Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics - Volume 34, Issue 2, 2021

Abstract

Extended oral production has seldom been used to explore adjectival and verbal agreement in L2 Spanish. This study examines oral narrations to compare the agreement behavior, speech rates, and patterns of errors of highly proficient Spanish heritage and L2 learners (early and late bilinguals, respectively), whose L1 is English, with those of native controls. Although both bilingual groups displayed high agreement accuracy scores, only the early bilinguals performed at or close to ceiling. In addition, the L2 learners spoke significantly more slowly than the heritage and native speakers, who displayed similar speech rates. Explanations accounting for the differences in speech rates and agreement accuracy include age of acquisition of Spanish, syntactic distance between a noun and its adjective, and task effects. All of these factors favored the early bilinguals, enhancing their advantages over L2 learners. Findings suggest that the integrated knowledge and automatic access needed for native-like attainment in agreement behavior in extended oral production is more easily achievable by early than by late bilinguals.

Abstract

Complex nominals (CNs) are frequently found in specialized discourse in all languages, since they are a productive method of creating terms by combining existing lexical units. In Spanish, a conceptual combination may often be rendered with a prepositional CN (PCN) or an equivalent adjectival CN (ACN), e.g., demanda de electricidad vs. demanda eléctrica [electricity demand]. Adjectives in ACNs – usually derived from nouns – are known as ‘relational adjectives’ because they encode semantic relations with other concepts. With recent exceptions, research has focused on the underlying semantic relations in CNs. In natural language processing, several works have dealt with the automatic detection of relation adjectives in Romance and Germanic languages. However, there is no discourse studies of these CNs, to our knowledge, for the goal of establishing writer recommendations. This study analyzed the co-text of equivalent PCNs and ACNs to identify factors governing the use of a certain form. EcoLexicon ES, a corpus of Spanish environmental specialized texts, was used to extract 6 relational adjectives and, subsequently, a set of 12 pairs of equivalent CNs. Their behavior in co-text was analyzed by querying EcoLexicon ES and a general language corpus with 20 expressions in CQP-syntax. Our results showed that immediate linguistic co-text determined the preference for a particular structure. Based on these findings, we provide writing guidelines to assist in the production of CNs.

Abstract

Traditional corpus-based methods rely on manual inspection and extraction of lexical collocates in the study of selection preferences, which is a very costly, labor-intensive, and time-consuming task. Devising automatic methods for lexical collocate extraction becomes necessary to handle this task and the immensity of corpora available. With a view to leveraging the Sketch Engine platform and in-built corpora, we propose a working prototype of a Lexical Collocate Extractor (LeCoExt) command-line tool that mines lexical collocates from all types of verbs according to their syntactic constituents and Collocate Frequency Score (CFS). This might be the first tool that performs comprehensive corpus-based studies of the selection preferences of individual or groups of verbs exploiting the capabilities offered by Sketch Engine. This tool might facilitate the task of extracting rich lexico-semantic knowledge from diverse corpora in a few seconds and at a click away. We test its performance for ontology building and refinement departing from a previous detailed analysis of stealing verbs carried out by Fernández-Martínez & Faber (2020). We show how the proposed tool is used to extract conceptual-cognitive knowledge from the THEFT scenario and implement it into FunGramKB Core Ontology through the creation and modification of theft-related conceptual units.

Abstract

Previous task repetition studies have largely overlooked the second language learners’ development of linguistic knowledge as well as written accuracy. Furthermore, sufficient attention has not been paid to the role of written corrective feedback (WCF) in task repetition to reinforce attention to form. Moreover, studies exploring task repetition effects on learners with different prior knowledge of the target structure are rare. This study attempted to bridge these lacunas. Seventy-nine upper-intermediate learners in Iran were divided into four groups: task repetition with no feedback (TR), task repetition with metalinguistic feedback (TR+M), task repetition with direct feedback (TR+D), and task repetition with mixed direct metalinguistic feedback (TR+DM). All groups performed an error correction test that measured explicit knowledge, an elicited imitation test that tapped automatized explicit knowledge, and a picture-cued written production test that measured written accuracy. Participants performed a dictogloss task and received WCF before repeating the same task. Subsequently, they performed another dictogloss task with different content. Results revealed that the +Prior Knowledge learners in the TR+DM group gained explicit knowledge and proved slightly better than the TR+D regarding written accuracy. None of the groups, however, could develop automatized explicit knowledge.

Abstracta

A partir de la idea de trabajo de Adamczewski (1978) de que algunos operadores adverbiales temporales o de frecuencia, al cuantificar la validez de la relación predicativa, bloquean esta relación tematizándola, intentamos desarrollar un instrumento de análisis lingüístico con el que abordar cuestiones aparentemente dispares como la interpretación iterativa o la indeterminada en ámbito verbal, o el uso del plural o del diminutivo en ámbito nominal. Por otro lado, al poder apreciar en el contraste entre lenguas que algunas implementan la operación de cuantificación a través de operadores con los que no cuentan otras, y que cada lengua al fin y al cabo no hace que uso de los recursos de los que dispone hasta ese momento de su evolución, desarrollamos el concepto de pobreza de recursos. A través de él intentamos hacer ver que cada lengua realiza en general operaciones similares a otras lenguas aun si las huellas visibles de estas operaciones en la superficie del enunciado son o pueden parecer del todo disímiles.

Abstract

In this paper, I analyze the construction of the trope of irony in a political interview, more specifically the interview with a Spanish politician on television in 2013. Its context is the emergence of the 15M, a citizen’s protest movement against the cuts imposed by the European Union and the Spanish Government. From a theoretical-methodological point of view, I adopt a holistic perspective, inspired by Halliday’s approach of jointly analysing the form-function relationship and White’s constructivism. I also review the different definitions and explanations of irony. After analysing the formal resources that construct irony, I give an account of the cognitive frameworks that are opposed in this discourse, and finally describe their narrative disposition and the communicative functions that those resources fulfill.

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyse the syntactic and semantic interclausal relations that hold with Old English verbs of inaction. These verbs are studied from the perspective of juncture-nexus relations and the semantic relations Phase, Psych-action and Causative. The results are compared on the grounds of the Interclausal Relations Hierarchy. The comparison of semantic content and syntactic expression evidences discrepancies between too weak juncture-nexus types, such as clausal subordination, and very close semantic relations, like Phase. Two main conclusions are drawn. Firstly, the Interclausal Relations Hierarchy allows us to describe the variation in the complementation of inaction verbs in Old English; and to make predictions on the diachronic axis, given that the loss of finite clause complementation and the change to infinitival complementation presented by Present-Day English verbs of inaction are fully predicted by the IRH. Secondly, semantic relations and nexus types remain stable throughout the change, whereas juncture levels change.

Resumen

Las valoraciones negativas escritas por los clientes de productos y servicios adquiridos a través de Internet se han convertido en una poderosa herramienta a favor del consumidor. Gracias a esta, dichos consumidores expresan, generalmente, sus quejas ante la falta de adecuación entre el producto descrito y el producto finalmente obtenido, y que revierte en la imagen de la empresa que las recibe. En el marco de la cortesía lingüística y basándonos en un corpus compuesto por seiscientas opiniones negativas recogidas en la página web de Amazon, el presente trabajo analiza contrastivamente las estrategias de cortesía empleadas en las valoraciones negativas de consumidores chinos y españoles acentuando una perspectiva sociocultural y combinando una metodología tanto cualitativa como cuantitativa. El estudio revelará cómo las estrategias de cortesía chinas están orientadas hacia la construcción de una imagen positiva mientras que las españolas se encaminan a una imagen negativa. También se desprende de la investigación un análisis de algunos cambios en los modelos de cortesía verbal con respecto a la cortesía convencional.

Resumen

Con el objetivo de crear en los estudiantes de español de la Universidad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales de Viena (Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien) una conciencia sobre sus preferencias y modos de aprender y promover así su autonomía, se realizó un estudio para establecer sus perfiles de aprendizaje. Para ello, se adaptó al alemán el cuestionario CHAEA (Alonso et al., 1994) y se diseñó una encuesta digital. Tras una fase de pilotaje, un panel de cinco expertos revisó la traducción al alemán. En la recogida de datos se consiguió una muestra altamente significativa: 198 de un total de 744 estudiantes (26,6%). Los resultados muestran que entre los estudiantes de empresariales predominan básicamente dos perfiles de aprendizaje opuestos: la correlación de los estilos reflexivo-teórico y la correlación activo-pragmático. Esta dicotomía contrasta con los resultados de otras poblaciones y apunta a que los aprendientes podrían obtener beneficio de cualquier situación de aprendizaje, puesto que poseen estrategias de todos los estilos de aprendizaje.

Abstracta

En este trabajo investigamos la ideología del españolismo lingüístico en una muestra representativa del alumnado de Bachillerato del municipio madrileño de Fuenlabrada. Mediante una técnica cuantitativa basada en cuestionarios anónimos, extraemos y analizamos las percepciones que a este grupo poblacional le sugiere la diversidad lingüística de España. Las personas participantes han asignado propiedades extralingüísticas al gallego, euskera, catalán y castellano como si de características inherentes a las lenguas se tratase. Asimismo, se han presentado estas lenguas para evaluarlas desde una perspectiva sociolingüística, de manera que se detectan diferencias sustanciales entre las lenguas en diferentes dominios sociales, así como prejuicios hacia los hablantes de cada una de ellas. Bajo esta carga valorativa se encierran diferentes premisas propias de la ideología del nacionalismo lingüístico español, que, a través de un discurso supremacista, emplaza al castellano en una posición preferente con respecto a otras lenguas de España y presenta a estas como lenguas menos aptas para la comunicación y como obstáculos para el desarrollo económico.

Abstract

Authoring support consists of (semi)automated aids to be used at different stages during the writing process. Language information, however, tends to be restricted to areas such as spelling and grammar checking or term banks, and text construction difficulties that writers face concerning the structure of particular genres, associated sentence formulations or genre-specific vocabulary have not received proper attention. An additional gap in the research is that this support is generally addressed to English language users. This paper addresses these concerns focusing on a particular genre: the company’s directors’ report, and on Spanish language writers writing in English. A custom-made monolingual corpus has been analyzed using Bhatia (1993, 2004) and Swales (1990, 2004) definitions of genre and move combined with theme characterization. Recurrent strings for each move/step, which are conventionally associated with each rhetorical unit, were identified and formulated as “meta-strings.” The bilingual glossary includes domain-specific items as well as move/step or genre-specific lexical and phraseological options, i.e., elements used irrespective of the business, places or people involved. The results are valuable by themselves, as an analysis of the genre, but also as the empirical basis for the authoring support tool that we present here, and as language training materials.

Abstract

Speech acts used in doing ta’ārof (Iranian system of politeness) have been conceptualized in terms of both positive (i.e. sincere or genuine) and negative (i.e. ritual or ostensible) meanings. This study aimed to revisit the interpretation of the negative meaning by concentrating on ta’ārof (ritual) offers produced by characters in Iranian films. First, these items were identified and distinguished from their genuine counterparts based on the strategies used in their structures and analysing their contextual features respectively. Then, the researcher proposed a model in which she adopted the notion of Leech’s (1983) meta-implicature (indirect implicature) to explicate the negative meaning of ta’ārof offers. She grouped a series of effective factors in working out these meta-implicatures. Finally, a tentative hierarchy of stages for identification and interpretation of ta’ārof offers in Iranian films were proposed.

This article reviews The Palgrave handbook of motivation for language learning978-3-030-28379-7