L1 phonological effects on L2 (non-)naïve perception: A cross-language investigation of the oral–nasal vowel contrast in Brazilian Portuguese

Feature-based approaches to acquisition principally focus on second language (L2) learners’ ability to perceive non-native consonants when the features required are either contrastively present or entirely absent from the first language (L1) grammar. As features may function contrastively or allophonically in the consonant and/or vowel systems of a language, we expand the scope of this research to address whether features that function contrastively in the L1 vowel system can be recombined to yield new vowels in the L2; whether features that play a contrastive role in the L1 consonant system can be reassigned to build new vowels in the L2; and whether L1 allophonic features can be ‘elevated’ to contrastive status in the L2. We examine perception of the oral–nasal contrast in Brazilian Portuguese listeners from French, English, Caribbean Spanish, and non-Caribbean Spanish backgrounds, languages that differ in the status assigned to [nasal] in their vowel systems. An AXB discrimination task revealed that, although all language groups succeeded in perceiving the non-naïve contrast /e/–/ẽ/ due to their previous exposure to Québec French while living in Montréal, Canada, only French and Caribbean Spanish speakers succeeded in discriminating the naïve contrast /i/–/ĩ/. These findings suggest that feature redeployment at first exposure is only possible if the feature is contrastive in the L1 vowel system (French) or if the feature is allophonic but variably occurs in contrastive contexts in the L1 vowel system (Caribbean Spanish). With more exposure to a non-native contrast, however, feature redeployment from consonant to vowel systems was also supported, as was the possibility that allophonic features may be elevated to contrastive status in the L2.

The Interaction of Functional Predictors and the Mechanical Predictor Perseveration in a Variationist Analysis of Caribbean Spanish Heritage Speaker Subject Pronoun Expression

Subject pronoun expression (SPE) in Spanish has been widely studied across monolingual and bilingual varieties, showing a consistent effect of functional predictors. In recent papers, the role of the mechanical predictor priming, or perseveration, has been the source of debate. Additionally, little is known about the interaction of perseveration and significant functional predictors (e.g., grammatical person). In this paper, we expand on previous research by examining first-person singular (1sg) and third-person singular (3sg) data from sociolinguistic interviews with Spanish–English bilinguals from Florida to explore the possible difference in priming in deictic vs. referential subjects. The results from a mixed-effects variable rule analysis only offered clear evidence of priming in 1sg. We hypothesize that this result could be due to either surprisal (1sg overt pronominal subjects are rarer in the corpus that 3sg overt pronominal subjects) or to 3sg involving reference-tracking and perseveration only being evident in contexts where the subject form does not signal for pragmatic content.

Caribbean Spanish and Theoretical Syntax: An Overview

This chapter provides an overview of the main phenomena of syntactic variation that correspond to Caribbean Spanish. It also develops a critical review of the formal analyses proposed in the literature to account for them. After a short theoretical introduction, the presentation of the data is organized into two groups. The first is devoted to constructions that are characteristic of the area under study (including Mexico, Central America, Antilles Islands, Colombia, and Venezuela). The second reviews constructions also found in other territories, but more frequently attested in the Caribbean area. The set of constructions studied relates to major aspects of Spanish grammar, such as the pronominal system, wh- constructions, infinitival subjects, agreement, possessives, cleft constructions, and negation, among others.

A tradução como mediação cultural: as traduções da obra de Junot Diaz

This article has as its object the translations of the Dominican American writer Junot Díaz to Spanish, with special emphasis on the work of the Cuban-born translator Achy Obejas. Author of a short but remarkable work, Díaz elaborates his narratives in a variety of English that often incorporates elements of Spanish. His writing poetics includes the lexicon of Caribbean Spanish and syntactic structures and proper rhythm of his native language, which results in a strongly hybrid text. The translation of this text into a language that is so intensely present in the original is a challenge. To understand how the construction of this translation is processed, this article tries to analize the strategies used to try to keep up with the translinguistic character of these narratives. In order to reach this objective, some theoretical references are used, concepts such as the foreignizing translation, by Lawrence Venuti; translingualism; and D'Amore's considerations on translations of texts originally written in Spanglish. The analysis makes it clear that the work of Achy Obejas was largely able to give the texts in Spanish the same hybrid character present in the original ones.

The copula in certain Caribbean Spanish focus constructions

Certain varieties of Spanish (mostly Caribbean) exhibit a focus construction where an inflected copula and an inflected lexical verb look like clause-mates (no pause or coordinating/subordinating particle mediate between them), which would be quite unexpected for a language like Spanish. This chapter proposes that the copula and the lexical verb are not clause-mates, but rather pertain to two different clauses: the leftmost one contains the lexical verb while the rightmost one is a cleft. The two clauses combine to form a construction similar to so-called ‘Horn-amalgams’. An analysis of these constructions is offered parallel to Kluck’s (2011) analysis of Horn-amalgams: there is ‘paratactic coordination’ (whence the lack of coordinating/subordinating particles) and the copula is a cleft copula introducing a cleft pivot and an (eventually sluiced) cleft-clause. This accounts for the fact that the focused item bears exhaustive focus and is interpreted as functionally related to the lexical verb.