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In this article we will try to show five humorous signs used in Spanish linguistic jokes and that could be used in Spanish teaching. These signs are polysemy, homophony, paronymy, phraseology and diminutives. The election of jokes as a structure to use in teaching is based not only in the fact that it is the main humorous structure, but also in its easy to learn structure. As Attardo (2008) said, joke is the easiest humorous text type. Also, "joke is a humorous unit with no context and selfcontained, which has all the required information to be understood and enjoyed" (Martin, 2008: 37). The goal of this paper is to show how previously mentioned signs work in an internet extracted corpus, so we can get generalizations that can be used in Spanish teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a proposal on how to select suitable vocabulary items to teach Spanish as a foreign language (SFL) based on the triangulation or complementation of three sources of lexical information: (1) the available lexicon in native Spanish speakers, (2) the most frequent vocabulary in Spanish and (3) the specific notions of the Plan curricular del Instituto Cervantes. Previously, an analysis of the lexical needs of a sample of SFL students has been carried out, whose results have been collated with the abovementioned sources of vocabulary. The found shortcomings have been evaluated in order to observe how they are covered by each of these three sources. It has been proven that each source covers different lexical needs (with a similarity of 12.5% in the covered needs and a lexical compatibility of the sources of 24%), so the viability of the triangulation is justified. The resulting proposal offers a lexical compilation in different levels that combines the benefits of several well-established selection criteria and overcomes the limitations arising from using them individually. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a morphosyntactic analysis of the colonial Chilean chronicle La restauración de La Imperial y conversión de las almas infieles (c. 1693), written by the Mercedarian friar Juan de Barrenechea y Albis. Most features in the corpus could be explained by two interrelated motives. On the one hand, the examined characteristics are present in Chilean Spanish and in some areas of Latin America during the 17th century. On the other hand, the author's high sociocultural level is responsible for the creation of this especially highbrow text among colonial Chilean chronicles, that includes linguistic phenomena of Medieval Spanish and the Spanish Golden Age. [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]

There are many procedures to describe F0 contours in acoustic-phonetic terms. Garrido’s (1996, 2001, 2010) and z-score normalization systems have the advantage that they are automatic procedures. Therefore, this paper aims at analyzing both systems in order to determine the possible future application for the analysis of Spanish as a Foreign Language spoken by Brazilians (SFL). To do so, we analyze the melodic curves in declaratives, yes-no questions and wh-questions in Madrid Spanish, in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) spoken in the city of São Paulo and finally, in SFL. The validity of both systems was tested through a perception test with 10 Brazilian and 10 Spanish listeners. Listeners rated the degree of similarity between the signals with original intonation and signals with stylized F0 contours. The results showed that Garrido’s automatic stylization method is really able to perceptually create representations equivalent to the original ones in Spanish, BP and SFL and also better than those obtained with the procedure based on z-score normalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This project seeks to highlight certain basic problems that the use of specific terminology may create in the provision and understanding of information in the Mental Health ambit. The paper has been divided into two parts. The first one presents different theoretical basis from which some linguistic difficulties may arise. The subsequent section extrapolates these issues to an interlinguistic scenario in order to formulate proposals that may be useful to solve them through translation processes. The final goals of this project are i) to raise awareness among readers of the positive and negative impact that language may have on those persons suffering mental disorders and ii) to provide the basis for more accurate translations that may result in a more fluent and effective communication among patients and healthcare services, either in monolingual or interlinguistic communicative environments where English and Spanish are the languages involved. In addition, we will suggest extending some of these guidelines to closely-related disciplines such as interpreting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides and explains a data sheet to analyse the attenuation from a sociolinguistic and pragmatic point of view. The theoretical and methodological basis are established to create a common project to study the attenuation in the different varieties of Spanish and Portuguese (ES.POR.ATENUACION). The data sheet results from preliminary research based on a discursive corpus analysis and it proposes solutions for problems the analyst may face when recognising attenuation devices, especially those that come from situational factors. This present project aims at achieving homogeneity among the researchers in the pragmatic attenuation analysis, both qualitative and quantitative. Once particular analysis are carried out, we will focus on comparative and contrastive studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the variation between the following sentences: (1) "una concepción que no la tiene consciente" and (2) "una concepción que no tiene consciente". Case (1), unlike (2), shows a relative clause with a clitic (called "reassumptive" or "pleonastic") that explicitly retrieves the antecedent. We propose the speaker reiterates the antecedent with the clitic, when having established the theme, he is not yet sure about what he wants to say, because he intends to introduce new information, or because he intends to produce a contrast. In those cases, the speaker distributes again the Theme/Rheme progression of the relative clause recreating the informative progression of a sentence. We make a quantitative and qualitative analysis of authentic data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following research deals with the intonation of utterances in Chilean Spanish with stress clashes: the presence of two or more successive stressed syllables. In order to do this, and from the perspective of acoustic analysis, an experiment was devised to observe the frequency of use of each of the seven main stress clash management strategies reported in the literature (Prieto et al., 1995; Almeida, 2001). The results support the notion of tonal peaks as targets (Prieto, 2003) and the expected use of a single tonal peak in contexts of stress clash. They also establish some unexpected relationships between certain sets of the aforementioned strategies; as well as between utterances with different prosodic patterns. Based on the results of this investigation, this paper also attempts to propose a tentative categorization of stress clash management strategies in order to improve the current understanding of stress in Spanish and to facilitate future research in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]