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Copyright of Alpha: Revista de Artes, Letras y Filosofía is the property of Universidad de Los Lagos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Some previous sociolinguistic work in Chilean Spanish has claimed that velar palatalization (i.e., production of a word like gente /xente/ 'people' as [çen̪.t̪e] or [xjen̪.t̪e]) is a categorical feature of all speakers of this dialect, while other scholars have argued that palatalization of /x/ is conditioned by sociolinguistic factors. The present study comprises a sociophonetic analysis of the production of /x/ across 61 speakers from Santiago, Chile in an effort to acoustically verify one of these two claims. Via the use of static and dynamic analyses of 2,107 tokens of /x/ in diverse phonological environments, this paper demonstrates that among these data, only linguistic factors condition the place of articulation and degree of constriction of /x/. Overall, /x/ palatalization before /e/ appears to be a gradient strengthening phenomenon generalized among the entire sample of Santiago Spanish speakers. Further, I argue that the dynamic analyses are superior both theoretically and methodologically as they allow for more faithful capturing of the variability inherent in the speech signal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the grammatical challenges associated with the development of clause complexity, focusing on the performance of a group of monolingual Spanish-speaking schoolchildren with Specific Language Impairment/Developmental Language Disorder (SLI/DLD) in a longitudinal corpus of oral narrative samples. The study examines the presence of interclause relations of subordination and equivalence (hypotaxis and parataxis) in language samples of two groups: an experimental group made up of 24 schoolchildren with SLI/DLD and a control group made up of 24 schoolchildren with typical development (TD). The results show that while both groups use parataxis as the most common relation between clauses in all school grades, there is a significant decrease in paratactic relations and a significant increase in hypotactic relations from first to fourth grade of primary education. Although the development patterns are highly similar, the SLI/DLD group shows greater difficulties in mastering more complex (hypotactic) relations in fourth grade compared to the control group, indicating that it is less sophisticated in the use of these types of complex relations. These findings suggest that focused support on the most complex structures is needed towards the fourth grade of primary education, given the demands of the school academic register from 6 and 7 years of age and the potential problems that the development of clause complexity can cause in school-age children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Linguistica (1132-0214) is the property of Asociacion de Linguistica y Filologia de la America Latina and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This research presents the findings of a comparative study of mathematical competence among 130 students (M = 54.08 months; SD = 2.57) from vulnerable school contexts in Chile and the Spanish public school system. The study analyses a set of general and specific domain precursors for which evidence of socioeconomic background exists. Using multivariate regression and discriminant analysis techniques, we calculated similarities and differences between groups by comparing these precursors. Significant differences were found between the Spanish and Chilean groups (p <.05); however, no differences were observed in non-symbolic comparison and receptive vocabulary. Possible reasons for the existence and extent of these differences are discussed in terms of socio-cultural and educational contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psychological Capital is a construct that is experiencing strong growth within the framework of Positive Psychology. In work contexts, it has been related to employee performance, wellbeing, attitudes, and behaviors. In educational contexts, particularly non–English–speaking contexts, there is hardly any research on this topic, mostly due to the lack of assessment and measurement instruments. In general, most studies use the Psychological Capital Questionnaire (PCQ) by Luthans et al. (Personnel Psychology, 60(3), 541–572, 2007) as a measure. The purpose of the present study is the validation of a 12–item PCQ that is adapted to the academic context and translated to Spanish. A sample of 1126 undergraduate students from two different universities located in Spain (n = 596) and Chile (n = 530) participated in the study. The current study demonstrates –through reliability (alpha and omega indexes), single group and multiple group confirmatory factor analysis, and criterion validity (Pearson's correlations)– that the Spanish academic PCQ–12 is a reliable and valid indicator of academic psychological capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]