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On marked declaratives, exclamatives, and discourse particles in Castilian Spanish
No full textThis book provides a new perspective on prosodically marked declaratives, wh-exclamatives, and discourse particles in the Madrid variety of Spanish. It argues that some marked forms differ from unmarked forms in that they encode modal evaluations of the at-issue meaning. Two epistemic evaluations that can be shown to be encoded by intonation in Spanish are obviousness and mirativity, which present the at-issue meaning as expected and unexpected, respectively. An empirical investigation via a production experiment finds that they are associated with distinct intonational features under constant focus scope, with stances of (dis)agreement showing an impact on obvious declaratives. Wh-exclamatives are found not to differ significantly in intonational marking from neutral declaratives, showing that they need not be miratives. Moreover, we find that intonational marking on different discourse particles in natural dialogue correlates with their meaning contribution without being fully determined by it. In part, these findings quantitatively confirm previous qualitative findings on the meaning of intonational configurations in Madrid Spanish. But they also add new insights on the role intonation plays in the negotiation of commitments and expectations between interlocutors
Mechanical vs. functional processes in subject pronoun expression in Spanish second language learners
No full textSubject pronoun expression in Spanish is regulated by functional factors while the role of the mechanical factor priming, or perseveration, has been a source of debate. Additionally, 3sg subjects have been identified as more difficult to acquire than 1sg in L2 Spanish. In this paper we explore the interaction between Switch Reference, Form of Previous Subject (perseveration), and Speaker group in 1sg and 3sg subjects in L2 Spanish through the oral narratives of 28 Spanish L2ers (15 higher and 13 lower proficiency) and 9 Spanish-English bilingual native speakers (NSs). Results showed differences between L2ers and NSs in rates of overt pronominal subjects and in sensitivity to Switch Reference but not in the effect of priming. We hypothesize the differences in the interactions between variables in 1sg vs. 3sg could be due to 3sg involving reference-tracking and perseveration only being evident in contexts where the pronoun does not signal pragmatic content.50th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Language
Toward the prevalence of a personal use of impersonal uno in Colombian Spanish
No full textThis variationist study explores the alternation between the pronouns uno ‘one’ and yo ‘I’ in Colombian Spanish using data from the PRESEEA Medellín corpus. We test the hypothesis that, in Colombian Spanish, uno is being recast to the point that it functions as a variant of the first-person singular subject pronoun yo. We aim to go beyond the well-established pronombrista line of subject pronoun research with a variationist analysis of the alternation between uno and yo that examines, among other things, the role of stance and the focus of attention in terms of predictors that include transitivity, verb semantics, coreference, type of discourse, and sentence polarity. Our findings uncover the strongest conditioning effect of tense, mood and aspect as well as robust effects of transitivity, discourse genre, polarity, and type of preceding subject. Thus, the uno/yo alternation constitutes a linguistic variable in its own right
The Work of Memory in Female Writings of Romani Holocaust Survivors: Philomena Franz and Ceija Stojka
No full textThe chapter discusses the work of Philomena Franz and Ceija Stojka, who were the first survivors of Sinti and Romani descent to publish their memoirs about the events of Romani Holocaust (Porrajmos) in Germany and in Austria respectively.
It argues that for these authors writing provides an important vehicle for individual agency and enables them, while working through their traumatic memories, to express their unique individual perspective. Whilst dealing with their individual issues and life stories, however, Franz and Stojka continue to draw inspiration from their cultural heritage and remain painfully aware of the wider problems faced by their group. Their struggle for autonomy and selfexpression is therefore coupled with their people’s struggle for recognition. By proudly claiming their cultural heritage alongside their status as survivors, these authors were able to break some of the most persistent “Gypsy” stereotypes and became eminent representatives of their communitie
Sociophonetic analysis of mid front vowel production in Barcelona
No full textStudies aimed at observing Spanish contact-induced changes in Catalan among Spanish-Catalan bilinguals in Catalonia have evidenced both assimilation and dissimilation in the production of Catalan mid front vowels. However, the general lack of studies aimed at observing Catalan contact-induced changes in Spanish is an oversight of bidirectionality as an expectation of language contact. Accordingly, the present study uses both Catalan and Spanish mid front vowel production data from Barcelona to investigate the roles of age, gender, and language dominance in the processes of assimilation (Catalan cognate effects in Spanish) and dissimilation (distinctly produced cross-linguistic mid front vowel categories). While no cognate effect was observed in Spanish, younger speakers maintain less distinction between Catalan mid front vowel categories than older speakers, and females have less overlap between Spanish /e/ and Catalan /E/ than males. These results are consistent with a male-led change towards greater assimilation and more overlapping productions of all three mid front vowel categories. While cognitive factors such as language dominance and cognate status are central to models of bilingual phonetic representation, it is paramount to situate the bilingual individual within the context of the community and acknowledge the external social factors which also mediate variation in acquisition and production.50th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Language
A superlative challenge for a syntactic account of connectivity sentences
No full textIn this paper, I present two sets of data that challenge the “question plus deletion”(Q+D) approach to connectivity. The first set of data comes from Romance data where superlative import requires relativization, whereas the second set has more generally to do with relative clauses in subject position of specificational sentences. The problem comes down to what follows. Under Q+D, a conflict emerges between the assumed syntax of the post-copular clause and its interpretation. That is, the structural configuration required to satisfy Binding or NPI licensing cannot generate the desired (superlative) interpretation, at least not without relying on mysterious implicatures. The same problem does not arise for revisionist accounts, which maintain that variable binding does not require c-command and can therefore straightforwardly derive the correct meaning.50th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Language
Las Gitanas and the Female Perspective in the Rewriting of Spanish History: Oral Tradition and New Meanings in Flamenco Lyrics by Romnja Performers
No full textIn flamenco singing, the music is considered the primary aspect according to which individual components are assembled into sets, often causing the connections between individual verses to be ignored. But the lyrics have always been a central aspect of flamenco, and many lyrics originated from coherent longer poems that were later simply fragmented. This explains why romances performed by women play such an important role in flamenco, especially in the highly esteemed singing performed in private. Romnja performers have not yet been appreciated as tradition bearers, although they have actually kept alive the legacy of the old storytelling ballads. Into the present times, singing in specific modalities texts about the cruel pogroms of the 18th century that destroyed Gitano family structures by separating men from women and children, among other atrocities, maintains collective memory and avoids oblivion, and thus becomes a form of rewriting official history by female voices
Preliminary data from Canadian French-as-a-second-language classroom learners
No full textThis exploratory study seeks to examine the role of social identity in the acquisition of French intonation, specifically in the realization of the final pitch accent and overall shape of the pitch contour of non-final accentual phrases, among Canadian L2 learners of French. The primary objectives are to investigate the potential role of a social group-based accommodation effect in the acquisition of non-target-like speech and to identify any unique features in the French intonation contours of French immersion versus core French speakers. To such ends, two groups of six Anglophone learners of French having graduated from either a French immersion or a core French program completed a social identity questionnaire and a delayed sentence repetition task. The questionnaire results suggest that French immersion speakers have greater ingroup identification with their French program than their core French counterparts, particularly as concerns their emotional and psychological attachment to their program and peers. Due to the small sample size, differences in the French intonation contours of these learner groups were not significant and require further investigation. The results of this study expand our understanding of the role of sociological factors in the present instance social identity as a potential difference between L2 learner groups, and it is the first study to suggest a potential interaction between social identity and the production of linguistic features in an L2 context.50th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Language
The partial loss of free inversion and of referential null subjects in Brazilian Portuguese
No full textBrazilian Portuguese (BP) has been considered a Partial Null Subject language with the following properties: optional referential null subjects (RNS), null generic subjects, and null expletives. The aim of this paper is to discuss the nature of the optionality of RNSs. The case of the null generic subjects, partially attested in BP, and of null expletives are not under discussion. Using the macro-parametric view of the NS Parameter, we will make a joint discussion of both the possibility of RNSs and of free inversion in present BP. With regard to the latter, we will propose first that partial loss of free inversion has to be relativized in terms of prosodic weight. With regard to the former, we propose that optional RNS is felicitous when a sentence has a linear V2 (non-Germanic) pattern at PF, with the presence of a short cliticized element, which includes the subject pronoun. In both cases, we claim that BP has a filter at PF (Avoid V1).ja50th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Language
The case of first and second person object pronouns with Spanish non-anaphoric third person plural subjects
No full textThis paper offers a quantitative and qualitative analysis of object pronouns referring to discourse participants used with Spanish non-anaphoric third person plural subjects, e.g., me han criticado por largas respuestas (‘they have criticized me for long answers’). Non-anaphoric third person plurals being agent-defocusing mechanisms which are sometimes considered to be impersonal, the discourse participant objects have a higher referentiality than the subject. We will show how this impacts the construction and conceptualization as a whole. By combining data from oral and written mode and informal and formal register, we examine the syntactic and semantic roles of discourse participants as well as the verb types they are used with. Our fine-grained study highlights that the use of discourse participant object pronouns and their roles are closely associated with the presence of relational verbs and communication verbs. Moreover, we show how the higher referentiality of the discourse participant object with respect to the subject is reflected through its being the main anchoring point for topic continuity. Finally, results indicate that the combination of a discourse participant object pronoun with a non-anaphoric third person plural is highly associated with the informal register and, whereas within oral conversations discourse participants tend to be oriented towards the speaker, in written interactions from a digital forum they rather involve the interlocutor