Spanish in Context - Volume 13, Issue 1, 2016

The contact between Asturian and Spanish in the region of Asturias (Spain) has led to the variable incorporation of linguistic features of Asturian into the Spanish of Asturian speakers. Among these features is the use of the masculine singular morpheme /-u/, as opposed to Spanish /-o/. In this study I provide a quantitative analysis of the linguistic and extra-linguistic factors that govern the alternation between the Spanish and the Asturian morphemes, analyzing production data from 24 speakers from Gijón. The results of the mixed logistic regression analysis show that the selection of one vowel over the other is constrained by the adjacent phonological context and the variant used in the previous form. The use of /-u/ is also correlated with certain socio-demographic groups, such as male speakers, speakers whose occupations have low prestige and those who have a first order social tie with their interlocutor.

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

Research on variation demonstrates that analyses of frequency and predictors of use contribute to our understanding of languages. Investigations of subject expression in Spanish in particular have identified differences across person and number of the verb that suggest that linguists should focus their analyses exclusively on a single category of that variable (e.g., Torres-Cacoullos and Travis 2010). The current paper examines the subject-expression forms produced in first- and second-person contexts in separate analyses, exploring the degree to which patterns of use generalize across verbal person categories. Data from 32 sociolinguistic interviews with native and non-native speakers of Spanish in the same speech community were coded for independent linguistic variables, such as switch reference, perseveration, tense, mood and aspect of the verb form, verbal negation, presence of object pronouns, specificity and reference cohesiveness. Separate multivariate analyses for first- and second-person referents show subtle differences between NSs and NNSs.

This article focuses on the cross-linguistic lexical influence between English and Spanish. We begin by redefining the concept of cross-linguistic lexical influence as the impact that two or more languages have on each other’s vocabulary. We then present a brief chronological survey of Hispanicisms in English and Anglicisms in Spanish, taking the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and the Diccionario de la lengua española (DRAE) as the main sources, and examine some of the factors that affect the patterns of word interchange between these two languages. We argue that the historical and social milieu, mass media, information technology, prevailing attitudes to foreignisms, and the stance taken by dictionaries and official linguistic policy condition which words are borrowed, affect the phonological, orthographic and semantic forms of these borrowings, and impact the degree of their integration in the receiving language. The present study is the first to offer a cross-linguistic (bilateral) perspective on lexical borrowing, a novel approach that is of particular interest given the contrasting philosophical differences governing language policy and lexicographic traditions in English and Spanish. It demonstrates the importance of adopting a comparative approach in the study of lexical influence between languages.

Based on 2,685 instances of verbs inflected for first-person singular (1sg) drawn from 14th–16th century Spanish texts, the current study offers two main findings on the diachrony of variable subject expression. The results indicate that, in general, the linguistic conditioning of 1sg subject pronoun expression (yo) remains constant throughout the centuries, following the patterns reported for present-day Spanish. We observe an effect of switch reference and of distance between coreferential subjects favoring expression. Additionally found is coreferential subject priming, such that the form of a previous coreferential subject significantly influences subsequent coreferential mentions. Finally, tense-aspect-mood is significant, though both the imperfect and future tenses favor expression. Nevertheless, verb semantic class does not influence these data. In particular, the yo+cognition verb construction, especially the highly frequent yo creo, which leads the cognition-verb category nowadays, is absent here. The study thus both offers evidence of continuity and suggests possible language change.

The study of Anglicisms in Spanish has been significant since the last half of the twentieth century. After an initial period of purist publications, the approach to this sociolinguistic phenomenon became more descriptive and academic in the 1980s. Today’s bibliography is relatively extensive, including works which have widely analysed the impact of the Anglo-American culture on different areas, as well as suggested a variety of definitions and taxonomies of Anglicisms. However, some domains that are greatly influenced by the English language in Spain such as the terminology used in gyms have not been examined so far, since the published literature has focused on specific sports (football, tennis, etc.). The aim of this paper is to compile and analyse the most frequent Anglicisms in the lexicon used in sports activities offered by Spanish gyms, as an introductory approach to prospective research. We have studied a sample of 268 Anglicisms taken from the web sites of 15 gyms. Our analysis is not limited to the description of the linguistic features of these Anglicisms but it also explores the possible reasons for their use.