhaustive study of this kind of modal words. To this end, this paper offers some observations on the categorial characterization of gracias a Dios, the discursive instructions that make up its semantic information and ultimately the pragmatic effects favoured by its meaning. Furthermore, the linguistic study of gracias a Dios can explain relations with other emotive expressions in Spanish that can evaluate a discourse positively, but that offer some differences concerning its distributional properties, its semantic values and the communicative intentions which can be used nowadays. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with syntactic, semantic-denotative and terminological criteria used in attempt to characterize and classify several types of Spanish nominal combinations. We are going to revisite such criteria in order to propose some guidelines on delimiting free syntax constructions from phraseological ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyze the discursive function of the construal [[subject NP] [VP1st/2nd pl] ], which is specific for Spanish. We will show how the prototypical construal, with a plural substantive subject referring to a nationality, profession or sociological group, imposes its features on the more peripheric variants (a subgroup, individualization through proper nouns or professional titles, a non-human subject or a singular subject). Finally, we analyze the pragmatic and rhetorical effects of the construal, viz. the precision of the subject and the creation of a community feeling (through inclusion or the imposition of a categorization). [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]