{"title":"Copula Choice is Associated with Discourse Integration Skills in Spanish-Speaking Children","authors":"Karen Miller","doi":"10.1515/shll-2021-2051","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/shll-2021-2051","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The present study investigates the relationship between discourse integration skills and Spanish copula choice in monolingual Chilean Spanish-speaking children. Previous research has focused on determining the age at which children associate estar to a transitory property and ser to an inherent property (Holtheuer, Carolina. 2012. Spanish-speaking children do not always overuse estar. Revista Signos 45(78). 3–19, Holtheuer, Carolina & Johanna Rendle-Short. 2013. Ser and estar: Corrective input to children’s errors of the Spanish copula verbs. First Language 33(2). 155–167, Schmitt, Cristina & Karen Miller. 2007. Making discourse dependent decisions: The case of the copulas ser and estar in Spanish. Lingua 117(11). 1907–1929, Sera, Maria. 1992. To be or to be: Use and acquisition of the Spanish copulas. Journal of Memory and Language 31. 408–427, Requena, Pablo, Astrid Román-Hernández & Karen Miller. 2015. Children’s knowledge of the Spanish copulas ser and estar with novel adjectives. Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics 22. 193–207), showing that by 2 years of age children know the categorial distribution of the two copulas, but that at 5 years of age only some children, but not all children, have knowledge of the transitory/inherent distinction that often arises when the same adjective occurs with one or the other copula. The present study seeks to extend the latter research by further investigating the factors that might influence why only some children associate estar to transitory properties at 5 years of age, a question that will not only shed light on when the subtle meaning differences of the copulas are acquired, but also how they are acquired. Maienborn, Claudia (2005. A discourse-based account of Spanish ser/estar. Linguistics 43(1). 155–180) notes that estar is discourse-linked, while ser is not. Specifically, the use of estar with an adjectival predicate to compare changes to a person across different stages of their life relies on one’s ability to integrate the larger discourse (i.e., these various stages) into their statement. In the present study, to determine whether Spanish-speaking children’s production of the copula estar with adjectival predicates was associated with their discourse integration abilities, children were presented with both a Copula Elicitation Task and a Discourse Production Task. Analyses revealed an association between children’s discourse integration skills and their use of estar with adjectives to express transitory properties, a finding that indicates that children’s acquisition of estar is mastered late – at least in part because of their late development of discourse integration skills more generally. Most studies on the acquisition of estar with adjectival complements have focused primarily on comprehension. Experimental studies on children’s production of estar are rare. As such, this experimental study is one of the few that examines children’s use of estar in product","PeriodicalId":126470,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133157774","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pronominal Feature Re-assembly: L1 and L2 Pronoun Resolution of Spanish Epicene and Common Gender Antecedents","authors":"A. Faber, Luiz A. Amaral, M. Maia","doi":"10.1515/shll-2021-2046","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/shll-2021-2046","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this paper, we propose the implementation of a full-fledged feature-based lexicalist syntactic theory as a way to represent the possible configurations of features in the learner’s interlanguage and formalize a theory of acquisition based in feature reassembly. We describe gender agreement pronominal coindexation in Spanish using Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) and use it to analyze the results of a self-paced reading test with L1 and L2 speakers. We find that the specification of the gender feature value at the syntactic level in epicene antecedents facilitates pronominal resolution in L1 Spanish speakers. Conversely, there is a cognitive cost when the gender feature is underspecified at the syntactic level in common gender antecedents; this cost is not found among L2 speakers. The detailed descriptions in terms of feature specification in the HPSG framework allow us to observe differences between the L1 and L2 grammars in fine-grained detail and represent optionality at the lexical level.","PeriodicalId":126470,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics","volume":"44 11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133519437","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"El diptongo/hiato como rasgo contrastivo: un estudio perceptual con hablantes de herencia de español","authors":"Allison Milner","doi":"10.1515/shll-2021-2052","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/shll-2021-2052","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This study examines the perception of diphthongs and hiatuses in 11 heritage Spanish speakers and 6 Spanish-dominant bilingual speakers with an AXB discrimination task (Lukyanchenko, Anna & Kira Gor. 2011. Perceptual correlates of phonological representations in heritage speakers and L2 learners. In Nick Danis, Kate Mesh & Hyunsuk Sung (eds.), Proceedings of the 35th annual Boston University conference on language development, 414–426. Sommerville, MA: Cascadilla Press). In Spanish, diphthongs and hiatuses represent distinct vocalic sequences (Schwegler, Armin, Juergen Kempff & Ana Ameal-Guerra. 2010. Fonética y fonología españolas, 4th edn. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley). However, there are words in which the pronunciation of the vocalic sequence as either a diphthong or hiatus serves as a contrastive feature, as in the example of ley / leí (Face, Timothy L. & Scott M. Alvord. 2004. Lexical and acoustic factors in the perception of the Spanish diphthong vs. Hiatus contrast. Hispania 87(3). 553–564; Hualde, José I. & Mónica Prieto. 2002. On the diphthong/hiatus contrast in Spanish: Some experimental results. Linguistics 40(2). 217–234). Given that these features also exist in English, albeit in different forms, does L2 influence of English impact heritage Spanish listeners' perception of diphthongs and hiatuses in Spanish? Specifically, this study examines discrimination between the diphthong / hiatus as a contrasting feature with /a e o/ as the nucleic vowel in the diphthongs. Results indicate that there is not a significant difference in discrimination between heritage speakers and Spanish-dominant bilinguals. Additionally, the nucleic vowel in the diphthong tokens is a significant factor for the ability to discriminate diphthongs vs. hiatuses in heritage Spanish speakers. The findings of this study contribute to the corpus of phonetic studies focusing on heritage Spanish speakers and perception in their heritage language.","PeriodicalId":126470,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116309112","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Null Direct Object Clitics in Basque Spanish: A Study Across Four Generations","authors":"Ager Gondra","doi":"10.1515/shll-2021-2048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/shll-2021-2048","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The null direct object clitic is described as one of the distinctive morphosyntactic features of Basque Spanish (e.g., compré el libro i , pero se me ha olvidado traer øi). However, no study to date has explored the variable usage of this form in cross-generational terms. The present inquiry aims to fill this void by analyzing and contrasting the results of two studies by four generations of Spanish-Basque bilinguals with the following age ranges: 85–96 (Generation 1), 55–75 (Generation 2), 35–45 (Generation 3), 18–25 (Generation 4). The education level of the participants was also taken into consideration. The first study consisted of an acceptability judgment task, in which the participants rated the acceptability of sentences with a null direct object using a 5-point Likert scale. The independent linguistic variables in this study were the semantic features [+/-definiteness] and [+/-specificity]. The acceptance rate of null direct object clitics was significantly higher among Generation 1 and 2 speakers than among those of Generation 3 and 4, with no effect of definiteness or specificity. In the second study, based on an elicitation task, older speakers (Generation 1 and 2) produced significantly more null direct object clitics than their younger counterparts (Generation 3 and 4). By contrasting the differential behavior of the participants across and within the same generation, it is shown that the generational effects observed are mainly due to the participants’ different levels of formal education.","PeriodicalId":126470,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128336159","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Gender Assignment Strategies Among Simultaneous Spanish/English Bilingual Children from Miami, Florida","authors":"Osmer Balam, U. Lakshmanan, M. C. Parafita Couto","doi":"10.1515/shll-2021-2045","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/shll-2021-2045","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract We examined gender assignment patterns in the speech of Spanish/English bilingual children, paying particular attention to the influence of three gender assignment strategies (i.e., analogical gender, masculine default gender, phonological gender) that have been proposed to constrain the gender assignment process in Spanish/English bilingual speech. Our analysis was based on monolingual Spanish nominals (n = 1774), which served as a comparative baseline, and Spanish/English mixed nominal constructions (n = 220) extracted from oral narratives produced by 40 child bilinguals of different grade levels (second graders vs. fifth graders) and instructional programs (English immersion vs. two-way bilingual) from Miami Dade, Florida. The narratives, available in the CHILDES database (MacWhinney, Brian. 2000. The CHILDES project: Tools for analyzing talk, 3rd edn. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates), were collected by Pearson, Barbara Z. 2002. Narrative competence among monolingual and bilingual school children in Miami. In D. Kimbrough Oller & Rebecca E. Eilers (eds.), Language and literacy in bilingual children, 135–174. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Results revealed that in Spanish nominal constructions, children across both instructional programs and grade levels evinced native-like acquisition of grammatical gender. In mixed nominals, children overwhelmingly assigned the masculine gender to English nouns. Notably, irrespective of schooling background, simultaneous Spanish/English bilingual children used the masculine default gender strategy when assigning gender to English nouns with feminine translation equivalents. This suggests that from age seven, simultaneous Spanish/English child bilingual acquisition of grammatical gender is characterized by a predisposition towards the employment of the masculine default gender strategy in bilingual speech.","PeriodicalId":126470,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129030621","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Stylistic Variation and the Role of Dialect Contact in the leísmo of Basque-Spanish","authors":"Itxaso Rodríguez-Ordóñez","doi":"10.1515/shll-2021-2041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/shll-2021-2041","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract There is considerable debate with respect to the status of Basque-Spanish leísmo as a contact phenomenon. To address this conundrum, the present study adds another variable, dialect contact and examines the synchronic variation of Basque-Spanish leísmo among educated young speakers, paying special attention to possible stylistic effects. The speech of 41 Basque-Spanish speakers was gathered by means of sociolinguistic interviews and an elicited production task. Participants were stratified by region: 22 speakers were recruited from Gernika where contact with Basque has been intense and compared to 19 speakers from the Greater Bilbao Area where the contact with Basque is less strong. Dialect contact was operationalized through parental input (Basque Country vs. Monolingual Spain). Results indicate that leísmo is quite extended in the Spanish of the Basque Country and mainly driven by animacy. Basque-Spanish leísmo is also subject to stylistic effects, whereby animacy and grammatical gender effects were found, suggesting that Basque-Spanish speakers alternate between two systems depending on speech formality. Finally, results indicate that parental origin had an effect in Bilbao, but not in Gernika. I situate these results within a discussion of previous work on dialect contact.","PeriodicalId":126470,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics","volume":"41 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125474072","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Diachrony of Pronouns of Address in 20th-century European Portuguese","authors":"Víctor Lara-Bermejo, Ana Rita Bruno Guilherme","doi":"10.1515/shll-2021-2040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/shll-2021-2040","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The system of pronouns of address in Portuguese is known for its complexity. Although many investigations (mainly case studies) on Brazilian Portuguese have been carried out to this respect, there is lack of in-depth studies about the European variety. In this article, we aim to provide the history of the system of pronouns of address in European Portuguese throughout the 20th century, by analyzing dialect data pertaining to three sociolinguistic corpora. The results highlight that the 20th century meant a time with profound changes in Portugal’s society, since it represents a stage in which European Portuguese established a new paradigm that favoured standard responses and pragmatic solidarity. However, this variety is still inclined to pragmatic distance, for the data reveal that it has also come up with new strategies to maintain deference as the unmarked politeness strategy.","PeriodicalId":126470,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125780881","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The History of Spanish: A Student’s Introduction. Diana L. Ranson and Margaret Lubbers Quesada. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2018","authors":"Cynthia Kauffeld","doi":"10.1515/shll-2021-2039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/shll-2021-2039","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":126470,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics","volume":"62 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127999206","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Madrileños on the ejque: Perceptions of Velarized /s/","authors":"Robyn Wright","doi":"10.1515/shll-2021-2044","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/shll-2021-2044","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper explores the identities that Madrileños ascribe to speakers using velarized coda /s/. The language attitudes of 59 participants from Madrid were assessed by means of a matched guise survey in which they heard native Madrileños using either sibilant coda /s/ or velarized coda /s/. Results show that while Madrileños do perceive the velarized variant as a marker of a Madrid origin, this effect is mainly observed for female voices. In addition, speakers that used velarized /s/ were associated with more negative qualities and viewed as less desirable as friends and storytellers, although for certain traits, the strength of this effect depended on the gender of the listener. Furthermore, velarized /s/ is associated with low-prestige occupations while more prestigious professions are assigned to guises with sibilant /s/. The results presented in this paper suggest that, although the characteristic ejque is associated with Madrid, the velarized variant is in fact quite stigmatized in the Spanish capital.","PeriodicalId":126470,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134282853","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Epítetos e insultos de grupo en español: Sobre una ambigüedad y sus implicaciones sintáctico-semánticas","authors":"A. Saab, Eleonora Orlando","doi":"10.1515/shll-2021-2043","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/shll-2021-2043","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this paper, we further elaborate on a syntactic ambiguity between slurs and epithets first noticed in Orlando, Eleonora & Andrés Saab. 2020b. A stereotype semantics for syntactically ambiguous slurs. Analytic Philosophy 61(2). 101–129. Here, we discuss in detail the large theoretical implications of such an ambiguity both for the proper analysis of binominal constructions in Spanish (e.g., el idiota de Juan) and for the way in which it is advisable to model the expressive content slurs and certain epithets (those deriving from slurs) have. As for the first aspect, we contend that mainstream approaches in terms of predicate inversion for binominal constructions cannot account for why slurs lose their predicative import when occurring as epithets in binominal environments. In consequence, we propose a new analysis for epithets both in simple occurrences and in binominal constructions. This analysis derives the above-mentioned ambiguity as a type of structural ambiguity, according to which certain slurs can occur in predicative and in non-predicative positions. When they occur as predicates, they have a mixed semantics (McCready, Eric. 2010. Varieties of conventional implicatures. Semantics & Pragmatics 3. 1–57) reflected both in the truth-conditional and the expressive dimensions, but when they occur as epithets, the truth-conditional dimension is lost and only the expressive content survives. As for the second aspect, we defend a stereotype semantics, according to which stereotypes are modeled as Kratzerian modal bases (i.e., set of propositions) in virtue of which stigmatizing theories of human groups are reflected in a parallel, expressive dimension of meaning. This way of modeling some kinds of expressive contents explains how different slurs and epithets manage to communicate different theories about particular human groups, which are the target of derogation.","PeriodicalId":126470,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130002880","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}