The Place of Conversational Data in Spanish Syntax: Topic, Focus, and Word Order
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Francisco Ocampo
Abstract
Results yield by conversational data are compared with those generated by elicited grammaticality judgments on the issues of topic, focus, and word order. On the one hand, most of the sentence types produced by elicited grammaticality judgments are confirmed by empirical conversational data. On the other, research utilizing grammaticality judgments detects only prototypical constructions. The cause is that invented sentences, upon which grammaticality judgments are based, are cognitively biased to be prototypical. Therefore, elicitation methodology does not provide the analyst with the whole range of possible constructions. This type of data is simplified in the sense that it consists mainly of prototypical instances placed in a context of exemplification. Conversational data, on the other hand, include the human factor, conversational and pragmatic factors, as well as the real context where a particular utterance occurs. For this reason, it is argued that syntax studies based on conversational data allow for the possibility of finding new unexpected cases that may offer new perspectives.
© 2015 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Front Matter
- Contents
- Research Articles
- Gender Assignment and Agreement in L2 Spanish: The Effects of Morphological Marking, Animacy, and Gender
- A Case of Grammaticalization in the Use of the Perfect for the Preterite in Bilbao Spanish
- Testing the Cognitive Load Hypothesis: Repair Rates and Usage in a Bilingual Community
- Perceptions of Second Person Singular Pronoun Use in San Salvador, El Salvador
- Intervocalic Tap and Trill Production in the Acquisition of Spanish as a Second Language
- Book Reviews
- Martínez-Cachero Laseca: La enseñanza del español en el sistema educativo brasileño / O ensino do espanhol no sistema educativo brasileiro.
- State Of The Discipline. Topic: Pidgin And Creole Studies
- Pidgin and Creole Studies: Their Interface with Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics
- Viewpoints. Topic: The Place of Naturallyoccurring and Elicited Data in Linguistic Studies
- The Necessity of Both Naturally-Occurring and Elicited Data in Spanish Intonational Phonology
- Beyond “Naturalistic”: On the Role of Task Characteristics and the Importance of Multiple Elicitation Methods
- Naturalistic and Elicited Data in Grammatical Studies of Codeswitching
- The Place of Conversational Data in Spanish Syntax: Topic, Focus, and Word Order
Articles in the same Issue
- Front Matter
- Contents
- Research Articles
- Gender Assignment and Agreement in L2 Spanish: The Effects of Morphological Marking, Animacy, and Gender
- A Case of Grammaticalization in the Use of the Perfect for the Preterite in Bilbao Spanish
- Testing the Cognitive Load Hypothesis: Repair Rates and Usage in a Bilingual Community
- Perceptions of Second Person Singular Pronoun Use in San Salvador, El Salvador
- Intervocalic Tap and Trill Production in the Acquisition of Spanish as a Second Language
- Book Reviews
- Martínez-Cachero Laseca: La enseñanza del español en el sistema educativo brasileño / O ensino do espanhol no sistema educativo brasileiro.
- State Of The Discipline. Topic: Pidgin And Creole Studies
- Pidgin and Creole Studies: Their Interface with Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics
- Viewpoints. Topic: The Place of Naturallyoccurring and Elicited Data in Linguistic Studies
- The Necessity of Both Naturally-Occurring and Elicited Data in Spanish Intonational Phonology
- Beyond “Naturalistic”: On the Role of Task Characteristics and the Importance of Multiple Elicitation Methods
- Naturalistic and Elicited Data in Grammatical Studies of Codeswitching
- The Place of Conversational Data in Spanish Syntax: Topic, Focus, and Word Order
