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Copyright of Revista Signos is the property of Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso 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.)

Copyright of Boletín de Filología is the property of Universidad de Chile, Facultad de Filosofia y Humanidades 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.)

Light verb constructions (LVCs) permeate the oral and written productions of native (and nonnative) speakers of typologically different languages (e.g., Indo-European, Afro-Asiatic, and Sino-Tibetan languages, among others). From a cross-linguistic perspective, LVCs share basic combinatory and predicative features. However, semantic and morphosyntactic contrasts are visible even in closely related languages such as Spanish and Italian. Therefore, this paper aims to show some of the most significant asymmetries existing between Peninsular Spanish light verb constructions and their equivalent forms in Italian. The ultimate goal of this research is to highlight some of the systematic contrasts that affect specific semantic classes. [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]

Abstract  This paper deals with a number of facts related to the word order of Spanish declarative clauses and develops an analysis where the unmarked word order of Spanish clauses with different classes of verbs is not determined by syntactic conditions such as Case or agreement, but rather by structural conditions that are closely related to the thematic role of the different arguments of the verb. The analysis is based on a set of data that point to the conclusion that even though unmarked word order in Spanish is not determined by Case or agreement considerations, it is still mostly regulated by the EPP. However, these same data indicate that (a) the EPP is a requirement operative in some constructions but not in others, and (b) phrases other than the subject DP can satisfy the EPP. This paper develops an Optimality Theoretic account of these facts where the core of the analysis consists of introducing the notion of the Pole of the clause, defined as the highest specifier of the inflectional layer, and developing a set of markedness constraints whose interaction determines when and whether this specifier position is occupied. Central to this analysis are the characterization of the EPP as a violable constraint that requires the Pole specifier to be filled, and the use of Harmonic Alignment to formalize a hierarchy of markedness constraints that target the relative markedness of an argument or adjunct when it occupies the Pole specifier, independently of the grammatical relation it bears. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper it is argued that Langacker’s definition of grounding predications is problematic for languages other than English. The idea that in English tense and modal auxiliaries are mutually exclusive grounding elements leads Langacker (1990, 2003) to consider both deontic and epistemic modal auxiliaries as grounding predications, whereas he excludes German modals from being so on the basis of their tense inflection. In this paper I contend that, unlike the deontic modal verbs, and despite their tense marking, Spanish epistemic modals deber ‘must’, poder ‘may’ and tener que ‘have to’ are certainly appropriate for modal grounding due to their reference point function and to the subjectification they undergo. I show that deontic modality is more affected by temporal grounding than epistemic modality. Moreover, the impossibility of inserting an inchoative verb such as ir a ‘to be going to’ corroborates the theoretical underpinning that Spanish epistemic modals effect an epistemic grounding similar to that of the grounding predications in English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses some of the conceptual and semantic properties of entering events in the construction entrar en / a `enter in / to' in Spanish. The first part focuses on the question of how entering events are conceptualised in this language. Recent studies on entering events (Kita 1999) have shown that some of the semantic primitives considered central to the conceptualisation of motion are not necessarily present in all languages. Our starting point will be to test the validity of this argument in Spanish. We will show that Spanish entering events do depict a motion process from one point into another with a boundary crossing involved in most cases. However, we will also argue that the way in which this event is conceptualised varies with respect to two parameters: force dynamics (Talmy 1988) and profiling of events (Langacker 1987, 1991, 2000). The second part deals with the semantic differences brought up by the alternation of the prepositions a and en with the verb entrar. In previous analyses (Morera 1988:149; Gili Gaya 1990:254; Menéndez Pidal 1944:347; Roegiest 1980:94), the difference between choosing a or en was reduced to a diatopical variation based on a higher or lesser degree of dynamism. We will argue that the choice of preposition triggers other semantic interpretations where mechanisms such as metonymy, deixis, and scope play a fundamental role. [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 argues that the difference between connectivity and anti-connectivity effects in specificational copular sentences is heavily influenced by semantics and information structure. It shows that anti-connectivity effects with respect to binding disappear when the influence of information structure is neutralized, whereas anti-connectivity effects with respect to scope result from the semantics of specificational sentences. These data lead to the conclusion that anti-connectivity effects cannot be used as evidence against a syntax-based approach to specificational sentences and binding, that the analysis of specificational sentences should include both a syntactic and a semantic device, and that the syntactic analysis of specificational sentences should rely crucially on their information structure. I present and adopt Heycock & Kroch's (2002) analysis for specificational sentences, in which connectivity effects result from the assembling of ground and focus. The fact that connectivity effects are also exhibited by verb-object-subject word order in French and Spanish, which is marked for the ground-focus partition, is presented as an important piece of independent evidence in favor of this analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-linguistic research on event typology has revealed considerable variation in the linguistic conceptualization of placement events. Previous studies on second language acquisition have primarily dealt with the semantic re-categorization of placement verbs in a second language, but placement constructions have received less attention. The present study fills this gap by examining the constructions used by Spanish learners of L2 Danish (B1 and B2 levels) and by monolingual speakers of both languages. Data were elicited by means of the PUT task consisting of oral video descriptions and then classified into six main placement construction categories based on their frequency and structure. Results from the learner group suggest learning difficulties when reconstructing the expression of placement events in L2 Danish. In contrast to L1 Danish data, learners (i) kept using their L1 Spanish basic placement construction more often, (ii) avoided semantically more complex constructions, (iii) employed fewer spatial particles, (iv) showed difficulties in selecting the L2 appropriate spatial particles for specific placement scenes, and (v) used non-caused motion constructions. These findings suggest the creation of a linguistic conceptualization pattern on the part of the learners that is different from the respective L1 and L2 monolingual patterns, thus providing further empirical support for proposals arguing that bilinguals’ multicompetence is not equivalent to those of two monolinguals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Social Sciences Research / Sosyal Bilimler Arastirmalari Dergisi is the property of ODU Journal of Social Sciences Research 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.)

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]

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]

For many instances of verb-object combinations involving change of state verbs, different kinds of internal arguments seem to trigger distinct interpretations of the verb phrase. These are usually divided into literal uses, such as romper la ventana ‘break the window’ or cortar el papel ‘cut the paper’ and figurative uses such as romper el desarrollo ‘interrupt the development’ or cortar la circulación ‘cut off the circulation’. Based on an extensive manual annotation of corpus (the used corpus is the El País Corpus consisting of all the El País newspaper issues from 1976 to 2007 and is hosted at the Insitut Universitari de Linguistica Aplicada (IULA) at the University Pompeu Fabra) data involving verb-object combinations with Spanish change of state verbs, I argue that combinations like romper el desarrollo or cortar la circulación , far from representing frozen idiom chunks, exemplify very productive compositional patterns. The frequency and naturalness with which change of state verbs take both physical and abstract entities as objects raises the question of how verbs express their meaning and makes this kind of data especially relevant for a theory of the lexicon as well as of composition. I provide a clear inventory of the typical combinatorial patterns of romper and cortar and I show that their combinatorial behaviour is much more diverse than usually acknowledged. I then argue that these facts need to be addressed by the compositional system, rather than by postulating homophonic lexical entires (Dowty, 1979; Alonso Ramos, 2011) or contextualist accounts (Recanati, 2005). For a proposal I turn to Modern Type Theories, which allow me to incorporate a richer notion of lexical semantics within compositional semantics. These theories thus allow me provide an insightful compositional account of what has long been considered non-compositional, namely combinations of change of state verbs with objects denoting abstract entities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this work was to search into a suitable methodology to examine the use and function of the vose forms preceding subjunctive constructions spoken in the city of Santa Rosa, La Pampa, Argentina. We believe most of the studies done in the use of vose forms have been biased by the researchers' selection of a suitable environment that would yield successful results attesting to the uses of vose forms by a variety of Spanish speakers. Pragma-linguistics aspects involved in the data collection process as well as the explanations about the origin of one linguistic form or the other have been generally omitted or scarcely hinted at. For the purpose of this paper, we have reviewed previous studies on the use of vose forms carried out in the rioplatense area to observe the methodology followed in the compilation of the corpus. We focused on those research works which provide details on methodology or provide recommendations on this issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work revolves around a very peculiar set of Spanish verbs ('caer[se]', 'morir[se]', 'tropezar[se]', and 'encallar[se]', among others), which optionally allow the clitic 'se' without any significant change of meaning. These verbs do not enter the transitive-inchoative alternation (i.e. they are non-anticausative). Besides, the presence of the clitic has little semantic contribution, if any at all. They are problematic because they cannot be integrated in existing analyses that account for other instances of pronominal verbs like anticausatives and reflexives. What it is proposed in this work is that these verbs are optionally selected by a low applicative head. Moreover, the clitic 'se' is thought of as a nominal item. This allows the integration of these verbs in broader analyses of pronominal verbs that consider the clitic a nominal item (whether argumental or expletive-like). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the acquisition of verb placement (adverb placement, subject–verb inversion in yes/no questions, subject–verb inversion in direct, indirect and pseudo wh-questions) in L2 Spanish. Four different elicitation tasks (an identification task, a grammaticality judgment task, a preference grammaticality task and a production task) were used for data collection. The subjects were 41 English adult L2 learners of Spanish at different proficiency levels (beginners, low intermediate, intermediate and advanced) according to an independent placement test. In line with Lardiere’s (1998a, 1998b, 2000) and Prévost and White’s (2000) findings, evidence for developments in syntax which is independent of developments in morphology is found in support of the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis. Although L2 learners’ verb-placement is target like at the surface level, their knowledge of verb agreement is poor and limited. That is, L2 learners appear to have reset the verb movement parameter in Spanish (i.e., [+movement]), even though they fail to morphologically mark the verb for person and number correctly, showing lack of knowledge that the inflections in Spanish I are strong. These findings suggest that there is a strong dissociation between syntax and morphology (Lardiere, 2000), but they will also be discussed in the light of some current theories on the acquisition of new values for uninterpretable syntactical features (Hawkins & Hattori, 2006; Tsimpli & Dimitrakopoulou, 2007). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study represents a detailed examination of the linguistic variables that are significantly related to verb-form use in contexts of future-time reference for advanced learners and native speakers of Spanish. The results show that the factors lexical temporal indicator, clause type and temporal distance are related to the verb forms that both groups use to express the function of futurity and that (un)certainty and grammatical person and number are only important for native speakers, thus demonstrating that the learners have not yet reached native-like use of this variable structure. In addition to providing more information on the variable use of future-time reference for native and non-native speakers, the investigation makes methodological advancements in the study of morphosyntactic variation by defining a token by the function it performs in communication and by examining the full range of verb forms speakers use to fulfill this function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study provides normative data on the implicit causality of interpersonal verbs in Spanish. Two experiments were carried out. In Experiment 1, ratings of the implicit causality of 100 verbs classified into four types (agent-patient, agent-evocator, stimulus-experiencer, and experiencer-stimulus) were examined. An offline task was used in which 105 adults and 163 children had to complete sentences containing one verb. Both age and gender effects in the causal biases were examined. In Experiment 2, reading times for sentences containing 60 verbs were analyzed. An online reading task was used in which 34 adults had to read sentences that were both congruent and incongruent with the implicit causality of the verb. The results support the effect of implicit causality in both adults and children, and they support the taxonomy used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In two experiments, we investigated how text comprehension is influenced by the interaction between the properties of actions and the temporal relations specified by adverbs. Participants read short narratives describing a protagonist who performed two actions that involved similar sensorimotor systems (e.g., chopping wood and painting a fence) or different ones (e.g., whistling a melody and painting a fence). The actions were described as simultaneous or successive by means of the temporal ad- verbs while and after, respectively. Comprehension, both in Spanish and in English, was markedly impaired (longer reading limes and lower subjective coherence) for sentences including the adverb while and actions involving the same sensorimotor system. However, when one of the same sensorimotor system actions was described as a mental plan (e.g., chopping wood and thinking of painting a fence), comprehension was equally easy with the adverbs while and after. These results are compatible with a revised version of the indexical hypothesis that specifies how comprehension is guided by syntax and embodied constraints within multiple noninteracting mental spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of the second language acquisition of pronominal arguments have observed that: (1) L1 speakers of null subject languages of the Spanish type drop more subjects in their second language (L2) English than first language (L1) speakers of null subject languages of the Korean type and (2) speakers of Korean-type languages drop more objects than subjects in their L2 English. An analysis of these two asymmetries is conducted within the Minimalist Program framework (MP), which hypothesizes that language acquisition involves the learning of formal features of a target language. I propose, based on Alexiadou and Anagnostopoulou (1998), that the licensing of null subjects is conditioned by the interpretability of agreement features. When a language has [+interpretable] agreement features, raising of the verb to T (X-movement) satisfies the EPP requirement: hence, a null subject is allowed. On the other hand, in a language with [-interpretable] agreement features, the subject is obligatory since merger of the subject in the specifier of TP (XP-merge) is required to check the EPP feature. Learning of the obligatory status of English subjects is easier for Korean learners than for Spanish speakers since syntactically both English and Korean have the same feature value [-interpretable] (although null subjects are allowed in Korean for pragmatic reasons). Spanish has the opposite syntactic feature value [+interpretable] and resetting of this is more difficult. Licensing of null objects is hypothesized to be related to the strength of theta-features. Languages with strong theta- features, such as English and Spanish, do not allow null objects, whereas languages with weak theta-features like Korean allow null objects. It takes time for Korean speakers to learn the different value of English theta-features, resulting in the extended null object period in L2 English of Korean L1 speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study on specific language impairment (SLI). It is noted that verb acquisition is important to the linguistic advancement of children with SLI, who have difficulties in issues related to verb use. The study aims to determine the verb type and arguments used by children with SLI based on their linguistic competence. The subjects used for the study were monolingual and Catalan/Spanish bilingual children. The researchers found that there is a profile of simplicity in both monolingual and bilingual children. Profile of simplicity is characterized by a low use of complex sentences and avoidance of semantically complex verbs.