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This article deals with the form and use of reformulation markers in research papers written in English, Spanish and Catalan. Considering the form and frequency of the markers, English papers tend to prefer simple fixed markers and include fewer reformulators than Spanish and Catalan. On the contrary, formal Catalan and Spanish papers include more markers, some of which are complex and allow for some structural variability. As for use, reformulation markers establish dynamic relationships between portions of discourse which can be identified in our corpus with expansion, reduction and permutation. The analysis of the corpus shows that English authors usually reformulate to add more information to the concept (expansion), whereas Catalan and Spanish authors reduce the contents or the implicatures of the previous formulation more frequently than English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the investigation and analysis of speech accommodation effects in data obtained from Spanish learners of German with varying proficiency levels. The production data were recorded during a collaborative map task of the Spanish learners of German among each other and with a native speaker of German. The map task was designed to target words and phrases with specific segmental and suprasegmental characteristics. These characteristics were derived from contrastive analyses of Spanish and German. The main objectives of the paper were to investigate whether segmental and suprasegmental characteristics of the target language German are affected by phonetic accommodation to varying degrees and whether these differences depend on the proficiency level of the speaker or the interlocutor. The statistical analysis, using regression analyses, revealed inconsistent accommodation effects across learners of different proficiency levels as well as different linguistic phenomena. In line with previous findings the results can best be accounted for by an adaptation of a dynamic system approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and Objectives: Spanish subject pronoun expression (SPE) among Bube speakers in Equatorial Guinea has hardly been examined. Thus, the paper aims to (a) examine the SPE rate (b) and the linguistic and social predictors of SPE in this variety. Methodology: The data for the present study were collected using sociolinguistic interviews. These interviews lasted between 45 minutes and an hour. Data and analysis: The audio recordings of 18 bilinguals of Bube and Spanish in Equatorial Guinea were transcribed and analyzed using the Rbrul mixed-effects statistical software. Findings: The overt SPE rate of these bilingual speakers is 17.9%. This pronoun rate is one of the lowest ever found among bilinguals. The significant factors are grammatical person and number, ambiguity, the lexical content, and gender. The insignificant predictors were reference, reflexivity, and education. Originality: This is the first variationist study on Spanish SPE among Bube speakers in Equatorial Guinea. In this study, switch reference, a usually robust predictor, is insignificant among bilingual speakers. Significance: This study expands on the scarce research conducted on Equatoguinean Spanish and opens new avenues for exploration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The deconstruction of the 'War of Independence' (1808–1814) as a Spanish nationalist myth was a necessary step in advancing our knowledge of the history of the Age of Revolutions in Spain and of Spanish nation-building itself. However, it set aside those who had in fact experienced those events through a genuine Spanish nationalized lens. Using a corpus of autobiographical sources written between the 1780s and the 1830s, this paper argues that political concepts of Spanish nationhood were already available before the liberal revolution unleashed by the French invasion, that anti-liberals used the language of nationhood in their ego-documents too, and that ideas of independence and constitution pervaded social cleavages and ideological divides. Arguably, then, the War of Independence had both mythical and real dimensions in terms of the history of national identities. Therefore, the great issue in nineteenth-century Spanish nation-building would have not been a congenital 'lack' or 'weakness' of nationhood but an intense cultural war for its definition along political lines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study the nuclear configurations of declarative broad focus utterances in Yucatecan Spanish, a Mexican variety spoken in southeast Mexico in contact with Yucatec Maya, from a sociolinguistic perspective. We draw on a corpus of 276 utterances elicited from 16 speakers, eight Maya–Spanish bilinguals (four female/four male) and eight Spanish monolinguals (four female/four male). We particularly concentrate on the roles of bilingualism, gender, and their relationship to local (Hispanic) identity. Although the intonation of Yucatecan Spanish is known to be very different from Central Mexican Spanish, we find in our data a considerable number of contours that Martín Butragueño (2017) refers to as typical "Central Mexican circumflex intonation" (p. 153). What is more, this feature is distributed unevenly among speaker groups in our data. First of all, it is much more frequent in the bilingual than in the monolingual group. We suggest that this is due to the monolinguals' higher degree of identification with the local Spanish language and culture (whereas the bilingual speakers are more oriented toward the Mayan language and culture and less toward the local Spanish ones; see Uth, 2018b). Secondly, as regards gender, there are many sociolinguistic works that suggest that women tend to be less oriented toward local vernaculars than men. Building on that, we argue that a greater decrease of the supraregional circumflex configuration within the monolingual male group than within the monolingual female is to be expected. However, this hypothesis is not confirmed by our data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we propose a new hypothesis for the formal analysis of cross-linguistic influence, the Vulnerability Hypothesis (VH), with the support of data from subject personal pronoun use in Spanish and Catalan in Minorca, and contrast it to the Interface Hypothesis (IH). The VH establishes a categorical–variable continuum of permeability, that is, structures that show variable distributions are permeable while those that exhibit categorical distributions are not. To test the predictions of the VH, Spanish language samples were collected from 12 monolingual Spanish speakers, 11 Spanish-dominant bilinguals, and 12 Catalan-dominant bilinguals, and Catalan language samples from 12 Catalan-dominant speakers. Following a variationist comparative analysis, 4,466 first person singular (1sg) and 1,291 third person singular (3sg) tokens were coded for speech connectivity, verb form ambiguity, and semantic verb type. The language-external variable included in the analysis was language group (Spanish monolinguals, Spanish-dominant bilinguals, Catalan-dominant bilinguals, and Catalan controls). Results indicated that speech connectivity is the highest ranked variable in the Spanish control group (most categorical variable), while ambiguity and verb type are ranked lower, with only ambiguity reaching significance. The VH would, therefore, predict bilinguals would be similar to monolinguals in the most categorical variables, in this case, speech connectivity. This is in contrast to the IH, which would predict bilinguals would exhibit difficulty with the pragmatically driven distributions (e.g. speech connectivity), while they would show no contact effects or lesser effects with distributions at the lexico-semantic interface with syntax (e.g. verb form ambiguity and verb type). The prediction of the VH bears out in our data. Bilinguals do not differ with respect to speech connectivity. Ambiguity, on the other hand, is no longer significant in the bilingual groups and verb type reaches significance with 1sg (and not with 3sg) subjects. These results are discussed, redefining the concepts of convergence and simplification from language contact research to adapt to the variationist analysis used. Simplification is specified as the reduction of lower ranked predicting variables, while convergence is defined as an increase in parallels across languages with respect to the variables that are significant, their effect size (variable ranking), and the direction of effects (constraint ranking). Regarding language group, it was not returned as significant in 1sg data. Thus, the groups did not differ in their rates of overt pronominal expression. Differences, however, emerged across groups in the 3sg data, where bilinguals used significantly more overt pronominal subjects than monolinguals do. This paper contributes to current discussions in the fields of language contact, second language acquisition, and bilingualism, introducing a new hypothesis and contrasting it with the IH. In addition, it contributes to variationist approaches by examining a novel community of bilingual speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and objectives/purpose/research question: This paper’s objective is to offer new insights into the effects of language on memory for causation events in a second language (L2) context. The research was driven by the question of whether proficient L2 users acquired L2 thinking-for-speaking-and-remembering strategies along with the relevant expressions for different types of causation (intentional versus non-intentional). Design/methodology/approach: The cognitive domain of causation is an ideal platform for this investigation, since the lexicalisation of causation differs clearly in the two languages under consideration, English and Spanish. Spanish speakers always distinguish between intentional and non-intentional events through the use of different constructions. The English pattern of lexicalisation in this domain often leaves intentionality unspecified. Our methodology involves an experimental elicitation of event verbalisations and recall memory responses to video stimuli by English and Spanish monolinguals and bilinguals. Data and analysis: The analysis has shown that the Spanish monolinguals and first language (L1) Spanish/L2 English speakers always distinguished between intentional and non-intentional events, while the English monolinguals and L1 English/L2 Spanish speakers generally used expressions that were underspecified with regard to intentionality. Findings/conclusions: All populations used their habitual language patterns as an aid to memory. Spanish monolingual had better recall than their English peers. L2 speakers were mainly relying on the L1 in spite of speaking only the L2 during the experiment. Originality: Possible effects of these typological differences between an L1 and an L2 on speaker recall memory have not been investigated before. Significance/implications: The research presented in this paper informs the theoretical assumptions related to the thinking-for-speaking hypothesis by showing empirically that late bilinguals adhere to their L1 patterns as an aid to memory while speaking in their L2. This novel finding contributes to an improved understanding of language processing and language use among late bilinguals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: Many early Spanish-English bilingual speakers in the USA learn Spanish as their first language at home and English in school. This paper seeks to elucidate whether these speakers develop a separate phonological system for English and, if so, the role of primary and secondary cues in the development of the second language (L2) system. Design/methodology/approach: The phonetic realization of the voiceless stops /p/, /t/, /k/ is analyzed among three groups: early Spanish-English bilinguals; L1 English speakers who are late learners of Spanish; and L1 Spanish speakers who are late learners of English. The participants (N = 15) engaged in a reading task and a conversation task in each language during a single recording session. Data and analysis: 1578 tokens of /p/, /t/, /k/ were extracted and analyzed using acoustic software. Voice onset time in milliseconds and center of gravity in Hertz were analyzed, and monofactorial and multifactorial analyses were performed to determine the role of linguistic background. Findings/conclusions: Evidence is found of two phonological systems among early bilingual speakers, with varying degrees of assimilation to the phonological systems of the native speakers of each language. Originality: We argue that early bilinguals construct their L2 system of /p/, /t/, /k/ in English based on the primary cue of voice onset time rather than the secondary cue of center of gravity, as they are accustomed to noticing differences in voice onset time in Spanish and because the center of gravity of /p/, /t/, /k/ in English is more variable than voice onset time, and therefore represents a more variable and less predictable cue for early bilinguals as they construct their L2 system. Significance/implications: This paper contributes to the literature on the construction of phonological systems and to research detailing the speech of early Spanish-English bilinguals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The widespread use of computer-mediated communication (CMC) among adolescents has favored the creation of a newly written code called digitalk. This new code includes, among other characteristics, the use of foreign words as textisms, mainly anglicisms. These textisms also serve as a mark of identity among young speakers. The aim of this paper is twofold: first, to describe which are the more frequent anglicisms used by Spanish adolescents in their CMC and the code-mixing pathways of inclusion; second, to examine the possible influence between the use of anglicisms in the CMC of Spanish adolescents and their orthographic competence.Based on an exploratory methodology, a corpus of interactions through WhatsApp of a group of adolescents attending Compulsory Secondary Education in a region of southern Spain has been analyzed.Sketch Engine software was used for corpus analysis, presenting the normalized frequency (1/1,000) of textisms, misspellings, and multimodal elements. Finally, for the descriptive statistical analysis of the data and for the bivariate correlation analysis applying Pearson’s coefficient, IBM SPSS v.26 software was used.The results indicate that young people use English Code-Mixings (ECM) as discursive framers with an expressive aim and as a sign of belonging to a specific community of speakers. Moreover, no positive correlation is observed between the use of these ECMs and a lower orthographic competence.ECMs show an important pragmatic function in CMC among Spanish adolescents. Furthermore, they are one of the elements that have been incorporated into the digital norm of Spanish and can be used in Compulsory Education as a resource for the acquisition of communicative competence in adolescents along with other textisms.This is the first research that analyzes the frequency and function of anglicisms in Spanish CMC and their impact on the orthographic competence of Spanish adolescents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inspired by W. E. B. Du Bois's notion of double consciousness, Yeison F. García López assumes multiple identities: Afro-Colombian and Afro-Spanish. This multiplicity allows García López to assert a politically active citizenship, articulated through his migrant journey, his Afro-descendant and Colombian heritage, and his connection with Madrid society. This conversation delves into how García López's body of work as a poet, theorist, activist, and cultural agent contributes to an emerging Spanish, global, and transatlantic LatinX Latinity (LatinXness) from the Spanish capital. Overall, García López's efforts shine a spotlight on Spain's present-day plurality, highlighting the contributions of Africans and Afro-descendant people. He establishes connections among migrant communities of Latin American, Afro-descendant, and Asian origin as well as migrants from Eastern Europe descent, and Roma people and subverts Eurocentrism, colonialism, and white supremacy. García López's publications and cultural initiatives serve as a platform to amplify the voices of Madrid's migrant and racialized people, promoting culture as a form of resistance, healing, and empowerment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we investigate language contact between Haitian Creole and Dominican Spanish. We focus particularly on the acquisition of clitic pronouns (dative and accusative) in relation to their morpho-syntactic properties in the interlanguage of L2 Spanish speakers (Haitians and their bilingual descendants, whose first language is Creole) and we compare them with bilingual speakers of Creole and Spanish (Dominican-Haitians and Arayanos) and monolingual Spanish speakers (Dominicans), residents near the Dominican-Haitian border. Although the acquisition of clitic pronouns of L2 Spanish has been the object of multiple studies (Montrul, 2004; Sánchez, 2004), no study to date has referred to the case of native speakers of a Creole language, in this case of Haitian Creole. In Spanish, clitics can be heads of their own functional categories (AgrOP and AgrIOP) (Franco, 1993; Uriagereka, 1995), while acting as affixes of morphological agreement. For the purposes of this paper, we interviewed (semi) spontaneously, 11 informants, belonging to three groups of border speakers, whom we classified according to the variables of ethnicity and degree of bilingualism: 5 Haitians (Hs), 3 Arayanos (AYs) and 3 Dominicans (Ds); these latter were monolingual non-standard Spanish speakers that formed the control group. According to the results, there are significant differences or cases of divergence between the properties of the participants' grammar that could be due to the properties of their L1. The differences occur fundamentally in speakers of interlanguage, in relation to morphology (i.e. agreement — gender and number), rather than syntax. In the light of these results, it could be argued that Creole speakers with Spanish as an interlanguage do not seem to converge with monolingual speakers in their morpho-syntactic terms of the object pronouns (i.e. clitics), or they simply display an `'incomplete'' grammar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and objectives: This paper explores one dimension of language maintenance among college-aged heritage speakers of Spanish (HSS) in three communities of the U.S. Midwest. The aim was to understand whether Spanish was relevant at a point in life in which they were developing their own networks away from their families. Research questions: Were reading and writing in Spanish relevant for the participants? Did they use Spanish when on social media? Did they text in Spanish? Was Spanish relevant for them when consuming content on electronic media? Methodology: This analysis is part of a larger study on HSS in communities of recent Latino settlement. Respondents participated in an oral interview and responded to an online survey. Data and analysis: Results presented here come from a study designed to gather data on reported interlocutors, reading and writing, electronic media consumption, and social media use. Respondents were 71 HSS between the ages of 19 and 29. Results were compared with two control groups: 23 L2 speakers and 24 native speakers attending the same schools. Higher relevance was assumed when an event was reported closest to the moment of response. Reading and writing were classified as school, personal interest, employment, other. Relevance as related to social media, music, and internet use was determined by reported frequency. Findings: Highest relevance was reported for texting and listening to music; lowest was reported for consumption of internet content. Results for texting, social media and personal interest reading/writing suggest that for these speakers Spanish was viable for accrual of bonding social capital. Reading/writing reports suggest that for many, Spanish was also viable to attain specific academic goals. Environmental pressures to shift are evidenced in the uses not (or barely) reported: reading/writing related to work, religion and daily living, and consumption of internet content. Originality: This paper focuses on maintenance of relevance of a heritage language in the first stage of adult life. Implications: Results suggest that in using Spanish, respondents were not bound by physical context or immediate availability of interlocutors, but by their perceptions of viability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the domain of Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM) institutions, creative and innovative tools and methodologies for content delivery and user engagement have recently gained international attention. New methods have been proposed to publish digital collections as datasets amenable to computational use. Standardised benchmarks can be useful to broaden the scope of machine-actionable collections and to promote cultural and linguistic diversity. In this article, we propose a methodology to select datasets for computationally driven research applied to Spanish text corpora. This work seeks to encourage Spanish and Latin American institutions to publish machine-actionable collections based on best practices and avoiding common mistakes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions: How does learning a second language influence native language processing? The present study examined whether knowledge of Spanish – a language that marks grammatical gender – influences lexical processing in English – a language that does not mark grammatical gender. Design/Methodology/Approach: Three groups of adult English native speakers were tested: monolinguals; emergent bilinguals with high exposure to Spanish; and emergent bilinguals with low exposure to Spanish. Participants engaged in an associative learning task in English where they learned to associate names of inanimate objects with proper names. For half of the pairs, the grammatical gender of the noun’s Spanish translation matched the gender of the proper name (e.g. corn-Patrick). For half of the pairs, the grammatical gender of the noun’s Spanish translation mismatched the gender of the proper noun (e.g. beach-William). Data and Analysis: Fifty-six participants were tested − 21 monolingual speakers of English, 18 emergent bilinguals with high exposure to Spanish, and 17 emergent bilinguals with low exposure to Spanish. Data were analyzed using mixed analyses of variance. Findings/Conclusions: High-Spanish-exposure bilinguals (but not monolinguals or low-Spanish-exposure bilinguals) were less accurate at retrieving proper names for gender-incongruent than for gender-congruent pairs. Originality: The methodological approach used in this paper is especially well-suited to testing activation of grammatical gender in languages like English, which do not grammaticize gender. Significance/Implications: The findings of this study indicate that second-language morphosyntactic information is activated during native-language lexical processing, even when the second language is acquired later in life. This is particularly significant, considering well-known limitations in explicit knowledge of grammatical gender distinctions in the late-acquired second language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the New Mexico Spanish-English Bilingual Corpus, the present paper examines the variable position of the 1sg Spanish subject pronoun yo—pre- versus post-verbal—to consider the effect that code-switching may have on structural change. In an analysis of close to 700 tokens of yo, a rate of 16% post-positioning is found, which is within the range of post-position in non-contact varieties and thus contraindicative of the convergence hypothesis, in accordance with which the almost exclusive use of preverbal subject pronouns in English would predict lower rates of post-verbal yo in a converged contact variety. Moreover, by testing factors hypothesized to account for choice of post-posing yo using multivariate analysis, it is shown that bilinguals display similar constraints on yo post-positioning in New Mexican Spanish as monolingual speakers of Spanish, providing stronger support for an anti-convergence account. Results are discussed in terms of bilingual parallel activation, syntactic priming, and construction grammar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an examination of morphosyntactic factors that are generally understood to measure grammatical integration—and therefore used to help determine the status of other-language-origin nouns as borrowings or code-switches—through the lens of discourse, semantics, and lexical patterns. A total of 820 lone English-origin nouns surrounded by otherwise Spanish discourse are compared to Spanish and English nouns from the recorded speech of the same bilingual speakers in New Mexico. The semantic domains most open to English-origin nouns include both those traditionally expected, such as technology, and those generally thought to be unborrowable, such as kinship terms. In the case of determiner patterning, lone English-origin nouns’ propensity to occur with indefinite articles or as bare is linked to use in a nonreferential predicating function. Regarding gender, the preference for masculine assignment for lone English-origin nouns is tied to both nonreferentiality and the general patterns found in Spanish. The impact is felt here not from English, but from the conventions of the local community. Among their many functions, these nouns are best suited in this community for naming kin, classifying individuals as belonging to a certain occupation, and creating verbal compounds. It is argued that the morphosyntactic patterns found reflect the community norms, in which English-origin nouns tend to perform certain discourse functions. Systematic quantitative analysis thus reveals the powerful role of discourse referentiality of nominal forms, in tandem with local practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we focus on unsupervised sentiment analysis in Spanish. The lack of resources for languages other than English, as for example Spanish, adds more complexity to the task. However, we take advantage of some good already existing lexical resources. We have carried out several experiments using different unsupervised approaches in order to compare the different methodologies for solving the problem of the Spanish polarity classification in a corpus of movie reviews. Among all these approaches, perhaps the newest one integrates SentiWordNet with the Multilingual Central Repository to tackle polarity detection directly over the Spanish corpus. However, the results obtained were not as promising as we expected, and so we carried out another group of experiments combining all the methods using meta-classifiers. The results obtained with stacking outperformed the individual experiments and encourage us to continue in this way. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Objectives and Research Questions: This study explores the effects of bilingualism on the production of subject personal pronouns (SPPs) in speakers of two null-subject languages, Quechua and Spanish. The paper also seeks to determine if these effects can be explained by general bilingual accounts, such as the Interface Hypothesis (IH), or by contact-specific accounts. Methodology: This is a sociolinguistic variationist study; therefore, the data were collected with sociolinguistic interviews. Data and Analysis: The data consist of transcriptions of audio recordings of eight Spanish monolingual and eight Quechua-Spanish bilingual speakers of Huancayo (Peru). The data were analyzed by using the statistical software SPSS 23.0 and Goldvarb X. Findings: The IH predicts that the overt SPP rate of the bilinguals should be higher than that of the monolinguals and that the pragmatic switch reference constraint should be difficult for the Quechua first language speakers to master. The results show, however, that their rates are similar, and that switch reference was the most robust predictor for the bilinguals. This study's results suggest that indirect transfer from the mandatory Quechua switch reference subordinating particle – pti is taking place. Originality: This is one of the first variationist studies examining the IH predictions regarding SPP production in bilinguals speaking an indigenous American null-subject language alongside Spanish. In addition, this is the first study to show, through statistical analyses, the contact-specific effect the other language can exert on a particular constraint in the subject pronoun expression of the bilinguals. Significance: The results of the study suggest that even subtle transfer in situations of language contact can be accurately explained by contact-specific accounts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: The aim of the present paper is to look into the impact of bilingualism on lexical knowledge, lexical fluency, and lexical cross-linguistic influence (CLI). Design and methodology: To that end, Spanish monolingual (86) and Spanish–Basque bilingual (87) EFL learners were tested on lexical knowledge, lexical fluency, and (lexical) CLI by means of a task of lexical availability. Data were extracted from written sources. Data and analysis: Numerous responses were produced and instances of lexical CLI were examined and compared between monolingual and bilingual learners. Findings/Conclusions: Results point to a slight bilingual advantage in most of the measures tested but are not strong enough to reach statistical significance. Our results concur with previous studies in showing slight benefits for bilingual versus monolingual learners. Typological distance between Basque and English and the homogenization effect of schooling are thought to discard the potential benefits of bilingualism. Originality: This study shows that bilinguals are slightly better at lexical knowledge than monolingual counterparts. The comparisons of adolescent monolingual and bilingual learners learning an L3 under the same conditions are not frequent, neither is the examination of instances of lexical CLI. This is the main asset of the present study. Significance/implications: Our results suggest that teachers should encourage cross-linguistic comparison and positive lexical transfer through an increase in the use of cognates, since these can help then enhance and improve their lexical knowledge. Limitations: It is important to take into account that this study only looks at one specific aspect of lexical knowledge, other factors might also be influencing bilingual versus monolingual performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research questions: German and Spanish differ in lexicalization of object position in placement events (e.g. They stand/lay-put the binoculars on the shelf). Do native (L1) speakers of these languages show different recognition memory for object position in placement scenes ("Thinking for Speaking" (TFS))? And if so, can learning German as a second language (L2) improve memory accuracy? Originality: There is very little research on the effect of language on memory in L2 speakers and no such studies have focused on placement events. By adopting a short time course (750 ms) between the prime and recognition phase this study makes a methodological advancement. Design/Methodology/Approach: We employed a design with L1 speakers (N = 54) of German and Spanish, and a group of Spanish L2 learners (N = 123) of German. Participants were presented with a two-phased memory task with minimum delay, with language and pictures showing placement events. Following the direction indicated by German placement verbs we changed position of objects in the picture recognition phase. L2 German speakers received a form-focused instruction on German placement verbs (stand/lay) before the memory task. Data and Analysis: We analysed recognition accuracy for object position changes. Findings/Conclusions: Results showed that L1 German speakers had more accurate recognition memory for object position changes than L1 Spanish speakers. When Spanish learners of L2 German performed the experiment in German, their accuracy exceeded L1 German speakers' scores. Significance/Implications: The findings provide support for TFS effects on memory for object position in placement events for L1 speakers and show accuracy advantages for L2 speakers. Future studies should consider employing tasks with short time courses as the one used in this paper, in order to establish a base of controlled and reliable findings to unravel the linguistic relativity literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the language of child bilinguals and adult unbalanced bilinguals (heritage speakers) against that of bilingual native speakers of their home language (baseline). We identify four major vectors of correspondence across the language spoken by these three groups. First, all varieties may represent a given linguistic property in a similar way (child bilinguals = adult heritage speakers = bilingual native speakers of their home language). This occurs when either (i) the property in question is highly robust and is acquired by learners without difficulty or (ii) the property is already in decline in the baseline. We illustrate scenario (i) with data from Russian count forms, which are morphologically quite complex. The preservation of these forms in child bilinguals and adult heritage speakers suggests that simplicity of encoding is not the only factor determining robustness of retention. Second, child and heritage speakers may share a linguistic structure that differs from the one found in the baseline (bilingual native speakers of their home language ≠ child bilinguals = adult heritage speakers). This scenario occurs when incipient structural changes in the baseline become amplified in the language of next-generation bilinguals, or when a given structure is rare, confined to a specific register, and/or reinforced through literacy. Third, a structure may be acquired by bilingual children faithfully, but undergo reanalysis/attrition in the adult heritage language (bilingual native speakers of their home language = child bilinguals ≠ adult heritage speakers). Russian relativization illustrates this scenario; child bilinguals show native-like performance on relative clauses but adult heritage speakers show an exaggerated subject preference in the interpretation of gaps. Finally, a structure that is not fully learned by child speakers may be reanalyzed by adult heritage speakers following general principles, thus bringing the adult heritage representation closer to that of the baseline (bilingual native speakers of their home language = adult heritage speakers ≠ child bilinguals). Heritage speakers’ production and comprehension of psychological predicates in Spanish illustrates this possibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the development and validation of the Cognate Awareness Test (CAT), which measures cognate awareness in Spanish speaking English Language Learners (ELLs) in fourth and fifth grade. An investigation of differential performance on the two subtests of the CAT (cognates and noncognates) provides evidence that the instrument is sensitive to English-Spanish cognate awareness among elementary school-age Spanish-speaking ELLs. Cognates were highly correlated with the children's Spanish WLPB-R Picture Vocabulary scores, whereas oncognates were highly correlated to children's English WLPB-R Picture Vocabulary scores. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies in Spanish heritage language writing have recently uncovered two opposing tendencies: 'backwards biliteracy' where writing conforms to rhetorical traditions in the dominant language and 'forward biliteracy' where writing breaks away from canonical rhetorical traditions and where writers carve out their own, transcultural paths of expression. In the present paper, this opposition is revisited by focusing on one grammatical element in Spanish heritage language writing -- the variation between overt and null subject pronouns -- and it is argued that backwards and forward writing are discursively situated in the context of situation of literacy practices. On the basis of these data, a multidimensional model of transfer is proposed as a theoretical and methodological framework for the teaching of heritage language writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous works in English have revealed that disfluencies follow regular patterns and that incorporating them into the language model of a speech recognizer leads to lower perplexities and sometimes to a better performance. Although work on disfluency modeling has been applied outside the English community (e.g., in Japanese), as far as we know there is no specific work dealing with disfluencies in Spanish. In this paper, we follow a data driven approach in exploring the potential benefit of modeling disfluencies in a speech recognizer in Spanish. Two databases of human-computer and human-human dialogs are considered, which allow the absolute and relative frequencies of disfluencies in the two situations to be compared. The rate of disfluencies in human-human dialogs is found to be very close to that found for similar databases in English. Due to setup factors, the rate of disfluencies found in human-computer dialogs was remarkably higher than that reported for similar databases in English. In any case, from the point of view of speech recognition, the high frequencies of disfluencies and the distinct features of the acoustic events related to them support the need for explicit acoustic models. The regularities observed in the distribution of filled pauses and speech repairs reveal that including them in the language model of the speech recognizer may be also helpful. The extent to which the number of events depends on utterance length and on the speaker is also explored. Statistics are shown that follow previous studies for English, and a sizeable space is devoted to comparing our results with them. Finally, various possible cues for the automatic detection of speech repairs—a key issue from the point of view of speech understanding—are explored: silent pauses, filled pauses, lengthenings, cut off words and discourse markers. As previously observed for English, none of them was found to be reliable by itself. More information, especially at the acoustic-prosodic level, is no doubt needed to reliably detect speech repairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper highlights prosody as a fundamental feature of bilingual conversation. My data show that syntactic structure does not impose constraints on codeswitching, as one prevalent line of inquiry regarding codeswitching claims, but rather certain discourse structures make codeswitching at any given point more or less cognitively and interactionally profitable according to conversationalists' ability to produce and comprehend information.My corpus consists of one hour of conversational data from four competent bilinguals of Mexican heritage living in Southern California yielding a total of 782 analyzable units. Using the transcription methods developed by Du Bois, Schuetze-Coburn, Paolino, and Cumming, (1993) wherein each line of transcription consists of one Intonation Unit (Chafe, 1979, 1987, 1993, 1994), the prevalent pattern which emerged was one in which speakers overwhelmingly switched at Intonation Unit boundaries. Using what I have termed the Switch-Boundary Intonation Unit (SBIU) as my unit of analysis and adapting the notion of completion points (Ford and Thompson, 1996; Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974), I examine intonation contour type, syntactic completion and constituency, and pragmatic completion in order to best characterize the codeswitching frame. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can secessionism be a basis for affective or social polarization? Despite much research on independence movements, their relationship to polarization, a key mechanism theorized as increasing the risk of violent conflict, remains less understood. We argue that the issue of secession can affectively polarize along both policy and ethnic group lines even in the case of nonviolent disputes, and posit a number of expectations regarding such secessionist-based polarization. We test our argument with the case of Catalonia, a substate territory that has experienced a deep secessionist crisis since 2017, using new data from a panel survey and embedded experiments fielded across two key time periods. We find that individuals' secessionist preferences condition high levels of affective polarization, in that pro- and anti-independence advocates have strong negative views of one another. In addition, there is spillover in terms of stereotypes of associated language groups (i.e. Catalan, Spanish). Importantly, we find a group of moderates in between the two policy poles that exhibit far less polarization. Finally, we document the persistence of these overall patterns. Our results contribute to understanding the underexplored polarization dynamics of secessionist movements, particularly in contexts where high intensity violence (e.g. terrorism, civil war) has not occurred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social unconscious of a country or people is shaped by their origins and by the major collective traumatic experiences of their past. In the case of Mexico, this has been the trauma of the Spanish Conquest, that aimed to subjugate its originary peoples and obliterate their whole culture, language, and religion, which nonetheless subsisted subterraneously, syncretized with those of their invaders. It was a veritable genocide, both physical and cultural. The Mexican population was born from the mating of a brutal foreign conqueror and a subjected native woman, resulting in mestization, both physical and cultural. The psychic and social aftermath of these origins has been a deep ambivalence of Mexicans towards their identity and the foreign invader. This is similar to the fate of the unwelcome and abused child described by Ferenczi. Such underlying factors, derived from the collective history of peoples should be taken into account in any psychoanalytic or group-analytic enquiry of individual patients and groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Examine acculturation and psychological, lifestyle, and physiological factors based on gender and country of origin (U.S. vs. Mexico). Methods: Baseline data from the Starr County diabetes prevention study (N = 300) were analyzed – acculturation (language), psychological factors (depression), lifestyle factors (sedentary behaviors), and diabetes-related physiological outcomes (insulin resistance). MANOVA and linear regression were used to examine variable relationships based on gender and country of origin and identify predictors of depression and insulin resistance. Results: Participants were: predominantly female (73%); 51 years of age, on average; born in Mexico (71%); and Spanish-speaking. Individuals spent 11 of their waking hours (range = 0–18 h) in sedentary activities. Compared to females, more males spoke English and reported fewer hours in sedentary activities. Compared to participants born in Mexico, those born in the U.S. were more likely to: speak English; report depressive symptoms; and exhibit elevated BMI and insulin resistance rates. Two distinct models significantly predicted depression (R2 = 14.5%) and insulin resistance (R2 = 26.8%), with acculturation-language entering into both models. Discussion: Significant gender and country-of-origin differences were found. Future research on diabetes prevention should examine other Hispanic subgroups and strategies for addressing individual differences, while employing cost-effective group interventions that incorporate these differences and reach more at-risk individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on a subset of data from a larger survey study of immigrant and migrant Spanish-speaking readers in the United States and Canada, this article explores their pre-immigration reading histories; the role of reading in their lives and personal identities; specific day-to-day characteristics of their reading behaviors, including the frequency and places of reading; and the sources of information that readers use to select their new reads. This study places reading practices in the context of readers' migration experiences and pressures of adjustment and resettlement. Supported by the review of reading practices in selected countries of origin and by the analysis of the Spanish-speaking communities in the diaspora, this article contributes to the body of knowledge about immigrant and migrant readers. By so doing, it begins to address the gap in knowledge about Spanish-speaking readerships. This gap exists despite the extensive previously published research on Hispanic and Latinx library users, which has focused on their information-seeking behaviors, use of public libraries, language learning programming, and collection development in the Spanish language, without touching on reading practices. It is hoped that this study will contribute to more culturally sensitive reader services in libraries and a better understanding of Spanish-speaking community members by librarians in all types of libraries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using authentic audio-visual material in early language classes has become commonplace, but little prior empirical research has been published regarding why this pedagogical technique is effective for some students, and not others. This study examines the process of engagement and transportation of beginning foreign language learners into an authentic, Spanish language narrative-based music video. A structural equation model is developed that ties various elements such as belief consistency, cognitive difficulty, and affective disposition to the process of narrative engagement. The study then examines how a student's engagement and transportation into the music video's narrative impacts that student's language learning, thematic comprehension, and entertainment – three commonly cited objectives of using authentic audio-visual material. Evidence is provided to indicate that the degree of engagement and transportation into the narrative-based video influences students' language learning, thematic comprehension and entertainment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past research with Latina/o/x adolescent samples has found that language brokering can be a positive experience, but at times, stressful. Although many factors can contribute to these different brokering experiences, the ways in which Spanish-speaking family members and non-Spanish speakers support (or do not support) Latina/o/x adolescent children during their brokering exchanges can be a contributing factor. To better understand how Spanish-speaking family members and non-Spanish speakers can support young brokers, we interviewed 31 Latina/o/x early adolescent brokers. Our thematic analysis revealed that when brokers reported on family, the most prevalent type of supportive communication received was informational supportive communication. Brokers also reported that their family engaged in unsupportive emotional communication, but when family provided supportive communication, brokers felt efficacious and proud for helping their family. In addition, most brokers reported receiving informational supportive communication from non-Spanish speakers. Nevertheless, some brokers also reported that non-Spanish speakers provided limited informational supportive communication (i.e., absence of supportive communication). Our findings reveal what supportive and unsupportive communication might look like for brokers and how supportive communication can contribute to positive experiences for brokers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigates the acoustic differences and similarities that exist between the English and Spanish vowel systems. Spectrographic analysis of English and Spanish vowels; Similarity between the vowels i and a between languages; Vowel systems for i and a are produced with similar peak frequencies in the acoustic spectrum.

During the 2016 election, Donald Trump castigated unauthorized immigrants as "murderers and rapists." During his presidency, he continued the use of this rhetoric, explicitly linking unauthorized migrants to threatening narratives. Here, we consider three questions: Did Donald Trump and his immigration positions serve as an "anxiety trigger" for Latina/os? Are individuals with contextually stigmatized attributes especially sensitive to Trump and his policy proposals? Is Spanish language itself, an attribute negatively stigmatized in the context of the immigration issue, sufficient to increase deportation anxiety? Utilizing survey experiments of Latina/os, we demonstrate that exposure to a Trump immigration cue is sufficient to increase anxiety about deportation. We also demonstrate that stigmatized attributes predict anxiety, but do not moderate the effect of the Trump cue. Lastly, we provide evidence that survey language affects anxiety among Latina/os. In Studies 1 (n = 736) and 2 (n = 1,040), we show that exposure to information about Trump's immigration agenda significantly increases reports about deportation anxiety. In Study 3 (n = 1,734), we show that the Trump exposure condition induces heightened anxiety but that Latina/o attributes (language proficiency and use, immigration status, assessed phenotype) and identity strength have an independent effect on deportation anxiety. In Study 4 (n = 775), we randomized bilingual respondents into Spanish or English language survey protocols and found that comparable bilinguals exposed to Spanish language report higher levels of anxiety compared to English-language survey takers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to analyze the psychometric properties of the Musical Self-Concept Questionnaire (CAMU), an abbreviated and culturally adapted Spanish language version of the Music Self-Perception Inventory (MUSPI) developed by Vispoel. Participants comprised 1,126 students from professional and advanced conservatories located in different autonomous regions of Spain. The internal consistency of the instrument was found to be high (Cronbach’s alpha = .907; AVE = .685). The exploratory factor analysis revealed an internal structure consisting of seven factors: singing, playing, reading, composing, listening, moving and general musical self-concept. Sex differences and correlations between musical self-concept and both verbal self-concept and causal attributions confirm the criterion validity of the questionnaire. In addition to being a useful tool for measuring musical self-concept in Spanish, the CAMU also enables cross-cultural research into this construct to be conducted, in line with that carried out in English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a discourse genre, statements of purpose are characterized by their occluded status in the academy and by their hybrid nature. Statements of purpose are required in applications for a place in a postgraduate course (Master’s degree or doctorate), and they are requested to obtain information about the academic and professional background and skills of each applicant. A study of the genre’s linguistic and textual features is needed in Spanish to discover and understand writers’ and readers’ perception of this genre. A corpus of 50 motivation letters in Spanish is analyzed here. We study the distinguishing macro- and microtextual features of this particular genre and co-occurrences between both kinds of features. At the macrotextual level, statements of purpose display prototypical rhetorical moves, which can be classified as writers’ moves and readers’ moves. On the microtextual level, modalization resources and discourse markers are discussed. This multiple perspectives analysis of the corpus shows evidence of significant co-occurrences among modalization, discourse markers, and rhetorical moves. Writers’ ideal representations of this discourse genre, which spans the academic and professional fields, can also be deduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research investigating the effectiveness of textual enhancement as a tool to draw adult second language (L2) learners’ attention to the targeted linguistic form has consistently produced mixed results. This article examines how L2 form recognition and reading comprehension are affected by different types of textual enhancement. Participants (n = 109) in the experimental group read a passage that contained one type of textual enhancement (underline, bold, italics, change in font size, use of capital letters or change of font) on the target structure (Spanish present and preterit tense) morphemes. A control group (n = 16) read the same passage without any type of enhancement. To measure L2 form recognition, all groups completed pre- and post-tests consisting of an L2 to first language (L1) translation task. To assess the effects of enhancement type on L2 reading comprehension, the participants completed a 40 item multiple choice test with questions focusing on form or meaning from the reading. Results for the present study revealed that one type of textual enhancement was better than others with regard to facilitating L2 form recognition, and that comprehension was not hindered by enhancement, regardless of enhancement type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: This article explores the issue of second language (L2) acquisition of argument structure as it relates specifically to Spanish psych-verbs. These predicates are classified into three classes according to their distinct aspectual nature, which corresponds to different morphosyntactic properties. This study tests L2 learners’ ability to understand these subtle distinctions in spite of the impoverished input to which they are exposed and the lack of instruction and first language (L1) transfer. In particular, the research questions I explore are the following: (1) Are L2 learners aware of the fact that Class III has two possible word order configurations while Class II allows only one? (2) Do L2ers recognize that Class II allows antipassive se whereas Class III does not? Design/methodology/approach and data and analysis: A control group of 36 native Spanish speakers and an experimental group of 65 native English learners of Spanish across four proficiency levels conducted two scalar grammaticality judgment tasks. Their data, analyzed through repeated-measures ANOVA, showed that these L2ers had a good understanding of the morphosyntactic reflexes that distinguish eventive and stative psych-verbs. Findings/conclusions: Since these properties could neither have been learned through instruction nor transferred from the L1 or accessed straightforwardly from the input, learners must have resorted to universal mappings between meaning and syntax in order to achieve these target-like patterns of behavior. Originality: Although the acquisition of argument structure has been the topic of a considerable amount of early research in the field, this article looks at a completely novel instantiation of argument structure and its learnability. Significance/implications: This study contributes with new data to the long-standing debate on the poverty-of-the-stimulus (POS) argument by supporting positions that contend that L2 acquisition is characterized by a logical problem and that L2 learners can successfully overcome this POS by resorting to universal principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we test the hypothesis that code-switching leads to phonological convergence by examining voice onset time (VOT) realization in the spontaneous code-switched speech of New Mexican Spanish-English bilinguals. We find that average VOT duration values in New Mexican Spanish fall within the range typical of non-contact varieties of the language, while New Mexican English displays VOT values in the low range of typical non-contact English. When we examine the VOT values of Spanish- and English-language words at varying degrees of proximity to code-switch points, we find a similar asymmetry. In Spanish, no effect of recent code-switching is evident. In English, conversely, close proximity to code-switch points results in a significant reduction in VOT values, i.e. in the direction of Spanish. We argue that while the data studied here do not directly demonstrate a causal connection between code-switching and long-term phonological convergence, they would not be inconsistent with such a view. We discuss a number of possible causes for the observed asymmetry between Spanish and English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports a study that sought to determine whether non-native sentence comprehension can show sensitivity to two different types of Spanish case marking. Sensitivity to case violations was generally more robust with indirect objects in ditransitive constructions than with differential object marking of animate direct objects, even among native speakers of Spanish, which probably reflects linguistic differences in the two types of case. In addition, the overall outcome of two experiments shows that second language (L2) processing can integrate case information, but that, unlike with native processing, attention to a case marker may depend on the presence of a preverbal clitic as an additional cue to the types of postverbal arguments that might occur in a stimulus. Specifically, L2 readers showed no sensitivity to differential object marking with a in the absence of clitics in the first experiment, with stimuli such as Verónica visita al/el presidente todos los meses ‘Veronica visits the[ACC/NOM] president every month’, but the L2 readers in the second experiment showed native-like sensitivity to the same marker when the object it marked was doubled by the clitic lo, as in Verónica lo visita al/el presidente todos los meses. With indirect objects, on the other hand, sensitivity to case markers was native-like in both experiments, although indirect objects were also always doubled by the preverbal clitic le. The apparent first language / second language contrast suggests differences in processing strategy, whereby non-native processing of morphosyntax may rely more on the predictability of forms than does native processing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In native speakers of gender-marking languages, mechanisms of gender production appear to be affected by the morphophonological cues to gender present in the noun phrase. This influence is manifested in higher levels of production accuracy when more transparent cues to gender are present in comparison to when they are not. The goal of the present study was to examine the role of morphophonological cues to gender in the production of gender agreement in native speakers and second language learners of Spanish in light of the Marking and Morphing account of agreement (Eberhard et al., 2005). Participants repeated and completed complex subject noun phrases with head nouns that varied in gender and gender-marking transparency. Analyses of accuracy rates along with Marking and Morphing model simulations of the results indicated that, contrary to previous findings, native speakers were not affected by gender-marking transparency. However, based on model simulations, second language (L2) learners were affected by the morphophonological form of the head noun. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Spanish has a series of evidential discourse markers that combine the lexical semantics of visual perception with reference to inference or hearsay, for example, evidentemente ‘evidently’, por lo visto ‘visibly, seemingly’, al parecer ‘seemingly’ and se ve (que) ‘one sees that, apparently’. The main aim of this article is to examine the grammatical, semantic and interactional properties of these four evidential discourse markers in informal and formal spoken Spanish. From a semantic point of view, we study the evidential values expressed by these markers (i.e. direct evidence, reportative, inference) and discuss the correlations between them. From a functional point of view, we analyse the evidential markers on the basis of discourse-interactional criteria such as illocutionary force, position in the turn and kind of turn. From a grammatical point of view, we address the preferences in terms of person and Tense/Aspect/Modality (TAM) experienced by these evidential markers in discourse. The main result of our analysis is that, as far as the semantic and discourse properties are concerned, evidentemente differs from por lo visto, al parecer and se ve que. The former seems to refer primarily to shared thoughts, developing a reading that goes beyond any of the traditionally distinguished evidential values. The three other markers, by contrast, refer to indirect evidence, often combining the evidential values of reported knowledge and inference. In talk-in-interaction, the two types of markers behave differently: evidentemente does not enhance turn-taking, whereas the other markers leave room for the co-participant to give his or her view of the state of affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This work addresses the relation among the semantic-pragmatic categories of evidentiality, epistemicity and intensification based on a study of the discursive use of certain Spanish idiomatic phraseological units. The first part offers an introduction to some theoretical aspects, while the second part analyses the usage of the idiom a fe que. Two important theses that are defended in this article are as follows: (a) evidentiality has played an important role in the process of lexicalisation and grammaticalisation of a number of idiomatic phraseological units and (b) some evidential expressions display the existence of close relationships among evidentiality, epistemicity and intensification. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores the use of epistemic stance strategies in journalistic discourse in English and Spanish. The linguistic resources of epistemic stance include evidential and modal expressions, as well as verbs of cognitive attitude and expressions of factivity. This article examines the pattern of distribution of epistemic stance expressions in three types of journalistic genres in English and Spanish and the presence of multifunctionality of some evidential expressions in the two languages. The article aims to reveal possible similarities or differences in the use of the stance resources in the various genres and across languages. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study investigates a teacher’s L1 use during focus-on-form episodes (FFEs). FFEs assist L2 learning by bringing learners’ attention to language. We studied the language used in FFEs in a Spanish as a foreign language (SFL) classroom to better understand the pedagogical purposes of L1 use in the classroom. We video-recorded 12 hours of an intermediate-high SFL classroom with an L1 English teacher at a US university. The audio data was segmented into FFEs and then coded (English L1, Spanish L2, mix) to reflect the language used in each of the teacher’s utterances. We also identified the linguistic areas (e.g., grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation) targeted in the FFEs. Chi-square and descriptive statistics were used to understand the relationship between the teacher’s language and the linguistic areas. Lastly, using the same data set, we conducted a qualitative analysis in order to depict the situations in which the teacher employed the L1 and L2. There was a significant relationship between the teacher’s language and the FFEs’ linguistic areas. Specifically, the L1 and L2 were used equally when FFEs concerned vocabulary and grammar. However, when FFEs concerned semantics, frequent code-switching occurred. The qualitative data illustrate that the language choice may depend on the interactional patterns and the complexity of the linguistic structure. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article reports an experiment on the implicit learning of second language stress regularities, and presents a methodological innovation on awareness measurement. After practising two-syllable Spanish words, native Cantonese speakers with English as a second language (L2) completed a judgement task. Critical items differed only in placement of stress. We assessed participants’ awareness of the hidden stress regularities by verbal reports and a novel methodology: inclusion–exclusion production tasks adapted from Jacoby (1991) and from Destrebecqz and Cleeremans (2001). Participants who remained unaware of the underlying regularities nevertheless performed significantly above chance in identifying correctly pronounced novel words. We conclude that L2 word stress regularities may be learnt implicitly. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study investigates the extent to which advanced native-English L2 learners of Spanish come to acquire restrictions on bare plural preverbal subjects in L2 Spanish (e.g. gatos “cats” vs. definite plurals such as los gatos “the cats”). It tests L2 knowledge of available semantic readings of bare plurals and definite plurals in Spanish, where [+specific] and [+generic] interpretations are syntactically represented differently from English. Assuming L1 transfer, and in view of a potential subset/superset relationship of the two grammars, the learning task in this domain is not a straightforward one. Target acquisition requires both grammatical expansion and retraction; Spanish definite plural subjects require the addition of an L1-unavailable [+generic] reading, while a loss of an L1-available [+generic] reading for preverbal subject bare plurals is required. The results and analysis show that advanced L2 learners of Spanish (English L1) can circumvent a superficial subset/superset learnability problem by means of feature resetting in line with the Nominal Mapping Parameter. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We administered German and Spanish versions of the Neuroticism Extraversion Openness–Five-Factor Inventory personality inventory to two groups of late bilinguals (second-language learners) of these two languages. Regardless of individuals’ first language, both groups scored higher on Extraversion and Neuroticism when Spanish was the test language. In turn, scores on Agreeability were higher when German was used as the test language. The results are interpreted as evidence for cultural frame shifts consistent with cultural norms associated with the presently used language. Beyond the acquisition of linguistic skills, learning a second language seems to provide individuals with a new range of perceiving and displaying their own personality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quotatives have been studied extensively in the language of teenagers in recent years as they present distinctive features of their own that make them different in part from those used by adults in mainstream English and Spanish. However, zero quoting has not received all the attention it certainly deserves as it has not been fully probed in terms of its discourse and pragmatic functions. This corpus-based study is focused on the strategies used by British and Spanish teenagers to introduce constructed dialogue without the use of a particular marked and an explicit quotative form. The results indicate that the absence of quotatives is not casual; there are some linguistic contexts that favor the existence of this type of quotatives, namely non-lexicalized and sound words, and the dramatic recreation of situations where the speaker(s) perform new voices. The lack of quotatives also serves to involve the interlocutor more directly and in a higher degree in what is being told, and gives more self-assurance to the narrator. These tendencies apply equally to English and Spanish. The study of null/zero quotatives should go then beyond the simple reporting of an absence of a verbal mark, and should address pragmatic and interpersonal factors closely associated with the context where they occur and with the speaker’s attitude and communicative intention and purpose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crosslinguistically, children begin producing the person and number features of personal pronouns in a similar order. This article explored whether the same is true of verbal agreement morphology and evaluated three potential explanatory hypotheses which could account for a universal sequence of the development of phi features: the existence of an innate feature geometry, statistical properties in the input, and the organization of verbal paradigms. I examined these hypotheses in light of data from 20 bilingual children aged 2;00–3;06 years acquiring Basque and Spanish as well as child-directed speech from four adult speakers of Basque and Spanish. The results did not fit the predictions of the feature-geometric analysis nor the frequency-driven approach. However, there is evidence of paradigm building from the children’s early errors in the production of finite verbs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The aim of this article is to analyse the acquisition of object–verb/verb–object word order in Spanish and Basque by monolinguals (L1), early simultaneous bilinguals (2L1) and successive bilinguals, exposed to their second language before ages 5–6 (child L2). In this study, the second language (child L2) is acquired naturalistically, in a preschool setting with no formal instruction for the Basque L2 speakers and by environmental contact for the Spanish L2 speakers. Spanish and Basque are differentiated by their canonical word order as subject–verb–object and subject–object–verb, respectively. In Spanish, the subject–verb–object order is predominant (almost exclusive) in narrative contexts, whereas in Basque, both object–verb and verb–object word orders are possible in these contexts for pragmatic reasons, with a similar use in everyday language. The productions of a few L1 and 2L1 subjects are analysed longitudinally within the 1;06–3;00 age span. Cross-sectional data from 49 subjects who developed a child L2 are analysed at ages 5 and 8. The results reveal that the bilingual children apply the same syntactic patterns as the monolinguals in their respective languages independently of 2L1 or child L2 acquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]