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

The quasar luminosity function measures the number of quasars per cubic megaparsec and absolute magnitude. It is one of the most important tools for studying the active galactic nucleus population and how they have evolved in time. Our investigation estimates this function through a probabilistic approach. We model the observed density of quasars using a bidimensional non-homogeneous Poisson Process in the space of absolute magnitude times redshift. A series of adjustable parametrized models are tested and we use maximum likelihood and the Bayesian Information Criteria (BIC) to select the best model, from wich the corresponding quasar luminosity function is obtained. Finally a residual analysis is made to study the goodness of fit.

En el presente artículo analizamos la fijación externa e interna que presenta el binomio [entre + S] con artículo cero en español, y sus equivalentes en alemán en las combinaciones usuales entre lágrimas y unter Tränen. Los datos son extraídos del corpus DeReKo (Das Deutsche Referenzkorpus) y del Sketch Engine, deTenTen 13 y eseuTenTen11. En primer lugar, presentamos los objetivos del proyecto en el que este trabajo está enmarcado. En un segundo punto exponemos las diferentes aplicaciones de la lingüística de corpus en el ámbito de la fraseología. Por último, en base a los corpus consultados comentamos convergencias o divergencias más notables de las combinaciones usuales objeto de estudio.

Se propone un estudio semántico-discursivo de las dos querellas presentadas por la Fiscalía Superior de Cataluña contra D.ª Carme Forcadell i Lluís, presidenta del Parlamento de Cataluña, y contra los miembros de la Mesa del Parlamento catalán por los delitos de desobediencia y prevaricación. Compaginando las metodologías del análisis de sentimiento, de la lingüística del corpus y de la teoría de la valoración, este estudio desmiente la idea de que la querella solicita de forma imparcial la aplicación de normas generales a casos concretos. Lejos de ser fácticos o ideacionales, los enunciados del fiscal están cargados de significados interpersonales y manifiestan implicación subjetiva con una vehemencia aledaña de la invectiva política.

This paper aims to analyse the extent to which the textbook for German as a foreign language DaF kompakt A1 (Sander et al., 2011) complies with the recommendations of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Council of Europe, 2001) (hereafter CEFR) in respect to lexical competence and sociolinguistic competence in receptive and productive activities, specifically with regard to phraseological units. In this respect, we have focused on sentential formulae and fixed frames present in a corpus containing the textbook materials, and we have checked whether those fixed expressions correspond to the phraseological and sociolinguistic compe-tences that are expected in the Framework for an A1 level student of German language. To this end, we have compiled a corpus of the textbook receptive and productive materials, made up by three subcorpora: one for the written texts, one for the oral texts, and a third subcorpus containing exercises. We have performed a quantitative analysis (by means of AntConc 3.4.4 [Anthony, 2016] and kfNgram [Fletcher, 2007]), and a qualitative one. Our results suggest that the textbook complies with the recommendations of the CEFR.

The aim of the present research is to approach the current variation and vulnerability to manipulation of concepts, apparently clear and unambiguous, related to usual professional roles. The study concentrates on semantic frames, and subsequent, cognitive models associated to the term ‘boss’ as they are expressed and transmitted through large-scale British media. The qualitative and quantitative linguistic analysis of a substantial corpus of texts, in which this term appears, shows clear differences in its meaning, depending on key factors such as the socio-political and ideological orientation of the medium of publication.

The distinction between syntagmatic compounds of the type N Prep N, such as Fr. jouet d’enfant, and nominal syntagms of the type N Prep N, such as the partially equivalent Fr. jouet pour enfants, remains unclear and vague. This is mainly because the lexical and syntactic status of syntagmatic compounds still is controversial. In some cases, as in jouet d’enfant and jouet pour enfants, partial equivalent syntagmatic compounds and nominal syntagms may coexist and underlie a specific variation and alternation. In other cases, such as Pt. bracelete de aço and bracelete em aço, two variants of a syntagmatic compound may alternate and coexist. The first part of this paper provides an overview of the current discussion on these two types of constructions. The second part addresses the alternation and variation of syntagmatic compounds and nominal syntagms by means of analysis of large-scale corpus data, the French, Spanish and Portuguese corpus of the TenTen family. Here, the focus lies on the variation of the prepositional internal element of these constructions as well as on a comparison of different word formation patterns.

Log-likelihood and Chi-square tests are probably the most popular statistical tests used in corpus linguistics, especially when the research is aiming to describe the lexical variations between corpora. However, because this specific use of the Chi-square test is not valid, it produces far too many significant results. This paper explains the source of the problem (i.e., the non-independence of the observations), the reasons for which the usual solutions are not acceptable and which kinds of statistical test should be used instead. A corpus analysis conducted on the lexical differences between American and British English is then reported, in order to demonstrate the problem and to confirm the adequacy of the proposed solution. The last section presents the commands that can be used with WordSmith Tools, a very popular software for corpus processing, to obtain the necessary data for the adequate tests, as well as a very easy-to-use procedure in R, a free and easy to install statistical software, that performs these tests.

El presente artículo, partiendo de los más recientes estudios sobre el discurso telecinemático, pretende contribuir a la investigación en el ámbito de la lingüística aplicada a las series televisivas, las cuales constituyen uno de los productos culturales populares más influyentes en la sociedad contemporánea. El corpus de estudio está compuesto por los guiones completos de la exitosa serie Águila Roja, emitida por Radio Televisión Española entre 2009 y 2016. Compaginando técnicas de la lingüística de corpus y del análisis del discurso, este estudio examina la caracterización de Satur, uno de los personajes principales de la ficción, a través de la co-construcción del significado elaborada por la audiencia televisiva. Los resultados sugieren que el discurso del personaje está caracterizado por el uso del registro coloquial contemporáneo y por incongruencias y anacronismos, rasgos que crean humor y familiaridad con los espectadores.

The features of specialised languages have been extensively described by scholars in the literature. Amongst them, Enrique Alcaraz’s work stands out as an exhaustive and comprehensive description of EPAP at all linguistic levels: lexical, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic. This research aims to provide a bottom-up assessment of his description on a lexical level through the implementation of corpus-based techniques on two specialised corpora of legal and telecommunications English. The results support Alcaraz’s portrayal as regards term usage, the relevance of sub-technical vocabulary, the peculiarities of Latin single and multi word terms in legal English and the significant presence and usage of abbreviations in telecommunications English.

Referential cohesion consists of a series of phoric-type grammatical and lexical devices that exhibit syntactic and semantic links amongst discourse entities. By means of reference, textual meanings intertwine. Thus, a series of coreferential and disjoint reference networks are created, through which nouns are linked in order to contribute to textual cohesion.As a phenomenon that includes pronominalisation, ellipsis or zero anaphora, text deixis (which essentially consists in non-exophoric uses of demonstratives) and a variety of lexical cohesion devices (relationships of repetition, synonymy, hypernymy, hyponymy and association), referential cohesion works in the grammar and discourse-pragmatic interface. On the one hand, it sets structural and hierarchical syntactic-semantic relations between sentence constituents; on the other hand, it makes explicit the degree of activation of discourse entities in the memory of the interlocutors and therefore shows evidence of discourse organisation, which licences the interpretation of thematic progression and coherence.  Thus, firstly, the diverse referential devices are linked to text cohesion at the microstructural level. Secondly, they stand as obvious and tangible traces of coherence relations at the level of macrostructure. Finally, they underline the cognitive processes by means of which the addressor and the addressee interact in order to communicate –the main aim of discourse– at the contextual and pragmatic levels.