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In this paper, we investigate word order with the verb decir ‘say’ in two corpora of spoken Peninsular Spanish. This verb is particularly interesting because it has been observed to have a high frequency of postverbal subjects in previous studies. Beside features that influence optional subject-verb inversion, such as the type of subject, the type of complement and the type of sentence in which decir appears, we investigate whether factors related to residual V2 trigger the postverbal subject position in some contexts. It will be shown that fronted objects, but not preverbal adverbs, trigger subject-verb inversion in the speech data investigated here. Furthermore, the factor of subject type and complement type are relevant for explaining word order patterns. Lastly, we also discuss the existence of semi-fixed, ‘constructionalized’ word order patterns with decir and how they can be accounted for in a framework that makes use of perspectival functional categories in the left periphery.

Copyright of Revista Signos is the property of Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Lletres Asturianes is the property of Academia de la Llingua Asturiana and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Domínios de Lingu@gem is the property of Dominios de Lingu@gem and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Communication is at the foundation of safe and effective health care. When patients with limited English proficiency (LEP) have healthcare providers who do not speak their language, the communication barrier can lead to poor outcomes. Responding to the high number of Spanish-speaking individuals with LEP, a Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) program has integrated Spanish-language training in the curriculum. This paper describes their development and pilot testing of the Physical Therapy Spanish Proficiency Measure (PT-SPM). The PT-SPM was developed for English-Spanish bilingual faculty or clinicians to assess DPT students' clinically relevant Spanish communication. The PT-SPM has 11 total items with four subscales: verbal proficiency, aural proficiency, written proficiency, and cultural competence. Twenty-three pairs of DPT students and their bilingual clinical instructors were recruited for an interrater agreement study; each used the PT-SPM to independently rate the student's Spanish communication with Spanish-speaking patients with LEP in clinical settings. Cohen's weighted kappa was calculated to evaluate interrater agreement between the students and clinicians on item level, using linear incremental weights. The weighted kappa coefficients ranged from 0.35 (fair agreement) to 0.80 (substantial agreement). All weighted kappa coefficients were statistically significant. Two items had fair agreement; four items had moderate agreement, and five items had substantial agreement. These results support that the PT-SPM may have value as an assessment tool for DPT students in clinical settings. Educators in other health professions may consider adapting the PT-SPM. This paper contributes to the broader interprofessional dialogue about how to assess and improve patient-provider communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The intelligibility of an accent strongly depends on the specific talker-listener pairing. To explore the causes of this phenomenon, we investigated the relationship between acoustic-phonetic similarity and accent intelligibility across native (1st language) and nonnative (2nd language) talker- listener pairings. We also used online measures to observe processing differences in quiet. Method: English (n = 16) and Spanish (n = 16) listeners heard Standard Southern British English, Glaswegian English, and Spanish-accented English in a speech recognition task (in quiet and noise) and an electroencephalogram task (quiet only) designed to assess phonological and lexical processing. Stimuli were drawn from the nonnative speech recognition sentences (Stringer & Iverson, 2019). The acoustic-phonetic similarity between listeners' accents and the 3 accents was calculated using the ACCDIST metric (Huckvale, 2004, 2007). Results: Talker-listener pairing had a clear influence on accent intelligibility. This was linked to the phonetic similarity of the talkers and the listeners, but similarity could not account for all findings. The influence of talker-listener pairing on lexical processing was less clear; the N400 effect was mostly robust to accent mismatches, with some relationship to intelligibility. Conclusion: These findings suggest that the influence of talker-listener pairing on intelligibility may be partly attributable to accent similarity in addition to accent familiarity. Online measures also show that differences in talker-listener accents can disrupt processing in quiet even where accents are highly intelligible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Parental preference for various behaviour management techniques (BMTs) used in paediatric dentistry has been shown to be influenced by many factors, including ethnicity. Aim: To measure parental acceptability of BMTs used in paediatric dentistry and how it is influenced by ethnicity and language. Design: Parents of patients presenting to a paediatric dentistry residency clinic in Houston, Texas, USA or Medellín, Colombia watched ten video BMT vignettes and rated their acceptance on a visual analog scale (VAS). Participants were categorized into six groups based on language, ethnicity, and country of residence. Results: Parental acceptance of BMTs was affected by language, ethnicity, and country of residence (P = 2.2 × 10−16). Ethnic groups in the USA had a mean overall acceptance rate of all BMTs. Colombians rated all BMTs less acceptable than the US cohorts (P < 0.05), with the exception of voice control, which Colombians rate less acceptable than English‐speaking Caucasians and Spanish‐speaking Hispanics in the USA (P < 0.05). The Colombian population were not accepting of conscious sedation, nitrous oxide, general anaesthesia, and protective stabilization. Conclusions: Parents from different ethnic groups express different preferences in BMTs. Parents continue to prefer noninvasive techniques over pharmacologic and advanced techniques, with the exception of voice control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Latinos are the largest minority group in the United States (U.S. Census, 2014), yet this term comprises individuals from multiple ethnicities who speak distinct varieties of Spanish. We investigated whether Spanish-English bilingual children (N = 140, ages 4-17) use Spanish varieties in their social judgments. The findings revealed that children distinguished varieties of Spanish but did not use Spanish dialects to make third-person friendship judgments until 10-12 years; this effect became stronger in adolescence. In contrast, young children (4-6 years) made friendship judgments based on a speaker's language (English, Spanish). Thus, using language varieties as a social category and as a basis for making social inferences is a complex result of multiple influences for Spanish-speaking children growing up bilingual in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this article is double. Firstly, we aim to study the values the first person plural can develop in Spanish oral trials and, secondly, we will examine whether is possible to identify mitigating uses associated with this referential mechanism. After analyzing our corpus following a qualitative and quantitative methodology, we have observed that the use of the first person plural in this genre is not only prompted by the representative character of the Spanish legal system or to the constrictions of the discursive tradition. Usually, the use of first person plural (especially the plural of modesty and the associative plural) codifies an attenuating value oriented to attain a discursive goal, such as the negotiation of the acceptability of the ideas or the protection of the speakers' faces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several authors have established a large group of variables to characterise linguistic mitigation using a multidimensional database as a framework (Briz/Albelda; Albelda/others). In this study, 982 mitigation sequences have been selected from 18 spoken Spanish interviews; all of them have been identified as instances of mitigation by at least four different informants. Finally, these data have been analysed by means of three statistical methods: multiple correspondence analysis, decision trees and Random Forest. The results suggest that the variables that better characterise the three functions of mitigation (self-protection, prevention and repair) are (a) image of the speaker(s), (b) the previous speech act, (c) age, (d) syntactic position and (e) the prosodic-paralinguistic component. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Untrained Chilean auditors and without knowledge of German must identify, within a sequence of German voices, the voice of a German woman who previously spoke in Spanish with a delay of 2 hours. The statements were spoken by native German students from the University of Regensburg. The results show that the auditors identify the original voice, but inaccurately, by giving, within a scale of 1 to 7 the highest score to the target voice above the others, but with an overall average of 6.1. This reinforces the idea that hearing evidence should only have an indicative value. This text is based on a manuscript presented at the 2010 INGEACUS Congress held in Valdivia, Chile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the U.S., there is a growing Latino population, in which parents primarily speak Spanish to their children. Despite the evidence that language preference is associated with level of acculturation and influences parenting practices in these families, no study has compared how Spanish- and English-speaking Latino families acquire and utilize the skills taught during parent-training programs such as Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT). Twenty-seven mother-infant Latino dyads received a home-based adaptation of the Child-Directed Interaction (CDI) phase of PCIT as part of a larger randomized control trial. Most infants were male (63%), and their average age was 13.7 months ( SD = 1.43). Most families (52%) lived below the poverty line. The Dyadic Parent-Child Interaction Coding System-Third Edition (DPICS-III) was employed to evaluate PCIT skills at baseline and post-treatment, as well as at 3- and 6-month follow-up, assessments. We conducted multiple linear regression analyses among Spanish-speaking (55%) and English-speaking (45%) families to examine differences in acquisition and utilization of do and don't skills at each assessment while controlling for mother's education. Results yielded no group differences in the acquisition rate of do or don't skills at any time point. However, Spanish-speaking mothers used significantly more don't skills than English-speaking mothers at each assessment. Specifically, Spanish-speaking families used significantly more commands at baseline, post-treatment, and the 6-month follow-up assessments, as well as more questions at post-treatment and at the 6-month follow-up assessments. These findings highlight the importance of addressing cultural values such as respeto to ensure culturally robust parent-training programs for Latino families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: A 5-session twice-weekly clear speech protocol with daily home practice was developed to enable Spanish-accented speakers of English to code-switch for increased listener ease of understanding. This study provides preliminary data to test the hypothesis that this protocol results in increased ease of understanding for native English listeners, not in decreased talker accentedness. Method: Using a single-case experimental design, 6 adult native Spanish speakers with English proficiency participated in the protocol. Ease of understanding and accentedness were probed at least 5 times pretraining, at each training session, and once per week for 5 weeks posttraining. Thirty native English–speaking listeners assessed the probes using 7-point scales for each measure. Results: Ease of understanding improved for all participants (mean improvement = 3.5 points; effect size range = 6.98 to 15.33). Accentedness improved for 4 of 6 participants (mean improvement = 2.3 points; effect size range = 4.04 to 10.48). At the outset, most participants expressed concern that this approach would highlight speech errors. Upon follow-up, all participants reported confidence in using the approach and found it helpful in daily communication. Conclusions: Further research should explore the effects of this protocol on intelligibility and acoustic metrics and their relationship to ease of understanding and accentedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The perception of stress is highly influenced by listeners’ native language. In this research, the authors examined the effect of intonation and talker variability (here: phonetic variability) in the discrimination of Spanish lexical stress contrasts by native Spanish (N = 17), German (N = 21), and French (N = 27) listeners. Participants listened to 216 trials containing three Spanish disyllabic words, where one word carried a different lexical stress to the others. The listeners’ task was to identify the deviant word in each trial (Odd-One-Out task). The words in the trials were produced by either the same talker or by two different talkers, and carried the same or varying intonation patterns. The German listeners’ performance was lower compared to the Spanish listeners but higher than that of the French listeners. French listeners performed above chance level with and without talker variability, and performed at chance level when intonation variability was introduced. Results are discussed in the context of the stress “deafness” hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within search-on-speech, Spoken Term Detection (STD) aims to retrieve data from a speech repository given a textual representation of a search term. This paper presents an international open evaluation for search-on-speech based on STD in Spanish and an analysis of the results. The evaluation has been designed carefully so that several analyses of the main results can be carried out. The evaluation consists in retrieving the speech files that contain the search terms, providing their start and end times, and a score value that reflects the confidence given to the detection. Two different Spanish speech databases have been employed in the evaluation: MAVIR database, which comprises a set of talks from workshops, and EPIC database, which comprises a set of European Parliament sessions in Spanish. We present the evaluation itself, both databases, the evaluation metric, the systems submitted to the evaluation, the results, and a detailed discussion. Five different research groups took part in the evaluation, and ten different systems were submitted in total. We compare the systems submitted to the evaluation and make a deep analysis based on some search term properties (term length, within-vocabulary/out-of-vocabulary terms, single-word/multi-word terms, and native (Spanish)/foreign terms). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study investigates the production of voiceless alveolar and postalveolar fricatives and affricates by bilingual and monolingual children with hearing loss who use cochlear implants (CIs) and their peers with normal hearing (NH). Method: Fifty-four children participated in our study, including 12 Spanish-English bilingual CI users (M = 6;0 [years;months]), 12 monolingual English-speaking children with CIs (M = 6;1), 20 bilingual children with NH (M = 6;5), and 10 monolingual English-speaking children with NH (M = 5;10). Picture elicitation targeting /s/, /tʃ/, and /ʃ/was administered. Repeated-measures analyses of variance comparing group means for frication duration, rise time, and centroid frequency were conducted for the effects of CI use and bilingualism. Results: All groups distinguished the target sounds in the 3 acoustic parameters examined. Regarding frication duration and rise time, the Spanish productions of bilingual children with CIs differed from their bilingual peers with NH. English frication duration patterns for bilingual versus monolingual CI users also differed. Centroid frequency was a stronger place cue for children with NH than for children with CIs. Conclusion: Patterns of fricative and affricate production display effects of bilingualism and diminished signal, yielding unique patterns for bilingual and monolingual CI users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Utilizing self-reported survey data from 120 low-income, Spanish-speaking mother–child dyads, this study examined different types of classes (i.e., subgroups) based on the ways in which mothers and adolescent children coped with language brokering, particularly when they found it stressful. Four classes emerged, listed from largest to smallest class: (a) communal coping mothers, (b) shared communal copers, (c) independent communal coping children, and (d) communal coping children. Mothers’ parent–child closeness predicted class membership, but adolescent children’s reported closeness was not a significant predictor. Nevertheless, adolescent children’s respect for family significantly predicted class membership, whereas mothers’ respect for family was not a significant predictor. Mothers who were members of the communal coping children class reported less frequent depressive symptoms, whereas children who were independent communal coping children reported more frequent depressive symptoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One hundred dyads of low-income, Spanish-speaking mothers and their bilingual children (age = 12-18) who act as language brokers (i.e., culturally/linguistically mediate between their mothers and English-speakers) were surveyed. Multiple goals theory was tested and extended by examining how mother and child perceptions of own and partner interaction goals across language brokering episodes were associated with mother-child relational satisfaction. An actor-partner interdependence model revealed that goals related to face, trust, and ethnic identity were associated with mother and child relational satisfaction. For both mothers and children, perceptions of own and partner goals (i.e., actor effects), and interactions between own reported and partner perceptions of the same goal (i.e., actor-partner effects) linked with mother-child relational satisfaction. Mother and child goal management during language brokering may have broader relational repercussions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a comparative study to analyze how speakers understand and produce specific semantic relations such as causality and counter- causality. We are particularly interested in analyzing whether there are differences based on the underlying process and how the level of formal education of the participants is involved regarding their performance. We have evaluated causal and counter-causal relations in various conditions: "then (entonces)" and "because (porque)" for causality; "but (pero)" and "although (aunque)" for counter-causality. Our general hypothesis postulates a cross-causal advantage that is modulated by level of education and the particular hypothesis predicts internal differences by dimension according to the specific condition and depending on the underlying process and the level of formal education. Our results support our general hypothesis and, indeed, exhibit peculiarities within each semantic dimension, depending on the specific construction and connective, which are not always independent of the process or the formal education level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of our previous works had as its aim to analyse the behaviour of luego and después in the speech of Seville. The results obtained were significant, but they required an expansion of the material subject to analysis; hence our decision to study luego and después with a textual function in the Macrocorpus of the Linguistic Educated Norm in Major Cities of the Hispanic World. The focus will be specifically placed on their role as time connectors and as information-structuring units. This will allow us to check whether the patterns of variation and discursive behaviour observed so far are common to spoken Spanish as a whole, or whether diatopical or diastratic differences arise which help to shape the usage profile of these two alternating units. DOI: 10.20420/rlfe.2015.0008

The forms -ra and -se, almost without exception, are interchangeable variants of the Spanish past subjunctive. Less equal is their modern distribution, in which -ra enjoys a sizeable advantage, particularly in speech, in the parts of the Spanishspeaking world where it has been empirically studied. This study examines the current frequency of these forms in the writing of educated native speakers in the capital cities of 20 Spanish-speaking countries, thus allowing for a comprehensive geographic perspective of -ra/-se heretofore nonexistent. Other synchronic and diachronic studies of this phenomenon are reviewed, their data in some cases compared with those of the present study. Such considerations not only permit insight into shifts in the distribution of -ra/-se over time, but reveal current contrasts in their use depending on variables such as spoken versus written language, different genres and registers employed in the written word, the sex of the writers, the existence of both subjunctive and non-subjunctive uses in the data, and, perhaps most importantly, dialectal differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information regarding PRESEEA, a project developed to determine linguistic variation in the corpus of Spanish language spoken throughout the Hispanic world. The author comments on the focus of the study on sociolinguistics via such resources as surveys, interviews, and geographic distribution.

This article discusses the linguistic variation in the -/d/ found at the end of Spanish words as they are spoken in Madrid, Spain. The author comments on the sociolinguistic characteristics of the study and describes the linguistic differences based on age, sex, and social class. Statistical information based on logistic regression analysis is also provided.

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]

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]

This study concerning luego and después considers their use as verb modifi ers, as temporary connectors and as information structurers. We have analyzed a sample of about 15 hours of recording taken from partially controlled surveys to educated speakers from Seville. The main aims are to know the discursive values that these units acquire in orality, to observe communicative performance presented in the analyzed texts and determine whether there are linguistic or social factors that constrain the variation between both. The results have allowed us to check that después was the preferred variant in all contexts by Seville speakers, without appreciating conditions that in- fl uenced alternation. Both particles are preferably used as textual markers: as temporary connectors appeared more often in enumerative series and as information structurers acquired several nuances added to this basic sense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates variation in the prosodic system of Spanish in the speech of three generations of Mexican Americans living in a Mexican American-majority community in South Texas, United States, characterized by high levels of bilingualism and long-term, sustained contact between languages. Low and Grabe's (1995) Pairwise Variability Index was used to quantify prosodic rhythm in the Spanish and the English of community members across generations in order to: (1) assess differences between contact and non-contact varieties of Spanish, (2) investigate the cross-generational stability of prosodic rhythm in the community, and (3) ascertain the type of influence from English, if any, on Spanish prosody. Findings show that while the oldest generations maintain separate systems of rhythm in Spanish and English, the youngest generation demonstrates prosodic convergence. [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]

Objectives: Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) is one of the most common mental disorders in adolescence. Many validated psychometric tools are available to diagnose individuals with SAD efficaciously. However, there is a demand for shortened self-report instruments that identify adolescents at risk of developing SAD. We validate the Mini-SPIN and its diagnostic efficiency in overcoming this problem in Spanish-speaking adolescents in Spain. Methods: The psychometric properties of the 3-item Mini-SPIN scale for adolescents were assessed in a community (study 1) and clinical sample (study 2). Results: Study 1 consisted of 573 adolescents, and found the Mini-SPIN to have appropriate internal consistency and high construct validity. Study 2 consisted of 354 adolescents (147 participants diagnosed with SAD and 207 healthy controls). Data revealed that the Mini-SPIN has good internal consistency, high construct validity and adequate diagnostic efficiency. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that the Mini-SPIN has good psychometric properties on clinical and healthy control adolescents and general population, which indicates that it can be used as a screening tool in Spanish-speaking adolescents. Cut-off scores are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the Estudio Sociolingüístico del Español de Chile (Sociolinguistic Study of Chilean Spanish) research project in Santiago, Chile. The authors comment on the research completed during the period from 2005-2012 on the spoken Spanish of Chile. They also describe the methodology that was utilized, which included oral interviews, as well as an analysis of socioeconomic factors, age, and education level of each participant. Variations in the Spanish spoken by the research subjects are also examined.

In this paper helpful melodic patterns are available for the formation of speakers in context where the illocutionary force mitigation is the main purpose of the conversation. The objective is to determine the improvements needed to improve the performance of workers exposed to direct contact with other people and to increase communication effectiveness, quality of service and parther satisfaction, together with the cultural education of the worker. The research project is located within Fono-cortesía: el componente fónico en la expresión de cortesía y descortesía verbales en español coloquial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the detailed analysis of those units and combinations used in the current Spanish to manifest rejection, differentiating between those who express dissent and those who express a disqualification. To do this, we attend to the differences between the modal operators identified, highlighting its use restrictions and its(im)polite values. The empirical material used consists of three different types of interactions: colloquial conversations edited by the group Val.Es.Co and other communicative events marked by conflict, such as political debates and talk shows. The methodology used corresponds to pragmatic linguistics (Fuentes Rodríguez 2000). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Alfa: Revista de Lingüística is the property of Alfa: Revista de Linguistica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista de Lengua para Fines Específicos is the property of Revista de Lengua para Fines Especificos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper presents a corpus-based examination of pragmatic marker use in Spanish as a foreign language. Using quantitative and qualitative methods, it examines the frequency and seven functional differences in the use of pues and bueno in the oral examination of 46 participants using the Computer Assisted Screening Tool (CAST) online test. The participants were adult (average age 22) non-native speaking examinees at two levels of language proficiency. The study investigated whether examinees’ proficiency level would influence the pragmatic markers’ rate of occurrence and variety of functions. Frequency measures of pragmatic markers were obtained from examinees rated at two levels of proficiency: ‘full’ or ‘fail’. 1 1 ‘Full’ and ‘fail’ are the terms used in the CAST test as descriptors of the test takers who were rated as highly proficient (‘full’), or as not meeting the criteria for highly proficient (‘fail’). In no way are they intended to disparage the efforts of any test takers. A discourse analytic approach was then employed to examine the discursive functions of pragmatic markers. The quantitative results showed that proficiency level was significantly related to the overall frequency of use of the focal markers, with the ‘full’ group tending to use them more frequently than the ‘fail’ group. Qualitatively, the study found that higher proficiency speakers used both pragmatic markers for a wider range of functions than their lower proficiency counterparts. The discussion considers the implications for raising learner awareness of pragmatic marker contributions to perceived oral fluency and pragmatic capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Este trabajo pretende describir la evolución del sistema lingüístico español (oral y escrito) desde las perspectivas diacrónica y sincrónica y su forma actual para, finalmente, tratar de mostrar cómo sus characterísticas influyen y explican en parte los datos existentes sobre la adquisición de la lengua escrita en español. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The characteristics of acquired dyslexias in Spanish speakers have been the subject of intense debate due to the effect of the orthographic transparency of Spanish. For some authors, this transparency implies that reading must always be phonologically mediated and that the dual-route reading models and patterns of acquired dyslexia described in English-speaking patients are not applicable to Spanish speakers. Other authors have reported on cases of Spanish speakers that fit into the cognitive typology. We reviewed all publications on acquired dyslexia in Spanish speakers with three intentions: to verify if the patterns observed were in keeping with the cognitive typology mentioned above; to analyse the influence of the method of study on findings; and to consider which theoretical approach best explains them. As a result of the review, we could unmistakably identify cognitive acquired dyslexia patterns and conclude that cognitive dual-route models can explain the characteristics of acquired dyslexia in Spanish-speaking patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we intend to describe the evolution of the Spanish linguistic system (spoken and written) from both diachronic and synchronic perspectives, as well as to describe its current form; the main aim is to show how current Spanish language characteristics influence and explain, in part, the existing data about literacy acquisition in Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Las characterísticas de las alexias en hispanohablantes han sido objeto de intensa polémica con el argumento de la transparencia ortográfica del español. Para algunos autores la transparencia hace que la lectura sea siempre mediada fonológicamente y que no sean aplicables los modelos de doble ruta de lectura ni los patrones aléxicos descriptos en pacientes anglohablantes (alexias fonológica, de superficie y profunda). Otros autores reportan casos que encajan en la tipología cognitiva y defienden la aplicabilidad de estos modelos. Se revisaron todas las publicaciones sobre alexia en hispanohablantes con el objetivo de verificar si los patrones observados corresponden a la tipología cognitiva, analizar la influencia del método de estudio en los hallazgos y ponderar qué propuesta teórica los explica mejor. La revisión nos permitió identificar inequívocamente los patrones aléxicos cognitivos y concluir que los modelos cognitivos de doble ruta de lectura pueden explicar las characterísticas de la alexia en pacientes hispanohablantes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on qualitative analysis of conversational interactions collected over the course of a Spanish language learner's academic year abroad, this article explores the development of interactional resources related to alignment activity in the learner's conversational participation. Alignment activity refers to the means interlocutors use to demonstrate their intersubjectivity. Alignment moves such as assessments, collaborative contributions, and collaborative completions index shared understanding, the ability to adopt the other's point of view, and the ability to speak in the other's voice. Analysis of the learner's alignment activity over the course of the year abroad reveals changes in participation that allowed the learner to play a more active role in the co-construction of communication as her time abroad progressed. The findings in this study contribute to the operationalization of the concept of interactional competence (IC) and to our understanding of its development over time. This study proposes the inclusion of alignment activity as another important grouping of interactional resources relevant to models of IC (He & Young, ; Young, , ). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]