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In the framework of givenness hierarchy, this paper analyzes the asymmetries between the definite article and demonstratives in Spanish and makes a comparison between Spanish and Chinese. The paper concludes that despite some similarities, the asymmetries in Chinese are more moderate because the instruction encoded in Chinese demonstratives is more general. In addition, the asymmetries in the two languages should be understood in different ways. In Spanish, the main factor that causes the asymmetries is that the article does not impose restrictions on the context construction. However, with the demonstratives, the selection of encyclopedic context is impossible. In Chinese, the demonstratives do not impose restrictions on the context choices. However, being an element not fully developed as grammaticalized representation of definiteness (Cao, 2014), the demonstratives remain inadequate in the use of the first mention and associative anaphora. In cases of direct anaphora, due to the lack of economy and the fact that most anaphoric expressions are incomplete descriptions, the percentage of use of demonstratives in Chinese is also low. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

The aim of this paper is to study the poetic language of the Cantares de Dzitbalché. Despite its importance in the literary field, the texts contained in this Maya manuscript have received little interest from the rhetorical point of view. However, the use of parallelisms and other figures of semantic deepening make this work a masterful example of Maya poetry. Likewise, it is possible to observe in the texts an influence of the Hispanic tradition at the morphosyntactic and thematic level, which will also be analyzed and discussed throughout the work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]