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In this paper, we present the results of a case study that was carried out in order to evaluate the passive paremiological competence of university learners with advanced mother tongue and foreign language proficiency. In doing so, 10 Spanish paremias and 10 French paremias characterised by differing degrees of frequency of use, idiomaticity and opacity were selected. Along these lines, we designed a questionnaire that was completed by a group of 20 university students with Spanish and French considered as their mother tongue and their foreign language, respectively. In this case, passive paremiological competence is directly related to age (the competence of the youngest is significantly lower than that of the oldest), to the frequency of use of the mother tongue and to the degree of idiomaticity and opacity in the foreign language. Finally, it should be noted that passive paremiological competence in the foreign language is significantly lower than in the mother tongue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the methodology for developing a lexicon of Spanish (up to and including level B1) within the framework of the European iRead4Skills project. The basic metalinguistic notions that should be presented to students are introduced so that this resource could be exploited in the most appropriate way possible. The main microstructure fields (in particular, those corresponding to syntactic-semantic features, semantic classes and domains) introduced in the database are presented and discussed. The treatment of phraseology and diasystematics is also specifically examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with diatopic variation in Spanish wine-related language. We evaluate the degree of penetration of diatopic variation in this specialized language at different levels: international, national, regional, county and local. We also analyze the presence of diatopic variation in the origins and evolution of Spanish wine-related language. Documentary research has allowed us to establish the state of the art and fieldwork and documentary work have yielded results that we have analysed using qualitative methodology. We have collected a large number of specialized voices from different geographical areas of the Spanish-speaking world. Our main conclusion is that diatopic variation is intrinsic to the Spanish wine-related language. We have also been able to verify diachronic and functional variation in this specialized language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phraseology is undergoing a paradigm shift largely due to the application of techniques and concepts from other related disciplines. This paper combines big data analysis with the principles of construction grammar. It includes an automatic extraction protocol for the resultative constructional idioms with de quicio. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data are performed in order to draw conclusions about the adequacy of the corpora selected for analysis, the relationships established between these constructions and more schematic ones, as well their distribution, frequency, and productivity, with a focus on "global" Spanish and its diatopic varieties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we will try to show five humorous signs used in Spanish linguistic jokes and that could be used in Spanish teaching. These signs are polysemy, homophony, paronymy, phraseology and diminutives. The election of jokes as a structure to use in teaching is based not only in the fact that it is the main humorous structure, but also in its easy to learn structure. As Attardo (2008) said, joke is the easiest humorous text type. Also, "joke is a humorous unit with no context and selfcontained, which has all the required information to be understood and enjoyed" (Martin, 2008: 37). The goal of this paper is to show how previously mentioned signs work in an internet extracted corpus, so we can get generalizations that can be used in Spanish teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the few researchers who have approached Alonso de Herrera's Libro de agricultura, the accuracy and richness of its terminology would be two of its main features. Under this premise, in this paper we focus on the fourth book of this six-volume treatise on agriculture, which is dedicated to the knowledge of everything related to the vegetable gardens. After an appropriate lexicological classification of the selected vocabulary, we examine the effect that these words has haved on the Spanish lexicographic tradition, with particular attention to the Diccionario de autoridades--after being Herrera selected as one of the classics of the Hispanic literature for its preparation--, as well as the Covarrubias' Tesoro (1611)--in this case is due to its noticeable encyclopedism, which connect with the rich and assorted information supplied by Herrera--. After our analysis, we conclude the low impact of the Libro de agricultura in the first academic dictionary. On the other hand, we detect a greater harmony between Covarrubias and Herrera, having found several lexicographical articles from the Tesoro with information of vegetable gardens clearly coinciding with the Libro de agricultura. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In China the nominal addresses are common elements in the personal interaction. 老 /lao/, 大/da/ and 小/xiao/, indicators of the age of the people, are used to form titles of professions, posts and social status, which have to do with their special signification in the Chinese culture. On the other hand, they are used, with the kinship names and family names, to denote and connote different interpersonal relations, because they are expressions filled with feelings. This paper explores their semantic and pragmatic characteristics with a presentation of the nominal addresses formed with 老/lao/, 大/da/ and 小/xiao/ and their translation into Spanish in La fortaleza asediada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following paper is based on the translative research of the original version, written in English, of the novels The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood) and Never Let Me go (Kazuo Ishiguro), in addition to the short-story Story of Your Life (Ted Chiang), and of the available target texts published in Spain (El cuento de la criada, trans. by Elsa Mateo Blanco; Nunca me abandones, trans. by Jesús Zulaika, and La historia de tu vida, trans. by Luis G. Prado), for which we will examine the fictional lexico-semantic content composed by the authors to build their universes and its reflection in the Spanish language (peninsular variety), with the aim of developing translation strategies for the neologisms of a fictional universe based mainly on lexicality, as it is the one of Ribofunk, by Paul di Filippo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the description and analysis of an anomalous or non-normative plural agreement phenomenon that certain Spanish verbs, named "terciopersonal" o "pseudopersonal" in the literature, present when combined with an infinitive clause whose verb selects a plural NP as its direct object (Te cuestan hacer las tareas más fáciles 'It's hard for you to do the easiest tasks'). After describing the phenomenon, we show that the finite verb does not present all the characteristics that are usually attributed to auxiliaries and we defend that the theory of nexus and junctures proposed in role and reference grammar is a useful analytical tool in order to account for the structures under study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a proposal on how to select suitable vocabulary items to teach Spanish as a foreign language (SFL) based on the triangulation or complementation of three sources of lexical information: (1) the available lexicon in native Spanish speakers, (2) the most frequent vocabulary in Spanish and (3) the specific notions of the Plan curricular del Instituto Cervantes. Previously, an analysis of the lexical needs of a sample of SFL students has been carried out, whose results have been collated with the abovementioned sources of vocabulary. The found shortcomings have been evaluated in order to observe how they are covered by each of these three sources. It has been proven that each source covers different lexical needs (with a similarity of 12.5% in the covered needs and a lexical compatibility of the sources of 24%), so the viability of the triangulation is justified. The resulting proposal offers a lexical compilation in different levels that combines the benefits of several well-established selection criteria and overcomes the limitations arising from using them individually. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the very beginning, machine translation (MT) represents a significant advance in our society despite of the difficulties encountered in its way. Nowadays, different MT systems are used in private and public sectors in response to the increasing translation demand. This paper presents the quantitative and qualitative results obtained from the evaluation of two different MT systems—rule-based and neural-based MT systems—within the field of legal and administrative translation in public service interpreting and translation (PSIT). For this purpose, COSTA MT Evaluation Tool will be used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new concept, discursive interpersonality, as a flexibilized model of interpersonal metadiscourse (IM). Departing from the proven validity of IM (Hyland, 2005a, 2005b) as a framework to analyse interpersonal relations between writers/speakers and readers/listeners, our argumentation is grounded on our research results, stemming from the study of different academic and professional genres. Since interpersonal metadiscourse is conditioned by contextual variables, such as genre, discipline, language and corpus, as an array of authors suggest (Dahl, 2004; Sala, 2006; Yakhontova, 2006; Giannoni, 2007; Mapelli, 2008; Crismore & Abdollazadeh, 2010; Gotti, 2010; Lorés-Sanz, 2011a; Ivorra Pérez, 2015, 2016; Suau-Jiménez, 2016; Mattiello, 2018; Turiman et al., 2018; Herrando-Rodrigo, 2019), IM would need to be redefined or readapted, including new markers, new lexico-grammatical realizations. As a result and very importantly, propositionality should be considered a theoretical central feature that contributes to interpersonal interactions but that traditional approaches of IM do not accept as such. So, a new, more encompassing concept needs to be coined that accounts for all these essential aspects. Assuming how interpersonal metadiscourse has been defined conventionally (Mauranen, 1993a, 1993b; Hyland, 2005a, 2017), we propose two integrative concepts: discursive turn (Jaworski & Pritchard, 2005), not in its philosophical sense but in one that sees discourse as an identity axis or departure point for analysis, and interpersonality (Lorés-Sanz et al., 2010), considered as an umbrella term broader than IM. Discursive interpersonality might thus open more satisfactory paths for further research in a variety of genres, domains and languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of this study is to present a test to evaluate the pragmatic competence of Chinese students of Spanish as a foreign language. This article describes the process of creation of the test and presents the whole test for its use by Spanish language teachers. For the creation of this test, two empirical studies were carried out: a preliminary study and a main study. The preliminary study is an ethnographic study that starts from the exemplary generation method, whose final objective is to know the perception of the difficulty that Chinese students have. These students are studying in Spanish universities and are facing different communicative situations in their everyday life. Thus, this preliminary study serves as a starting point for the design of the main study, the elaboration of the test. For the design of the pragmatic comprehension test, a correlation or psychometric methodology is used, through which variables are described and their relationships are analysed from a representative sample of subjects. This paper shows a final product: a standardized test that meets the requirements of utility (authenticity, interactivity, impact, practicability and assessment, and scoring) proposed by Bachman and Palmer (1996) for language tests and psychometric reliability statistical requirements and validity. This pragmatic test is published in its entirety and exclusively in this journal so that it can be used by Spanish teachers and researchers with the aim of improving teaching and research in the acquisition of the pragmatics of Spanish as a foreign language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Necrotourism is a little-studied area from tourismology, linguistics, terminology and translatology. In fact, tourists' lack of knowledge about this type of tourism is reflected in a limited number of researches, often very locally conducted. It has also led to a lack of data or surveys at national or regional level. This paper aims to complement the studies already undertaken in tourismology, carrying out a discursive analysis of the necrotourist texts in French and Spanish. Therefore, a textual corpus in both languages, composed of tourist guides, brochures and websites will be compiled. In this way, we will study the lexical-semantic, morphosyntactic and pragmatic-cultural characteristics of these texts, in order to facilitate their translation. This preliminary research concludes that there is not a necrotourist discourse as such, but a particular tourist discourse, characterized by a great interdisciplinarity and by the numerous semantic fields that nourish its lexicon, such as architecture and history of art. It has been also observed that this discourse is very influenced by culture, since each society has a particular relationship with death and places of burial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Museum texts play a critical role in the discourse that accompanies any given artifact, exhibition or museum. In the case of museum text translation, some relevant contributions have appeared in recent years; however, some scholars suggest that this is a field of study that still needs to be further developed. This paper focuses on several aspects of museum text translation based on a descriptive analysis of records found on websites from 26 museums in New York City. By analyzing the corpus, which has been essentially compiled in two periods (2016 and 2020), we notice a word increase of 40% within this four-year period. As for the types of texts that are more frequent in the corpus, educational resources are at the top of the list, followed by press releases and texts informing about parallel activities. There is also a tendency for translating texts related to temporary exhibitions, as compared to texts on the museums' collections, which are scarce in the corpus. Lastly, in the light of the generalized museum closure in mid-March 2020 due to the COVID-19 outbreak, it is noticed that just a few of the museums' websites inform visitors of the closure by using the Spanish language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the first "Prosodic Map of Chile", a long-term project aimed at documenting and describing (both phonetically and phonologically) the suprasegmental features of Chilean Spanish. In order to better appreciate the map's reach, a review of currently implemented similar prosodic maps is provided, including AMPER, ATLES and some others. This review considers what particular parameters are studied in each map, closely inspecting what are the foundations, directions and the overall reach of each one of them. The closing section provides a consideration of some freely available software tools designed to build maps, particularly OpenStreetMap, focusing on its potential for future international collaborative efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines disjunctive and copulative initial coordination in Spanish (o1... o2 'either... or' and ni1... ni2 'neither... nor') with a view to demonstrating that, in contrast to conventional analyses, the former element does not pass the proofs of the coordinating conjunctions. To do so, we will base our proposal on the grammatical patterns observed in a compilation of examples from the "Corpus del Español del Siglo XXI" (in particular, from written texts in European Spanish). These patterns allow us to suggest that o1 and ni1 are not coordinators, but focal particles whose scope or dominion is the first conjunct coordinated by o2 or ni2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a morphosyntactic analysis of the colonial Chilean chronicle La restauración de La Imperial y conversión de las almas infieles (c. 1693), written by the Mercedarian friar Juan de Barrenechea y Albis. Most features in the corpus could be explained by two interrelated motives. On the one hand, the examined characteristics are present in Chilean Spanish and in some areas of Latin America during the 17th century. On the other hand, the author's high sociocultural level is responsible for the creation of this especially highbrow text among colonial Chilean chronicles, that includes linguistic phenomena of Medieval Spanish and the Spanish Golden Age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to justify the building of a glossary or annotated inventory of all the Hispanicisms used in a corpus of English popular romance fiction novels compiled for research project FFI2014-53962-P. An examination of these texts, which are totally or partially set in a Spanish-speaking area, the Canary Islands, proves their tendency to include Spanish words, phrases and even sentences. In this preliminary work, we will describe the guidelines we are using for the compilation and classification of the Hispanicisms found in 30 novels, published between 1955 and 2004, and will also list the entries to be included in the glossary. The work is conceived as a contribution to the studies on the role of Spanish as a loan-giver language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has two intertwined objectives that are consistent with the overall goal of using an interface grammar to describe different contrasts among languages. The first one is to describe the internal structure of the English resultative construction or KR, to characterize a representative sample of the KR subtypes and to render explicit the syntax-semantics interface conditions that make it possible. KR is a Macroevent that fuses two Events--an Activity and an Event proper--in the temporal sequence of a 'causal course of Events' so that this Event is the Result of the Activity. In order to reach this characterization, it is necessary to subsume Manner under Activity, Result under Change and CAUSE under 'causal course of Events'. The second objective is to expose the features that license the presence of KR in English while permitting a scarce presence of it in Spanish. KR is the Macroevent that complements the prototypical English Event, which opposes to Spanish in so far as it projects an Activity as main verb while the Spanish Event projects an Event proper. Thus, KR is not a complementary structure for the Spanish Event. Furthermore, KR reflects the typical 'open' combinatory English style, which is quite different from the Spanish 'close' one. This means that English allows for an open set of semantic relations between two words under the same structure while Spanish prefers to reduce them to (likely) one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we have analyzed the acoustic cues of Spanish stress (duration, amplitude, fundamental frequency) in the possessive mi in order to discover dialect differences between the North and the South of Peninsular Spanish. For this purpose, we have compared the possessives of three towns in the North and three in the South of Spain, using the recordings of the corpus COSER. Results empirically show that the values of duration, amplitude, and F0 in the possessives of both zones are similar, contradicting the literature on the topic. However, in Asturias the possessives have an accent linked to the left periphery and conditioned by the information structure of the sentence. This fact would explain the stressed values in the literature: the possessives in Asturias hold an accent (not stress) in specific positions different to other varieties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have dealt in this paper, with a non-normative writing for Spanish words which implies exogenous conventions, and we have distinguished it from an intervention which can be considered similar, because it also generates alternating forms separated from the corresponding norm by using non-Spanish conventions, but for writing of words that the speakers recognize as importations from other languages. On data from the commercial domain, obtained in the Buenos Aires dialectal area of Argentine Spanish, we have compared the origin of the resources used in the foreign writing for Spanish words and in the hyperforeign configurations, verifying a disparity that ratifies the characterization that we have tried out for both types of intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research explored the relationship between a set of variables, such as reading comprehension and logical-mathematical intelligence, along with two sets of cognitive and learning variables, in respect to overall school performance and school performance in the subject of Spanish Language in a population of socially vulnerable secondary school students (N=688). The main objective of this study was to examine the differences and quantify the effect of the addition of the above-mentioned variables to an explanatory model for academic performance. For this purpose, comparative analysis, bivariate correlation and stepwise multiple regression models were used. The results showed that 34.9% of the variance of students' grade point average in the subject of Spanish Language could be explained by the variables that were added to the model. The positive effect of reading comprehension, achievement attributed to effort, and the self-regulation strategy of revision stood out in this model. At the same time, a negative effect was found for older age and attributing achievement to external causes. In addition, the explanatory model introduced in this article showed greater predictive power for the female group; notably the variable critical comprehension also had a positive effect for the female group. Finally, the main educational implications for these findings are analyzed and discussed in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a non-normative phenomenon almost unknown in Spanish, the "pluralization" of adverbs in -mente (lugares realmentes sorprendentes 'places really surprising'), which is not found in the main grammars of this language. From the data of Corpus del español we propose to make known this phenomenon, to show in which countries it is documented and with what frequency. Later, we analyze which adverbs in -mente show this final -s in current Spanish and in what syntactic contexts are given. In particular, we show that the kind of adverbs that are involved in this phenomenon are degree, modality, and focusing adverbs, mainly when they modify adjectives or sentences. Finally, we propose an explanation of the presence of this final -s based on two different processes that the Spanish language undergoes in the grammatical category of adverbs: adverbial agreement, which so far has been described for quantifier adverbs, and adverb "false" pluralization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even if Lenormand's works are barely read or played in actual days, he was one of the avant-garde authors that generated more attention in the early twentieth century. The French author was enthusiastically welcomed by Spanish public. His works were frequently translated and played in Spanish theaters and intense debates were hold in literary reviews about how to interpret his characters. However, Lenormand's psychological conception of human being divided Spanish criticism in two groups: those who were in favour of his freudian proposals and those conservative critics who rejected Lenormand's novelties because they did not fit in the theatrical trends prevailing in early twentieth century Spain. Another controversial aspect in the Spanish reception of Lenormand's works was the alleged innovative nature of his theater: was he really an avant-garde author or did he merely relocate the great dramas of classical theater into the twentieth century? The aim of this paper is to study the diverse reactions stimulated by Lenormand's works among Spanish criticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this research is to determine and analyse the engagement markers used in the comments on the news published in the online papers El País (Spain) and Emol (Chile). The comments were selected from two different contexts: politics and sports. In this study we consider engagement markers as part of interactional metadiscourse, that is, the elements that involve readers to call their attention or to include them as participants of discourse (Hyland, 2005a). In this research, a corpus of 2,400 comments were compiled and tagged manually and with UAM Corpus Tool. The purpose of the analysis was to identify the metadiscoursal strategies used as engagement markers. The results showed that the writers that comment news in Emol and in El País used a similar amount of engagement markers; on the other hand, significative variation was not identified in the use of engagement markers in comments on politics and sports, although these markers were more frequently found in political comments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Words meanings and their use in the language are not fixed in time. This is the case of the word humor, whose current meaning is new in Spanish, as it is attested in dictionaries. Lexicographic discourse can reveal enough data about the history of words. Therefore, the aim of this research is to find out the concept of humor that appears from the first papers in the Spanish lexicography, from the late fifteenth century to the early eighteenth century. Taking Covarrubias's dictionary (1611) as a turning point, a corpus of dictionaries has been compiled to do research on how the subject of humor was treated by the selection of voices related to it. The results are sufficiently clear in respect to the prudence with which this subject was conceived, as well as to its pragmatically marked use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of social media in the academic community has become very popular in recent years, especially among undergraduate students (Espuny et al., 2011; Gómez-Aguilar et al., 2012; Cancelo Sanmartín & Almansa Martínez, 2013). Besides, Spanish speaking undergraduates usually make use of English when communicating among them in higher education scenarios. Consequently, in this paper we try to detect code-switching cases by undergraduate students in academic scenarios through social media. The methodology used heavily relies on corpus. In a Spanish monolingual corpus composed of samples of communication through social media among undergraduate students enrolled in the Degree of Translation and Interpreting (Uni-versity of Valladolid, Spain) we detect code-switching cases and analyze them. Results might provide us with data to be aware of the deviations from the Spanish rules. In addition, they might allow us to adopt corrective measures through the creation of new tools to improve academic communication through social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to show the situation of the mathematical lexicon in the nineteenth century. Undoubtedly, one of the possible approach for the diachronic analysis of the language is to use the historical dictionaries. Another path is access the sources which served as a vehicle for the scientific expression, for example, the lexicological and lexicographic works of Felipe Picatoste. With both, this mathematician noticed that mathematical terms were being subjected to an abandonment. Ultimately, the study is progressing in the historical study of Spanish language from its scientific perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to analyse discursive attenuation procedures that 52 students of Spanish as a foreign language of United States use. From a questionnaire, the answers linked to two communicative functions present in the Plan curricular del Instituto Cervantes were collected. In the first, participants had to decline an invitation from a friend, while, in the second, they had to refuse a request from a stranger. Although, initially, it was supposed to find a greater number of attenuation resources associated to participants' responses when these had relation to a larger social distance degree between interlocutors, results suggest that there are other factors that prevent the validation of this hypothesis. However, differences in the amount and type of attenuation mechanisms are found regarding both functions in two groups at an intermediate level of Spanish (the first one, between A2 and B1, and the second one, between B1 and B2). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the study of grammatical metaphor in Spanish, specifically in Social Science textbooks in use in Colombian secondary schools. Our main interest is to analyze, from a Systemic Functional Grammar perspective (Halliday, 1994, 2004b), the particular characteristics of ideational grammatical metaphors in Spanish and their implications for citizenship education and for learning processes. The corpus is made up of chapters about the Industrial Revolution from three eighth-grade texts. Our analysis has identified the presence of grammatical metaphors in Hallidayan terms: nominalizations of processes and qualities and the use of causal verbs in place of conjunctions. We have also identified other types of metaphor: nonergative clauses, historical present tense, and inanimate participants. The paper also stresses the importance of unpacking metaphors during the process of analysis and also during teaching and learning processes, since unpacking sheds light on information hidden in the metaphor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we present a contrastive analysis about the semantic field of housing in three peninsular áreas: Madrid, Sevilla and Mérida, with the results obtained applying the Cuestionario para el estudio de la norma culta de España e Hispanoamérica. Our objective is to determine the similarities and differences of the active lexicon of the speakers in this cities from a geolinguistic and diachronical perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine some semantic, syntactic and pragmatic motivations that may influence the preferred order of the Spanish temporal adjuncts antes 'before' and después 'after', when they function as bare adverbs, as adverbial phrases, and as linkage markers in subordinate clauses. The study of narrative texts reveals that these sequential adjuncts respond differently to each of the motivations under study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses and positions the linguistic contact phenomena between mapuzugun and Spanish from a comprehensive perspective which combines extralinguistic outlook, internal and external factors which so far have been treated separately. This research makes a sociohistorical and sociolinguistic revision to the Spanish-mapuzungun relationship. The social interaction of the languages regardless the use domains and the sociocultural institutions that arise from the cultural contact and occidental colonization from a historical point of view is emphasized. Different national scholar papers about linguistic contact are discussed here. We propose a new model and a new analysis approach to study the Mapuzugun/ Spanish contact in mapuche bilinguals. Finally, we stress the necessity of understanding linguistic contact as a complex phenomenon involving extra-linguistic factor, internal and external ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are many procedures to describe F0 contours in acoustic-phonetic terms. Garrido’s (1996, 2001, 2010) and z-score normalization systems have the advantage that they are automatic procedures. Therefore, this paper aims at analyzing both systems in order to determine the possible future application for the analysis of Spanish as a Foreign Language spoken by Brazilians (SFL). To do so, we analyze the melodic curves in declaratives, yes-no questions and wh-questions in Madrid Spanish, in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) spoken in the city of São Paulo and finally, in SFL. The validity of both systems was tested through a perception test with 10 Brazilian and 10 Spanish listeners. Listeners rated the degree of similarity between the signals with original intonation and signals with stylized F0 contours. The results showed that Garrido’s automatic stylization method is really able to perceptually create representations equivalent to the original ones in Spanish, BP and SFL and also better than those obtained with the procedure based on z-score normalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has two main objectives. The first one is to summarize the various points of view regarding two key concepts in the study of language evolution and change, which are grammaticalization and lexicalization. We have found in previous literature many different opinions and arguments on concepts and their respective domains, as well as the relationship between them, ie, how these processes interact and the degree of linguistic change. Our aim is to give a critical summary of all the authors as a basis to achieve the second objective: to try to elucidate in which evolutionary stage of the continuum collocations are placed and also to provide a test of diachrony in some cases. They will be the basis for further development and introduction to the study of this issue. We will proceed as follows: first, we will examine the two processes of linguistic change and their interrelation. Then we will discuss the subject in the collocations field: that is its position in the evolutionary continuum, and we will test the diachronic line of the following examples of collocations: "estar seguro de que" and "dar comienzo". Both examples support the thesis put forward in this paper: that collocations are in the lexicalization process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to provide a proposal study based on modality in utterances and its relationship between them and evidentiality, as a linguistic resource, because there are some markers (evidentials) in touristic texts, which coding the knowledge resource and the point of view. This study has a corpus based in 50 tourist texts published in El País website (between 2013-2014). We analyze the author's linguistic resources to show the way he gets the information appeared in the utterance, in order to persuade and inform the reader, through epistemic modality. Furthermore, it is a specialized language, Spanish for tourism, which has a lower degree of specialization than other specialized languages, making further interesting the study of evidentials as a modality linguistic resource. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I study exocentricity and its common issues in linguistic morphology; likewise I propose a metonymic analysis as an alternative to exocentricity. Exocentricity is a contradictory concept and in its definition, structural and semantic concepts are mixed. Various types of compounds (sacacorchos, cara dura, puntapié) are considered exocentric without the criteria taken into account were clearly defined. Because of this, it has been considered a heterogeneous and even anomalous category (Benveniste, 1977; Bauer, 2008; Scalise and Guevara, 2006). Instead, this research proposes a metonymic analysis, based on the phenomenon of "reference point" (Langacker, 1999). This concept is, I argue, more explanatory and has greater cognitive relevance for speakers. In addition, a metonymic analysis classifies external relation in compound words convincingly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates possible communicative effects caused by transfer from Swedish into L2 Spanish of prosodic patterns manifested in rising boundary tones, as occurring in the speech act of "requests". More specifically it studies whether there is any difference between transactional (+/- request for information) and interpersonal values (+/- value of friendliness) perceived in boundary tones produced in EL1, EL2 and SL1, depending on whether the evaluator is Spanish, Chilean or Swedish respectively. It also discusses whether these differences affect the valuation of the utterance in a way that may interfere with communication. The results show that the realisation of the rising boundary tones is the feature that mostly contributes to the foreign accent of Spanish spoken by Swedes. The results also show that the intersubjective value associated with a rising boundary tone is negatively affected when the intonational features of L2 Spanish do not match those of Spanish L1. Different discursive preferences in the Spanish and Swedish L1 are proposed as explanations to these results. The study finally suggests that teachers of Spanish as L2 pay attention to supra-segmental features that carry important pragmatic values, since the acquisition of these patterns can be of relevance for successful interaction with native speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This project seeks to highlight certain basic problems that the use of specific terminology may create in the provision and understanding of information in the Mental Health ambit. The paper has been divided into two parts. The first one presents different theoretical basis from which some linguistic difficulties may arise. The subsequent section extrapolates these issues to an interlinguistic scenario in order to formulate proposals that may be useful to solve them through translation processes. The final goals of this project are i) to raise awareness among readers of the positive and negative impact that language may have on those persons suffering mental disorders and ii) to provide the basis for more accurate translations that may result in a more fluent and effective communication among patients and healthcare services, either in monolingual or interlinguistic communicative environments where English and Spanish are the languages involved. In addition, we will suggest extending some of these guidelines to closely-related disciplines such as interpreting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the use of unaccented pronouns in accusative and dative function in the narrative production of three groups of students monolingual in Spanish: (a) rural Mapuche, (b) rural non-Mapuche and (c) urban. Our assumption is that the use of clitics is different according to the situation of contact between languages. In this context, we establish three types of uses: "standard use", "rural use" and "ethnical use". The Mapuche group uses the pronouns in different forms from the other two groups. This difference is discussed in the frame of contemporary contact linguistic and functional and typological linguistic. This approach allows us to attribute this uses to indirect transfer porduced by the intense and historical contact between the Mapudungun and Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides and explains a data sheet to analyse the attenuation from a sociolinguistic and pragmatic point of view. The theoretical and methodological basis are established to create a common project to study the attenuation in the different varieties of Spanish and Portuguese (ES.POR.ATENUACION). The data sheet results from preliminary research based on a discursive corpus analysis and it proposes solutions for problems the analyst may face when recognising attenuation devices, especially those that come from situational factors. This present project aims at achieving homogeneity among the researchers in the pragmatic attenuation analysis, both qualitative and quantitative. Once particular analysis are carried out, we will focus on comparative and contrastive studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The graphic or scriptural environment of Cameroon is experiencing a process of hispanization through Spanish words and expressions. These imported words name spaces, structures and institutions. It seems that the authors of that practice do escape from the heavy socioeconomic reality they are faced with since the decade of ninety. The evasion consists of several ways. It is spatial when foreign toponyms are transposed into Cameroon context and temporal when glorious and idyllic moments of the past are brought into mind. However, escapism can be carried out through rewarding adjectives or the designation of purely positive realities. Consequently, Cameroonians use symbolic concepts like goodness, friendship, divinity, etc. in order to, according to dream or visceral wish, make positive their daily life and get out of the generalized crisis. The aim of this paper consists in analyzing that phenomenon on the basis of collected data from Cameroon towns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional analytic approaches establish a strong connection between discourse markers (DMs) and a number of prosodic cues regularly associated to them (especially pauses and strong variations in pitch), mainly on the sole basis of DMs being prescriptively written with a comma or (semi)colon placed after them. Within theories based on discourse units, minimal discourse units tend to be identified on the basis of prosodic criteria and, therefore, DMs are considered independent, minimal discourse units. This paper, however, puts this tight relationship into question by presenting a prosodic and discursive analysis of eleven discourse markers extracted from a Spanish spontaneous corpus (Val. Es.Co 2.0 Corpus, online version). Data show two main conclusions: first, that a discourse marker is, indeed, a minimal discourse unit; secondly, however, that the relationship between discourse markers and prosodic cues is neither as frequent nor as straightforward as it had been expected initially; therefore, a reconsideration of the criteria used to delimit minor discourse units needs to be done. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, succession documents translation is one of the most frequent translation briefs. This matter takes on particular importance in countries with a high immigration rate, and that is the case of Spain: as a consequence of immigration of English-speaking people, many legal and sworn (English<>Spanish) translations of testamentary instruments are carried out. In order to achieve this, the knowledge of textual and structural features of legal and family documents in general, and in succession documents in particular becomes essential. This paper reports on the findings of one study whose purpose was to analyse the macrostructure of succession instruments. Our research corpus consists of 90 wills in electronic format: 30 Spanish, 30 for England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and 30 Scottish. Our analysis results show striking differences in the macrostructure (and grammar) of the legal genre analysed in the legal systems aforementioned. We suggest that the knowledge of macrostructural differences of a complex text genre such as the will contributes to carrying out its bi-directional translation: not only with direct directionality (English-Spanish) but also with reverse directionality (Spanish-English), highly demanded in the current professional market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The voiced labiodental fricative [v] has traditionally been rejected as a natural allophone of /b/ in Spanish in general, as well as in Chilean Spanish, although its existence has been admitted in cases of extra-linguistic influence, and recent research has included it in the phonetic inventory. This paper seeks to contribute by providing new data on the production of allophones of /b/, including [v]. To achieve this purpose, audio and video recordings of the speech of 19 pre-literate and literate native speakers of Spanish from Concepción, Chile, were analyzed. The results show that for all speakers, [v] is not just a natural allophone of /b/, it is the most common one. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that the existence of [v] is not affected by the literacy process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of "zero sign" is both functionally and semantically valid in those cases where an absence (a silence) systematically contrasts with a presence in a given context. Rabanales (1966) has posited the existence in Spanish of a recurrent "zero preposition" in the direct object, when the preposition "a" contrasts with an absence of a preposition. This paper offers cases and analyses that corroborate his position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose some guidelines for the classification of phonetic-phonological adjustments (Clasificación de Ajustes Fondtico-Fonológicos, CLAFF). Such guidelines are intended to describe and classify, from a phonetic-articulatory point of view, the adjustments that boys and girls make when, according to the standard Chilean Spanish phonological model, they unsuccessfully try to utter oral statements. These guidelines include 21 phonetic-articulatory parameters that enable to comprehensively describe the quantitative and qualitative articulatory behaviour shown in normal children's speech. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the variation between the following sentences: (1) "una concepción que no la tiene consciente" and (2) "una concepción que no tiene consciente". Case (1), unlike (2), shows a relative clause with a clitic (called "reassumptive" or "pleonastic") that explicitly retrieves the antecedent. We propose the speaker reiterates the antecedent with the clitic, when having established the theme, he is not yet sure about what he wants to say, because he intends to introduce new information, or because he intends to produce a contrast. In those cases, the speaker distributes again the Theme/Rheme progression of the relative clause recreating the informative progression of a sentence. We make a quantitative and qualitative analysis of authentic data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following research deals with the intonation of utterances in Chilean Spanish with stress clashes: the presence of two or more successive stressed syllables. In order to do this, and from the perspective of acoustic analysis, an experiment was devised to observe the frequency of use of each of the seven main stress clash management strategies reported in the literature (Prieto et al., 1995; Almeida, 2001). The results support the notion of tonal peaks as targets (Prieto, 2003) and the expected use of a single tonal peak in contexts of stress clash. They also establish some unexpected relationships between certain sets of the aforementioned strategies; as well as between utterances with different prosodic patterns. Based on the results of this investigation, this paper also attempts to propose a tentative categorization of stress clash management strategies in order to improve the current understanding of stress in Spanish and to facilitate future research in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]