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Based on a corpus of ego-documents from the 19th and 20th centuries, the paper offers the result of a variationist analysis to set the factors affecting the selection of forms article + que in relative clauses headed by preposition a with a human antecedent. The data show that, despite the remarkable vitality that still enjoys the traditional form in this context (the pronoun quien), several factors begin to favor the diffusion of the innovative variant in that seminal period. As usual in early stages of language change, the explanatory hierarchy begins with structural factors, among which are selected as significant those related with the antecedent (the distance between antecedent and pronoun, indeterminacy or definite determiner, semantic nature) and with the type of relative clause (non-defining). From the sociolectal point of view, the data show that there has been a change from below, especially in the 20th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An analysis of the non-deictic second person singular uses in Chilean Spanish is presented in this paper. The dataset is made of semi-spontaneous speech, specifically, sociolinguistic inter-views, from which an exploratory corpus was extracted. In this context, the main goal of the research is to analyse the non-deictic 2nd person singular uses according to stylistic aspects through a new proposal of discourse-pragmatic categories which are related with linguistic and extralinguistic variables. Specifically, four categories are distinguished: a) generalization, b) focused generalization, c) inclusive defocalization and d) self-disguising. This classification is then correlated with the factors of forms of address and sex. Results regarding the sociolinguistic and morphosyntactic variables demonstrate that men present higher frequencies of use of the non-deictic strategies, specifically with voseo verb forms, while women tend to employ this device with tuteo. As for the categories, non-deictic usage is especially high through generalization and focused generalization, as strategies associated with a potential effect of empathy towards the interlocutor, especially in those cases where voseo is employed. In this sense, each of the categories proposed represents a specific discourse-pragmatic strategy at a stylistic variation level, which is regarded not only by the degree of formality, but also as a linguistic choice within the speakers' repertoire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within a sociolinguistic framework, in this paper, we describe the use of dequeísmo (use of 'de que' instead of 'que') in the utterances of Spanish speakers living in Santiago de Chile. A stratified sample of 120 interviews with people residing in Santiago was utilized for the analysis. The study intended to 1) identify the internal variables that prompted the use of dequeísmo and 2) correlate those variables with sociodemographic of the speakers (gender age and socioeconomic status). The results suggest that the contexts that foster the use of dequeísmo frequently allowed for the replacement of other de prepositions and appositive structures, although most cases occurred in clauses with functions of direct object and subject. Additionally, in the sample, the use of dequeísmo was frequently coincided in the speeches of male and older speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to carry out a comparative sociolinguistic analysis of intervocalic obstruent consonant /d/ variation in urban Granada and Malaga (Spain). To do so, two perfectly comparable spoken corpuses gathered in the frame of the PrESEEa-Project were used. Given that /d/ deletion is quite frequent in southern varieties of Castilian Spanish, our analysis zoomed in on consonant deletion vs. maintenance regardless of the differences of intensity or tension perceptible in maintained consonantal variants. Prior to the comparative analysis itself, an exhaustive bivariate analysis was performed considering both linguistic and speaker (stylistic and social) variables, as well as their respective interaction. Therefore, we carried out two multivariate comparative analyses, the first one involving separate parallel analyses of data from both corpuses and the second one being an integrated analysis of the whole data. Results were amazingly similar for both towns and tend to confirm those obtained for other areas both in Spain and America, basically regarding the fundamental weight of internal factors on /d/ variation (i.e. consonant maintenance in word-roots vs. deletion in morphemes). However, they contradict most of previous results with regard to the effect of the speaker variables (i.e. younger speakers' leadership on /d/ deletion). Finally, conflict sites reveal sharper social stratification and age differences in Malaga than in Granada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the singular or plural agreement between Spanish verb haber with existential meaning and its plural argument, in 108 interviews collected in Mexico City as a part of a sociolinguistic corpus structured by age, gender and educational level. All relevant data (633) are considered. For the analysis, the proposed methodology in the "Project for the sociolinguistic study of Spanish from Spain and from America (PrESEEa)" is followed, using a wide range of linguistic and social variables. The results are subjected to rigorous statistical analysis and compared with those obtained in other studies. The singular/plural alternative has received considerable attention in the field of study of linguistic variation in Spanish. Mexico City Spanish is grouped with other conservative areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]