Search

Although vos is common in speech in Medellín, it is considered non-prestigious for writing (Agudelo Montoya et al. 2016). Nonetheless, vos is an important marker of local identity (Jang 2013) that increasingly appears in writing (Weyers 2016a). Its presence suggests a potential upward shift in its prestige. For that to happen, favorable attitudes toward its use in writing are called for. Here we examine the linguistic attitudes of 222 medellinenses toward vos, tú, and their corresponding verb forms in advertising. We find that (1) all speakers prefer vos; (2) they favor the pronoun vos over its corresponding verb forms; (3) younger speakers prefer vos over their older counterparts; and (4) men prefer voseo verb forms while women prefer tuteo forms. Given the overall positive attitudes toward vos, it is possible that its prestige will increase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this work is the historiographic study of the orthographic fixation of the Spanish language in the 19th century during the so-called democratic six years (1868-1874), a significant period regarding Spanish educational legislation, which gives teachers the freedom for the selection of school text books and seems to open a new stage for the interests of the neographers. The officiality of academic orthography is not obligatory, so we are facing a particularly propitious moment for supporters of writing reform. In spite of everything, the neographer vindications disappear from public opinion forums; there is hardly a glimpse in the thick controversy between Bosch, Condomines and Gómez de Salazar. This research will serve, from a general point of view, to evaluate the role of the pedagogical press in the whole process of fixing the orthography in Spain; from a specific point of view, it intends to expose all this controversy and carry out its study taking into account the conjunction of the internal and external perspectives of linguistic historiography, in order to try to analyze its importance within the general process of Spanish orthography fixation, as well as explain the reasons for the absence of other similar controversies in this period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By means of this article we try to illuminate the motivation of a phraseologism used colloquially in Chile: hacer perro muerto ‘sneak out of a restaurant without paying for consumption’. In order to attain this, American and Hispanic lexicographic data are examined, and a diachronic corpus of our language is consulted. It is concluded that the phrase parallels with amarrar un perro ‘to pay not a debt’, registered in Costa Rica and Andalusia. Both phraseologisms (hacer perro muerto and amarrar un perro) denote actions that deceive hospitality or trust, and a similar motivation is found in both: they are literally ways of harming or neutralizing someone’s else guardian animal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problem addressed in this article is related to the difficulties observed in the causal connectors in ELE learners of proficiency level A2 and B1 with French, German and English L1. To do this, a study is carried out in the areas of Corpus of Learners in computational format (Computer Learner Corporation, CLC) and Computer Aided Error Analysis. The variables considered correspond to the trend of use of causal connectors and the identification of causal errors according to the level of competence A2 and B1 and the mother tongue of the learners. From the CAELE corpus, a subcorpus of sentences with causal connectors has been delimited, made up of 1,578 textual sentences of Anglo-Saxon, French-speaking and German learners of ELE. The main objectives are to determine the frequencies of correct use and the frequencies of errors in the use of grounds. The results show a greater use of the causal connector because with 87% in both levels. The other causes follow with a percentage of 2% each: the causal connector as, the conjunctive phrases due to and since, the prepositive phrases thanks to that and because the conjunctive phrase since, the causal connector then and the phrase prepositive by + infinitive with 1%. The connector because it was searched with 3 different forms of writing: why; because. However, in terms of its functionality in all contexts of use, it turned out to express a causal relationship. Regarding the mother tongue, the German learners, unlike the other learners, were the ones who presented the greatest problems in terms of the use of causal connectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the controversy over the creation of the Canarian Academy of Language. I adopt a glottopolitical perspective that considers institutional linguistic descriptions as interventions in the public space of language in order to maintain power and organize specific social orders. I examine the antecedents of the study of Atlantic Spanish and Spanish in the Canary Islands from the fifties to the nineties at the Universidad de La Laguna, and I observe a break in the language discourses that construct Canarian Spanish as a symbol of identity, a result of the dynamics of quasi–nationalism in the state of the autonomies. The need for the Canarian Academy of Language functioned as part of the rhetoric of the abandonment of the state and was established in terms of repairing a sociolinguistic trauma that would be solved with the action of philologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the following article, we analyze the historical drift of the inchoactive periphrasis ponerse a + INF, in Chilean Spanish. Our aim is to describe the diachronic trajectory of this construction, bringing dialect contrasts with its historical development in the peninsular Spanish and with other Spanish inchoactive periphrasis. At the conceptual level, we interact with the theory of grammaticalization and the construction grammar. In methodological terms, our study is based on a review of the historical linguistic corpus that allows constructing a quantitative and qualitative analysis. As result of the investigation, we argue that ponerse a + INF shows a development mainly divergent to that observed in the peninsular variety. Furthermore, we argue that this scheme has functioned as a supporting construction in the creation of new inchoactive mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prologues are valuable pieces for the historiographic investigation about works that deal with linguistic aspects, that is, for Linguistic Historiography (HL). In this work we propose to examine this type of texts (paratexts) produced at one time: the 19th century; a space: Hispanic America; and a typology: works on grammar and orthography. All this from a precise and exhaustive analysis methodology, which will allow to establish what are the forms that such texts adopt, that is, their variants and representations, as well as the functions they perform in the contextual framework to which they are assigned, both intralinguistic: the works they surround, and extralinguistic: the sociocultural and political environment in which these works are produced. With this we intend to contribute to the historiography of linguistic ideas in relation to the Spanish language and its grammar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the frequency of grammatical collocations verb + preposition (GramCol v+p) in L1-English learners of Spanish as a Foreign Language (SFL) of levels A2 and B1 under the model of Interlanguage Contrastive Analysis. To this end, a collocational typology based on a criterion of intermediate fixedness was implemented. The results show higher frequency in level B1, but not in the variety of the units, and a greater number of correct uses than in A2. Regarding found differences according to syntactic and semantic pattern, the variables of competence, pattern complexity and theme appear to play an important role in their explanation in the context of the learners' corpus examined. This work contributes to the study of GramCol v+p and other types (noun/adjective + preposition) in SFL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study responds to the call for increased dialogue among different areas of additional language research. Specifically, we bring together learner corpus research and variationist approaches to second language acquisition to advance learner corpus research in two ways: (a) by modeling interlanguage development and variability and (b) by conducting an analysis that moves away from descriptive error analysis. To accomplish this goal, we analyzed grammatical gender marking in additional language Spanish. The data come from LANGSNAP, a longitudinal learner corpus. Through the use of a generalized linear mixed‐effects model (a multivariate, quantitative analysis), we revealed new information about the development and variable use of gender marking in additional language Spanish. Through our analyses, we hope to contribute to greater interactions among researchers working in different strands of additional language research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present work offers a first description of the behavior of the quantifier cadas -in relation to its standard form cada- when it appears in agreement with a plural noun, that is, from the formal properties of the element that accompanies it. This phenomenon had not been the subject of prior study and should be related to the series of adverbs and quantifiers that present concordance in current Spanish, either "expected" (bastantes pesados) or a "false pluralization" (realmentes libre), with adverbial mark -s. Also, it analyzes the cases in which the plural mark is missing in the name that precedes cadas and its behavior in relation to the silent nouns, following the work of Pereira (2018) on Brazilian Portuguese. In current Spanish, cada manifests plural mark (-s) in the two cases mentioned: cadas cosas se leen and cadas fantasma hay en la red. However, Pereira's proposal is not entirely applicable to varieties of Spanish. In effect, the analysis of the data obtained in the social network Twitter allows us to offer some aspects of interest at a descriptive and theoretical level. From the descriptive point of view, it is possible to characterize the quantifier and its complex forms (cadas cual, cadas quien, etc.) in relation to the behavior of the standard form. From the theoretical point of view, the Spanish data present some restrictions to the proposal on the pluralization of cada in the Brazilian Portuguese variety (cadas uno). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study used achievement goal theory (AGT) in the Spanish second language (L2) classroom to determine what students' self‐selected goals are and how those goals relate to the ACTFL World‐Readiness Standards for Learning Languages (National Standards Collaborative Board, 2015). AGT is built on the concept of goal orientation, which is the natural tendency toward achievement‐seeking behavior. The four goal orientations are mastery approach, mastery avoidance, performance approach, and performance avoidance. The results of this mixed‐methods study show that the majority of students have mastery approach goals, but all four goal orientations were present across the sample population (N = 165). Results also indicate that 67.1% of students said that a top goal was communication and speaking, and 41.8% of students stated that grammar was a main goal. The findings that Communication (67.1%) and Cultures (2%) were the only two standards of the ACTFL 5 Cs (National Standards Collaborative Board, 2015) that were mentioned in students' goal statements and that Connections, Comparisons, and Communities were not mentioned at all indicate a disparity between what language learning entails and L2 learners' perceptions. Pedagogical implications are discussed. The Challenge: Students' goals have an important impact on their interest in and motivation for learning a second language. What goals do students set for themselves, and how do those goals relate to ACTFL's 5 Cs? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • We built state-of-the-art lexical simplification systems for Spanish. • We produced new resources for lexical simplification for Spanish. • New resources improve grammaticality of simplified output. • New resources improve meaning preservation during simplification. • New resources increase the number and correctness of lexical changes. Abstract The current bottleneck of all data-driven lexical simplification (LS) systems is scarcity and small size of parallel corpora (original sentences and their manually simplified versions) used for training. This is especially pronounced for languages other than English. We address this problem, taking Spanish as an example of such a language, by building new simplification-specific datasets of synonyms and paraphrases using freely available resources. We test their usefulness in the LS task by adding them, in various combinations, to the existing text simplification (TS) training dataset in a phrase-based statistical machine translation (PBSMT) approach. Our best systems significantly outperform the state-of-the-art LS systems for Spanish, by the number of transformations performed and the grammaticality, simplicity and meaning preservation of the output sentences. The results of a detailed manual analysis show that some of the newly built TS resources, although they have a good lexical coverage and lead to a high number of transformations, often change the original meaning and do not generate simpler output when used in this PBSMT setup. The good combinations of these additional resources with the TS training dataset and a good choice of language model, in contrast, improve the lexical coverage and produce sentences which are grammatical, simpler than the original, and preserve the original meaning well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Spanish and English contrast in adjective-noun word order: for example, brown dress (English) vs. vestido marrón ('dress brown', Spanish). According to the Matrix Language model ( MLF) word order in code-switched sentences must be compatible with the word order of the matrix language, but working within the minimalist program (MP), Cantone and MacSwan arrived at the descriptive generalization that the position of the noun phrase relative to the adjective is determined by the adjective's language. Our aim is to evaluate the predictions derived from these two models regarding adjective--noun order in Spanish--English code-switched sentences. Methodology: We contrasted the predictions from both models regarding the acceptability of code-switched sentences with different adjective--noun orders that were compatible with the MP, the MLF, both, or none. Acceptability was assessed in Experiment 1 with a 5-point Likert and in Experiment 2 with a 2-Alternative Forced Choice (2AFC) task. Data and analysis: Data from both experiments were subjected to linear mixed model analyses. Results from the 2AFC task were also analyzed using Thurstone's law of comparative judgment. Conclusions: We found an additive effect in which both the language of the verb and the language of the adjective determine word order. Originality: Both experiments examine adjective-noun word order in English-Spanish code-switched sentences. Experiment 2 represents a novel application of Thurstone's law of comparative judgements to the study of linguistic acceptability which yielded clearer results than Likert scales. We found convincing evidence that neither the MLF nor the MP can fully account for the acceptability of adjective-noun switches. Implications: We suggest that advances in our understanding of grammaticality in code-switching will be achieved by combining the insights of the two frameworks instead of considering them in isolation, or by espousing a probabilistic model of code-switching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the emergence and evolution in Spanish of three verbal constructions that share the same form as the Spanish verbal periphrasis for expressing future time, namely, 'to go + inf'. Specifically, those constructions are verbal periphrases expressing the past tense, the completive and focus values. The past periphrasis and the completive one share the same etymology as the future tense periphrasis: a construction in which the verb ir 'to go' expresses an advance in time. The omission of the indication of the place towards which the movement takes us will allow us to stop focusing on a destination in order to envisage the event expressed by the infinitive of the construction. On the other hand, the focus construction constitutes a further evolution of the completive periphrasis. From the 18th century onwards, the distribution of these three periphrases is the same as that of modern Spanish: the past periphrasis has disappeared from the language and the other two are maintained in contexts of communicative proximity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carried out within a variationist-sociolinguistic framework, this study seeks to gain a better understanding of the underlying mood grammar of second-generation heritage bilinguals in New York City (NYC). To that end, we compare optional subjunctive use in the speech of 26 second-generation heritage bilinguals to that of 26 of their first-generation counterparts. Based on usage patterns observed in both generations, a total of ten linguistic contexts are identified as subjunctive optional, i.e., where the subjunctive and the indicative alternate. Results stemming from quantitative analyses show that generation conditions optional subjunctive use, suggesting the presence of two distinct generational groups in our corpus. Furthermore, two internal variables are found to be statistically significant for both cohorts: linguistic context and rank order; whereas only one external variable is significant for the bilingual heritage speakers: level of English skill. Finally, we take a critical approach to challenge widely-accepted notions surrounding heritage languages, namely simplification, attrition and incomplete acquisition, concluding that all three lack the theoretical means to accurately describe the complex bilingual situation in NYC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work the processing features of gender and number in subject-verb agreement and subject-predicate adjective in the sentence production in Spanish was investigated. As a general objective, in this work we set out to investigate the processing of the features that come into play in both subject-verb and subject-adjective predicative agreement in our language. Specifically, an attempt will be made to answer if the features of gender and number are processed in the same way, if the feature have a default value and if the values present differences, that is, if the singular differs from the plural, and the masculine from the feminine. This will allow us to establish if any of these values is more error-sensitive. In addition, we seek to identify the role of the marking concept. Under the paradigm of error elicitation we designed an experiment in which the Gender of the head noun (N1) and local noun (N2) (Masculine-Feminine), and the Number of N1 and N2 (Singular-Plural) was manipulated: Example: El abuelo (N1) del niño (N2). 20 subjects participated in the experiment which were presented in visual form the basis of the adjective for 500 ms. (PEINAD_) and then the preamble (4000 ms.) The participants read and completed with the verb "to be" and inflected adjective: Example: El abuelo del niño está peinado. Each participant was given a list of 128 targets. The pattern of errors and omissions of subject-verb agreement (S-V) and subject-predicate (S-P) was analyzed. The results showed main effects of number and gender. The data indicated that the participants produced more attraction errors of S-V when the local noun was in plural; while the most influential feature for S-P agreement was the feminine gender of the head noun of the subject. In summary, in relation to the agreement between the subject and the verb, and specifically, for the number feature, classical asymmetry was found, with greater interference when the head noun appeared in singular and the local noun in plural. The surprising fact, which could come to light given the characteristics of the design of the experiment, is that the attraction occurred more strongly when the gender of both nouns matched. With regard to agreement of subject- adjective predicate, and with respect to the gender of the nouns and the adjective, a main effect of the gender of the head noun was found, with more errors when the N1 appeared in feminine. We also found an interaction between the gender of N1 and the gender of N2, with more errors when the N1 appeared in feminine and N2 in masculine, and at the same time when the number of both coincided. The data suggest that it seems that the most influential feature to make the agreement between the subject and the predicate adjective is the gender of head noun, with a higher probability of interference when it appears in the feminine gender. In sum, our experimental research gathered evidence that allows us to progress in the characterization of how and when the processing of agreement and interference occurring in situations forced by experimental conditions as in natural speech. In particular, we analyze the characteristics of the gender and number features and the role of the marking concept. The data obtained in our experimental work were analyzed in terms of a general theory of processing so as to inform a production model of the still developing agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A reading-to-write task is a complex cognitive activity. The aim of this study is to gain insight into the difficulties that advanced learners of Spanish as a foreign language for professional communication purposes experience when they have to perform a reading-to-write task. This insight will help to improve writing instruction and training for this particular type of students. In this study, 19 students of a one-year master's programme in multilingual professional communication (level B2–C1 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, Council of Europe, 2001) were asked to carry out a reading-to-write task in Dutch, their mother tongue, and in Spanish at the beginning of the academic year. This task was repeated at the end of the academic year. On both occasions, the task was writing an informative synthesis of approximately 200–250 words using three digital source texts in Dutch and in Spanish pertaining to different text genres (i.e., a report from the European Union, a website, a newspaper article). The three source texts varied in lexical and syntactical complexity, content, style and discursive characteristics. All written products were evaluated by two independent raters. We found no general improvement in the reading-to-write task between the two moments, neither in the L1 nor in the L2. We did not find an improvement at sentence, text, or discourse level either. We will explore several explanations for this lack of improvement, based on theoretical models of foreign language acquisition and recent empirical writing research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research on heritage speaker (HS) bilingualism suggests, not without controversy, that certain properties of HSs' grammars, mainly discursive properties, can result in divergent grammatical outcomes in adulthood be it as a result of incomplete acquisition or attrition. This study contributes to this line of research by examining whether HSs' word order configurations with Spanish double object constructions reflect compliance with the pragmatic (End-Focus Principle) and syntactic related factors (End-Weight Principle) that regulate word order in Spanish. To this end, two groups of HSs with different proficiency levels in Spanish as well as a bilingual and a monolingual control group, all of Mexican origin, completed an acceptability judgment task. HSs' performance on this task shows that their knowledge of the discursive nuances associated with constituent order remains as robust as their knowledge of the syntactic factors associated with this phenomenon. Our findings therefore suggest that this linguistic domain may not be subject to so-called incomplete acquisition or L1 attrition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine variable past-time expression in urban Tucumán, Argentina, an understudied region representative of the set of Andean varieties included in Northwestern Argentinean Spanish. We analyze the present perfect (PP) and preterit in two contexts of data collection: a sociolinguistic interview and a contextualized preference task across a range of linguistic and social factors, such as temporal reference and speaker age. Oral results indicate that Tucumán has a higher frequency of use of the PP than has yet been documented in Latin American varieties and even Peninsular Spanish, previously argued to have the highest rate. Preference task results yielded somewhat lower PP rates, confirming that the PP is preferred in speech, whereas the preterit is more viable in written language. The current study documents the highest rate of use of the PP to date across a number of linguistic contexts, contributing to our knowledge of the processes of grammaticalization and task-related differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work deals with root transformations (RTs) such as negative preposing in English and Spanish. I claim that RTs may in principle be compatible with all types of embedded clauses, regardless of whether the selecting predicate is factive/non-asserted or non-factive/asserted. Languages differ in how freely they allow RTs in various types of complements. Adopting an intervention account, according to which the movement of an operator to Spec-CP intervenes with other types of movement, including RTs, I account for the variation in the distribution of English/Spanish negative preposing by certain options made possible as a result of feature inheritance of discourse features. It is well known that the distribution of RTs in English is extremely limited, while in Spanish the same operations are possible in many more constructions. In Spanish, discourse features may be inherited from complementizer (C) to tense (T) such that negative preposing targets Spec-TP, and hence there is no intervention effect. In contrast, discourse features stay at C in English, meaning that negative preposing competes for the target position with the operator movement to CP, and this gives rise to intervention. This hypothesis is explored and validated through an experiment with informants of the two languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to shed light on the syntactic status attributed to ditransitive constructions--double object construction (DOC) and to/for-dative--with respect to which type of structure is syntactically transformed through a process analogous to that of passives. We will do so by providing an analysis of the ditransitives and passives that appear in the English production of a set of English/Spanish simultaneous bilingual twins. Our results show that DOCs start being produced earlier than to/for-datives. However, the age of onset of passives differs in the children though it is consistently produced later than ditransitives. Likewise, adult input goes hand in hand with the children's production of ditransitives and passives since the high frequency of DOCs in this input, as opposed to the low frequency of to/for-datives and passives, is reflected in child output. These findings thus suggest that to/for-datives could be said to be derived from DOCs although, given the later acquisition of passives, no firm conclusions can be drawn as to whether this is done via a passive-like process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents empirical evidence that disfavors using highly lexicalist minimalist models, such as the one presented in Chomsky (1995), when analyzing language mixing. The data analyzed consist of English – Spanish mixed noun phrases discussed in Moro (2014) as well as English – Norwegian mixed noun phrases and verbs taken from the Corpus of American Norwegian Speech. Whereas the lexicalist model in Chomsky (1995) only can explain a subset of the mixing patterns attested in both authentic English – Spanish mixed noun phrases and the American Norwegian corpus, we show that an alternative exoskeletal model can account for all of them. Such a model would entail that rather than assuming lexical items with inherent, functional features that determine the derivation, syntactic structures are generated independently from the lexical items that come to realize them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates variation in the grammatical system of Spanish in the speech of three generations of Mexican Americans living in a community in South Texas, United States, characterized by high levels of bilingualism and long-term, sustained contact between languages. Two variables are studied using quantitative methods: (1) the extension of the copula verb estar into domains traditionally confined to ser and (2) the expansion of progressive forms at the expense of the simple present. The data reported here suggest changes-in-progress that appear to be accelerated by the linguistic and sociocultural conditions of the community including, especially, lack of access to formal education in Spanish. The sociolinguistic patterning for these variables is compared to patterning for the same variables reported in the literature in both monolingual communities in Spain and Latin America and bilingual communities in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the interaction between viewpoint aspect and the semantics of adjectives in combinations of the Spanish copula estar with various classes of individual-level adjectives. The basic data are subtle contrasts in the use of perfective and imperfective past tenses, like the one in Estuvo inteligente vs #Estaba inteligente. The analysis we put forward assumes that a mismatch arises between the copula and the adjective that must be solved in interpreting the construction; we claim that the effects of viewpoint aspect are due to its role in the inferential process of mismatch resolution. The peculiar properties of evaluative adjectives make perfective aspect favour such processes, whereas with other lexical classes of individual-level adjectives, the preferred option is imperfective aspect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including Spanish grammar, semantics and grammatical manifestations in different languages.

The present study investigated metaphony and vowel harmony (VH) in two varieties of Peninsular Spanish, Eastern Andalusian and Montañes, to determine whether the harmonic processes of either variety are better classified as automatic or morphophonological. Despite both varieties exhibiting VH, the triggers and targets for each variety result in harmonic alternations that are quite distinct, as based on the following eight criteria indicated in Haspelmath and Sims (2010): phonological versus morphological or lexical conditioning, phonetic coherency, phonetic distance, restriction to derived environments, extension to loanwords, sensitivity to speech style, creation of new segments, and restriction to the word level. Although previous research has extensively documented the VH of Andalusia and Montañes, no study has yet systematically compared the two using a singular metric to determine if the harmonic processes in each region are more characteristic of automatic (i.e., phonological) or morphophonological alternations. An in-depth analysis of the harmonic processes in each variety revealed that a binary classification was less appropriate than viewing these alternations on a continuum. The nuanced representation of these alternations on a continuum is a unique contribution to the literature on Spanish VH and provides a fresh perspective on the nature of alternations in Peninsular Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The distribution of DDPP in raising constructions --depending on the embedded clause's formal properties-- has been essential for Case Theory and movement. Likewise, the behavior of DDPP, according to agreement facts, has given rise to relevant discussions about the kind of movement involved (A-Movement/A'- Movement). Nevertheless, this distribution is not so clear in certain Spanish dialects which show double-agreement effects. It means that the embedded verb as well as the raising verb (parecer 'to seem') present inflectional number (and person) morphology: Parece-n que lo olvida-n (seem.3PL that it forget.3PL 'They seem to forget him'). The analysis of the data in these varieties allows us to define a number of characteristics which are relevant from a descriptive and a theoretical point of view. Descriptively, it is possible to identify some notable particularities, with respect to the position of the DP, which triggers agreement and the interaction of these constructions with dative experiencers as well (Me parece que... 'It seems to me that...'). From a theoretical point of view, these data have consequences for approaches on agreement, on the relationship between Case and movement, and on the discussion regarding the Experiencer Paradox in Spanish. Additionally, they allow us to identify a new empirical domain in which a DP plural number feature has an active role in the Probe-Goal domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the results of an analysis conducted on politeness in informal conversations in Peninsular Spanish, specifically on the use of compliments in casual Valencian Spanish with face-enhancing effects. Face-enhancing compliments typically have the primary function of constituting and reinforcing the face of the addressee. The compliments that were analyzed consisted of positive comments about the complimentees' belongings, people related to them, their actions, and their qualities. Most of these face-enhancing compliments were exchanged in situations defined by a high degree of communicative immediacy (Koch & Oesterreicher 1985) and conventionality. The settings where these compliments were produced, plus their discursive, structural and formal features, illustrate their formulaic nature. Among the most important of these features is the fact that there is a predominance of faceenhancing compliments formulated as declarative, copulative and exclamatory sentences. Most of these compliments contain a short repertoire of adjectives with a positive meaning, and are modified by intensifiers that help to reinforce and guarantee the faceenhancing effect of the speech act. They usually consist of isolated utterances occupying a second turn position in adjacency pairs. Lastly, their addressees rarely acknowledged these compliments explicitly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the properties of Spanish evaluative prenominal possessives (i.e. the affective possessive preceding a proper name, the so-called "emphatic possessive", and the possessive in the Old and American Spanish doubled possessive construction) are thoroughly described, and compared with those of canonical prenominal possessives. It is mainly proposed that evaluative possessives, in contrast to canonical prenominal possessives, are not base-generated as nominal modifiers and then raise to D0, but are directly merged (mostly) within the DP domain, thus capturing the fact that affective, emphatic and doubling possessives just evaluate the relation between the possessum and the possessor, and are not interpreted as complements of the noun. In order to account for their different distribution, it is further argued that the three types of Spanish evaluative prenominal possessives are (basically) inserted in different structural positions in an split-DP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first objective of this paper is to provide justification for the claim that variation between the prepositions por 'by' and de 'of' introducing the subject argument in Spanish nominalisations should not be explained as primarily paralleling sentence-level voice or aspectual distinctions. The strongest arguments against assuming a direct analogy between the clausal and the phrasal levels with respect to these functional categories are, on the one hand, that the use of agentive por-phrases is far from limited to nominals which can reasonably be claimed to bear a resemblance to a passive structure and on the other, that de-marking of the Agent is fully compatible with an activity reading of the nominal, as opposed to a result reading. Secondly, as an alternative, it is proposed that the use of por vs. de relates to the perceived degree of agentivity of the subject referent, correlated with the degree of affectedness experienced by the object referent and that por functions as a semantic marker overtly signalling agentivity rather than a syntactic marker of subjective Case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The second person singular Chilean paradigm presents three forms of address: tuteo, voseo and ustedeo, all part of a distinctive complex system within the Spanish American world (Benavides, 2003). Apart from morphosyntax, from the field of linguistic variation it is important to highlight the use of the pronominal system in order to transmit specific communicative functions. In this sense, the main goal of the present study is to analyze the distinctive discourse-pragmatic dimensions in the usage of second person singular in Chilean Spanish. Therefore, a typology with four different functions is proposed: a) Direct address (traditional deictic usage), b) Reproduced address, c) Non-deictic usage, d) Discourse markers. For a more integral analysis these variables have been related to pronominal address, according to a morphosyntactic factor. The oral corpus we have used is composed of sociolinguistic interviews. Our results indicate that the categories here proposed represent adequately the multifunctional character of the second person system, which is employed by speakers as a stylistic strategy to provide utterances with specific communicative values that transcend personal understanding and project a collective knowledge about the social norms of language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies across many languages (e.g., Dutch, English, Farsi, Spanish, Xhosa) have failed to show early acquisition of subject–verb (SV) agreement, whereas recent studies on French reveal acquisition by 30 months of age. Using a similar procedure as in previous French studies, the current study evaluated whether earlier comprehension of SV agreement in (Mexican) Spanish can be revealed when task demands are lowered. Two experiments using a touch-screen pointing task tested comprehension of SV agreement by monolingual Spanish-speaking children growing up in Mexico City between about 3 and 5 years of age. In Experiment 1, the auditory stimuli consisted of a transitive verb + pseudonoun object (e.g., agarra el micho ‘he throws the micho’ vs. agarran el duco ‘they throw the duco’); results failed to show early comprehension of SV agreement, replicating previous findings. In Experiment 2, the same stimuli were used, with the crucial difference that the word objeto ‘object’ replaced all pseudonouns; results revealed SV agreement comprehension as early as 41 to 50 months. Taken together, our findings show that comprehension at this age is facilitated when task demands are lowered, here by not requiring children to process pseudowords (even when these were not critical to the task). Hence, these findings underscore the importance of task-specific/stimulus-specific features when testing early morphosyntactic development and suggest that previous results may have underestimated Spanish-speaking children’s competence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article exposes the existence of semantic restrictions to alternations in the Spanish dative which layout some boundaries for two concepts developed in the context of contemporary studies about the interpretation of the Spanish dative construction: the notions of comprehensive relation (Romero Morales, 2008) and genetic relation (Gutiérrez Ordónez, 1999). The first notion takes on the semantic relations that license these constructions and the second one tries to explain how its meaning is detennined taking as a basis the meaning of other sentences with fully prepositional complements. The aforementioned limitations to these concepts are exposed basing the analysis on examples that include verbs belonging to two classes of the Spanish dative: the ones belonging to the class of material transference and the ones belonging to the class of physical movement, according to Delbecque y Lamiroy's (1996) typology. The results of these analyses show that the descriptive adequacy of these relations can be restricted by the lexical requisites of the verb in combination with the semantic potential of the dative construction in Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper, which falls within the field of Spanish noun subordination, intends to propose a unified account of clause structures that crosslinguistically have been described as complement of a verb, or complement clause. First, I deal with the four types of complement clauses that code an argument of the main verbal predicate in Spanish, namely, subject, direct object, nominal predicate and prepositional government. In order to explain the subordinate structural alternation in relation to the verbal finite or infinitive inflexion, in all four cases, I analyze the participants' coreference between the complement clause and the main one, trying to demonstrate that the mentioned coreference is not only established between the subject of the complement clause and the subject of its main clause. Second, taking into consideration that in Spanish the complement clause usually follows its main clause, I analyze the infonnation structure of its semantic content to come to the conclusion that its position following the main clause is due to its high communicative value, assuming that Spanish syntax organizes its constituents according to the old! known infonnation-new infonnation order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine some semantic, syntactic and pragmatic motivations that may influence the preferred order of the Spanish temporal adjuncts antes 'before' and después 'after', when they function as bare adverbs, as adverbial phrases, and as linkage markers in subordinate clauses. The study of narrative texts reveals that these sequential adjuncts respond differently to each of the motivations under study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research seeks to account for the density of use of the gerundio 'no perifrástico' ('non periphrastic' gerund) and the -ing form by Spanish and English users in order to determine their functionality as a resource for textual cohesion. The aim is to explore descriptively and through contrast (Valenzuela, 2002) the semantic values of consequence and the link (Lenz, 1925; Nesfield, 1956; Gili Gaya, 1961; RAE, 1973; Hernández, 1984; Quirk y otros, 1989; Biber et al., 1999; Fernández, 1999; Huddleston & Pullum, 2002; Miller, 2002; Wardhaugh, 2003; Dontcheva- Navratilova, 2005; RAE y ASALE, 2009) in authentic texts in interaction, in order to demonstrate its cohesive role in the textual construction (Halliday & Hasan, 1976; Hartmann, 1980; Bolinguer; 1990; Halliday & Hasan, 1990; Holland & Lewis, 1996; De Beaugrande & Dressler, 1997; Biber & otros, 2002; Miller, 2002; Carter & McCarthy, 2006). The samples correspond to a probabilistic selection of texts from the written press. The analysis relies on, first, the identification of these non-personal forms and, then, on their description considering their meanings of link and consequence through conjunctive cohesive resources. The results showed that the users of Spanish and English, although in different degree, use these forms as linking resources. These forms become additive or consequence conjunctions that connect propositions bringing meanings depending on their relationship with the independent clause or with a different one. These hybrid forms conform a functional element that explicitly joins ideas and is, at the same time, an element that carries meaning, but without the syntactic freedom that lexical classes enjoy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Opuntia Brava is the property of Universidad de Ciencias Pedagogicas de Las Tunas, Centro de Documentacion e Informacion Pedagogica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Diachronica is the property of John Benjamins Publishing Co. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper proposes a theoretical and analytical approach to the textual encoding of thirdperson referents in Spanish, understood as the simultaneous choice of grammatical forms and meanings within a discursive context. Three different variable phenomena are considered: the way referents are formulated or indexed, their preverbal vs. postverbal placement within the clause, as well as the syntactic function they are accorded. These phe-nomena are all interpreted as being motivated by two complementary discursive-cognitive factors: the salience and informativeness of referents in context. After outlining a model of the prototypical tendencies of referent encoding based on such factors, a narrative text is quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed in order to observe the evolution of grammatical choice patterns as salience is gained along the context. It is concluded that manner of for-mulation and placement react in a more systematic way to discursive-cognitive factors than syntactic function does, the latter variable being partly dependent on the eventive features of the specific clause. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes in detail the various uses that the Spanish discursive marker o sea (que) adopts in an oral text of the genre 'life story' produced in Buenos Aires city in 2013. The aim is to classify and clarify these uses based on two criteria: their semantic-pragmatic function and their position in the utterance. The analysis combines six main functions (explanation, conclusion, restriction, continuation, reinforcement and attenuating at closure) and three positions (initial, middle and final). The chief findings of this work are not only the high frequency of this marker in oral expression, but also the ample diversity and flexibility --concerning position as well as function-- it can adopt throughout the same text. This versatility is partly attributed to the persistence of the 'original' disjunctive sense of o after a process of grammaticalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advanced grammar courses often present standardized grammar rules to students without considering sociolinguistic variation. As a result, many native/heritage students feel that they speak 'incorrectly,' and many second language learners do not get an accurate picture of the target language's real-world grammar. This article describes and evaluates a unique approach to teaching advanced Spanish grammar to university students. The curriculum focuses on core grammatical content by studying structures that are subject to sociolinguistic variation, as in había ∼ habían dos ranas [there was ∼ were two frogs], and it highlights the sociopolitical factors that explain why some forms are deemed prestigious. To test the efficacy of this curriculum, students enrolled in an advanced Spanish grammar course at a large university in the southwestern United States completed a pre- and posttest that measured Spanish grammar knowledge, awareness of sociolinguistic concepts, and positive language attitudes. Results showed statistically significant gains with respect to knowledge of grammar and sociolinguistics. Students also demonstrated a heightened awareness of how prejudice can manifest in judgments of spoken language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper describes the Spanish Ambiguous Words (SAW) database, which comprises 210 words (133 polysemous and 77 homographs). Three-hundred and fifteen Spanish university students took part in the study on which SAW is based. First, subjective word meanings and senses were collected by means of a meaning retrieval task. Two judges then assigned participants’ responses to different categories of meaning according to lexicographical and statistical criteria. Results showed that, while there was a relatively high relationship between the number of senses included in the dictionary and those provided by participants ( r = .62), regression analyses on lexical decision and naming times revealed that participants’ number of senses had significant predictive power, whereas those from the dictionary did not. This indicates that normative data from participants seem to better reflect the psychological reality of word senses. Hence, the SAW database constitutes a useful tool for future research into ambiguous word learning and recognition in Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the syntactic and semantic properties of causative stative predicates. We focus on two Spanish group of verbs: instrumental alternation verbs {bloquear 'to block', obstruir 'to obstruct') and object experiencing psych verbs {preocupar 'to worry', molestar 'to annoy'). We show that, although both groups of predicates exhibit atelic and non dynamic (that is, stative) readings, their aspectual characterization is not properly accounted for by the stage level category (Pylkkanen 2000, Fábregas y Marín 2015). Instead, we claim that causative states are davidsonian states (cf. Maienborn 2005), that is, states with an event argument, which is claimed to be a necessary condition for causative relations. We motivate this conclusion from a model of syntax-semantics interface in which external arguments do not combine directly with (pure) states (Moreno Cabrera 2003), but must establish first a thematic relation with events (Jaque 2014). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a variationist study on subject position in Spanish monolinguals and Spanish-Quechua bilinguals in Huancayo, Peru. Such a variable is ideal to examine the universal predictions of the Interface Hypothesis (IH), since it involves two interfaces constraining subject position choice in Spanish: the syntactic-semantic one (internal) and the syntactic-pragmatic one (external). The IH predicts that the acquisition of features at internal interfaces should bear no difficulty for bilinguals, in contrast with the acquisition of features at external interfaces. Multiple regression analyses reveal that the differences found go along the lines of the universal predictions of the IH: the unaccusativity of the subjects' verbs (internal interface) is a strong predictor of the VS order for the bilinguals, whereas focus (external interface) does not constrain said variant. Nonetheless, some Quechua properties appear as an alternative explanation, rather peculiar to the contact situation studied, to the contrast found between the two speaker groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is very well known that we should take a sociolinguistic teaching approach for Spanish heritage language (HL) learners' instruction. Potowski (2005) proposed that instruction be centered on literacy development and grammatical knowledge. However, not much has been said regarding grammar instruction: What does Spanish HL learners' grammar look like? What are the main similarities and differences between advanced L2 learners and HL learners? What are the most effective grammar teaching techniques for Spanish HL learners? Can those techniques used for L2 grammar teaching be applied to HL learners? In this article, an answer to all of these questions is offered. Moreover, practical examples of activities are provided using several techniques such as processing instruction, interactional feedback, dictogloss, and input enhancement, followed by pedagogical implications derived from current research on grammar instruction for both advanced L2 and HL learners of Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses Spanish and Portuguese verbal periphrases that express the beginning of a process (ingressive manner of action). It analyses stylistically marked and stylistically unmarked ingressive constructions in order to determine similarities and differences between the two languages. The study is primarily based on the comparable web corpora Aranea which makes it possible to see the frequency of use of Spanish and Portuguese periphrases in contemporary language, compare them and determine semantic restrictions for auxiliated verbs in each construction. As a result of this corpus analysis, it is possible to trace the main systemic correspondences between Spanish and Portuguese ingressive verbal periphrases and see the relationship between the original meaning of a concrete semi-auxiliary verb and the group of infinitives that can appear in a periphrasis introduced by that verb. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we deal with the question of relational adjectives being able to function as head adjectives inside adjectival phrases. In the first part we focus on the analysis of examples with two relational adjectives modifying the same noun. We analyze different ways of encoding the string of two adjectives and we propose that this grammatical construction must be analyzed as follows: [[N+A]+A]. In the second part examples with an adverb placed between a noun and a relational adjective are analyzed. We prove that restrictions are different dependant on the nature of the adverb. The combination with degree quantifiers is possible, but it leads to a qualifying interpretation of the adjective. However, the combination with focus quantifiers and many adverbs ending in -mente do not entail this meaning change. In these cases we propose that relational adjectives are entitled to function as adjectival heads inside adjectival phrases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this research is to evaluate the effectiveness of written direct corrective feedback on the learning improvement of prepositions "por and para" in Spanish as second language. These grammatical structures are considered among the most complex prepositions to acquire during the learning process, considering the frequency of errors in their use and their syntactic-semantic nature (Ferreira et al, 2014; Fernández Jodar, 2006; Ginés y Ramírez, 1998; Fernández López, 1997). In order to achieve this aim, a quasi-experimental study with a pretest, immediate posttest, delayed posttest and control group was conducted. In this context, we have systematically applied the strategies of written metalinguistic and non-metalinguistic direct corrective feedback on these prepositions errors. The results have shown the positive effects of the written corrective feedback on the acquisition of these prepositional structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]