Volume 10, Issue 2 -

Resumen Desde 2011 hasta 2015, el presidente del gobierno de las Illes Balears llevó a cabo una serie de reformas lingüísticas con el supuesto objetivo de abrir las puertas del mercado laboral local y global a la población balear. En reacción a estas políticas, una parte significativa de la población balear salió a la calle acusando al gobierno de enmascarar un ataque a la lengua catalana. A partir de un análisis cuantitativo y cualitativo de datos de 316 encuestas a residentes y 20 entrevistas personales, examinamos las actitudes e ideologías que la población mallorquina alberga respecto al conflicto lingüístico más reciente, las cuales se manifiestan irremediablemente ligadas a la crisis económica existente en el periodo. Subrayamos la percepción del valor económico del inglés y del castellano frente al catalán o a la variedad regional mallorquina en plena crisis económica del país.

This study examines measures of prosodic timing (i. e., segment-to-segment durational variability) in Yagua and Spanish spoken in Amazonian Peru. We performed an acoustic analysis of consonantal and vocalic durations from sociolinguistic interviews in Spanish (for Yagua-Spanish bilinguals and Spanish monolinguals) and from oral narratives in Yagua (for Yagua-Spanish bilinguals). Subsequently, we applied variability metrics to the speech of each group to compare their respective timing values. Our results show that, first, Yagua displays more segment-to-segment durational variability than monolingual Spanish. Second, L1-Yagua/L2-Spanish speakers show primarily Yagua-like timing values in Spanish, whereas Yagua-Spanish simultaneous bilinguals show primarily Spanish-like values in Spanish. These results suggest that ethnic Yagua communities are converging toward Spanish-like patterns of prosodic timing. This research contributes to the Spanish contact and prosodic timing literature by offering bilingual and monolingual data from one of the world’s most complex and typologically diverse geolinguistic areas.

Empirical study of variation between the Spanish intensifiers bien ‘very’ and muy ‘very’ has received little attention. A recent exception is (Brown, Esther L. & Mayra Cortés-Torres. 2013. Puerto Rican intensifiers: Bien/muy variables. In Ana Maria Carvalho & Sara Beaudrie (eds.), Selected proceedings of the 6th Workshop on Spanish Sociolinguistics , 11–19. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project), who considered the conditioning factors of the intensifiers, although the study’s interview data included low use of the variants in certain linguistic contexts. Accordingly, our contextualized preference task elicits greater token counts across contexts and extends intensifier research across dialects. In our analysis of the four dialects of Tarragona and Madrid, Spain, and Tucumán and Buenos Aires, Argentina, we test the descriptive claims that bien is selected at higher rates in Latin America than Spain and that monolingual speakers from Madrid select bien at lower rates than Spanish-Catalan bilinguals from Tarragona, as predicted by descriptive literature. Furthermore, we investigate whether possible differences in rates and predictors between one capital city variety and that of a smaller city are mirrored across our two capital city contexts. We surveyed 205 native speakers of Spanish via a 24-item contextualized preference task. Participants chose their preferred intensifier or indicated that both were acceptable. We manipulated three independent linguistic variables: adjective quality, verb type, and animacy, and we consider the social variables age, gender, and, in the case of Tarragona, home language. Overall, we extend research on intensifier variation through a more controlled experimental design and cross-dialectal comparison.

Abstracto Este estudio analiza el papel del CdC en los hashtags utilizando datos recogidos de perfiles de Valencia, España. El CdC en los hashtags ocurre en un 5% de los casos. El inglés es la lengua más utilizada en los hashtags, seguido por el valenciano. Los hashtags son una herramienta para establecer públicos ad hoc alrededor de un tema compartido (Bruns y Burgess 2014). Estas comunidades ad hoc no solo tienen que ver con un tema compartido, sino que forman comunidades de individuos con el mismo estatus social en su red social. Los usuarios demuestran este prestigio poniendo hashtags en otras lenguas en sus tweets para demostrar competencia. Este estudio corrobora el propósito del CdC en los hashtags para expandir la audiencia y para expresar afiliación con una comunidad multilingüe virtual (Jurgens et al. 2014). El uso del inglés en sus hashtags es un símbolo de su conocimiento lingüístico y sirve como marcador de prestigio. El uso del valenciano tiene una función parecida al uso del galés en Twitter para expresar afinidad regional (Johnson 2013). Tiene una función parecida en cuanto a su función de señalar que el usuario que utiliza un hashtag en valenciano es parte de la comunidad valenciana en Twitter.

We trace the evolution of two causal conjunctions of temporal origin in Catalan, pus (que) ‘since’ (later puix (que) ), which ultimately derives from Latin post ‘after,’ and ja que ‘since,’ ultimately from iam ‘already.’ We focus on the different causal meanings that these connectors may express at different stages. The analysis of our Catalan corpus, which spans from the 13th to the 20th century, reveals a clear diachronic tendency for clauses headed by these conjunctions to be increasingly more frequently placed after the main clause. Given the expected correlation between clausal order and pragmatic function, we interpret these facts as showing that the thematic usage of clauses (primarily expressing causes oriented to the illocutionary force or the modal value) is prior to their interpretation as having rhematic causal value. These findings replicate the results that have been reported for the cognate Spanish conjunctions (with some time lag for Cat ja que vis-à-vis Sp ya que ). and thus show a parallel evolution in the two languages. Furthermore, as in Spanish, puix (que) and ja que show a very similar evolutionary pattern, with the difference that the latter connector develops a few centuries later, providing some evidence for the cyclic character of this evolution (i.e, as the older connector moved along its grammaticalization path, a second connector arose to replace it in its original value and started evolving in the same direction).

According to prescriptive grammars of Spanish, subordinate clauses after expressions of uncertainty require the subjunctive when introduced by the complementizer que ‘that’ (e. g., No creo que venga (S) . ‘I don’t believe that he’ll come.’) but require the indicative when introduced by the complementizer si ‘if/whether’ (e. g., No sé si viene (I) . ‘I don’t know if he’ll come.’). The use of these moods in actual speech, however, is highly variable. Using a database of conversational Spanish from 10 cities in Latin America and Spain, 428 tokens of subjunctive and indicative mood use were examined according to the following linguistic and social factors – subject agreement, intervening material, frequency of the subordinate verb, age, sex, and education level. Of these variables, only intervening material is statistically significant in the conditioning of mood variation. The use of the subjunctive is preferred after the complementizer que when there is no intervening material separating it from the subordinate verb. In order to further explore possible interactions between individual factors, a Joint Multiple Correspondence Analysis using R was conducted. Results from this exploratory analysis suggest that the use of the subjunctive correlates with young, male, and highly educated speakers whereas the indicative correlates with older, female, and less educated speakers. The variable use of mood after expressions of uncertainty in Spanish may be socially motivated, as these results suggest. As such, the impact of social variables on mood variation should be explored in future studies.