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Authoring support consists of (semi)automated aids to be used at different stages during the writing process. Language information, however, tends to be restricted to areas such as spelling and grammar checking or term banks, and text construction difficulties that writers face concerning the structure of particular genres, associated sentence formulations or genre-specific vocabulary have not received proper attention. An additional gap in the research is that this support is generally addressed to English language users. This paper addresses these concerns focusing on a particular genre: the company's directors' report, and on Spanish language writers writing in English. A custom-made monolingual corpus has been analyzed using Bhatia (1993, 2004) and Swales (1990, 2004) definitions of genre and move combined with theme characterization. Recurrent strings for each move/step, which are conventionally associated with each rhetorical unit, were identified and formulated as "meta-strings." The bilingual glossary includes domain-specific items as well as move/step or genre-specific lexical and phraseological options, i.e., elements used irrespective of the business, places or people involved. The results are valuable by themselves, as an analysis of the genre, but also as the empirical basis for the authoring support tool that we present here, and as language training materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recurrent assumption in psycholinguistics is that certain universal principles of computational economy guide the structural decisions made during sentence processing. The first study conducted in Spanish on attachment decisions (Cuetos & Mitchell, 1988) questioned the existence of such principles by presenting evidence that Spanish speakers prefer to use an early closure or high attachment strategy to solve the interpretation of sentences with relative clauses with two potential antecedents. Since then, several studies have been conducted that provide contradictory evidence. In this paper, we present a comprehensive and critical review of the research on Spanish, examining the various methodologies used and the influence of different factors on syntactic processing. The implications of these findings for models of sentence processing are also discussed, and the possibility of considering universal principles is debated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to analyze the sociolinguistic conditioning factors that motivate the expression of the pronominal subject in the Spanish spoken in the Colombian Caribbean. The sample consisted of recordings of 18 informants for each sociolinguistic corpus (Barranquilla, Cartagena and Valledupar), which make up the variety spoken in the Colombian Caribbean, collected based on the PRESEEA methodology. The cases were adapted to the coding guide for the expression variable of the pronominal subject of the PRESEEA. The quantitative analysis was carried out with the Rbrul program. The similarity observed in a preliminary contrastive study of the varieties and the exclusion of the subdialect predictor reveal the coherence of the dialect in terms of pronominal expression. The results show a high rate of pronominal expression (44.2%) for the analyzed variety, which includes it among the Caribbean ones. The multivariate analysis showed that nine linguistic and two social variables play a significant role in pronominal variation and confirm the strong and complex influence of linguistic factors, much more than social, on the variable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the process of the research entitled "Spanish as a Foreign Language SFL Teaching through Colombian Festivals Language", which sought to promote its learning, from the perspective of strengthening of interculturality. It was circumscribed in the interpretive paradigm with a qualitative approach based on culture as inherent content of the process. It is a study with the help of a pilot test that involved the design of teaching units for C Level of CEFR that would stimulate it in other languages learners. It was sought to activate communicative and intercultural competence, so that non-native speakers of Spanish had access to the meanings that speakers from different Colombian regions give them. For which a theoretical framework on the relationship between language and culture was needed. As a result, this research has not only a pedagogical-didactic value, but also a sociocultural one, since it confirms that learning a language is inhabiting the culture that speaks it. It is concluded that SFL teaching through ordinary language is a viable and a productive strategy because it implies a genuine immersion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines evidential hashtags on Twitter. The analyzed hashtags contain constructions of the verb decir (‘to say’) that are preceded by the hash symbol (e.g., #dicen, #sedice, #esodicen, #dicenporahí), which have not been analyzed from the perspective of evidentiality. An exploratory and qualitative study was performed using a sample of 94 tweets that were published over six months. The analysis addresses structural and semantic-pragmatic parameters. According to the results of the analysis, evidential hashtags can transmit reportative, quotative and folklore evidentiality. Furthermore, the evidential meaning of the hashtags is accompanied by pragmatic functions such as attenuation, ironic dissociation and argumentative strengthening. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Around 5% of the world population suffers from hearing impairment. One of its main barriers is communication with others since it could lead to their social exclusion and frustration. To overcome this issue, this paper presents a system to interpret the Spanish sign language alphabet which makes the communication possible in those cases, where it is necessary to sign proper nouns such as names, streets, or trademarks. For this, firstly, we have generated an image dataset of the signed 30 letters composing the Spanish alphabet. Then, given that there are static and in-motion letters, two different kinds of neural networks have been tested and compared: convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and recurrent neural networks (RNNs). A comparative analysis of the experimental results highlights the importance of the spatial dimension with respect to the temporal dimension in sign interpretation. So, CNNs obtain a much better accuracy, with 96.42% being the maximum value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The diagnostic criteria for the semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia (svPPA) include the possible presence of acquired surface dyslexia or dysgraphia. Acquired surface dyslexia is characterized by a greater difficulty in reading irregular words with the production of regularization errors. On the other hand, acquired surface dysgraphia is characterized by difficulties in writing irregularly spelled words, which are stimuli that produce phonologically plausible errors. The identification of these patterns in Spanish has been subject to controversy due to the orthographic transparency of the language and its lack of irregular words. However, differences do exist between reading (completely transparent) and writing (considerably irregular) and thus, designing tests to identify acquired surface dysgraphia is a simple task, since there are irregular words for writing in Spanish. Nevertheless, few cases of acquired surface dysgraphia have been reported in Spanish-speaking patients. In addition, the identification of acquired surface dyslexia in Spanish-speaking patients requires the use of tasks other than reading irregular words. Aims: The aim of this paper is to report the reading and writing impairments of a Spanish-speaking patient with svPPA, and show that it is possible to identify patterns of acquired surface dysgraphia and dyslexia in a transparent language. Methods and procedure: Single case study of a Spanish-speaking patient with svPPA. The tests administered were: writing to dictation of words (both regular and irregular) and nonwords, reading of words and nonwords (measuring accuracy and reaction times) and lexical decision with pseudohomophones. Outcomes and results: We found a regularity effect in the writing to dictation task with the generation of several phonologically plausible errors, a loss of lexical advantage in reading latencies although reading accuracy was conserved, and a pseudohomophone disadvantage effect in the lexical decision task; thus, resulting in a profile consistent with the patterns of acquired surface dysgraphia and dyslexia. Conclusions: The results obtained indicate it is possible to identify these patterns when the characteristics of the language are taken into consideration in the selection of tests to be administered. Therefore, it is possible to test for all the established criteria for svPPA in Spanish-speaking patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of this study is to present a test to evaluate the pragmatic competence of Chinese students of Spanish as a foreign language. This article describes the process of creation of the test and presents the whole test for its use by Spanish language teachers. For the creation of this test, two empirical studies were carried out: a preliminary study and a main study. The preliminary study is an ethnographic study that starts from the exemplary generation method, whose final objective is to know the perception of the difficulty that Chinese students have. These students are studying in Spanish universities and are facing different communicative situations in their everyday life. Thus, this preliminary study serves as a starting point for the design of the main study, the elaboration of the test. For the design of the pragmatic comprehension test, a correlation or psychometric methodology is used, through which variables are described and their relationships are analysed from a representative sample of subjects. This paper shows a final product: a standardized test that meets the requirements of utility (authenticity, interactivity, impact, practicability and assessment, and scoring) proposed by Bachman and Palmer (1996) for language tests and psychometric reliability statistical requirements and validity. This pragmatic test is published in its entirety and exclusively in this journal so that it can be used by Spanish teachers and researchers with the aim of improving teaching and research in the acquisition of the pragmatics of Spanish as a foreign language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers student teachers as reflective practitioners arguing that reflection processes can be established in university pre-service programmes, rather than the more widely acknowledged school practicum. Results from a small-scale study into micro-teaching sessions, where student teachers taught peers, indicate that 'teachers' and 'learners' benefitted from sharing knowledge, and from reflection afterwards, evaluating teaching and learning approaches and considering strategies for future practice. Increased confidence, teamwork and appreciation of practical considerations: organisation, planning and resources were all highlighted by students after the sessions. We conclude that stimulating reflection in the university setting through peer teaching offers a helpful perspective for teacher educators, so that during school practicum, students can interrogate their practice effectively, enhancing their pedagogy. We also raise questions about theory-informed practice and its role in reflection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study reports on how the affordances of the WebEx platform were used as multimodality resources during the negotiation of meaning by participants engaged in an English/Spanish eTandem video-conferencing exchange. The exchange involved five dyads of university students with an intermediate level of language proficiency. A total of seven tasks were completed in each language. Analysis of the transcribed interaction revealed 915 focus-on-form episodes (FFEs). Further analysis of the FFEs revealed that six types of multimodality resources were involved during the negotiation process: chat, pictures, whiteboard, electronic translator, webcam, and paper dictionary. Of these, the most frequently used were chat (over half of all FFEs), pictures, and the whiteboard. Although previous studies have pointed to the importance of multimodality resources during the negotiation of meaning, the present study provides statistical support and attests to the frequent use of combined resources. In contrast to previous studies that have mainly involved Skype, the study highlights how the increased affordances of the WebEx platform enhanced participants' ability to negotiate meaning, especially with respect to chat, the shared document feature that facilitated the use of pictures and the whiteboard for drawings. Although limited in their appreciation of the webcam with respect to actual language learning, participants acknowledged its importance at the socio-affective level as a means of establishing social presence and creating a rapport with partners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the acoustic characteristics of sound [s] in the cities of: Medellín and Apartadó and explores the hypothesis that the articulation of /s/ will serve to distinguish between the dialects spoken in these two areas. The study analizes 943 [s] produced by a total amount of 32 speakers. The following parameters were considered in the analysis: Center of gravity, spectral peak, standard deviation of the spectrum, skewness, kurtosis, zero crossings and harmonic-noise ratio. Results suggest that: in syllable onset [s] is more apical in Medellín and more dentalised in Apartadó. Also, Medellín's onset [s] is more sibilant. In coda position, there is no difference between the two dialects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines evidential hashtags on Twitter. The analyzed hashtags contain constructions of the verb decir ('to say') that are preceded by the hash symbol (e.g., #dicen, #sedice, #esodicen, #dicenporahí), which have not been analyzed from the perspective of evidentiality. An exploratory and qualitative study was performed using a sample of 94 tweets that were published over six months. The analysis addresses structural and semantic-pragmatic parameters. According to the results of the analysis, evidential hashtags can transmit reportative, quotative and folklore evidentiality. Furthermore, the evidential meaning of the hashtags is accompanied by pragmatic functions such as attenuation, ironic dissociation and argumentative strengthening. [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]

This paper introduces MadSex, a spoken corpus of 54 sociolinguistic interviews in Spanish based on the topic of sexuality. It was collected in order to study the cognitive sociolinguistic variation of sexual concepts. The paper presents and justifies methodological decisions taken during design, collection and transcription stages. Informants were selected in Madrid, based on a pre-stratified sample divided by sex, age and level of education. The interview methodology relied on an opinion questionnaire designed for the indirect elicitation of sexual concepts, which overcame successfully the limitations imposed by the low frequencies of semantic variables in discourse and the impact of sexual taboo in interaction. Relevant aspects of fieldwork, empathy and ethical protocols are also detailed in the paper. Transcription and markup are explained. Finally, an overview of the corpus is given, as well as some research papers based on it. Examples of the questionnaire are also provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers the notion of semantic attenuation (Langacker 1985, 1990) as a bleaching process that involve subjectivity and thus can operate as the basis for the formation of cierto 'certain' as an attenuative marker where assertiveness is downplayed. The notion of intersubjectivity proposed by Delbecque for cierto (2009) is revised based on the range of meanings attested in discourse in Mexican Spanish. Intersubjective-objective uses are to be distinguished from intersubjective-interlocutive ones as the second type depends crucially on the interaction between speech participants. The study shows that the attenuative uses of cierto do not come from the adjectival intersubjective uses but from the fuzzy specific-indefinite determination of cierto and other fixed constructions (en cierta manera 'in some way', hasta cierto punto 'up to some degree/point') which diminish the degree of assertiveness of a sentence. The first samples of attenuation come from modifying scalar properties with negative associations and, from those uses, other assertive reducing effects take place. Finally, the paper shows that the digressive marker por cierto which operates at the level of discourse continuity lacks the semantic properties to fully operate as an attenuative marker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is dedicated to the study of the dissemination of Spanish books—books written in Spanish—during the 16th century in Brussels. This study is based on an inventory of the bookseller-printer Michiel van Hamont made in 1569, at the request of the authorities searching for heretical books. This is the first survey conducted on this subject. Spanish books that have effectively circulated within the Southern Netherlands, have generally been neglected by scholars. They mainly focused their attention on local production (which books were printed by whom) and export to the Iberian World (Kingdom of Spain and Americas). They studied the rise of Antwerp as a major centre of Spanish vernacular editions and its role in the dissemination of Spanish books. The first findings in this paper show that the distribution of Spanish books in Brussels in the mid-sixteenth century is merely a marginal phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Audio description is an access service that translates visuals into words which are then received auditorily by end users. This article aims to compare audio descriptions created by professionals and by students in Spanish, in order to identify commonalities and divergences, if any. Part of the VIW corpus is used to that end. Although limited in size, the VIW corpus is the first open-access multilingual multimodal corpus of audio descriptions, including various audio descriptions of the same visual input, namely the short film "What happens while". The analysis presented in this paper focuses on quantitative data such as the number of words, number of AD units and sentences, as well as on the distribution of word classes. Where relevant, data are compared to general language corpora so as to highlight the specificities of the language of audio description. The paper also compares the most frequent words used by both groups, and a selection of semantic classes automatically retrieved is analysed. This article provides new insights into the language of audio description and shows the research potential of the VIW corpus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender bias is affecting many natural language processing applications. While we are still far from proposing debiasing methods that will solve the problem, we are making progress analyzing the impact of this bias in current algorithms. This paper provides an extensive study of the underlying gender bias in popular contextualized word embeddings. Our study provides an insightful analysis of evaluation measures applied to several English data domains and the layers of the contextualized word embeddings. It is also adapted and extended to the Spanish language. Our study points out the advantages and limitations of the various evaluation measures that we are using and aims to standardize the evaluation of gender bias in contextualized word embeddings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the first written sources containing information about the Poqomchi' language (Mayan family, Guatemala) is the trilingual Poqomchi'-Spanish-Latin dictionary dating from the beginning of the seventeenth century. Its author was a Dominican missionary, Dionisio de Zúñiga, although his work is based on earlier dictionaries of his predecessors. This paper analyses Zúñiga's dictionary in the context of Dominican evangelizing tradition. Whereas the descriptions of certain lexical entries prove that the author was familiar with the culture and customs of the Poqomchi' people, some other terms, specifically those denoting pre-Columbian deities and native religious concepts, seem to be derived from earlier missionary texts including Domingo de Vico's famous Theologia Indorum. These intertextualities confirm the intellectual continuity among Dominican missionaries in Highland Guatemala during the early colonial period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this paper is to revisit the so-called aspectual se, frequently cited over the last three decades as a new function of reflexive pronouns in Spanish and other languages, which refers to facultative uses of the reflexive pronoun where it has no effect on the valency or diathesis of the verb. I will focus on four empirical problems that such accounts face when dealing with corpus data: the requirement of a delimited object for transitive verbs, the semantic implications of the aspectual function of the reflexive pronoun, the unacceptability of the reflexive pronoun with some predicates, and the fact that these accounts have ignored a number of predicates that also take this facultative reflexive pronoun. I argue that a larger sample of both contexts and verbs, obtained by exhaustively analyzing corpus data, is necessary to improve our understanding of these uses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the U.S. Utilizing family health history in cancer prevention holds promise in lessening the burden of cancer. Nevertheless, family health history is underutilized in public health and preventive medicine. Community health workers, also known as lay health educators, are ideal candidates to offer basic cancer family history-based education and services to the general public. The authors developed the first cancer family history-based genomics training program in cancer prevention tailored for community health workers. This paper details the development and pilot testing findings of the training. Specifically, a multidisciplinary research team of geneticists, genetic counselors, health educators, community health workers, and community health worker instructors developed a 7-module, 6-hour, bilingual (English and Spanish) cancer family history-based training focusing on cancer family history-based risk assessment, lifestyle recommendations, and genetic evaluation and testing. The curriculum was based on an integrated theoretical framework, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network guidelines, the community health worker core competencies, and the 4MAT instructional model. The Texas Department of State Health Services approved and certified the curriculum with 2 delivery formats: in-person/face-to-face workshops and online training. A total of 34 community health workers completed the pilot training in person (n=17) and online (n=17) in 2018 and 2019. Participating community health workers' knowledge, attitudes, self-efficacy, and intention in delivering basic cancer family history-based genomics education and services significantly increased on the immediate post-test measures compared with their pretest data. Positive ratings and feedback were also reported by the community health workers. Findings from this pilot study suggest that wider training is warranted for educating more community health workers in the U.S. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considering that Digital Information and Communication Technologies (DICTs) are integrated into the development of our daily actions, including those that belong to the school environment, it is necessary to reflect on the possibilities of use that they offer inside and outside schools. Thus, we understand that the school context is one of those responsible for showing learners the possibilities to act in virtual contexts. In language teaching, for example, it is up to it to encourage new literate practices through the perception of DICTs as tools that enable self-knowledge and autonomy in learning. In this sense, this paper proposes to briefly discuss the role of digital literacy for autonomous learning of foreign languages, notably the Spanish language. This text presents the results of a qualitative research that aimed to identify how a group of adolescents sees and uses TDICs to learn Spanish independently. Participants were randomly selected from high school students at a Brazilian federal public school. The "digital microliteracy" concept proposed in here seeks to afford the analyzes of how these apprentices perceive the possibilities that the virtual environment can offer them in relation to the autonomous learning of the Spanish language. It was possible to verify that the agents surveyed realized that the DICTs are agents that provide interaction between peoples of other nationalities, thus promoting interculturality, but at the same time needed more guidance on how to use them effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I argue that the Mio Cid epithet, most widely associated with the Castilian warrior exile Rodrigo Díaz and traditionally believed to have been bestowed upon him by Arabic speakers, is in fact an autochthonous Castilian formula closely related to equivalent hybrid formulas such as Mi Anaya and Mi Echa. Close attention to the charters of the Northern Meseta allows us to flesh out a small but significant corpus of such references and also observe such names being used in a second idiosyncratic way as generic witnesses. By framing the Mio Cid usage within this broader onomastic tradition, a more solid geography and chronology emerge and these in turn indicate a relatively widespread use of such terms in late eleventh and early twelfth-century Castile, initially in aristocratic circles, before the epithets morphed into personal names. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the Natural Language Processing community have been moving from uncontextualized word embeddings towards contextualized word embeddings. Among these contextualized architectures, BERT stands out due to its capacity to compute bidirectional contextualized word representations. However, its competitive performance in English downstream tasks is not obtained by its multilingual version when it is applied to other languages and domains. This is especially true in the case of the Spanish language used in Twitter. In this work, we propose TWiLBERT, a specialization of BERT architecture both for the Spanish language and the Twitter domain. Furthermore, we propose a Reply Order Prediction signal to learn inter-sentence coherence in Twitter conversations, which improves the performance of TWilBERT in text classification tasks that require reasoning on sequences of tweets. We perform an extensive evaluation of TWilBERT models on 14 different text classification tasks, such as irony detection, sentiment analysis, or emotion detection. The results obtained by TWilBERT outperform the state-of-the-art systems and Multilingual BERT. In addition, we carry out a thorough analysis of the TWilBERT models to study the reasons of their competitive behavior. We release the pre-trained TWilBERT models used in this paper, along with a framework for training, evaluating, and fine-tuning TWilBERT models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper summarizes the findings of the Neuropsychological Norms for the U.S.-Mexico Border Region in Spanish (NP-NUMBRS) Project and offers a roadmap for future research. The NP-NUMBRS project represents the largest and most comprehensive co-normed neuropsychological battery to date for native Spanish-speaking healthy adults from the U.S. (California/Arizona)-Mexico borderland region (N = 254; ages 19–60 years). These norms provide demographic adjustments for tests across numerous domains (i.e., verbal fluency, processing speed, attention/working memory, executive function, episodic memory [learning and delayed recall], visuospatial, and fine motor skills). This project: 1) shows that the NP-NUMBRS norms consistently outperformed previously published norms for English-speaking non-Hispanic (White and African-American) adults in identifying impairment; 2) explores the role of Spanish-English bilingualism in test performance; and 3) provides support for the diagnostic validity of these norms in detecting HIV-associated neurocognitive impairment. Study limitations include the limited assessment of sociocultural variables and generalizability (e.g., other Latina/o populations, age limit [19 − 60 years]). Future research is needed to: 1) investigate these norms with U.S.-dwelling Spanish-speakers of non-Mexican heritage and other clinical subpopulations; 2) expand coverage of cognitive domains (e.g. language, visuospatial); 3) develop large normative datasets for children and older Latina/o populations; 4) examine how sociocultural factors impact performance (e.g., bilingualism, acculturation); 5) investigate these norms' diagnostic and ecological validity; and 6) develop norms for neurocognitive change across time. It is hoped that the NP-NUMBRS norms will aid researchers and clinicians working with U.S.-dwelling Spanish-speakers from the U.S.-Mexico borderland to conduct research and evidence-based neuropsychological evaluations in a more culturally responsive and ethical manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper describes the methodology and sample characteristics of the Neuropsychological Norms for the U.S.-Mexico Border Region in Spanish (NP-NUMBRS) Project, which aimed to generate demographically-adjusted norms for a battery of neuropsychological tests in this population. The sample consisted of 254 healthy Spanish-speakers, ages 19-60 years, recruited from the U.S.-Mexico border regions of Arizona (n = 102) and California (n = 152). Participants completed a comprehensive neuropsychological test battery assessing multiple domains (verbal fluency, speed of information processing, attention/working memory, executive function, learning and memory, visual-spatial skills and fine motor skills). Fluency in both Spanish and English was assessed with performance-based measures. Other culturally-relevant data on educational, social, and language background were obtained via self-report. Demographic influences on test performances were modeled using fractional polynomial equations that allow consideration of linear and non-linear effects. There were no significant demographic differences between participants tested in Arizona and California. Age and gender were similar across education ranges. Two thirds of the sample were Spanish dominant and the remainder were considered bilingual. Individual articles in this Special Issue detail the generation of demographically adjusted T-scores for the various tests in the battery as well as an exploration of bilingualism effects. Norms developed through the NP-NUMBRS project stand to improve the diagnostic accuracy of neuropsychological assessment in Spanish-speaking young-to-middle-aged adults living in the U.S.-Mexico border region. Application of the present norms to other groups should be done with caution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: In the wake of the national controversy over demographically corrected normative comparisons used in neuropsychological assessment, the field finds itself in need of adopting better practices and providing stronger instruction in norm selection and application when assessing underrepresented populations. Neuropsychologists must employ critical thinking within their clinical decision-making that takes into account patient demographics, analysis of the measures themselves, normative samples, and statistical adjustments employed in normative studies. Not doing so may result in erroneous diagnostic conclusions, exposing underserved patient populations to poor or harmful clinical care and even misdiagnosis. The following case series presents several demographic considerations illustrating how selection and application of different (at times, ill-fitting) normative reference groups can affect treatment outcomes in the Latinx community. We examined the performance of various published norms when applied to monolingual and bilingual Spanish speakers. Participants and Methods: This study samples three demographically diverse (i.e., education, age, and sex) clinical cases and applies regression-based and stratified norms to raw scores to demonstrate the possible differential outcomes when using different reference groups. One example is Ms. Congeniality, a 69-year-old, Spanish and English bilingual woman with 12 years of education who presented for a third revaluation at our clinic due to progressive memory loss. Her prior Spanish language profiles demonstrated impaired confrontation naming and steadily decreasing letter fluency over the past 10 years. Results: Her performance on semantic fluency (i.e., animal naming) showed relative stability based on her raw scores (10 in 2012, 11 in 2016, and 12 in 2022). Using the Neuropsi A&M norms, which stratify performance across nine age ranges between ages 6-85 and three education ranges between 0-10+ years, her performance over the past 10 years ranged between the less than 1st percentile to the 9th percentile (1%, 1%, and 9%, respectively). However, using the NP-NUMBRS norms, which use regression-based continuous age (19-60) and education (0-20) predictors of test performance, her scores corresponded to steadily improved performance (8%, 28%, and 86%). Thus, this qualitative comparison demonstrates a likely overcorrection for individuals of advanced age when using norms based on samples that are a poor fit because they lack representation of older adults, as in NP-NUMBRS, and a possible undercorrection when using norms with overly broad education stratifications (e.g., 10-22 years, as in Neuropsi). Conclusions: Application of ill-fitting normative standards can have far-reaching implications for interpretation of neuropsychological test results. Moreover, this case series exemplifies the need for higher-order instruction in norm selection, specifically for underserved communities who run the risk of being misdiagnosed. Through case examples, this study underscores the importance of understanding the unique effects of different demographic corrections in the context of limited available normative reference groups. This abstract is the first illustration in a series of papers aimed at facilitating the decision-making process within the framework of socially responsible neuropsychological practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the discourse of a specific type of meme in Spanish, the image macro, is analysed, together with several ways in which memes generate humorous effects. Two main areas are addressed: (a) how humour arises from the processing of the text in the meme (decoding of the text plus further inferential enrichment); and (b) how humour relies on specific combinations of the text and the image in the meme. The pragmatic framework used in the analysis will be relevance theory (Sperber and Wilson 1995), which in previous research (especially Yus 2016) has proven to be a valid foundation for the analysis of humour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A formal perspective is the focus of this paper, which aims to discuss and represent the perception of nasalization of vowel /a/ in certain nasal contexts, a phenomenon of allophony in Spanish, which can be either phonological or allophonic in Portuguese. Empirical support is based on data from 9 native speakers from Montevideo, Uruguay, and 15 Brazilian learners of Spanish as a second language. Perception data, taken from studies carried out by Brisolara and Matzenauer (2018a, 2018b), were obtained by an Identification Test, which was run by the TP software program (RAUBER et al., 2012). The fact that the Uruguayan have lower accuracy than the Brazilian to identify nasalized vowels is attributed to the strict allophonic nature of the phenomenon in Spanish. It was captured and formalized by the Bidirectional Processing and Grammar Model -- BiPhon (BOERSMA, 2006, 2007; BOERSMA; HAMANN, 2009), which integrates the Stochastic Optimality Theory. Since perception, according to BiPhon, has the role of mapping continuous phonetic representation to a discrete phonological surface structure, the phenomenon related to the perception of nasalization of the vowel /a/ in Spanish was formalized in a way that represented, through the interaction between Cue Constraints and Structural Constraints, the difference between grammars of Brazilian Spanish learners and of Uruguayans: the weight of the *VORALN and *Vnasal Structural Constraints was decisive in specifying both grammars, and the proximity of the central values of the Structural and Cue Constraints represented the presence of variation in the perception data of the Uruguayan and the Brazilian. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the present paper is to analyse the state of Medical Spanish in two monolingual dictionaries (Dictionary of the Spanish Language of RAE and Dictionary of Spanish Use by María Moliner). Moreover, the entries will be compared in two other medical dictionaries which are available on-line (Diccionario médico-biológico, histórico y etimológico and the dictionary of PortalesMedicos). The object of this study are thirty definitions related to semantic field of sports massage: the focus of research will be also on studying the occurrance of the terms of corpus and whether the entries have labels and what kinds of them (of medicine, biology, physiotherapy or others). The result of the carried-out research is that definitions from corpus not always meet one of the fundamental principle of the scientific language -- to be monosemous. Using the labels in the analysed field is inconsistent and diverse. Neither physiotherapy nor medicine are the most often occurring labels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses contributions of literature to foreign language teaching, in the training and performance of teachers, based on two research projects: a Master's degree, which analyzed two collections of textbooks for teaching the Spanish language; and a teaching project that focused on the performance of undergraduate students in Letters/Spanish during their trainee period at a foreign language center. The research is intersected by the perspective that the literary text can contribute significantly to the teaching of languages, since it presents linguistic, cultural, social and historical elements. The investigations were based on the literature review on the teaching of Spanish as a Foreign Language in Brazil and on qualitative research-act ion (LÜDKE; ANDRÉ, 2013; THIOLLENT, 2011). The conclusion was that the broad potential of literature is not yet sufficiently explored in the classroom, neither in textbooks, which maintain a superficial and utilitarian approach, a factor that corroborates the relevance of this discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a discussion of narrative podcasts based on the analysis of Radio Ambulante, a Spanish language radio show created in the United States in 2011. The research aims to demonstrate that the emergence of the narrative podcast is strongly linked to the tradition of National Public Radio (NPR), the American public radio network founded in 1970. The article presents a brief history and examples of NPR radio shows that became fundamental in the development of the podcast’s journalistic tradition. In addition, it highlights the Radio Ambulante project as one of the most representative examples of this tradition in a foreign language. In this essay, two episodes of this podcast are analyzed: “Las Hijas de Maria Señorina” and “Mais Médicos”, productions of 2018 totally or partially dedicated to Brazil that had their audio transcribed in Portuguese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The election of Jair Bolsonaro for the presidency of Brazil in 2018 had repercussions worldwide. Important vehicles, such as The Economist and The New York Times, have dedicated a prime space to the political event. In this paper, however, the focus is on the coverage made by South American newspaper sites that speak Spanish language shortly after the announcement of the outcome of the election. For that, nine newspapers from different countries were selected and their texts were analyzed through Content Analysis, by Bardin (2011). Despite the variety of context-related themes, Jair Bolsonaro and the PT, the texts had more resemblance than differences in the way they dealt with the subject, showing that the south of Latin America - even without much dialogue between its peoples - follows relatively similar paths, including in journalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If heritage languages are defined by their local sociolinguistic status and situation (Montrul, 2016), the case of Latin American Spanish in Switzerland was defined, at the start of this investigation as practically inexistent at the state level. Though Latin Americans in Switzerland seem to be larger in number than Spanish migrants, they face more obstacles when trying to be taken into account by heritage language development policies, especially in early childhood. The reasons are diverse, but perhaps the most important one is that they are not perceived as a group in need of special integration policies. The aim of this paper is to provide evidence of the impact a heritage language and culture development program which includes mixed groups (heritage and foreign language) had on the Swiss society's attitude towards Spanish speakers, especially (but not exclusively) Latin Americans living in the city of Wil and surrounding areas in the canton of St. Gallen. This work also presents evidence of the identity reconstruction process in migrant families. To this end, several impact indicators are defined and the creation process of the program together with the data record that took place between 2013 and 2020 are explained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decade, several studies have shown the polyfunctionality of the particle como in Spanish. Beyond its approximating semantic value, it has been established that como also fulfils pragmaticdiscursive functions, such as retardation, mitigation and introduction of direct speech (Holmvik, 2011; Jørgensen, 2012; Panussis, 2016; Mondaca, 2017; Panussis and San Martín, 2017, Mondaca, 2019). This paper aims to analyze, on the one hand, the relationship between the approximating use of como and its function as a direct speech introducer in Chilean Spanish, in order to establish what types of information are introduced in direct style, through this particle, by the speakers. On the other hand, and from an exploratory perspective, the study pursues to identify the syntactic combinations that como, as a direct speech introducer, presents. To achieve these aims, a corpus of 24 sociolinguistic interviews collected in the Fondecyt Project 11110211 has been used. The distribution of this corpus includes six speakers from each of the four geographical macro-areas of Chile (Wagner, 1998, 2004). The main results show the following: a) The function of introduction of direct speech associated to como is linked to the approximating value of the particle; b) the direct speech introduced by como not only reproduces speech quotes, but also thoughts, hypothetical speech, stereotyped speech, and attitudes; and, c) although como can operate as an only introductory element of direct speech, most frequently it acts in combination with other elements, such as the verb ser and the adverb así. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents several rather unexpected manuscripts that have been discovered in the Firkovitch collections. These collections, which are preserved in the National Library of Russia, are best known for Hebrew, Karaite, Samaritan, and Judeo-Arabic manuscripts, and have attracted the interest of specialists in Middle-Eastern languages and cultures. It is generally not known that they also contain manuscripts written in a western language. In the course of my research on the collections, however, I have come across approximately twenty manuscripts in Judeo-Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students from Mexico, ranging from elementary to university levels, regularly commute across the United States-Mexico border (physically and digitally) to attend class. These individuals are known as transfronterizos/as/istas, terms stemming from the Spanish word for "cross-border" that highlights their bicultural experiences. They are characterized by dual citizenship, frequent travel across a borderland geography, and fluid identities. The unique experience of toggling and acquiring knowledge and experiences from different countries constitutes a distinct identity and movement. Transfronterizos legally cross the border in both directions for various reasons, including for work, healthcare, to escape violence, and seek opportunities; however, the primary aim of this paper is to investigate the occurrence, rationale, and perspectives of cross-border students. What circumstances cause them to cross the border in order to go to school? How does the digital and physical commute affect learning and identity? Are teachers and administrators aware of the challenges and opportunities playing out in their classrooms, virtual and otherwise? These questions are addressed and contextualized through secondary literature and primary interviews with transfronterizos who commute across the border to attend school. The article concludes with a call for more research and policy focused on bilingual education, transparency, empathy, mobility, and an expanded spectrum of identification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Spanish-speaking and Italian-speaking linguistic panorama, the subjunctive has been defined mainly from a structural perspective based on the notion of syntactic dependency. From the 19th century became relevant the semantic approach, and the notions of reality / unreality began to predominate in the definition of mode. However, many bibliographic sources such as Vásquez (2013), Stewart (2002) and Haverkate (2002), have revealed that the use of the subjunctive is not only limited to the appearance of a modalizer of possibility, imaginary, or potential fact, but that the intention of the speaker and the presence of inducers without any unreality value can introduce inexplicable forms of the subjunctive from a perspective purely semantic or clearly syntactic. The objective of this paper is to identify the main distributions of the subjunctive in Spanish and Italian. Contrastive, exploratory, descriptive, and documentary analysis is limited to epistemic and deontic completive propositions, relative sentences and adverbial subordinate clauses, given space limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presenting and classifying some fixed phraseological units found in García Márquez's novels is the purpose of this paper. The proposed methodology includes detailed reading, analysis and collection of the phraseological corpus in some of the author's novels, as well as the comparison of said corpus with monolingual and phraseological dictionaries of general Spanish, and dictionaries of Colombianisms, to determine semantic and pragmatic factors of these units. As a result, a list of phraseologisms present in the work of the Colombian writer was prepared, allowing observe that García Márquez's novels are a valuable source of phraseological expressions. It is concluded that literary work, taken as a linguistic corpus, offers possibilities to study the expressive resources of the language in use; hence the relevance of this analysis, since phraseology studies in the literature are a fruitful field of research that require further exploration in Colombian works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to show in detail a teaching approach to change the way of teaching (to teach) Spanish (or any other first language) at university. To do this, the idea that this change must be created at the beginning of the educational system -that is, the teacher training- is taken as a basis. Hence, a teaching experience carried out with teachers-to-be in the subject "Spanish Language Teaching" is presented. This experience applies the cases study to learn (to teach) Spanish and includes several active methodologies, such as cooperative learning and the task-based approach. The results, focused both on the vision of the subject as a whole and on the specific activity that concerns us, suggest a general acceptance of the methodologies used. Nevertheless, the main conclusion also contains a series of paradoxes that affect especially those who do not feel comfortable learning with the above mentioned case studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes aspects of a little-known work in the context of grammar and history of Spanish language teaching in Portugal, the Gramática espanhola para uso dos portugueses (Oporto, 1947) by Julio Martínez Almoyna: the possible reasons for its publication in Portugal in the mid-twentieth century, the structure of the lessons and its didactic characteristics. Regarding the first aspect, the writing of the work is framed in the Luso-Spanish socio-political context of the time. Regarding specifically methodological issues, we analyze in detail the microstructure of the lessons and the underlying didactic criteria. In order to examine the didactic characteristics of the manual, we put it in contrast with other works published in Portugal for the teaching of Spanish; specifically, the Gramática elemental de la lengua española (Lisbon, 1947), by Pablo Gayán Hernanz, and Español para lusitanos. Método práctico de lengua española (Coimbra, 1952), by José María Viqueira Barreiro. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the current Spanish, there are different examples of infinitives introduced by a seemingly superfluous preposition: the infinitives can be preceded by the preposition de (Le dijo de ir), by the preposition a (Lo mandó a callar) and by the preposition para (Le dijo para ir de inmediato). The aim of this paper is to show that the presence of this preposition is intimately linked to the original final value of the infinitive and that this origin is translated in the current syntax of the exhortative and volitive verbs and in the lexical and grammatical aspect that the infinitive can express, according to the syntactic context. From the history of the language, it is intended to explain the current state of the infinitive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the use of Spanish nominal address terms in Mexican literary works: Los bandidos de Río Frío (1892-1893), by Manuel Payno, Los de abajo (1915-1920), by Mariano Azuela, and the play Los albañiles (1969), by Vicente Leñero. The quantitative and qualitative analyses are based on the occurrence of address terms types with two grammatical (Spanish second-person systems and the grammatical category of the corresponding nominal phrase head) and two pragmatic variables (the interpersonal relationship of the speaker with the referent of the address term and the evaluation that the first attributes to the second). It is observed that the use of nominal address terms does not follow a stable pattern based on these variables, among other factors that intervene in communicative contexts. Instead, variability is the most common situation. In addition, the same type of address term may undergo changes in dialogic dynamism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of this paper are the conditions of use and discourse functions of nominal forms of address (NFA) in dialogical interactions. The corpus includes Cervantes's six Entremeses and two Novelas Ejemplares. In the first part, we analyse the sociopragmatic conditions for NFA selection. We highlight the relevance of adding a third variable, status, to the classic ones: power and distance, in order to adequately explain the selection of forms in both asymmetric or hierarchical relationships and symmetric ones in different social groups. This variable is associated to the acknowledgement of social identity and position, which lies at the foundation of social rganization of European modern societies. It also advocates for the convenience of including discursive factors such as genre constraints and interaction dynamical development. In the second part, we analyse the functioning of NFA at two discourse levels: conversational organization and turn management and rapport management and linguistic politeness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the personal style of the Count of Tendilla, captain-general of the kingdom of Granada, in his last collection of letters (1513- 1515). Specifically, the study focuses on an analysis of the changes in forms of address, depending on the image the Count wished to project of himself and the effect he wished to have on the recipient. The letters show two basic patterns in the forms of address: 1) etymological voseo -or use of "vos" as a second person singular pronoun; and 2) indirect forms of address (vuestra merced, vuestra señoría, vuestra alteza) in semantic and syntactic concordance, depending on the social value and emotional tone of the letter. The study unveils a widely varied repertory of grammatical and discourse strategies, such as the direct nature of vos, which makes it possible to bridge the gap between the interlocutors, the use of the vocative señor as a means of deference and attenuation, along with the use of indirect forms of address to acknowledge the noble status of the interlocutor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a comparative bibliometric analysis between English and Spanish languages over patents and research about expandable polystyrene (known in Mexico as "unicel") and its current state in health and environmental aspects in order to learn about the subject depending on the used language. It was found that the number of patents registered in Spanish only reaches 39% of the total of those that exist in English, while the number of investigations written in Spanish only represents 13% of the total in English. The current uses of polystyrene are among the most predominant topics in Spanish, however new developments are scarce, while in English, research over new products applied in all industries predominate. On environmental and health issues, in Spanish there is only 2% of the existing research in English, while, on health issues, there is only 7%. Therefore, Spanish-speaking researchers requiring updated and highly specialized information on expandable polystyrene and its implications will only be able to access about 10% of all the available information on the subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to analyse the Spanish construction resulta que + [clause] from a discourse syntax approach, a macro-syntax. The current use of the structure shows that its conceptual meaning fades and acquires a procedural one related to discourse’s informative dimension; mainly, the characterisation of the information introduced as “surprising” or “not expected”: resulta que mis amigos nunca quisieron que me fuera [“as it turns out, my friends never wanted me to leave”]. Resulta que + [clause] is not as fixated as other discourse elements, such as discourse operators or markers. However, it belongs to the same category of other syntactic constructions which trigger a wide range of discursive values and are not usually tackled by traditional syntactic studies. This research analyses its internal structure and its discourse functioning in order to embed it in a framework which takes into account the potential of this kind of structure in grammar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyze the expressions formed by ni with non clausal phrases (noun phrase with preposition, adjective phrase, adverbial phrase, infinitive, gerund). From this structure come several expressions of rejection very common ones in the current colloquial Spanish, like ni hablar, ni pensarlo, ni queriendo, ni soñando, ni de coña, etc. emerge from this structure. The starting hypothesis is that these expressions, despite coming from different base categories, have a very similar discursive behavior in conversational discourse and show a high level of grammaticalization. To carry out this research, we use the communicative exchanges included in the Corpus MEsA, which includes discourse from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, YouTube, blogs, digital forums and web pages of diverse themes. The methodology followed is the Macrosyntax model of Fuentes Rodríguez (2019a), developed from Pragmatic Linguistics (Fuentes Rodríguez 2000). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes a kind of discourse operator insufficiently studied: the operators that indicate deontic modality, especially those introduced by modal operators in Spanish like por fuerza, in order to locate the insertion of elements belonging to the plane of the modality in the structure of sentence. Checking characteristics of these terms: its distribution, its incidence, its grammaticalization, it can contribute, on the one hand, to its categorical and functional definition and, on the other hand, to development of discourse grammar or macrosyntax. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]