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

This study examines bilinguals’ gender use strategies in code-switched agreement (i.e. the moon is bonita) and concord (i.e. la moon) structures. Thirty-five L1 Spanish-L2 English adult bilinguals and 43 L1 English-L2 Spanish adults with an intermediate (N=18) or advanced (N=25) level of proficiency in Spanish completed an acceptability judgment task in which they rated code-switched Adjectival Predicates and DPs. The results show that only the L1 Spanish-L2 English bilinguals prefer the Adj (in the case of agreement) or the D (in the case of concord) to be marked for the gender of the Spanish translation equivalent of the English N, but that all groups rate agreement structures higher than concord structures. Both of these findings corroborate previous work on intrasentential code-switching, however, this is the first study to offer an account for the contrast in processing difficulty between agreement and concord structures. We argue that this difference can be explained in terms of the way in which the features are valued in agreement and in concord. Under the double-feature valuation mechanism (Liceras et al., 2008) in agreement both features are valued in a single direction, while in concord the features are valued in two different directions. It is this unidirectionality of the feature valuation mechanism in agreement that makes code-switched agreement structures such as Adjectival Predicates easier to process.

El objetivo de este artículo consiste en describir el uso etimológico/no etimológico de las formas personales le y les en la ciudad de Sevilla. Para llevar a cabo nuestro propósito, hemos analizado una muestra de habla compuesta por 48 entrevistas del sociolecto alto y bajo, pertenecientes al Corpus PRESEEA-Sevilla. Se ha trabajado, así, con una plantilla de codificación que analiza la posible incidencia de 38 variables independientes (lingüísticas, estilísticas y sociales) en la actualización de los clíticos pronominales le y les. Los datos obtenidos ponen de manifiesto una tendencia conservadora, es decir, la preferencia por el uso etimológico por parte de los hablantes sevillanos. Con respecto a la aparición de usos no etimológicos, el elemento más importante es la presencia de un referente personal, que se da en la mayoría de las ocasiones en que aparece leísmo. Por factores sociales, la primera generación y las mujeres muestran mayor tendencia al leísmo. En cambio, la tercera generación es la más reticente. En cuanto al nivel de instrucción, son los sociolectos altos los que más uso hacen de formas le/les no etimológicas. Respecto a los tipos de leísmo, es decir, leísmo aparente y leísmo real, que emplean los hablantes en Sevilla, es el primero el que predomina en esta comunidad de habla.

The Derivational Complexity Hypothesis (Jakubowicz & Strik 2008) proposes that computationally complex structures interact with syntactic constraints in linguistic production, causing the rise of avoidance strategies in child L1 and adult L2 speakers. These avoidance strategies have until recently been understudied in the field of SLA (as opposed to the use of ungrammatical structures), but they actively compete with target-like forms during the language acquisition process and can therefore advance our understanding of non-native linguistic development. This article provides evidence for the DCH based on avoidance strategies shown by non-native speakers of Spanish in the production of the wh- island (How did you say when the jewels were stolen?). Through a game-based elicitation task, speakers at the intermediate and near-native level were prompted to produce questions containing a wh- island. The results show that intermediate speakers of Spanish significantly avoid producing questions that contain an island, as opposed to native and near-native speakers. The strategies used instead of the target are of a less complex nature (pronominalization of the second clause, omission of the middle verb), therefore supporting the DCH. Near-native and native data, on the other hand, show a use of creative strategies that is absent from the intermediate data. Off-target constructions by these groups often consist of questions that are structurally more complex than the intended target forms (use of relative clauses and embedded NPs).

The present paper aims at accounting for the Spanish Imperfecto, Perfecto, Pluscuamperfecto and the Indefinido by applying three binary tense oppositions: Present vs Past, Synchronous vs Posterior and Imperfect(ive) vs Perfect(ive). For the sixteen Spanish tense forms under analysis a binary approach leads to covering twelve of them. Their relation with the preterital forms outside the range of the three oppositions is accounted for by two surgical operations: (a) the notion of Imperfect(ive) is severed from the notion of ongoing progress by restricting it to underinformation about completion and by seeing continuous tense forms as involving a more complex semantics; (b) the notion of (non-)stative is strictly severed from interference of information coming from the arguments of a verb. These theoretical moves make the way free for a formal-semantic insight into the interaction of Spanish tense and aspect. It also paves the way for a principled distinction between completion and anteriority. Restricted to tense forms pertaining to the past, our analysis sheds light on the struggle for survival of tense forms outside the binary system.

This paper investigates the patterns regarding the (un)availability of by-phrases and agent-oriented modification in adjectival passives in Spanish. Departing from the observation that adjectival participles derived from change-of-state verbs ban agent-oriented modification but those derived from stative causative verbs allow it, I put forth a novel theoretical account that derives the restrictions solely from the Aktionsart of the underlying verbal predicate, syntactically modelled and independently motivated. I extend my proposal to German and Hebrew, which display a similar behavior, and propose a parametric account for languages like Greek that freely allow by-phrases and agent-oriented modification regardless of the Aktionsart of the underlying verbal predicate.

This paper examines some aspects of nominal inflection. It focuses in particular on noun classification with evidence drawn mainly from Spanish where noun classification surfaces as formal Gender. Under a minimalist lens, this feature is a puzzling grammatical element because it seems uncongenial to the idea of optimal design. I examine some syntactic evidence to assess the syntactic locus of Gender features in nominal structures, and conjecture that noun classification simply externalizes some basic properties of the linguistic system in the functional domain. I motivate my conclusions on the basis of empirical evidence and recent theoretical proposals that argue for the adoption of a much more abstract conception of syntactic constructs than those we have generally been considering.

Este artículo aborda la flexión verbal con base en los conceptos introducidos en el modelo morfológico basado en palabras; en específico, el modelo de Word and Paradigm. Se propone una metodología para el análisis de la flexión verbal del español. Para esto, tomamos únicamente la primera conjugación del español. El análisis aquí establecido se basa en determinar partes principales que permitan predecir los paradigmas verbales de primera conjugación. Mostramos que a partir de unas cuantas partes principales es posible predecir el paradigma completo de una forma verbal. Asimismo discutimos los fenómenos de la competencia entre esquemas donde se presenta cambio de acento (como en las formas “hablemos” y “háblemos”) así como las diptongaciones /o/ → /ue/ y /e/ → /ie/ que responden a un cambio en la parte principal. Finalmente, se muestran las ventajas que el modelo basado en palabras muestra en el análisis de la flexión.

This paper aims to explain, from a theoretical point of view, the behaviour of past participle agreement with the object in situ (PPAOIS) in Majorcan Catalan. It is possible in perfect telic dynamic events, but not in Kimian and Davidsonian states —except for certain telic dynamic constructions built with Kiparsky (1998) and Jaque’s  (2014) high pure stative verbs—, nor in some atelic dynamic constructions (like those ones with NP objects bounded by a D or Q), although it is perfectly grammatical with bare plurals and with bare mass nouns. In order for PPAOIS to be possible, it is proposed that a specific functional head (Asp, that is to say: Proc[uq][uϕ]), related to so-called inner aspect, must be present in the event structure. Asp establishes a double Agree relation with the object, in order to get its quantisation and [uϕ] features valued. It is also explored the possibility that the [q] feature of Asp be interpretable. If Asp is not present in the structure, the impossibility of PPAOIS follows. Moreover, PPAOIS will be only materialised if a pro object co-referent with the full NP object moves through a LowTop position —similar to the AgrO projection proposed by Kayne (1989).

The impact of English on Cuban Spanish has represented the embodiment of a profound process of acculturation on the island. This empirical study is intended to examine the anglicization of Cuban Spanish by determining anglicizing patterns or strategies in the phonological, morphological, lexical and semantic levels. Thus, the article demonstrates the variability of word-building mechanisms and semantic transparency dia-synchronically. The normative and descriptive analysis is also accompanied by brief contrastive commentaries on divergent and common aspects between Cuban Spanish and European Spanish, illustrated with examples extracted from prior corpora and dictionary revision. The research has shed more light on the universality of certain morpho-phonological patterns in Spanish, as well as the correlation between pragmatic or extralinguistic aspects with lexico-semantic variation, revealing significant changes in sociolects and attitudes. 

A characteristic feature of the Spanish spoken in the Mexican state of Chihuahua is the pronunciation of the standard phoneme /tʃ/ (<ch>) as a non-standard allophone [ʃ] (<sh>). The present study analyzes the social and linguistic factors that influence variation in the Mexico-United States border community of Ciudad Juárez. Direct and indirect elicitations techniques were used to gather tokens of /tʃ/ from a sample of 40 local speakers who varied in age, sex, socioeconomic status, education level, and degree of bilingualism. The data was perceptually and acoustically interpreted and then statistically examined using variable rules analysis. On the linguistic side, the results show that [s], [i], [u] in preceding phonological context favor weakening. On the social side, the most prone participants to produce [ʃ] were: young men from low socioeconomic status, regardless of being Spanish monolinguals or Spanish-English sequential bilinguals. These findings indicate an ongoing gender shift with respect to previous research in the same community.