Spanish in Context - Volume 16, Issue 1, 2019

Abstract

The following paper focuses on the attitudes of the in-group (referred to as bilingual Veneto-Spanish speakers) and out-group (monolingual Spanish speakers) in the bilingual community of Chipilo, Mexico. This paper has two main goals: first, to analyse the attitudes of the out-group towards the in-group; and second, to analyse the perceived attitudes of the latter group, who become the primary ‘determinants’ in minority language maintenance. Through 108 sociolinguistic questionnaires and 15 interviews, the following social factors were examined: ethnicity, gender, level of education, and age of the speakers. The results showed negative attitudes perceived by the in-group, especially younger males of higher education levels, as well as possible tensions between the two groups.

Abstract

Differential Object Marking (DOM) is a phenomenon widely attested in Spanish. In two experimental studies using production and acceptability judgments we examined the extent to which Mexican Spanish presents some variation among monolingual speakers with respect to expansion of DOM. We tested whether DOM with animate and specific objects is categorical in this variety, and whether DOM is expanding to inanimate definite and indefinite objects as observed by diachronic studies of Mexican and other Latin American varieties. We also tested DOM with other constructions: bare plurals, the verbs like tener and haber, small clauses and causative and perception verbs. Our study contributes new data documenting linguistic variation in native speakers and confirms synchronic and diachronic analyses of DOM in Spanish.

Abstract

Recent literature has focused on specifying the nature of causal relations. Although the identification of whether connectives prototypically convey objective or subjective relations has been carried out for languages such as French, Dutch and English, the same has not occurred in the case of Spanish. The present study examines frequently used connectives and lexical cue phrases in terms of domain, propositional attitude, and presence of a Subject of Consciousness (SoC) in order to determine the degrees of subjectivity conveyed by the connectives. The findings show that debido a (que) is a highly specific connective used in objective causal relations about facts which do not involve SoC. On the contrary, the connectives porque and ya que present similar flexibility that result in both being used to convey subjective and objective causal relations. This study supports the assumption of subjectivity being a cognitive mechanism that shows across different languages.

Abstract

This article addresses differences in 25 study abroad students that reside in the dormitory, primarily with other native English speakers, to those that live with local host families during a 13-week semester in Central Spain. In addition to completing four tasks to elicit three regional features ([θ], [χ], and vosotros) the participants, all majors or minors of Spanish, also completed questionnaires and interviews to elicit a variety of social and individual factors, including social networks and amount of contact with Spanish and English. Living experience accounts for differences in the production of one feature in one task at the middle of the semester. In addition, those students that lived with a host family exhibited more contact with Spanish and completed fewer international trips on weekends. The study not only discusses ways to increase contact in Spanish but also ways to improve the study abroad experience in general.

Abstract

En este estudio, se describe el funcionamiento de los procesos de encapsulación realizados por los pronombres demostrativos neutros ‘esto’, ‘eso’ y ‘aquello’ en el discurso de la economía (8.044 casos). Los objetivos específicos de este estudio son, en primer lugar, identificar la frecuencia de ocurrencia de los tres pronombres en función de encapsulador; en segundo término, determinar la extensión de los referentes encapsulados y su ubicación textual en relación con cada uno de los pronombres en estudio; por último, se determina el contexto semántico en que operan los pronombres examinados. El corpus de análisis estuvo conformado por treinta y ocho manuales de economía provenientes del Corpus PUCV-UCSC-2017 (8,5 millones de palabras). Los principales resultados indican que el pronombre ‘esto’ es el de mayor frecuencia en el corpus y, a su vez, el más empleado con función encapsuladora. Los otros dos pronombres revelan –en comparación– una ocurrencia muy escasa. Se observa, además, que la Cláusula y el Complejo Clausular son los referentes encapsulados con más alta ocurrencia y que, al mismo tiempo, su funcionamiento es mayoritariamente de tipo anafórico. En cuanto al contexto semántico, el tipo de relación más frecuente es la de causalidad. Los hallazgos más sobresalientes son la orientación referencial bidireccional de los pronombres en estudio y la identificación de antecedentes de tipo multisemiótico, es decir, no únicamente verbales (i.e. gráficos, esquemas, fórmulas).

This article reviews Bilingualism in the Spanish-speaking world: Linguistic and cognitive perspectives

This article reviews A Sociolinguistics of Diaspora: Latino practices, identities, and ideologies

This article reviews Introducción a la lingüística hispánica actual: teoría y práctica