Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

Within the field of Linguistics, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, a crowdsourcing marketplace specializes in computer-based Human Intelligence Tasks, has been praised as a cost efficient source of data for English and other major languages. Spanish is a good candidate due to its presence within the US and beyond. Still, detailed information concerning the linguistic and demographic profile of Spanish-speaking ‘Turkers’ is missing, thus making it difficult for researchers to evaluate whether the Mechanical Turk provides the right environment for their tasks. This paper addresses this gap in our knowledge by developing the first detailed study of the presence of Spanish-speaking workers, focusing on factors relevant for research planning, namely, (socio)linguistically relevant variables and information concerning work habits. The results show that this platform provides access to a fairly active participant pool of both L1 and L2Spanish speakers as well as bilinguals. A brief introduction to how Amazon’s Mechanical Turk works and overview of Hispanic Linguistics projects that have so far used the Mechanical Turk successfully is included.

Chains of auxiliary verbs in Spanish allow for the reconceptualization of well-known grammatical problems under the light of understudied structures. In this paper we will deal with issues regarding the position of subjects in declarative and interrogative sentences featuring auxiliary chains. It will become immediately evident that the dichotomy between pre- and post-verbal subjects results inadequate to provide adequate characterisations for the Spanish cases, in contrast to the situation in English. This is so because post-verbal subjects may appear, a priori, to the right of each auxiliary in a chain. These new data, which have received little attention, constitute a challenge for standard hypotheses about the position of subjects in Spanish.

This paper studies two Spanish constructions with the verb poner (‘to put’) and an infinitive. The first one, <ponerse a + infinitive>, has  traditionally been considered an inchoative periphrasis; however, we will show that its grammaticalisation is only complete with inanimate or impersonal subjects, while with animate subjects the structure keeps causative semantics. The second one, <poner something / someone a + infinitive>, has received much less attention in the literature. Although it originated together with its se-counterpart, it has not become a periphrasis and today exhibits a hybrid behaviour similar to that of verbs of influence on the one hand and restructuring causative verbs on the other. It will be shown that both constructions started with a causative-aspectual meaning (‘triggering an event’) that they keep today: ponerse has a causative meaning despite being an auxiliary and poner has an aspectual meaning despite not being an auxiliary, which explains many of their special characteristics. This paper will not only shed light on the diachronic and synchronic properties of these constructions but will also reflect on the limits between lexical and grammatical categories.

Following Oca (1914), this article argues that passive and impersonal se constructions in Spanish are regular transitive constructions where the pronominal clitic seis the argumental subject. Several arguments (secondary predication, non-argumental predicates, control and obviation, anaphora binding, active morphology or its alignment with overt nominative pronouns, among others)show that (i)bothconstructions are active structures, (ii)despite what agreement facts might suggest, in both the internal argument of the verb is not the subject but the direct object throughout the derivation, (iii) se is the active nominative pronominal subject of the construction. We argue that the alleged ‘special’ properties of passive-se are not construction-specific but follow from the lexical specifications of se agreeing with Tense as a quirky subject.

En este trabajo se discute en qué consiste la gramaticalización del pronombre se del latín al español a la luz de la teoría del se en español moderno como estrategia de reparación en Forma Fonética (Pujalte & Saab 2012 y trabajos posteriores). Para ello, en primer lugar demostramos que la evolución de este pronombre desde el latín clásico al español actual constituye un caso de gramaticalización tal como es definida en el marco de la Teoría de la Gramaticalización esbozada por Lehmann (1985, 2004, 2015). Esto se apoya en evidencia morfo-fonológica –la gradual pérdida de material fonológico, la homogeneización silábica del paradigma pronominal–, sintáctica –su progresiva falta de libertad sintáctica, i.e. su obligatoriedad y aumento de restricciones combinatorias y posicionales– y semántica –su pérdida de significado específico–. Luego de establecer el modo en que esos cambios se producen a lo largo de un recorrido que va del latín clásico al español actual pasando por el latín vulgar y el español medieval, se revisan las clasificaciones de tipos de gramaticalización de Roberts & Roussou (2003) y Kornfeld (2004). Se propone finalmente que, si el análisis del se de Pujalte & Saab (2012) está en lo correcto, debe agregarse a estas tipologías una variante que consiste en la reinterpretación de un elemento que es la manifestación fonológica de un determinado nodo presente en la sintaxis como un elemento de rescate introducido en Forma Fonética.

Voiceless bilabial fricative productions ([ɸ]) have been widely reported for several Spanish dialects especially in America (Lenz 1940; Predmore 1945; Navarro Tomás 1943; Florez 1951; Boyd-Bowman 1960; Canfield 1981; among others). Most of these sources posit that the bilabial variant [ɸ] is more likely to be found in rural areas, that it is normally produced by speakers with a low educational level and that is generally followed by back (and rounded) vowels. Nevertheless, there is a need to formalize such observations and check to what extent these external and internal factors or others may be impacting the choice of this fricative over the more common [f]. In order to do so, eighteen speakers of Spanish from Guanajuato (Mexico), an area that has been reported to present both variants (Boyd-Bowman 1960), were recorded producing words with ‘f’. The analysis of 126 productions yielded the following results: a) speakers with a lower educational level (primary or secondary education) show more instances of the bilabial fricative [ɸ] than those that have attained higher degrees (university); b) older speakers and males tend to produce the vernacular variant [ɸ] more than younger speakers and females; and c) back round vowels (/o u/) are more likely to trigger the use of the bilabial fricative due to their articulatory similarities.

The interrogative element cómo ‘how’ of Spanish has a double meaning: that of manner and that causal. With the former, it behaves like a typical interrogative element, but, with the latter, its behavior manifests the specificities of por qué ‘why’. Two analyses are proposed, always in cartographic terms: one for sentences with cómo with a causal value and another one for sentences in which cómo with this value appears in front of es que ‘is that’ (cómo es que). Indeed, the conditions for embedding for these two types are different (much more restricted for the first one than for the second one). It is proposed that sentences with cómo without es que have an exclamative illocutionary force with an interrogative component, while the force of sentences with cómo es que would be a variant of the interrogative one (interro-exclamative force). In both cases, their factual and mirative nature is syntactically relevant. The general analysis proposal is finally applied to a poorly studied element, que cosa que (Ripacurtian Catalan and Aragonese).

La naturaleza ha jugado un papel fundamental a lo largo de la educación del hombre, y en particular en la educación durante la etapa infantil. En el origen del siglo XX aparece la necesidad de vincular las escuelas con la naturaleza para mejorar las condiciones higienistas de los espacios de educación. En este contexto de renovación escolar, Richard Neutra es uno de los arquitectos del siglo XX que entendió y desarrollo la escuela vinculada con la naturaleza, concebida como un espacio que no solo instruye, sino que educa. Estas ideas se comparan medio siglo más tarde con la escuela japonesa Fuji de Tezuka Architects que aparece en una pequeña población para recordar que la educación en la naturaleza es la base para construir un mundo sostenible.

En torno a la línea de trabajo que desarrolla el Taller Ciudad Puerto de la Facultad de Arquitectura y Urbanismo de la Universidad de Chile, interesada en la relación entre los procesos de expansión portuaria y los procesos de fricción y degradación urbana de las principales ciudades puerto chilenas, se tiene como propósito analizar y caracterizar el caso de la ciudad-puerto de Iquique, en sus áreas norte y sur. Para ello se utilizan como base cartografías e imágenes satelitales junto a instrumentos de planificación, sobre los cuales se va caracterizando temáticamente el territorio y la ciudad, a partir de capas de información. Las principales conclusiones obtenidas de dicho análisis se traducen en el planteamiento de tres Planes Maestros; dos para el sector norte y uno para el sector sur

En la historia de la arquitectura chilena se ha dado una escasa atención a las cuestiones de género y de clase, priorizándose el análisis estilístico y la biografía de personas y edificios como métodos de reconstrucción histórica. A partir de esta constatación, proponemos realizar un estudio historiográfico a partir de la identificación de los modos en que aparece el trabajo femenino en la historia de la arquitectura en Chile. Este trabajo se organiza a partir de tres categorías de análisis historiográfico propuesto por Soledad Zárate y Lorena Godoy (2005), que registran las formas en las cuales el trabajo femenino ha sido caracterizado en la historiografía chilena desde las últimas décadas del siglo XIX hasta los primeros años del siglo XXI