Volume 17, Issue 2

Tense-mood-aspect mappings and the variable morphosyntactic structures that express them are a key aspect of language development. For instance, progressive aspect expression in Spanish might present a learnability problem because the language alternates synthetic and analytic forms to encode progressiveness (e.g., como vs. estoy comiendo ‘I am eating’). To date, however, acquisition studies have focused on present temporalities, rather than past or future contrasts. We examine the frequency of selection of these variants and the linguistic factors that significantly condition selection across course levels. For this purpose, four groups of college-level learners ( N =  117) and one L1 Spanish group ( N  = 21) completed a 30-item written preference task. The dependent variable was form selection (synthetic, analytic, or that both were equally possible). The independent variables considered were the dynamicity of the predicate, the presence of a co-occurring adverb, temporality, and verb lexeme frequency. Results showed stable rates of selection across groups, with each selecting synthetic forms in over 50% of contexts. Within-group mixed-effects regression analyses revealed that lexical frequency and temporality, in addition to dynamicity, were relevant predictors of preference, as learners moved from making no distinction between forms to systematic patterns of selection as course level increased.

In laboratory studies, speakers often modify their speech (e.g., by hyper-articulating, attempting a “supra-regional” norm, or hypercorrecting) to ‘speak correctly’, especially under the (perceived) expectation of formal speech. A strategy to address this challenge involves comparing performance on one variable against a well-documented pattern on another variable. Previous research in Spanish shows /s/ sensitivity to speech formality, making it a useful comparison for probing other lenition processes. This study uses the acoustics of coda /s/ to predict the acoustics of /n/ and pre-nasal vowels among speakers of Argentine and Dominican Spanish, two dialects in which these have been widely attested. The data analyzed come from 28 speakers of Dominican Spanish and 26 of Argentine Spanish, recorded with a nasometer (a split channel set of microphones that record nose and mouth signals separately). Findings shows pervasive presence of frication for /s/ (whether [s] or [h]), suggesting heightened attention to speech. Additionally, longer /s/ co-occurs with longer nasal consonants. However, when duration of /s/ was compared to the time-course of nasalization, only the Argentine data showed earlier onset of nasalization with shorter /s/. The addition of a well-known sociolinguistic variable can serve as a validity measure for a less understood variable.

This paper examines variation in six features of Spanish, testing the hypothesis that outcomes of language and dialect contact are shaped by the differing social meaning of linguistic variables. Two of the study’s variables are strongly associated with aspects of identity and style. Four others are poorer signals of social meaning, despite constituting sites of crosslinguistic and/or dialectal difference. In the speech of life-long residents of the contact setting (Boston, MA), the weak features have converged with English grammatical norms. In contrast, the strong features show persistence of dialectal and crosslinguistic differences, suggesting that socially weaker variables are more susceptible to reconfiguration by bilingual optimization strategies. The effect of contact on strong variables, by comparison, is to amplify their already powerful links to ideologies of personal and group style. While strong variables are not immune to contact-induced change, modification in their use is primarily social, rather than cognitive, in nature.

Previous research has found that heritage speakers of Spanish sometimes extend canonically third-person singular (3PS) verbal morphology to first-person singular (1PS) subjects, a pattern that has been reported with both children and adults across a variety of different verbal paradigms (e.g., preterite). However, despite clear evidence of 3PS extensions in heritage Spanish, no previous research has systematically investigated the factors that shape this common, yet still poorly understood morphological tendency. To test whether heritage speakers’ likelihood of extending 3PS forms is shaped by paradigmatic frequency, the present study investigated adult heritage speakers’ production and comprehension of person agreement in the present perfect paradigm, which is relatively low frequency in Latin American/US varieties of Spanish, and the preterite paradigm, which is relatively much more frequent. 30 adult heritage speakers of Latin American/US Spanish completed two oral production tasks and one listening comprehension task, all of which targeted their knowledge of 1PS and 3PS morphology in both the present perfect and preterite paradigms. Results of the production experiments revealed that heritage speakers were far more likely to extend 3PS morphology to 1PS subjects in the present perfect paradigm than in the preterite paradigm, an asymmetry that we attribute to the lower relative frequency of present perfect verb forms. In the comprehension task, participants performed similarly by extending 1PS readings to canonically 3PS inflections more often in the present perfect than in the preterite. Together, these novel results indicate that heritage speakers are more likely to extend 3PS inflections in the paradigms that they use less, a finding with key implications for our understanding of how language experience shapes the variable morphological systems that heritage speakers develop.

Speakers tend to avoid homophony that is problematic. While Spanish admits some homophony of 1SG and 3SG forms in three arrhizotonic tenses/moods (imperfect, past subjunctive, conditional), in two of the three rhizotonic tenses/moods (present indicative and preterite), the 1SG and 3SG contrast systematically. In the preterite, contrast ( DĪXĪ ∼ DĪXIT ) was lost in Old Spanish ( dix[e]   ∼   dix[e] ) but subsequently restored ( dije  ∼  dijo ). The development dix(e)  >  dijo has been attributed to analogical extension of arrhizotonic – o , (cf. amó ), with destressing. This article proposes that said extension is the result of anti-homophony (AH). Like analogical extension, AH improves form-function isomorphism yet applies primarily to higher-frequency forms. It is argued that AH targeted 1SG ∼ 3SG homophony selectively, affecting only verb forms without an explicit tense/mood marker (e.g., dixe  ∼  dixe vs tenga  ∼  tenga ). This morphological restriction on AH explains why homophony persisted in four of the seven basic tenses (e.g., tenga  ∼  tenga , tenía  ∼  tenía , tendría  ∼  tendría , tuviera [–se]  ∼  tuviera [–se] ). The modern pairs fui  ∼  fue and di  ∼  dio , which are the outcome of heavy competition, are shown to be a straightforward result of AH. In a broader perspective, the drive to distinguish 1SG and 3SG forms has brought about a “1–3 pattern” with a range similar to that of the N-pattern, in which stress is retained in certain paradigmatic cells in the absence of conditioning phonological factors. Destressing – o in forms like dijo and vino served to maintain the integrity of the 1–3 pattern as an organizing principle.

We investigate the well studied Pretérito Perfeito Composto ( tenho cantado ) and the rather under-studied vir  +  gerúndio periphrasis ( venho cantando ) in Brazilian Portuguese based on the working hypothesis that they represent functionally highly similar but competing constructions. Aiming at identifying linguistic factors that impact the choice between them, the theoretical and corpus-based analysis discovers a diverging treatment of the underlying eventuality’s potential to be continued after the speech time, as well as a contrary preference concerning morphological number of involved arguments. Within a broader research context, this contributes new evidence concerning the current status of the Pretérito Perfeito Composto in Brazilian Portuguese. While it has been argued that it tends be displaced more and more by the Simple Past, the present study reveals that the vir  +  gerúndio periphrasis is another emerging competitor.

Using articulatory data from five Spanish speakers, we study how stop-lateral-vowel sequences respond to perturbations of phonetic parameters in the segments that compose them. Target words with stop-lateral complex onsets were embedded in different prosodic contexts. Regardless of prosodic context, stability-based indices for the presumed global organization of the elicited stop-lateral complex onsets do not show the expected patterns. Nevertheless, evidence for global organization does emerge in the presence of compensatory relations among phonetic parameters which vary as a result of prosodic modulations. Thus, as stop duration and the lag between the two consonants in a cluster increases, the vowel begins earlier in relation to the preceding lateral. Similarly, as the lag in the stop-lateral transition increases, lateral duration decreases. That is, local changes to some part of the sequence produces (language-particular) compensatory effects propagating to other parts of the sequence, in attestation of the global organization presiding over the entire stop-lateral-vowel sequence. We relate our results to independently observed properties usually associated with the idea that Spanish is a syllable-timed language and draw implications for the link between qualitative phonological organization and continuous phonetics.

The present study examines Spanish gender agreement among beginner and non-beginner naturalistic and instructed native Russian learners of L3 Spanish. The project has two goals: first, to investigate whether the above groups differed in their target production and comprehension of gender agreement according to a series of morphological variables (gender class, type, and congruency) and secondly, to determine whether there was a relationship between accuracy and task completion times. A total of 49 native speakers of Russian learning Spanish as an L3, divided across two learner groups (24 instructed in Canada and 25 naturalistic in Mexico) and two proficiency levels (28 beginners and 21 non-beginners), along with a control group of 15 native Spanish speakers, completed several tasks. Results demonstrate that regardless of learning environment, native-like proficiency for gender agreement can be achieved at advanced levels. Differences were observed at the beginner level with the naturalistic group performing better with more difficult forms (e.g., feminine, non-canonical, and incongruent), indicating that at initial stages there is an advantage of naturalistic acquisition. Naturalistic learners had faster task completion times, though this did not correspond to higher accuracy levels. This study has important implications for the field of applied linguistics as it places importance on assessing gender acquisition across distinct learning environments.