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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]

In Spanish, a SVO language with variable word order, post-verbal subjects have been proposed to be favored for particular verb categories. For instance, based on agentivity, unaccusatives are proposed to favor VS as a whole. Motion verbs are regarded as unaccusatives generally favoring VS order. An alternative analysis is presented here, using data from two conversational corpora. Motion verbs are recategorized based on their predicted tendency to include adverbials in the sentence and compared with other unaccusatives. Motion verbs are divided according to their Deictic Function (Talmy 2000) into "come" verbs (i.e., "motion-toward-the-center," that is, the speaker), and "go" verbs. "Come" verbs do not often require target specification through an adverbial, whereas "go" verbs do. Adverbials were found to appear as post-verbal path specification in "go" verbs; due to weight factors, such specifiers favor pre-verbal subjects. Importantly, even when no modifier is present, trends persist, suggesting entrenchment of usage patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the progress made by a group of ERASMUS students in their use of the Spanish Preterite and Imperfect during a stay abroad. Advanced learners of Spanish (N = 12) and native speakers (N = 12) completed an impersonal narrative-based forced-choice test (INT) and an explicit knowledge questionnaire (EKQ). Results from the INT partially confirm the findings of previous studies which indicate that the expression of grounding distinguishes learners from native speakers. Our data show that only the foreground clearly distinguishes between the two groups, not the background. Responses to the EKQ reveal that learners use a variety of mechanisms for their selection of past tense morphology: formal instruction, translation into their L1, knowledge of other L2s and conversation with native speakers. This article suggests further research be undertaken to examine the impact of the learning context on students' use of past tense morphology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work addresses two strategies that Spanish and other languages employ to codify the notion of 'resultant state': through a stative projection within the syntactic structure of the verb (internal resultant states: v.g. John disappeared for two years) and by means of the resultative construction with estar + past participle (derived resultant state; v.g. John was disappeared for two years). The contrast between both options is analyzed with respect to the position that the event argument which licenses the result reading occupies in the syntactic derivation, taking as a starting point a fine-grained model of the verbal phrase (or 'first phase') inspired by Ramchand (2008). In internal resultant states, the event dominates a stative projection; whereas in derived resultant states, the event is dominated by a stativizer external projection. Empirical consequences of this pattern are introduced for different domains: the interpretation of certain modifiers, the availability of present-oriented epistemic readings and the inclusion relation between Event Time and Reference Time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The verb decir has two characteristics that increase the interest of its study: it reflects the enunciation process and it is one of the most productive bases for the creation of discursive markers. This work addresses to the pragmalinguistic analysis of four of them: digo, digo yo, ya digo and ya te digo. All of them are conjugated in the first person singular of the present indicative. However, there are some variations that cause them to belong to different categories (markers or operators) and also work in different macrostructures (enunciation, modality, assertion, informative structuring). The analysis carried out identifies the above divergences, indicating to which grammatical category they belong (operators or connectors), and describing their operation in the different levels of discourse. The ultimate goal is to contribute to the macrosyntactic description of the current Spanish language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on the construction mira que + clause and analyzes the discursive functions it develops when it is fixed. Using a macrosyntactic methodology and based on the fundamentals of construction grammar, the article describes the distribution and behavior of this construction and the procedural contents it develops. In some contexts, mira que acts as intensifier of a valuation word. In others it is combined with gerunds, participles or nouns with negative content. It appears in these cases as a suspended statement. In combination with other sentences it may introduce a justifying argument or a concessive anti-oriented meaning. The distributional context predetermines the argumentative orientation of the construction and makes it work as a discursive element more linked to the procedural dimension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to analyse the Spanish construction resulta que + [clause] from a discourse syntax approach, a macro-syntax. The current use of the structure shows that its conceptual meaning fades and acquires a procedural one related to discourse's informative dimension; mainly, the characterisation of the information introduced as "surprising" or "not expected": resulta que mis amigos nunca quisieron que me fuera ["as it turns out, my friends never wanted me to leave"]. Resulta que + [clause] is not as fixated as other discourse elements, such as discourse operators or markers. However, it belongs to the same category of other syntactic constructions which trigger a wide range of discursive values and are not usually tackled by traditional syntactic studies. This research analyses its internal structure and its discourse functioning in order to embed it in a framework which takes into account the potential of this kind of structure in grammar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we attempt to examine the way the dictionary, as a discursive instrument, historical and ideological (Lauria, 2010,2011) has intervened in the construction of the sense of the discursive object inmigrante. Thus, this work consists in reveal and analyse diachronically the different lexicographic meanings that the entry inmigrante, the semantically close lexemes (eniigrante, migrante, etc.) and the linked verbs (emigrar, inmigrar, migrar) had in the Spanish language dictionaries edited in Spain and Argentina between 1726 and 1910. We will consider, firstly, the way in which the production conditions, either immediately or broadly speaking (Orlandi, 2015), have largely determined the historical changes that the semantic field of immigration experienced in the Spanish lexicography during the XIX century. Secondly, we will reflect on the way that the local production has re-signified the immigrant at the beginning of the XX century, key historic moment when the "mass immigration" phenomenon and the commemoration of the Centenary of the Revolution of May come together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Verbs of perception (PV) are known to frequently give rise to discursive uses. PVs are used, for example, as evidential markers through grammaticalization processes. This study focuses on two evidential markers of Spanish derived from the visual PVs ver ('to see'), namely, 'por lo visto' and 'se ve (que)'. Although the attention dedicated to these evidential markers in Spanish has increased considerably in recent years, contrastive studies have not taken into account the dialectal variation of this phenomenon. We aspire to take a first step in filling this gap by contrastively studying 'por lo visto' and 'se ve (que)' in different dialects of Spanish by means of a comprehensive, empirical study. The results display the distribution of 'por lo visto' and 'se ve (que)' in the dialectal map of Spanish. In addition to the diatopic variation, the frequency differences also reveal some significant diaphasic variation (in this case linked to discursive genre). In general, the results show that 'se ve (que)' is used more frequently and appears more often in informal registers than 'por lo visto'. Likewise, 'se ve (que)' turns out to be more widespread geographically than 'por lo visto'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the Spanish verb andar ‘to walk’ has a prescriptively irregular preterit conjugation (e.g., anduve ‘I walked’), adult native speakers may produce an innovative, regularized form (e.g., andé). Nevertheless, researchers have had difficulty documenting this form of variation. The current study presents the first systematic, variationist analysis of andar regularization. We sought to answer three research questions: 1) Do speakers in Bogotá, Colombia produce regularized forms of preterit andar? 2) If so, at what rate do bogotanos produce regularized forms? 3) Do any independent factors predict regularization? We designed a 25-item cloze task in which we manipulated person/number, with 164 bogotanos participating. In addition to providing the first systematic study of andar regularization, we demonstrate that the phenomenon is constrained by independent linguistic and social variables, while appealing to changes in the overall frequency of use of andar diachronically and to the relationship between the frequency of use of each person/number and regularization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The distribution of DDPP in raising constructions --depending on the embedded clause's formal properties-- has been essential for Case Theory and movement. Likewise, the behavior of DDPP, according to agreement facts, has given rise to relevant discussions about the kind of movement involved (A-Movement/A'- Movement). Nevertheless, this distribution is not so clear in certain Spanish dialects which show double-agreement effects. It means that the embedded verb as well as the raising verb (parecer 'to seem') present inflectional number (and person) morphology: Parece-n que lo olvida-n (seem.3PL that it forget.3PL 'They seem to forget him'). The analysis of the data in these varieties allows us to define a number of characteristics which are relevant from a descriptive and a theoretical point of view. Descriptively, it is possible to identify some notable particularities, with respect to the position of the DP, which triggers agreement and the interaction of these constructions with dative experiencers as well (Me parece que... 'It seems to me that...'). From a theoretical point of view, these data have consequences for approaches on agreement, on the relationship between Case and movement, and on the discussion regarding the Experiencer Paradox in Spanish. Additionally, they allow us to identify a new empirical domain in which a DP plural number feature has an active role in the Probe-Goal domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the historical evolution of the causative and inchoative periphrases with poner in Spanish. In these constructions, poner functions as an auxiliary verb, combining with a subordinate infinitive to which it adds a causative (poner a alguien a trabajar) or an inchoative aspectual meaning (ponerse a trabajar). The aim of this paper is twofold. It aims (i) to determine when and how both periphrases developed out of the basic locative construction of poner, and (ii) to shed light on their degree of grammaticalization. Therefore, this article exposes the results of a formal and semantic analysis of the causative and inchoative periphrases with poner between the thirteenth and twenty-first century. It is shown that both constructions developed in a parallel way, but at a different pace. The inchoative periphrasis seems to be more grammaticalized than the causative periphrasis, presenting a much higher frequency of use and a higher degree of syntactic incorporation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article exposes the existence of semantic restrictions to alternations in the Spanish dative which layout some boundaries for two concepts developed in the context of contemporary studies about the interpretation of the Spanish dative construction: the notions of comprehensive relation (Romero Morales, 2008) and genetic relation (Gutiérrez Ordónez, 1999). The first notion takes on the semantic relations that license these constructions and the second one tries to explain how its meaning is detennined taking as a basis the meaning of other sentences with fully prepositional complements. The aforementioned limitations to these concepts are exposed basing the analysis on examples that include verbs belonging to two classes of the Spanish dative: the ones belonging to the class of material transference and the ones belonging to the class of physical movement, according to Delbecque y Lamiroy's (1996) typology. The results of these analyses show that the descriptive adequacy of these relations can be restricted by the lexical requisites of the verb in combination with the semantic potential of the dative construction in Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Spanish verb phrase can take on many forms, depending on the temporal, aspectual and modal interpretation that a speaker wants to convey. At least half a dozen constructions work together to build or analyze even the simplest verb form such as hablo 'I speak'. This paper documents how the complete Spanish verb conjugation system can be operationalized in a computational construction grammar formalism, namely Fluid Construction Grammar. Moreover, it shows how starting from a seed grammar that handles regular morphology and grammar one can create a productive grammar that captures systematicity in Spanish verb conjugation and can expand its construction inventory when new verbs are encountered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the syntactic and semantic properties of causative stative predicates. We focus on two Spanish group of verbs: instrumental alternation verbs {bloquear 'to block', obstruir 'to obstruct') and object experiencing psych verbs {preocupar 'to worry', molestar 'to annoy'). We show that, although both groups of predicates exhibit atelic and non dynamic (that is, stative) readings, their aspectual characterization is not properly accounted for by the stage level category (Pylkkanen 2000, Fábregas y Marín 2015). Instead, we claim that causative states are davidsonian states (cf. Maienborn 2005), that is, states with an event argument, which is claimed to be a necessary condition for causative relations. We motivate this conclusion from a model of syntax-semantics interface in which external arguments do not combine directly with (pure) states (Moreno Cabrera 2003), but must establish first a thematic relation with events (Jaque 2014). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an analysis of transparent gerunds in Spanish, as in ¿Qué llegó [silbando ] Juan? 'What arrived [whistling ] Juan?', using a decomposition of Aktionsart in a series of syntactic heads. A traditional analysis of these secondary predicates as adjuncts would undermine well-established syntactic principles restricting movement and extraction. We argue that these transparent gerunds should be analyzed as syntactic constituents merged as part of the syntactic projections associated with Aktionsart. More precisely, they qualify as RhemePs - assuming Ramchand's First Phase Syntax system - thus allowing their arguments to be extracted. Well-attested differences between Spanish and English gerunds will be explained in our analysis by proposing that the Spanish gerund projects as PathP (given it carries a path preposition), whereas English gerunds are simply RhemeP (lacking any sort of preposition). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the contrastive study of the polysemy of perception verbs. However, unlike previous studies that focused mainly on the so-called 'prototypical' visual (ver, mirar) and auditory (oír, escuchar) perception verbs, the present study focuses on the 'inferior' verb sentir. Moreover, instead of comparing the polysemy of the verb in several (cognate) languages, the originality of the present study lies in its essential focus on two dialectical variants of the same language, namely the peninsular and the Mexican variant of Spanish. It is shown how even one single verb in the same language but in different dialects presents interesting divergent patterns both on the semantic and the syntactic level, which in turn foster divergent pragmatic uses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language contact and linguistic change are thought to go hand in hand (e.g. Silva-Corvalán 1994), however there are methodological obstacles, such as collecting data at different points in time or the availability of monolingual data for comparison, that make claims about language change tenuous. The present study draws on two different corpora of spoken Spanish -- bilingual New Mexican Spanish and monolingual Ecuadorian Spanish -- in order to quantitatively assess the convergence hypothesis in which contact with English has produced a change to the Spanish verbal system, as reflected in an extension of the Present and Past Progressive forms at the expense of the synthetic Simple Present and Imperfect forms. The data do not show that the Spanish spoken by the bilinguals is changing to more closely resemble the analogous English progressive constructions, but instead suggest potential weakening of linguistic constraints on the conditioning of the variation between periphrastic and synthetic forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the processing of compound words offers important insights on how the mental lexicon is organized. It is a current topic in psycho linguistics if compound words are represented and processed as unitary lexical units (full-listing models) or only as individual constituents analyzed via a combinatorial mechanism (full-parsing models). There is enough experimental evidence that both mechanisms are involved (dual-route models). Several characteristics of the stimuli, like length, morphological family size, frequency of compounds and their constituents are important factors to determine how they are processed. Compound words are meaningful units that contain smaller meaningful units. Therefore, in the domain of compounds' studies, several hypotheses have been proposed to explain how only one interpretation is achieved from two independent meanings. Models that describe the construction of lexical semantic features in compound words, like APPLE - Automatic Progressive Parsing and Lexical Excitation (Libben 1994,1998) or CARIN - Competition A mong Relations in Nominals (Gagné, 2000), are based on the notion of a morphological head. According to these theories the recognition of the head would trigger an interpretation of the whole word. In noun-noun compounds (pez espada, 'swordfish', telaraña 'spiderweb'), in which the head has the referential features, the identification of this head and the posterior clarification of the relationship with the non-head lexeme is the way to interpret the whole compound (pez 'fish' and tela 'web', respectively). However, not every compound has a head with the referential attributes inside. Verb-noun compounding is an extremely productive word-formation process in Romance languages. Spanish verb-noun compounds have the particularity of being exocentric: these con structions do not present a categorical, morpholog ical or semantic head. Therefore, access to the meaning depends on the relationship between both of their constituent lexemes. For these units, the traditional distinction between semantically transparent and semantically opaque compounds is not suitable, because it doesn't take under consideration the projection of the argument structure by the verbal constituent. The semantic relationship established between the lexemes within a compound is not unique. While the prototypical semantic structure responds to the agent-patient pattern (cortacésped), there are other semantic possibilities, such as locative relationships (pasacalle). The present study addresses the issue of the comprehension of Spanish verb-noun compounds in order to provide evidence about the role of the argument structure projected by the first lexeme in the whole-word meaning. It is proposed that the argument structure of the verbal constituent has a cognitive influence on the processing and comprehension of these units. Firstly, an acceptability judgment test was administrated in order to identify a group of verbnoun compounds that were adequate for the Argentinean Spanish lexicon. Secondly, a lexical decision task was conducted with the stimuli selected as acceptable. Thirty native speakers (20 females), ranged in age from 19 to 34 years old, with at least 12 years of schooling, participated in the experiment. The lexical decision task included three types of compounds according to their argument structure: (1) Agent / patient (abrelatas), (2) Agent / patient with less prototypical features or metaphorical processes (chupasangre), and (3) locatives (guardamuebles). Stimuli were matched according to the whole-word and constituent frequency and length. For the statistical analysis, ANOVAs were calculated for error rates and response times (RTs) for each condition. Results show that reaction times (answers) to locative compounds were significantly higher than to agentpatient compounds. This contrast cannot be explain ed by differences in frequency or length, of the compounds or their constituents. Consequently, the present results seem to support the hypothesis that argument structure plays a central role in the processing of these words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The singular/plural alternation of the concordance between the verb haber with existential meaning and its argument is a phenomenon that changes according to the variety of Spanish used -that will differ depending on the side of the Atlantic is used. This article presents the research carried out in Madrid, a linguistic community traditionally exempt from this innovative phenomenon, based on the analysis of 108 semi-directed interviews that conform the PRESEEA corpora and that correspond to the Salamanca and Vallecas-Puente de Vallecas districts. The analysis of the dependent linguistic variable (singular/ plural) has been carried out according to the guidelines proposed within the framework of PRESEEA. This framework considers the potential impact of 23 independent variables: eleven linguistic, four stylistic, and eight sociological. The results indicate that the pluralization, although still rare, is slowly being introduced in the variety of Spanish spoken in Madrid. Therefore, in addition to the analysis of the incidence of the stylistic, social and linguistic factors, the linguistic innovation stage has also been studied in detail, as well as the potential impact of the cognitive constraints and characteristics of the speakers that have introduced these pluralized constructions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spanish copulas have inspired a vast amount of studies involving a significant number of technical concepts in their description. Against this background, we concentrate on the need to refine the technical parameters used, focusing on the linguistic domains where they are encoded and on the distinction between lexical and constructional semantics. Building on specific tests, we propose that ser and estar: (i) depart from both the standard notion of copula (semantically trivial verb) and of stative verb (lacking temporal structure) and are at least ambiguous as for the eventive type of construction they render; (ii) that many properties observed in the literature do not actually ensue from to the copula per se, but rather from the construction they head; (iii) and that the parameter boundedness best captures their situation, as long as it is conceived as a different semantic property, logically distinguishable from perfectivity telicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the acquisition of the semantic values of the Spanish present tense among second language learners and Spanish heritage speakers, an area so far underexplored. We predict bilingualism effects evidenced in lower patterns of use, acceptance and preference of the simple present with an ongoing meaning, as well as preference for the progressive in ongoing and habitual contexts. Furthermore, we expect the heritage speakers to outperform the L2 learners, and to behave closer to native speakers. In contrast to our expectations, we found overextension of the simple present to ongoing situations and to contexts where the present progressive is preferred. The heritage speakers behaved closer to the native speakers, suggesting age-related effects in language development. We argue for morphosemantic convergence towards the less aspectually restrictive configuration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous analyses of the Spanish deictic verbs venir 'to come', ir 'to go', traer 'to bring' and llevar 'to take' have drawn upon Fillmore's (1975) series of lectures on deixis in noting that speakers of Spanish forbid the use of the verbs venir and traer to express movement towards the hearer. Under this egocentric view (Beinhauer, 1940; Ibañez, 1983), the Spanish verbs venir and traer can only be used to describe movement towards the speaker's location. Little experimental research has been done, however, to confirm the extent to which heritage and second language (L2) speakers of the language conform to this pattern. The present study gathered data on the deictic preferences of bilingual, heritage speakers of Spanish and English (HS) and compared this data with that of L2 and monolingual native speakers of Spanish (NS). 74 participants, consisting of 12 NS, 34 HS, and 29 L2 speakers, assessed the grammaticality of 20 stimulus items that contained prescriptively correct and incorrect usages of the deictic verbs venir, traer, llevar and ir. Both HS and L2 speakers made significantly more errors than NS when the direction expressed in the stimulus was oriented towards the hearer, suggesting both groups may benefit from instruction on this topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

El artículo discurre sobre la combinatoria del verbo hacer en español. La autora comenta sobre el uso de hacer en la sintaxis español y describe el concepto de infraespecificación en el contexto lingüístico, según el científico de la computación James Pustejovsky. También se consideran los usos variados del verbo hacer.

The bibliography about types of evidentiality has hardly dealt with the relationship between the sense of smell and the speaker's level of epistemic certainty. The present paper, the aim of which was to analyze that relationship, has used an semantic analysis to prove that the sense of smell (expressed by means of the Spanish verb oler) not only can act as a source of variable epistemic modality information but also can have uses associated with mirativity (the expression of an unexpected or surprising piece of knowledge). Attention is additionally paid to the diachronic uses of oler which show that its evidential uses have become lexicalized from complex cognitive processes such as subjectivization or metaphorical structuring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pronominal verbs (PVs) are a morphological form class of intransitive verbs in Spanish such as acatarrar-se (= to get a cold) and quejar-se (= to complain) that are obligatorily marked with the reflexive, or se, clitic. The main objective of this paper is to propose a solution to the following puzzle: PVs represent a heterogeneous set of argument structure configurations but are formally marked in the same way. In order to do so, I empirically motivate the existence of two different argument structure configurations within the class of PVs, unaccusative and unergative. I then show that what makes these configurations unique is that they contain a deficiency in Voice, in the form of unchecked formal features. This deficiency has a different source in each configuration: it is an unchecked categorial D-feature in unaccusatives and unvalued phi-features in unergatives. The reason why these two configurations are marked in the same way is because, as proposed in , Syncretism as PF-repair: The case of se-insertation in Spanish. In Maria C. Cuervo & Yves Roberge (eds.), The end of argument structure? 229-260. Bingley, UK: Emerald Press.), the se clitic paradigm is used as a general repair mechanism to eliminate unchecked D and phi features on Voice post-syntactically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on variation demonstrates that analyses of frequency and predictors of use contribute to our understanding of languages. Investigations of subject expression in Spanish in particular have identified differences across person and number of the verb that suggest that linguists should focus their analyses exclusively on a single category of that variable (e.g., Torres-Cacoullos and Travis 2010). The current paper examines the subject-expression forms produced in first- and second-person contexts in separate analyses, exploring the degree to which patterns of use generalize across verbal person categories. Data from 32 sociolinguistic interviews with native and non-native speakers of Spanish in the same speech community were coded for independent linguistic variables, such as switch reference, perseveration, tense, mood and aspect of the verb form, verbal negation, presence of object pronouns, specificity and reference cohesiveness. Separate multivariate analyses for first- and second-person referents show subtle differences between NSs and NNSs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study looks at both the knowledge and use of the Spanish pronoun se mainly with unaccusative predicates in the interlanguage of an adult English speaker learning Spanish as a Second Language (L2) in a native, non-institutional setting. Data recorded from the learner's production along with other similar data were presented to him as a written acceptability judgment task. A comparison was made with the outcome of the task in order to have a more comprehensive view of his linguistic competence. The results seem to confirm those of previous studies in that the learner overgeneralizes the use of the clitic se. They also suggest that the development of L2 knowledge may involve a process of construction resulting in structures not present either in the native language (L1) or the L2, which show in certain fossilized errors. It is argued that these structures originate in the interaction of Universal Grammar principles and both L1 and L2 influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the combination of verb and noun in the Spanish language. The authors comment on the recent history of this unique linguistic combination, including an analysis of its syntactic and semantic meanings. They also examine several common examples of this verb-noun combination, including the words abrelatas (can openers), picahielos (ice picks), and rompecorazones (heartthrobs), and provide a linguistic breakdown of their construction.Their use in everyday Spanish language is also detailed.

The current study builds on research on mood distinction in Spanish, which has focused on the subjunctive mood, by examining the full inventory of verb forms that second-language learners and native speakers (NSs) of Spanish use in mood-choice contexts. Twenty NSs and 130 learners corresponding to five proficiency levels completed three oral-elicitation tasks. The results show that participants use a wide repertoire of tense/mood/aspect forms in mood-choice contexts and that NSs and learners use largely the same forms. An analysis of the conditional and imperfect suggests that learners tend to restructure and strengthen their form-function connections between these verb forms and a range of functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the relation between the level of informants' interlanguage and the frequency of two types of errors: intralinguals and interlinguals. A cognitive- contrastive approach has been suggested as an eclectic model to analyze the frequency of errors of Persian-speaking students in using Spanish verb-governed prepositions. This study is considered as an applied study based on research objectives, and a correlation from the point of view of method. The population is from Alame Tabatabaie University undergraduate Spanish students. First 75 students were selected according to the cluster sampling method. Then 67 of students were reselected and divided into the following three levels of interlanguage: basic, intermediate, and advanced. The level of interlanguage was determined by the students' answers to the questionnaire. Using descriptive statistics, the study shows that the frequency of intralingual errors has a positive correlation with the level of the interlanguage, and the frequency of interlingual errors has a negative correlation with the level of interlanguage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the morpho-syntactic properties of Spanish verbs formed by - ear affixation (EAV henceforth). These include deadjectival (e.g. amarillear ‘to go yellow’), denominal (e.g. fanfarronear ‘to behave like a boaster’), and deverbal verbs (e.g. bailotear ‘to dance in an irregular manner’), which do not form a natural semantic class. The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to develop a unified morpho-syntactic analysis of EAV within Hale and Keyser's (1993) approach to argument structure – as developed in Mateu (2002) and Acedo-Matellán and Mateu (2011, 2013) – and Distributed Morphology; second, to take this proposal as a basis to account for cross-dialectal variation in the productivity of EAV. We group EAV into three basic syntactic classes that share a core structure v + P. We argue that a large subset of unergative verbs must be analyzed as events with a specifier that select for a relational/predicative complement, a type of structure that is shown to underlie verbs with an adverbial argument. - Ear is further checked against unmarked - ar , the default verb-forming suffix in Iberian Spanish. We show that an underspecified analysis of EAV is compatible with cross-dialectal variation in that it accommodates the (non-)predictable range of meanings found across American varieties where - ear has become the default verbalizer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Construction grammar (CG) has been proposed as an adequate grammatical formalism for building intelligent language tutoring systems because it is highly compatible with the learning strategies observed in second language learning. Unfortunately, the lack of computational CG implementations has made it impossible in the past to corroborate these proposals with actual language tutoring prototypes. However, recent advances in Fluid Construction Grammar (FCG) now offer exciting new ways of operationalizing robust and open-ended language processing within a CG approach. This paper demonstrates its adequacy for ICALL applications through a case study on error diagnosis in the domain of Spanish tense, aspect and modal morphology. The performance of the FCG tutor is tested on the Spanish Learner Language Oral Corpus (SPLOCC 2). This first FCG Spanish error diagnostic prototype achieves an accuracy of 70% on a total of 500 conjugation errors in four oral tasks carried out by 20 low intermediate and 20 advanced English learners of Spanish. Follow-up experiments will test this prototype on larger learner corpora of differing proficiency levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we investigate the pluralization of presentational haber (e.g., Habían fiestas. 'There were parties.') in the Spanish of Havana, Santo Domingo, and San Juan. Drawing on Goldberg's (1995) Cognitive Construction Grammar, we claim that the phenomenon consists in a language change from below: the pluralized variant of the presentational haber construction () is replacing the impersonal variant (). Using a mixed-effects regression analysis, we show that speakers of the Caribbean dialects pluralize the verb in 41-46% of the cases. The linguistic factors that were investigated in this study (typical action-chain position of the noun's referent, clause polarity, verb tense, comprehension-to-production priming and production- to-production priming) argue in favor of considering the variation an argument-structure alternation. The comparative sociolinguistic analyses reveal that these factors have the same effects and relative strengths in the three communities. For the three communities, the results for gender and social class support that the phenomenon constitutes an advanced language change from below. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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