Spanish in Context - Volume 14, Issue 3, 2017

Study of speech and written texts has provided significant insight regarding linguistic variation and its social correlates. Variation in the representation or display of language, however, remains a relatively understudied phenomenon. With this in mind, we present a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the variation observed in the Linguistic Landscape (LL) of Pilsen, Chicago. A community undergoing perceived processes of gentrification, Pilsen is an active site of economic, sociocultural change as well as newly intensified language contact. To investigate Pilsen’s displayed language variation, we implement a series of logistic regression models that analyze the distribution of both language and contextual framing observed on signs in four key areas in Pilsen. In doing so, we present an informed means with which to understand the sociolinguistic context of Pilsen as a community undergoing change and provide a replicable framework for future study of LLs that experience similar dynamics.

El español colombiano ha sido un referente constante de las oraciones con ser fozalizado (SF); sin embargo, son muy limitados los estudios con datos naturales que describan y expliquen el comportamiento microparamétrico y sociolingüístico en cuanto a las restricciones de concordancia de las SF en relación con las cláusulas seudohendidas (CLSH). Los trabajos existentes se basan en comunidades del interior de Colombia, y apenas se han investigado las variedades dialectales, consideradas marcadamente diferenciadas, como la zona caribeña colombiana ( Montes 2000 ; Rodríguez 2005 , 2007 ). Por ende, esta investigación documenta, analiza y explica la variación entre las estructuras con ser focalizado (SF), compuestas por un verbo matriz y el verbo ser+constituyente focalizado, y las cláusulas seudohendidas (CLSH), caracterizadas por la presencia de una clausula relativa + el verbo ser + un constituyente focalizado, en datos naturales del corpus de PRESEEA de Barranquilla, Colombia, Los resultados confirman que el español de Barranquilla, contrario a los resultados de otras variedades,usa con mayor frecuencia las SF frente a las CLSH, con y sin concordancia con el verbo matriz, principalmente entre participantes jóvenes con menos educación formal. Este estudio concluye que el SF es un fenómeno sintáctico complejo de microvariación dialectal, que trasciende las descripciones sintácticas, propuestas en estudios previos ( Sedano 1988 ; 2001 ; 2010 ; 2015 ; Méndez Vallejo 2009 ; 2015 ; Vázquez-Larruscaín 2014 ; 2015 , entre otros).

This article concentrates on the competing forces underlying the use of the English morpheme -er in Spanish. Despite some asymmetries concerning the semantics of this morpheme in Spanish and English, I argue that we are witnessing one of the earliest instances of morphological borrowing in Spanish: -er has achieved a unique status in peninsular Spanish in so far as speakers have started to use it productively to mean “an avid fan of X”. In order to support my argument, I provide empirical evidence and place this phenomenon within the framework of both contact language studies and fandom studies, particularly online fandom communities, the forerunners of this linguistic innovation in fields such as music, politics, or TV shows.

The role of frequency in language variation has received a great deal of attention in recent years, especially in phonology. Recently, Erker and Guy (2012) extended the analysis of frequency to morphosyntactic variation and examined frequency effects in variation between null and overt subject personal pronouns (SPPs) in New York City Spanish. Their results suggest that frequency activates or amplifies the effects of other influences on speakers’ choices between overt and null pronouns, such as person and number. Here we attempt to replicate their study. Analysis of more than 8,600 examples of possible sites of SPP variation collected from Mexican immigrant and Mexican American Spanish shows that frequency has only a small effect on a speaker’s choice between an overt and a null pronoun. The results presented here suggest that factors such as a change in reference from the subject of the preceding tensed verb or the person and number of the verb operate independently of frequency effects and provide a better explanation of observed patterns of variation than frequency.

Despite the vast amount of literature that has dealt with the increasing presence of Anglicisms in multiple domains in Spanish, little attention has been paid to the use of Anglicisms by teenagers in internet forums, which have become a popular medium of communication among adolescents. This paper intends to analyze the use of Anglicisms by Spanish-speaking teenagers in this context. After having examined the contributions in www.forojovenes.com for six months (October 2015 to March 2016), the findings reveal that teenagers tend to use pure Anglicisms more frequently than other kinds; despite the existence of equivalents for some of the examined Anglicisms, the English term is chosen; the most prolific subject area to the use of Anglicisms is that of ICT. Sources such as corpus CREA, the project COLA and several well-known dictionaries have allowed to verify these uses. The employment of Anglicisms in this field may be justified in many cases, due to the lack of Spanish equivalent, but in other cases, these borrowings are connected with the prestige and sense of modernity associated with English.

El artículo estudia los contextos en los que pervive el pronombre relativo simple (sin artículo) en las proposiciones de relativo oblicuas introducidas por la preposición en. Para ello, se aplica una metodología variacionista, con el análisis multivariante de las ocurrencias obtenidas de un corpus formado por textos periodísticos del año 2014. De este análisis se desprende que, pese al dominio de la forma innovadora con artículo (en el que), existen contextos que favorecen la pervivencia de la variante etimológica. En su mayoría estos factores se relacionan con el antecedente (distancia, determinación, valores semánticos), pero otros se vinculan con el tipo de proposición relativa, la función sintáctica del relativo, la polaridad de la subordinada, etc. La incidencia de estos contextos como factores condicionantes de la estructura simple sitúa el fenómeno en el ámbito de la variación morfosintáctica más que en el de la gramaticalización y creación de una unidad gramatical.