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Communication is at the foundation of safe and effective health care. When patients with limited English proficiency (LEP) have healthcare providers who do not speak their language, the communication barrier can lead to poor outcomes. Responding to the high number of Spanish-speaking individuals with LEP, a Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) program has integrated Spanish-language training in the curriculum. This paper describes their development and pilot testing of the Physical Therapy Spanish Proficiency Measure (PT-SPM). The PT-SPM was developed for English-Spanish bilingual faculty or clinicians to assess DPT students' clinically relevant Spanish communication. The PT-SPM has 11 total items with four subscales: verbal proficiency, aural proficiency, written proficiency, and cultural competence. Twenty-three pairs of DPT students and their bilingual clinical instructors were recruited for an interrater agreement study; each used the PT-SPM to independently rate the student's Spanish communication with Spanish-speaking patients with LEP in clinical settings. Cohen's weighted kappa was calculated to evaluate interrater agreement between the students and clinicians on item level, using linear incremental weights. The weighted kappa coefficients ranged from 0.35 (fair agreement) to 0.80 (substantial agreement). All weighted kappa coefficients were statistically significant. Two items had fair agreement; four items had moderate agreement, and five items had substantial agreement. These results support that the PT-SPM may have value as an assessment tool for DPT students in clinical settings. Educators in other health professions may consider adapting the PT-SPM. This paper contributes to the broader interprofessional dialogue about how to assess and improve patient-provider communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 Lletres Asturianes is the property of Academia de la Llingua Asturiana 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 paper deals with the conceptual semantics and the discourse functions of Spanish epistemic adverbs and/or adverbial phrases such as quizá, tal vez, a lo mejor, igual, lo mismo ‘maybe/perhaps’ in informal conversation. The study is based upon the following hypothesis: the best basis for a modal adverb to be ‘successful’ in spontaneous conversation is having a ‘dynamic’ semantic profile with an ‘instructional’ role in speaker-participant interaction. It will be shown that the conceptual profiles of grammaticalized adverbial expressions such as a lo mejor allow for specific interactional functions in conversation. The argument is corroborated by striking semantic and frequency differences with the less grammaticalized but more productive modal adverbs ending in -mente (posiblemente and probablemente). My corpus analysis also indicates that, from an interactional point of view, a lo mejor, igual and lo mismo have consistent discourse functions which quizá(s) and the adverbs in -mente clearly lack. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within search-on-speech, Spoken Term Detection (STD) aims to retrieve data from a speech repository given a textual representation of a search term. This paper presents an international open evaluation for search-on-speech based on STD in Spanish and an analysis of the results. The evaluation has been designed carefully so that several analyses of the main results can be carried out. The evaluation consists in retrieving the speech files that contain the search terms, providing their start and end times, and a score value that reflects the confidence given to the detection. Two different Spanish speech databases have been employed in the evaluation: MAVIR database, which comprises a set of talks from workshops, and EPIC database, which comprises a set of European Parliament sessions in Spanish. We present the evaluation itself, both databases, the evaluation metric, the systems submitted to the evaluation, the results, and a detailed discussion. Five different research groups took part in the evaluation, and ten different systems were submitted in total. We compare the systems submitted to the evaluation and make a deep analysis based on some search term properties (term length, within-vocabulary/out-of-vocabulary terms, single-word/multi-word terms, and native (Spanish)/foreign terms). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.)

Copyright of RILCE. Revista de Filología Hispánica is the property of Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Navarra, S.A. 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 RILCE. Revista de Filología Hispánica is the property of Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Navarra, S.A. 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 paper utilises the methodology of Conversation Analysis (CA hereafter) to report on the Spanish particle pues in Mexican Spanish talk. Two general sequential contexts are examined: 1) pues-prefacing in the second pair-part of an adjacency pair, i.e., in the second pair-part of an assessment sequence and in response to questions; and 2) turn-final pues and pues at the end of a turn-constructional unit. The analysis of assessment sequences shows that pues is used to treat the previous assessment as obvious and index epistemic independence; in addition, pues can be one of the elements used to formulate a delicate disagree- ment. In response to questions, pues either signals unstraightforwardness in answering or indicates that the answer is obvious which challenges the relevance of the question. Similarly, pues, in response to challenges, prefaces the obvious actions to fulfil the request, making the response a riposte. Turn-final pues and pues at the end of the turn constructional unit mark repair after interactional trouble. Finally, in a news delivery sequence, si pues treats the previous talk as not news for the recipient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the acquisition of interpretable features in English second language (L2) learners of Spanish by investigating the personal preposition a in Spanish. The distribution of a in direct object NPs relates to the animacy/specificity of the NP, the animacy/agentivity of the subject, and the semantics of the predicate (Torrego, 1998; Zagona, 2002); i.e., personal a is conditioned by the interpretability of semantic features. Forty-nine English L2 learners of Spanish of three different proficiency levels, and 16 Spanish controls took part in a Completion Task and an Acceptability Judgement Task. These revealed that L2 learners of Spanish of all proficiency levels behaved differently from native speakers of Spanish. The L2 learners appear to have acquired some of the interpretable features (i.e., [±animate]), but show delays with others. Nonetheless, our data show partial convergence by advanced learners with the native speakers: some features are acquirable, while others may be less accessible and subject to developmental processes. In explaining our data we appeal to Lardiere's (2008, 2009) Feature Reassembly Hypothesis, but assess it critically and aim to develop it further by considering the complexity constraints in terms of the number of features involved and their configuration. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Although accusative object marking has been widely studied in Spanish, there do not appear to be sociolinguistic studies addressing its variation and possible change, despite evidence of loss of the marker from Dominican Spanish. This paper describes the findings of a study on the marking of human accusative objects in Cuban Spanish that compared two time periods and two generational cohorts with spoken data from the 1960s and 1990s. A significantly lower rate of object marking was found for the later time period, as well as similar rates for one generational cohort studied at both times. The findings of a logistic regression analysis suggested that loss of the object marker is a change in progress constrained by definiteness of the object. It is shown that the pattern found here for Cuban Spanish is more similar to Old Spanish than to Modern Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the applicability of modern theories of language to data from pre-modern language varieties. Specifically, I address the extent to which Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper’s (1989) taxonomy of directive head acts is valid for use in descriptions of these speech acts in Early Modern Spanish. In order to address this issue, data from two distinct primary sources was collected: first, a series of familiar letters written in the latter half of the sixteenth century, and second, a collection of short farces widely discussed as representing the popular speech of the time. The results of this study indicate that speakers in the sixteenth century displayed a strong preference for direct request strategies, at odds with conclusions drawn about modern Spanish in the literature. Though the head act taxonomy is found to be useful for analyzing the Early Modern data, I caution that it cannot be assumed that speakers in different periods appraise potential face-threatening acts similarly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper describes the development of a Spoken Spanish generator from sign-writing. The sign language considered was the Spanish sign language (LSE: Lengua de Signos Española). This system consists of an advanced visual interface (where a deaf person can specify a sequence of signs in sign-writing), a language translator (for generating the sequence of words in Spanish), and finally, a text to speech converter. The visual interface allows a sign sequence to be defined using several sign-writing alternatives. The paper details the process for designing the visual interface proposing solutions for HCI-specific challenges when working with the Deaf (i.e. important difficulties in writing Spanish or limited sign coverage for describing abstract or conceptual ideas). Three strategies were developed and combined for language translation to implement the final version of the language translator module. The summative evaluation, carried out with Deaf from Madrid and Toledo, includes objective measurements from the system and subjective information from questionnaires. The paper also describes the first Spanish-LSE parallel corpus for language processing research focused on specific domains. This corpus includes more than 4000 Spanish sentences translated into LSE. These sentences focused on two restricted domains: the renewal of the identity document and driver’s license. This corpus also contains all sign descriptions in several sign-writing specifications generated with a new version of the eSign Editor. This new version includes a grapheme to phoneme system for Spanish and a SEA-HamNoSys converter. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Copyright of RILCE. Revista de Filología Hispánica is the property of Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Navarra, S.A. 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.)

Drawing on data from 14 communities in California and Texas, this paper examines the variability in language and literacy resources across communities with large numbers of Latino families. Spanish-speaking children live in communities that vary considerably with respect to language use, ethnic composition and education levels. Children's community experiences vary with respect to exposure to English and Spanish and in terms of access to print materials in one or both languages. Immigrant Spanish-speaking families residing in these communities also demonstrate variation with respect to home literacy practices. However, community-level characteristics only modestly predict a few aspects of children's language and literacy experiences. While this suggests that community characteristics can influence children's language and literacy opportunities (relative to Spanish-speaking children in other communities), the weak associations also show that educators should not presume to know children's home language and literacy experiences based on observable community characteristics. Overall, school-related literacy was the most common and frequent type of literacy activity in the home across communities. Schools provided literacy materials and activities to families in communities where they were lacking, thereby helping compensate for an overall scarcity of literacy opportunities for children in the low-income communities in which they resided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes early language development in a deaf Spanish child fitted with a cochlear implant (CI) when she was 1;6 years old. The girl had been exposed to Cued Speech (CS) since that age. The main aim of the research was to identify potential areas of slow language development as well as the potential benefit of CI and CS. At the beginning of this research the child was 2;6 years (she had been using the CI for 12 months). Adult-child 30-minute sessions were videotaped every week for 1 year (13-24 months of CI use), and transcribed according to CHAT norms. Measures of phonemic inventory, intelligibility, lexicon, and grammar development were obtained. Part of the data were compared with data from two normally hearing (NH) children with the same mean length of utterance (MLU). In order to confirm trends observed during these 12 months of observation, an extra set of data was obtained in the next 3 months (25-27 months of CI use). Results in the initial 12 month period (13-24 months of CI use) showed irregular language development in the deaf child. The development of her phonemic inventory and lexicon progressed at a rate that was similar to, or faster than, that of NH children. However, the slow acquisition of articles and also the slow development of MLU suggested that the child might have problems with grammar. Data from the next 3 months (25-27 months of CI use) confirmed this trend. Results are discussed in relation to similar studies in other languages. Potential benefits of CS are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates possible communicative effects caused by transfer from Swedish into L2 Spanish of prosodic patterns manifested in rising boundary tones, as occurring in the speech act of "requests". More specifically it studies whether there is any difference between transactional (+/- request for information) and interpersonal values (+/- value of friendliness) perceived in boundary tones produced in EL1, EL2 and SL1, depending on whether the evaluator is Spanish, Chilean or Swedish respectively. It also discusses whether these differences affect the valuation of the utterance in a way that may interfere with communication. The results show that the realisation of the rising boundary tones is the feature that mostly contributes to the foreign accent of Spanish spoken by Swedes. The results also show that the intersubjective value associated with a rising boundary tone is negatively affected when the intonational features of L2 Spanish do not match those of Spanish L1. Different discursive preferences in the Spanish and Swedish L1 are proposed as explanations to these results. The study finally suggests that teachers of Spanish as L2 pay attention to supra-segmental features that carry important pragmatic values, since the acquisition of these patterns can be of relevance for successful interaction with native speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a corpus-based examination of pragmatic marker use in Spanish as a foreign language. Using quantitative and qualitative methods, it examines the frequency and seven functional differences in the use of pues and bueno in the oral examination of 46 participants using the Computer Assisted Screening Tool (CAST) online test. The participants were adult (average age 22) non-native speaking examinees at two levels of language proficiency. The study investigated whether examinees’ proficiency level would influence the pragmatic markers’ rate of occurrence and variety of functions. Frequency measures of pragmatic markers were obtained from examinees rated at two levels of proficiency: ‘full’ or ‘fail’. 1 1 ‘Full’ and ‘fail’ are the terms used in the CAST test as descriptors of the test takers who were rated as highly proficient (‘full’), or as not meeting the criteria for highly proficient (‘fail’). In no way are they intended to disparage the efforts of any test takers. A discourse analytic approach was then employed to examine the discursive functions of pragmatic markers. The quantitative results showed that proficiency level was significantly related to the overall frequency of use of the focal markers, with the ‘full’ group tending to use them more frequently than the ‘fail’ group. Qualitatively, the study found that higher proficiency speakers used both pragmatic markers for a wider range of functions than their lower proficiency counterparts. The discussion considers the implications for raising learner awareness of pragmatic marker contributions to perceived oral fluency and pragmatic capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate word order with the verb decir ‘say’ in two corpora of spoken Peninsular Spanish. This verb is particularly interesting because it has been observed to have a high frequency of postverbal subjects in previous studies. Beside features that influence optional subject-verb inversion, such as the type of subject, the type of complement and the type of sentence in which decir appears, we investigate whether factors related to residual V2 trigger the postverbal subject position in some contexts. It will be shown that fronted objects, but not preverbal adverbs, trigger subject-verb inversion in the speech data investigated here. Furthermore, the factor of subject type and complement type are relevant for explaining word order patterns. Lastly, we also discuss the existence of semi-fixed, ‘constructionalized’ word order patterns with decir and how they can be accounted for in a framework that makes use of perspectival functional categories in the left periphery.

This paper deals with attitudes towards two Spanish speech varieties. Particularly, this is a study about how inhabitants from Mérida city appraise the contemporary educated speech from Caracas and the sociolect called habla malandra. An experimental design for two related groups was followed. Ten people participated in the study, and three variables were considered, namely, age (20-30 years old), geographical origin (Mérida city), and level of education (university students). Data were obtained from two short films, each one cointaining the two speech varieties for the same plot. Matched guise technique (Lambert 1967) was used. Informants were asked to appraise the announcer's personality using binary features included in a semantic differential scale. Results show that attitudes of people from Mérida city towards these two speech varieties are similar, while the two dialects under study were poorly and/or negatively appraised in the dimensions of professional competence and socioeconomic status. Thus, a non-prestigious appraisal was given to both dialects by the community of Mérida. However, both of them, especially habla malandra variety, were positively appraised in the scales of personal integrity and social attraction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the features that characterize some syntactic-semantic patterns involving a-prepositional complementation in Spanish. The analysis is situated at the core-grammar level or level 1 of the Lexical Constructional Model in which lexical templates and constructional templates undergo various processes of Subsumption (see Ruiz de Mendoza and Mairal, 2008; Mairal and Ruiz de Mendoza, 2009). Special emphasis is made on the mechanisms of Subsumption across verb classes and, more specifically, on how such mechanisms determine the (re)construction of meaning and mark differences and commonalities between the Spanish verbs golpear and tocar. Examples extracted from relevant corpora of the Spanish language are used in support of the analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to show the results of phonetic-pragmatic analysis applied to the discourse markers a ver, bueno, claro, vale, ¿cómo? and ya in semi-spontaneous speech. The objective is to determine the incidence of acoustic-phonetic patterns upon the perception of the pragmatic meaning of 'anger', 'assent' and 'strangeness'. To achieve this, a procedure to obtain data was designed. This data was then examined according to the acoustic phase of the protocol of melodic speech analysis, proposed by Cantero and Font (2009). It is, therefore, an exploratory study about experimental phonetic based on pragmatics. The main results highlight the facts that a) there is a phonetic pattern for the analyzed discourse markers, at least in the Chilean variety of the Spanish language, formed tonetically by /- interrogative, - suspended, + emphatic/; and b) the variation in the suprasegmental phonetics configuration of the discursive units studied is related to the variation of the pragmatic meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The Automated Working Memory Assessment battery was designed to assess verbal and visuospatial passive and active working memory processing in children and adolescents. The aim of this paper is to present the adaptation and validation of the AWMA battery to Argentinean Spanish-speaking children aged 6 to 11years. Verbal subtests were adapted and pilot tested on a small sample (n =26). A validation study was conducted including 6-, 8- and 11-year-old children (n =210). All subtests presented an increase in difficulty as the number of to-be-remembered items raised, and showed high Cronbach''s α values. Regarding validity, all subtests had medium to high and significant correlations among them, and with two external measures of working memory (Picture Span and Word Order) and an executive function task (Tower of London); correlations with Block Design were low and non-significant. We conclude that the adapted AWMA can be considered a valid and reliable battery of working memory in Argentinean Spanish-speaking children. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper studies the conversational strategy known as "intensification" from a sociolinguistic perspective. The data consists of a collection of informal conversations among Spanish women from Madrid, together with a set of oral interviews with women from the same speech community. The results illustrate the social change that have developed in Madrid, as they are codified in the Spanish spoken in the area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discussed the use of automatic score tests to measure a person's ability to speak a language, and focuses on facility-in-L2 tests, a group of tests in English, Arabic, Spanish, and Dutch. Also discussed are the oral proficiency review, the Versan tests, and the semi-directed method, which is computer based. The article concludes that the scoring of facility-in-L2 tests has features that a human-rated score can't match, and that their results are backed by psycholinguistic studies.

This paper is a metalexicographical analysis of the dictionary voces usadas en Chile, by Aníbal Echeverría y Reyes published in Chile in 1900. it reviews the state of lexicography practiced in late 19th Century Chile. The analysis follows Matus' metalexicographical analysis chart (1995), which allows description, analysis and critical evaluation of lexicographical works on Chilean spanish. This work aims at revealing (revealing) the advanced scientific techniques used by Echeverría y Reyes in processing and systematizing dictionary entries. it also shows the strategies used by the author to detach himself from the more purist and conservative ideas that were commonplace in his day. This becomes evident in the increase of idiomatic reference points, which induce a polycentric standardization, as stated by de granda (1994), and in the way the frontiers between official and marginal lexicon become diffuse, allowing for the inclusion of taboo terms in the dictionary. finally, the study stresses the importance of Aníbal Echeverría y Reyes' lexicographical work as a transitional period in the field's pre-scientific and scientific stages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dialogue systems are one of the most interesting applications of speech and language technologies. There have recently been some attempts to build dialogue systems in Spanish, and some corpora have been acquired and annotated. Using these corpora, statistical machine learning methods can be applied to try to solve problems in spoken dialogue systems. In this paper, two statistical models based on the maximum likelihood assumption are presented, and two main applications of these models on a Spanish dialogue corpus are shown: labelling and decoding. The labelling application is useful for annotating new dialogue corpora. The decoding application is useful for implementing dialogue strategies in dialogue systems. Both applications centre on unsegmented dialogue turns. The obtained results show that, although limited, the proposed statistical models are appropriate for these applications. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In the absence of a Spanish prosody assessment procedure, an English one (Profiling Elements of Prosodic Systems-Children: PEPS-C) has been adapted for use with Iberian Spanish speakers. The paper describes the scope, principles and methods of the test and the modifications other than lexical translation that were required to produce a Spanish procedure. Findings from the first studies of data collected using the Spanish test are briefly considered: these suggest crosslinguistic parallels and English/Spanish differences in adult prosodic ability. Lengthier consideration is given to prosodic data from Spanish children and the use of prefinal contrastive accent in the two languages. We conclude that the test is a feasible and valid instrument for assessing Spanish prosodic ability and indicate possible directions for further research. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this paper, I will analyze the properties of interjections in Spanish, "anda," "vaya," "venga," "mira," "cuidado," "hombre," "mujer," "oye," etc., when they coappear with other evidential and enunciative constituents. Some interjections select a complement with "que," a conjunction that has an evidential meaning because it denotes an evidential value related to the source of the information. This information is showed as an affirmative marker, according to the speaker's point of view: ¡Mira que decir el primer apellido…!, Anda que no he regalado yo adularias. As far as the enunicative "que" is concerned, this conjunction is not selected by the interjection; on the contrary, the conjunction is the head of an independent sentence with intonative and syntactic properties: Nos vamos a acostar, mira, que está mi hermana en el ascensor también; ¡Anda!, que yo que os iba a enseñar hoy a hacer el masaje con las pelotas. In other words, "que" is a modal conjunction whose function is to introduce an independent sentence and link it within a discourse structure; for this reason, it must be distinguished from the evidential que. My aim is to show that the interpretation of the two forms: interjection + evidential "que" and interjection + enunciative "que" are different when they appear in oral discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the study of politeness phenomena, small talk is an area that has gained in interest and popularity over recent years (cf. Coupland, 2000b). Given its close connection with phatic communion (Malinowski, 1972 [1923]), it constitutes a valuable resource for maintaining friendly relations in social interaction. This paper deals with the interactional dynamics of small talk in a dialectal variety of Argentinean Spanish, namely Buenos Aires Spanish. It does so from a sociolinguistic perspective, but it also builds on sociocultural pragmatics. The aim of the study is to investigate how small talk operates in both institutional and noninstitutional settings in terms of socio-discursive and pragmatic strategies, and to identify some of the functions that it fulfills. The corpus analysed consists of a range of data collected in Bahía Blanca in the form of notes from participant observation as well as recordings of naturally occurring face-to face interactions. Also included is some consideration of how members of the community under study perceive (Placencia, 2001) and interpret (Gumperz, 1982a; Tannen, 1996) the phenomena in question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1990s, research on institutional discourse employing a conversation analysis approach, with its roots in ethnomethodology, has produced a considerable number of studies in different contexts and from different perspectives. Based on the premise that members of a society have expert knowledge of identity work, of the institutions in which their interactions are embedded and of practices of everyday life, a series of qualitative studies have analysed in detail the mechanisms of interaction and the restrictions exerted by the institutional context in which these encounters take place. An aspect often forgotten is the study of small talk. The main aim of this paper is to analyse small talk in a particular institutional context: The medical consultation. More specifically, we aim to examine whether small talk plays a peripheral social function alone or whether it also plays an informative function as some previous studies have shown. Results from the data analysed indicate that small talk performs both functions and that they appear to be intertwined with other elements such as the use of a colloquial style. The study also suggests that the use of small talk is affected by the way in which the Spanish Health Service operates and/or the fact that some of the patients in the consultations examined are not native speakers of Spanish. Nevertheless more quantitative and qualitative research needs to be done in order to draw more definite conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although its very name indicates its presumed insignificance and marginalization from the sociolinguistic enterprise, 'small talk' has recently begun to receive increased attention as an object of interest to sociolinguistics (cf. Coupland, 2000). This paper draws on work on small talk in varieties of Spanish (e.g. Márquez Reiter y Placencia, 2004; Placencia, 2004, 2005; Márquez Reiter, 2006) as well as work on television news discourse (cf. Clayman y Heritage, 2002) in order to investigate the functions of small talk in U.S. Spanish television newscasts. The analysis attempts to uncover the social functions of small talk used among broadcasters. The news anchors' stance and identity construction through small talk is explored, as is the construction of institutional identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on two of the major problems that have traditionally hindered the study of the so-called 'colloquial Spanish', namely (i) terminological hesitation and lack of consensus in referring to this linguistic form (designated indistinctly by terms such as 'language', 'speech', 'discourse', etc., on one side, and 'colloquial', 'spoken', 'conversational', etc., on the other side) and (ii) the lack of a clear and unitary definition of the object of study. For this purpose, first the most common designations and the conditions which make it possible to use them as synonymous are identified. Secondly, the conceptual structure of the most famous definitions and the linguistic and extralinguistic features of the object of study which each one of them emphasizes are analyzed. Finally, reasons for the perpetuation of the terminological and conceptual vagueness in the history of Spanish Linguistics are mentioned and a theoretical frame for a better definition of spoken or colloquial Spanish is suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Parental preference for various behaviour management techniques (BMTs) used in paediatric dentistry has been shown to be influenced by many factors, including ethnicity. Aim: To measure parental acceptability of BMTs used in paediatric dentistry and how it is influenced by ethnicity and language. Design: Parents of patients presenting to a paediatric dentistry residency clinic in Houston, Texas, USA or Medellín, Colombia watched ten video BMT vignettes and rated their acceptance on a visual analog scale (VAS). Participants were categorized into six groups based on language, ethnicity, and country of residence. Results: Parental acceptance of BMTs was affected by language, ethnicity, and country of residence (P = 2.2 × 10−16). Ethnic groups in the USA had a mean overall acceptance rate of all BMTs. Colombians rated all BMTs less acceptable than the US cohorts (P < 0.05), with the exception of voice control, which Colombians rate less acceptable than English‐speaking Caucasians and Spanish‐speaking Hispanics in the USA (P < 0.05). The Colombian population were not accepting of conscious sedation, nitrous oxide, general anaesthesia, and protective stabilization. Conclusions: Parents from different ethnic groups express different preferences in BMTs. Parents continue to prefer noninvasive techniques over pharmacologic and advanced techniques, with the exception of voice control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the U.S., there is a growing Latino population, in which parents primarily speak Spanish to their children. Despite the evidence that language preference is associated with level of acculturation and influences parenting practices in these families, no study has compared how Spanish- and English-speaking Latino families acquire and utilize the skills taught during parent-training programs such as Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT). Twenty-seven mother-infant Latino dyads received a home-based adaptation of the Child-Directed Interaction (CDI) phase of PCIT as part of a larger randomized control trial. Most infants were male (63%), and their average age was 13.7 months ( SD = 1.43). Most families (52%) lived below the poverty line. The Dyadic Parent-Child Interaction Coding System-Third Edition (DPICS-III) was employed to evaluate PCIT skills at baseline and post-treatment, as well as at 3- and 6-month follow-up, assessments. We conducted multiple linear regression analyses among Spanish-speaking (55%) and English-speaking (45%) families to examine differences in acquisition and utilization of do and don't skills at each assessment while controlling for mother's education. Results yielded no group differences in the acquisition rate of do or don't skills at any time point. However, Spanish-speaking mothers used significantly more don't skills than English-speaking mothers at each assessment. Specifically, Spanish-speaking families used significantly more commands at baseline, post-treatment, and the 6-month follow-up assessments, as well as more questions at post-treatment and at the 6-month follow-up assessments. These findings highlight the importance of addressing cultural values such as respeto to ensure culturally robust parent-training programs for Latino families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: A 5-session twice-weekly clear speech protocol with daily home practice was developed to enable Spanish-accented speakers of English to code-switch for increased listener ease of understanding. This study provides preliminary data to test the hypothesis that this protocol results in increased ease of understanding for native English listeners, not in decreased talker accentedness. Method: Using a single-case experimental design, 6 adult native Spanish speakers with English proficiency participated in the protocol. Ease of understanding and accentedness were probed at least 5 times pretraining, at each training session, and once per week for 5 weeks posttraining. Thirty native English–speaking listeners assessed the probes using 7-point scales for each measure. Results: Ease of understanding improved for all participants (mean improvement = 3.5 points; effect size range = 6.98 to 15.33). Accentedness improved for 4 of 6 participants (mean improvement = 2.3 points; effect size range = 4.04 to 10.48). At the outset, most participants expressed concern that this approach would highlight speech errors. Upon follow-up, all participants reported confidence in using the approach and found it helpful in daily communication. Conclusions: Further research should explore the effects of this protocol on intelligibility and acoustic metrics and their relationship to ease of understanding and accentedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The perception of stress is highly influenced by listeners’ native language. In this research, the authors examined the effect of intonation and talker variability (here: phonetic variability) in the discrimination of Spanish lexical stress contrasts by native Spanish (N = 17), German (N = 21), and French (N = 27) listeners. Participants listened to 216 trials containing three Spanish disyllabic words, where one word carried a different lexical stress to the others. The listeners’ task was to identify the deviant word in each trial (Odd-One-Out task). The words in the trials were produced by either the same talker or by two different talkers, and carried the same or varying intonation patterns. The German listeners’ performance was lower compared to the Spanish listeners but higher than that of the French listeners. French listeners performed above chance level with and without talker variability, and performed at chance level when intonation variability was introduced. Results are discussed in the context of the stress “deafness” hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Utilizing self-reported survey data from 120 low-income, Spanish-speaking mother–child dyads, this study examined different types of classes (i.e., subgroups) based on the ways in which mothers and adolescent children coped with language brokering, particularly when they found it stressful. Four classes emerged, listed from largest to smallest class: (a) communal coping mothers, (b) shared communal copers, (c) independent communal coping children, and (d) communal coping children. Mothers’ parent–child closeness predicted class membership, but adolescent children’s reported closeness was not a significant predictor. Nevertheless, adolescent children’s respect for family significantly predicted class membership, whereas mothers’ respect for family was not a significant predictor. Mothers who were members of the communal coping children class reported less frequent depressive symptoms, whereas children who were independent communal coping children reported more frequent depressive symptoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This study investigates variation in the prosodic system of Spanish in the speech of three generations of Mexican Americans living in a Mexican American-majority community in South Texas, United States, characterized by high levels of bilingualism and long-term, sustained contact between languages. Low and Grabe's (1995) Pairwise Variability Index was used to quantify prosodic rhythm in the Spanish and the English of community members across generations in order to: (1) assess differences between contact and non-contact varieties of Spanish, (2) investigate the cross-generational stability of prosodic rhythm in the community, and (3) ascertain the type of influence from English, if any, on Spanish prosody. Findings show that while the oldest generations maintain separate systems of rhythm in Spanish and English, the youngest generation demonstrates prosodic convergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) is one of the most common mental disorders in adolescence. Many validated psychometric tools are available to diagnose individuals with SAD efficaciously. However, there is a demand for shortened self-report instruments that identify adolescents at risk of developing SAD. We validate the Mini-SPIN and its diagnostic efficiency in overcoming this problem in Spanish-speaking adolescents in Spain. Methods: The psychometric properties of the 3-item Mini-SPIN scale for adolescents were assessed in a community (study 1) and clinical sample (study 2). Results: Study 1 consisted of 573 adolescents, and found the Mini-SPIN to have appropriate internal consistency and high construct validity. Study 2 consisted of 354 adolescents (147 participants diagnosed with SAD and 207 healthy controls). Data revealed that the Mini-SPIN has good internal consistency, high construct validity and adequate diagnostic efficiency. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that the Mini-SPIN has good psychometric properties on clinical and healthy control adolescents and general population, which indicates that it can be used as a screening tool in Spanish-speaking adolescents. Cut-off scores are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]