Lexical Alignment to Non-native Speakers

Two picture-matching-game experiments investigated if lexical-referential alignment to non-native speakers is enhanced by a desire to aid communicative success (by saying something the conversation partner can certainly understand), a form of audience design. In Experiment 1, a group of native speakers of British English that was not given evidence of their conversation partners’ picture-matching performance showed more alignment to non-native than to native speakers, while another group that was given such evidence aligned equivalently to the two types of speaker. Experiment 2, conducted with speakers of Castilian Spanish, replicated the greater alignment to non-native than native speakers without feedback. However, Experiment 2 also showed that production of grammatical errors by the confederate produced no additional increase of alignment even though making errors suggests lower communicative competence. We suggest that this pattern is consistent with another collaborative strategy, the desire to model correct usage. Together, these results support a role for audience design in alignment to non-native speakers in structured task-based dialogue, but one that is strategically deployed only when deemed necessary.

Looking at redefining sex(uality)

This article examines the dubbing of the 2014 American gay-themed series Looking and its treatment of sexual references into Castilian Spanish with a view to exploring the role of audiovisual translation in the discursive construction of homosexuality. While some scholars have decried a historical tendency in translation to attenuate or even suppress references in connection with non-normative sex, the dubbing of Looking, I claim, amplifies these references by way of two strategies: up-scaling and increased explicitness. Drawing upon Jeremy Munday’s (2012) concept of “evaluation” and on appraisal theory as expounded by Martin and White (2005), I aim at revealing the significance of the translator’s lexicogrammatical selections and how these may alter the semiotic import of the characters and, thus, of a certain portrayal of homosexuality. Additionally, such choices may be indicative of the translator’s own stance towards issues of sexuality. Though the strategies analyzed may appear to perpetuate commonplaces regarding gay sexual experience, they ultimately serve, I argue, as a device to generate a language that goes beyond diluted expressions of homosexuality.

A New Window into La casa del padre An Analysis of the novel Aitaren etxea by Karmele Jaio

This article analyses the novel Aitaren etxea (lit. ‘The Father’s House’, self-translated into Castilian Spanish as La casa del padre), by Karmele Jaio. The book, which is dedicated to “all new men”, explores the gender dynamics underlying family relations, professional advancement in the cultural field, and the Basque national struggle. As a thesis novel, it calls on men to take stock of the ways in which they have perpetrated patriarchal structures so that they may be open to new attitudes.

The relationship between palatalisation and labial consonants in Castilian Spanish

In spite of the many studies devoted to the palatal outcomes of the Latin clusters PL and FL in Old Spanish, some other clusters and sequences composed of labial consonants such as -PUL-, -BVL-, -BE,I-, -VE,I- and -MI- have received little attention. The aim of this paper is to analyze the phonetic aspects of the diachronic evolution of these clusters and sequences into their Old Spanish outcomes [ʎ], [ɟ] y [ɲtʃ]. To this end, experimental, dialectal and comparative data from Old Spanish as well as from other Romance languages will be used. This will lead to the conclusion that the sound changes in both [Clabial + l] and [Clabial + j] clusters were based on the same articulatory mechanisms: a strengthening of the segment following the labial consonant and the later deletion of the labial, if it was a stop, or its assimilation to the point of articulation of the palatal, if it was a nasal. The implications of these conclusions for the evolution of pl and fl clusters in Old Spanish, as well as for the methodology in historical phonetics, will be pointed out.

Describing, listening and teaching questions and orders´ intonation in mexican, caribbean and castilian spanish to brazilian learners

The study intends to present results obtained from a methodology of intonation teaching, based on metacognition assumptions (Flavell, 1976; Gombert, 1992; Ribeiro, 2003). The methodology has five stages labelled as: 1 - learner's awareness of the transfering their mother tongue (LM) into the target foreign language (LEA); 2 - description of the intonational contour of total and partial interrogative utterances; 3-perception; 4-mimetic repetition; 5 - oral production based on careful listening. According to Cortés (2002), intonation is essential to convey messages in an appropriate way, showing an expressive meaning - besides syntactic-semantic aspects- and the meaning of the utterances. According to PINTO (2009), the E / LE learner transfers the intonational pattern of the LM when he or she in he/her LEA. How to teach intonation? This author proposed and applied a methodology of describing and teaching Spanish intonation to undergraduate students of Letras - Portuguese / Spanish, from a public university in Rio de Janeiro. For this study, 18 utterances were written in Spanish as a foreign language, based on the Interactive Atlas of the Spanish intonation. The corpus is composed of 9 utterances in Brazilian Portuguese as L1, both compared to 9 utterances in Spanish as L1, totaling 36 statements. For such data collection, the informants received CD's composed of yes/no questions, confirmatory questions and declarative imperatives of request in the dialect chosen by each student- the Castilian, the Caribbean and the Mexican. Recordings were made at two specific moments: before and after exposure to our methodology of description and intonation teaching. After teaching, we described the utterances phonetically and analyzed them with the aid of PRAAT software and following the Autosegmental Metric (AM) model. After this analysis, we compared the implementation of F0 and the tonal accent of these utterances, in order to check if the learner's accomplishment of the prosodic system undergoes alteration after the work of awareness, description, perception, mimetic repetition and production stuck in attention. We observed in our results that learners, before being submitted to our methodological proposal of intonation description and teaching, transfer characteristic of Brazilian Portuguese contours into the production of Spanish as a foreign language for all listed varieties. This fact confirmed the transfer process. However, when learners are submitted to our methodological proposal, they mostly implement the expected outlines according to the chosen varieties.

La enseñanza de la métrica

Se parte en este trabajo de una regla de oro de la enseñanza, formulada por el filósofo español José Ortega y Gasset en su Misión de la Universidad –no se debe enseñar sino lo que se puede de verdad aprender–, y un consejo del metrista venezolano Andrés Bello en sus Principios de ortología y métrica de la lengua castellana –“conviene que el alumno aprenda a percibir por el oído la medida de los versos”–. Se analizan diversas pautas docentes en el terreno de la ciencia métrica.The point of departure for this study is represented by the golden rule of teaching, formulated by the Spanish philosopher, José Ortega y Gasset, in his Mission of the University ‒you should only teach that which can be truly learnt‒, as well as by the piece of advice provided by the Venezuelan metrist, Andrés Bello, in his Principles of Orthology and Meter in Castilian Spanish ‒“what is advisable is that the student learn to perceive the measure of poetic lines by ear”‒. Thereafter, a range of teaching models are analyzed in the field of the science of metrics.

Spanish grammaticography and the teaching of Spanish in the sixteenth century

The first printed grammar of a European vernacular was Nebrija’s grammar of (Castilian) Spanish (1492), published at the end of the peninsular Reconquista and coinciding with Columbus’ arrival in America. In the sixteenth century castellano, the language of the Spanish Habsburg Empire, became prominent in Europe, for political, economic and religious reasons, a position strengthened in the seventeenth century by Spain’s cultural prestige. This contribution focuses on the first hundred years of Spanish language studies in Western Europe (Flanders, Italy, England, France). It offers an overview of grammatical and language-didactic tools for teaching and learning Spanish published in the sixteenth century. The relevant source texts (and their authors) are presented and analysed, and set in their political and cultural context.

Between dialect and standard

This paper offers a sociolinguistic analysis of the consonants (s) and (d) in the coda position in the city of Madrid, within the framework of the Project for the Sociolinguistic Study of Spanish from Spain and America (PRESEEA). The purpose is to illustrate how varieties of southern Castilian Spanish and those from the central and northern Peninsula converge and diverge, taking into consideration the social, political, and economic parameters that affect said processes. The diversity of patterns that coexist in the Madrid speech community reflects the city’s historic social complexity, the varied geographical origins of its migrant population, the interests that motivate each community of practice, as well as other circumstances that influence the direction of change. The analysis of (s) and (d) in coda illustrates the way in which the dynamics of variation and change in Madrid fluctuate between two poles: standardization and regionalization, the same two axes around which the community’s sociolinguistic patterns revolve.

The influence of social factors on the prosody of Spanish in contact with Basque

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: The main goal of this paper is to analyse how social factors determine the degree of occurrence of intonational features of Basque in Spanish in the Basque Country (i.e. Basque Spanish). Design/methodology/approach: We concentrate on information-seeking yes/no questions. In Castilian Spanish, these end in a rising contour, whereas in Basque they end in a rising–falling contour. The data were gathered through sociolinguistic interviews with 12 speakers of Basque Spanish with different linguistic profiles: monolingual Spanish; first language Spanish–second language Basque; and L1 Basque–L2 Spanish. Data and analysis: 172 information-seeking yes/no interrogatives were obtained from conversational speech. Their final intonational contours were annotated in the Spanish Tone and Break Index model of intonational analysis. Findings/conclusions: 79% of all information-seeking yes/no questions had final configurations with a rising–falling circumflex contour. Only 21% had the final rising contour of Castilian Spanish. Speakers differed in their frequency of occurrence of falling contours, but the differences did not correlate with the speakers’ linguistic profile (monolingual vs bilingual). Rather, higher percentages of yes/no questions ending in a falling contour were found among speakers who had (a) a higher degree of contact with the Basque ethnolinguistic group, and (b) more positive attitudes towards the Basque language and the Basque ethnolinguistic group. Originality: Methodologically, this study is original because the intonational analysis is carried out on natural speech rather than on read or elicited speech. This study is also original from a theoretical point of view because it is the first one to underline the role that subjective factors such as linguistic attitudes play in the adoption of features of a language variety from another contact variety. Significance/implications: Our research opens up a path to continue investigating the weight of subjective social factors such as linguistic attitudes in explaining the variation in the influence of one language variety over another.

The split of a fricative merger due to dialect contact and societal changes: A sociophonetic study on Andalusian Spanish read-speech

In line with a growing body of literature suggesting that mergers are reversible given the adequate dialect contact and social context, the present study examines the phonetic split of the Andalusian Spanish merger of ceceo into the Castilian Spanish feature of distinción. Specifically, the study analyzes 19,420 coronal fricatives produced by 80 Western Andalusian speakers from the city of Huelva and the nearby town of Lepe using a reading passage and wordlist. The analyses find that leaders of this change are younger speakers, women, those with more educational attainment, those of service and professional occupations, and those from Huelva. The implications are that large-scale societal changes have allowed for the split of the ceceo merger into distinción in both speech communities, albeit at different rates of change due to their unique socioeconomic histories, demonstrating that a split is possible given the right social context.