Volume 7, Issue 2

The choice of future construction in Romance languages with variable expression is complex, and several factors have been shown or hypothesized to influence this choice (e.g. Aaron 2006, 2010 and Poplack & Malvar 2007). One factor stands out time and time again, though scholars do not always associate it with the same form: certainty. Using corpus-based quantitative methods, the role of certainty in Iberian Spanish future form variation is examined. The semantics of futurity and epistemic modality are discussed, with particular reference to the Spanish synthetic, or morphological, future. Then, the onset of non-future-reference use of the Synthetic Future as an epistemic marker is described, and viewed in light of the role of epistemicity in the possible strengthening of the semantics of “certainty” with the Spanish Periphrastic Future. Finally, diachronic evidence from distributional patterns in grammatical person, verb class and clause type is presented, which suggests that speakers associate the periphrastic construction with “certainty” and, increasingly, the synthetic construction with “uncertainty.” It is suggested that functional competition with innovative forms can breathe new life into older forms, sparking further grammaticalization.

The present investigation is a mixed-method study combining quantitative and qualitative analyses to explore the use of como as a discourse marker in the Spanish spoken in Southern Arizona, based on a corpus of twenty-four sociolinguistic interviews of young male and female Spanish-English bilinguals. In the speech of these bilinguals, the discourse marker como mirrors the grammaticalization of the focus and quotative discourse functions of like in English. The results of this study on the diffusion of the focus and quotative como to another Spanish-English bilingual community add to our knowledge of how discourse markers can travel both within and between communities as well as across languages and time.

The variation between labial and velar fricatives ([f] > [x], e.g. [x]uego fuego ‘fire,’ [x]umar fumar ‘to smoke’) frequently occurs in disparate Spanish dialects (from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, New Mexico, among others) (Quilis 1993) and it is found in first language acquisition (Eblen 1982 and Greenlee 1992). The change [f] > [x] or [x] > [f] has also been observed in other languages such as English, Diola, Chinese, Tuareg, Hausa, among others (Foulkes 1997). Although the variation between [f] and [x] is so common cross-linguistically, there is no adequate understanding of the linguistic and social motivations that affect it. Using the variationist sociolinguistics framework (Labov 1972 and Weinreich, Labov & Herzog 1968), this study analyzes the variation of such fricatives in the speech of 25 native speakers of Corrientes (Argentine) Spanish. Results indicate that two main factors affect [f] > [x] variation in Spanish: i) phonetic context and ii) literacy (or lack of formal education).

The rise of the Internet has fueled a rapid borrowing of English-language computer and Internet related lexical resources into Spanish, at the same time that it has provided an unprecedented opportunity to observe the results of this virtual language contact. The traditional stages of adaptation and integration are occurring simultaneously rather than sequentially. Many borrowings reflect early stage orthography, flagging, metalinguistic clarification, and non-typical phonology, accompanied by a full range of late stage morphological exploitation. Computer and Internet related loanwords serve as bases for the full range of word formation processes in Spanish, including inflection, prefixation, emotive and non-emotive suffixation, acronymy, clipping, and composition and blending. However, while many borrowed bases are available for the creation of loanblends of all types, the number of native morphemes with which the bases combine is actually quite reduced, representing a very small handful out of all the derivational suffixes in the Spanish language.

This study provides insight into the consequences of tonal crowding in Buenos Aires Spanish, enriching our current knowledge of the phonetic phenomena in this variety of Spanish. The present work is an experimental study that elicits 270 broad focus declarative statements in varying degrees of tonal crowding from five native speakers of this dialect. To achieve this, the number of unstressed syllables between stressed syllables in content words was manipulated to observe how the scaling and alignment of L and H tones, rise times, and syllable durations in prenuclear pitch accents all respond in different phonetic conditions. The results indicate that temporal and scaling reorganization is a prerequisite for the realization of two pitch accents in tonal crowding situations in Buenos Aires Spanish, though in ways differing from other dialects of Spanish. The first pitch accent remains largely unaffected, while the second pitch accent appears to be deaccented entirely.