Spanish in Context - Volume 13, Issue 2, 2016

It has been suggested that contact between Spanish and English results in an increased rate of Spanish subject pronouns and a desensitization to factors that constrain pronoun usage. Yet, evidence for such contact-induced change has been found in some U.S. communities, but not others. In this study we analyze Spanish pronoun expression in interviews with Hispanics in Washington State who do agricultural work in Montana each summer. We compare U.S.-born bilingual children to monolingual adults from this community. Results from analyses of 3,572 verb tokens indicate little to no change in pronoun expression — neither in rates of expression nor in usage patterns. We explain this lack of change in pronoun expression by drawing on the well-established connection between social networks and language change. Poorer, more rural communities, like the farmworker community in Washington/Montana, tend to have tight-knit social networks, which increases the likelihood of retention of linguistic patterns.

This paper provides a phonetic analysis of intervocalic /r/ in lower-class Highland Bolivian Spanish. Results show that in this dialect rhotic assibilation has progressed beyond the fricative [ř] already reported by several scholars (cf. Navarro Tomás 1980; Canfield 1981; Lipski 1994; Sessarego 2011), to a voiced apical sibilant [z̺]. This article, in fact, offers the first spectrographic analysis of this segment. Findings are analyzed in light of a number of studies dealing with rhotic variability in Spanish. In particular, results are compared with those by Sessarego (2011), who provided an acoustic analysis of /r/ realizations for upper-middle-class Highland Bolivian Spanish speakers, without finding any instance of [z̺].

The present investigation uses the methodology of Conversation Analysis to study the particle ah in Mexican Spanish interactions. It looks at ah as a change-of-state token in remembering and noticing sequences. Similar to previous studies (e.g., Edwards and Middleton 1986; Goodwin 1987; and Drew 1989), this investigation aims to show how cognitive processes are socially organised in interaction. Three types of remembering sequences are identified and described: assisted, metacognitive, and spontaneous remembering. It is suggested that in these type of sequences, ah marks the end of the cognitive process which is completed either with external help or with metacognitive strategies. In noticing formulations, ah marks the realisation of something, it prefaces a noticing formulation which may work as a topic initiator or it may initiate the closing of a sequence. A noticing formulation may also work as an account of action.

En este artículo se estudian las posibilidades evidenciales de las diversas combinaciones que subyacen a la construcción española se ve (que). Para ello se examinan los usos de esta construcción en tres corpus discursivos orales del español, en los que se analizan los contextos sintácticos, los grados de fijación de la estructura y el significado que expresa en cada contexto. Los resultados revelan que se trata de una construcción con valor propiamente evidencial (evidencialidad indirecta) en dos de sus diversas combinaciones, y que el rasgo de la fijación contribuye consistentemente en la consecución de dicho valor.

Como parte de un proyecto investigador más amplio que encara un análisis global del funcionamiento de la descortesía en el debate electoral, este trabajo se propone dos objetivos. En primer lugar, revisar sucintamente los tres ejes en torno a los cuales se estructura dicha investigación (estrategias funcionales de descortesía, mecanismos lingüístico-discursivos mediante los que dichas estrategias se implementan y repercusiones sociales de los actos descorteses). En segundo lugar, como núcleo de la aportación, analizar un tipo específico de mecanismos, los de naturaleza interaccional, aislando cinco distintos subtipos y llevando a cabo una caracterización de su funcionamiento discursivo. Este análisis, realizado sin perder de vista los otros componentes de la investigación (estrategias y repercusiones sociales), pone de relieve el potencial de nuestro planteamiento triangular así como el relevante papel que, en el plano de los mecanismos, cumplen los vinculados al plano de la interacción conversacional.

The aim of this paper is to show an original method of calculating individual lexical richness. This method leads to a non-linear optimization. A randomized algorithm, Simulated Annealing, is used in order to carry out the optimization. This procedure has allowed us to represent a function from which we obtain a reliable pattern for lexical estimation. Furthermore, this method is compatible with other traditional procedures used for the estimation of lexical richness. Therefore, in this work we have taken an alternative and more general approach: we wish to calculate the virtual richness of the individual’s vocabulary. In order to validate the new model that calculates lexical richness, we carried out a pilot study based on the subjects’ sociolinguistic patterns that govern their lexical richness. We have explored the lexical variation of the Spanish system that occurs during the oral exchanges of 86 speakers born in Malaga.