Volume 4, Issue 2

In this article we examine diminutive formation in Judeo-Spanish, which has not been treated before in the generative literature. The distribution of diminutive suffixes is shown to be predictable based on an interaction of morphological and phonological properties, which is a recognized hallmark of diminutive formation in Spanish more generally. Judeo-Spanish also presents some interesting twists not commonly found in other varieties of Spanish. A formal analysis is developed in Optimality Theory that builds upon recent work on allomorph selection involving lexical ordering and subcategorization. A comparison with previous analyses of other Spanish varieties shows that our approach can account for the behavior of nominal class markers in diminutivization, as well as the alternation of diminutive allomorphs, while avoiding the proliferation of language- and morpheme-specific constraints. Furthermore, our account sheds new light on the moraic status of glides in rising and falling diphthongs and of the trill in word-medial intervocalic position.

It is admitted that the origin of the height of the radical vowel of Galician and Portuguese sigo~siga and cubro~cubra is problematic: the expected vowel in that context, through a regular phonological evolution, should be mid-high, not high. Given that Galician, Portuguese, and Spanish, share the unexpected height of the radical vowel, and that it seems the high vowel first appeared and was consolidated in the central dialects of the Peninsula, I will propose that forms like sigo and cubro were originated in those central dialects and were taken and spread into the occidental dialects by a language contact situation. As the contact was more prolonged and intense in Galicia than in Portugal, Galician promoted variants like pido~pides~pide~pida, shared with Spanish, diverging in this respect from Portuguese, which blocked their spreading.

In the following study, we use a corpus-based approach to undertake a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the discursive uses of verdad and its reduced variants verdá and vedá. The latter differ slightly in function and semantic content from its full variant, which functions either as the subject or as the object of the noun phrase. We show that speakers from Lópezville, Texas use verdad as a marker that increases discursive coherence, and that in this border variety verdad has developed innovative uses to codify modal meaning. As a cohesive element that brackets utterances, verdad is mainly used to assure an interlocutor’s attention; and in its role as a modal element, verdad can further show the attitude of the speaker toward the propositional load. In short, verdad can be used to reiterate that which is affirmed in discourse, where it takes on an assertive function by adding greater certainty to the propositional load. The quantitative analysis showed that verdad increases in frequency of use in hypothetical discourse and with information of a subjective nature. Finally, we traced the way in which verdad evolves from a lexical to a fundamentally discursive-modal element.

In Spanish, two-participant verbs of consumption (such as tragar ‘swallow’) may variably occur with the reflexive marker se. This paper provides a quantitative analysis of this variation in a corpus of spoken and written Peninsular Spanish in order to test the hypothesis that the construction with se correlates with High Transitivity (Hopper & Thompson 1980). We operationalize grammatical, semantic, and pragmatic characteristics that are associated with High Transitivity: definiteness and generalizability of the direct object, volitionality of the subject, polarity, tense and verb. Additionally, this study operationalizes person and text type in order to test the extent to which all of these characteristics correlate with the use of the reflexive clitic in Peninsular Spanish. The results show that the presence of se is primarily conditioned by the verb and that the other characteristics contribute to the use of the reflexive in varying degrees, depending on the verb.

The origin of New World Spanish (NWS) is often identified as an original leveled dialect that arose during the earliest moments of Spanish arrival and then spread throughout the Americas. One common denominator in the available accounts of dialect contact and koinéization in NWS is the fact that such studies usually attempt to encompass its evolution as a single process. Perhaps as a consequence of such analytical approaches, little or no reference is commonly made to the possibility that some areas may have followed highly idiosyncratic sociohistorical paths, causing explanatory difficulties for the single leveled dialect approach. In this article we offer an analysis of the genesis of Traditional New Mexican Spanish that suggests the possibility of a variety of NWS that arose independently of others.

The field of second language (L2) variation, focusing mostly on English and French, has existed for over 30 years, documenting the effects of linguistic context, social context and individual characteristics on learner language. Research on the L2 acquisition of variation in Spanish has experienced tremendous growth over the past decade and currently includes empirical studies of the acquisition of nearly a dozen variable structures based on data elicited using a variety of measures from a range of language learners. The current paper explores this research, noting where the greatest advances have been made and also where additional research would be beneficial. The paper covers a range of variable structures, including the copula contrast, mood selection, verbal subjects and objects, several markers of tense and aspect and several features of the L2 sound system. The acquisition of these structures is an essential component of gaining sociolinguistic competence in a L2.

This article presents an overview of the contribution of brain imaging techniques to the study of human language by first reviewing previous historical approaches to the study of the relationships between language and the brain. A brief introduction to modern brain imaging techniques follows, thereafter describing several concrete examples of contributions of these techniques to better know the human language, as well as to vivid debates into the linguistic and the psycholinguistic disciplines. This overview finishes with a comment on the present and the future of studying language with brain imaging techniques. It is concluded that these techniques are playing an essential role in the understanding of human language.

An overview of Articulatory Phonology and a computational model based on this framework are presented. In Articulatory Phonology the basic unit is the articulatory gesture, which both characterizes an articulatory event and functions as the element of phonological contrast. Syllables and larger utterances are hypothesized to be combinations of gestures, which may overlap in time. Gestures are modeled as damped mass-spring systems, each associated with an abstract planning clock that triggers their activation. Timing between gestures is modeled as coupling relationships between these clocks. The Task Dynamics Application (TaDA) is a computational implementation of the hypotheses of Articulatory Phonology, currently available for both English and Spanish and expandable to other languages. Operation of the model is demonstrated. Past uses of the model include predicting reaction time, testing hypotheses generated from examination of experimental articulatory data, and text-to-speech systems. Information is included on how to obtain both TaDA and the Spanish gestural dictionary module.

During the past decade, the use of behavioral (e.g. picture/word naming, self-paced reading, eyetracking) and electrophysiological (e.g. event-related potentials) quantitative experimental techniques historically associated with psychology has flourished in linguistics. These techniques are shaping linguistic theories in new ways and it is important to understand how they can contribute to our field. This article focuses on the use of eyetracking, a research methodology that measures eye positions and movements through a device called an eyetracker. In linguistics, eyetracking is generally employed for studying language processing during comprehension and production. The paper is organized as follows. Section 1 presents the benefits of eyetracking for linguistic research. Section 2 explains terminology commonly used in eyetracking studies and discusses issues relevant for stimuli creation and data analysis. Section 3 compares the eyetracker models employed in linguistic studies and provides useful links to obtain further information. Finally, Section 4 summarizes representative eyetracking research on Spanish and Portuguese.

The present paper discusses some techniques and procedures used in experimental phonetic research. The use of technology and its recent widespread availability have been instrumental in our developing a better understanding of the basic processes of human speech production and perception. Specifically, this paper reviews some of the uses of the software package Praat for acoustic and perceptual research, as well as software products such as R, Akustyk, SuperLab, and E-Prime, among others. Finally, we offer some remarks on the basic equipment (hardware) one would need to purchase in order to carry out modern experimental phonetic research in the field as well as in the laboratory.