Entonación de los enunciados aseverativos en el español de la Ciudad de México entre los años 1960 y 1970

This paper describes the prosodic features —with emphasis on the nuclear pitch accent— of the statements documented in the corpus “Norma lingüística culta” and “Habla popular de la Ciudad de México” (Lope Blanch, 1971, 1976). The prosodic description is carried out with the Autosegmental Metrical model and the analysis of sociolinguistic factors. Regarding the nuclear pitch accent L+H *, the statistical analysis showed two significant factors: narrow focus statements and the low level of education. The nuclear accent H * is more prevalent in men and the low level of education. By contrast we observed that the group of adults, the higher education and the broad focus statements favor the descending contour, which has lesser relation with vernacular patterns in Central Mexican Spanish.

El pretérito pluscuamperfecto como marca de género narrativo en el español andino del Noroeste de la Argentina

In her research about the past tense forms from the Quechua Southern Conchucos lands (Ancash, Peru), Hintz (2007) finds equivalences between some functions of the narrative structure of both the past tense in Quechua and the past tense in Spanish among the bilingual speakers of Quechua-Spanish. In this work, we analyze a group of not-experienced native speakers’ oral testimonies of Andean Spanish from Northwest Argentina. We seek to find a mutual relation between evidential and affect functions of the Quechua suffix -na: and the use of the pluperfect of Andean Spanish. Our findings show that there is a partial grammar barrowing between the two forms. We envisage also that the pluperfect appears remarkably more often in certain parts of the narrative structure, usually along with one of the decir verb forms as a metadiscursive markers (Chang, 2018 and 2019).

El sistema pronominal de objeto directo del español en contacto con el zoque de Chapultenango

This research aims to describe the Spanish language in contact with the Chapultenango’s Zoque language. Specifically, it provides evidence around the neutralization of the gender mark in the accusative pronominal system, showing a two-case simplified system in which the direct object pronoun (OD) is lo(s) and the indirect object pronoun is le(s), both of them without gender distinction. Likewise, it shows that this neutralization is an indirect contact-induced change in which internal variation of Spanish interacts with the grammatical structure of the Zoque.

‘¿Eres feliz con su abuela?’ Alternancia pronominal / verbal en el español bogotano. Un primer acercamiento

This paper examines the alternation forms between the 2nd person treatment —tú, usted, sumercé and vos— when it comes to address a single interlocutor in Bogotá, Colombia. Whilst a case vaguely described in the literature it is though quite frequent and systematic in the Spanish of Bogotá. Based on oral data (fragments of spontaneous conversations and direct observations) plus the information provided by both personal impression along with sociolinguistic questionnaires and the social media, we describe three types of pronominal alternation —1. Intra-verb (type I), 2. Intra-sentence (type II) and 3. Extra-sentence (type III)—. Our aims fall on qualitatively determine of the linguistic, social and pragmatics parameters which facilitate these constructions.

La modalidad deóntica como (de)subjetivación del discurso: variación entre las perífrasis haber/tener que+infinitivo

Spanish periphrases haber que + infinitive (‘one has to’) and tener que + infinitive (‘have to + infinitive’) convey a modal deontic meaning. Since haber is an impersonal verb in Spanish it is mandatorily conjugated in third person (hay que, habrá que, habría que…). Thus, haber que + infinitive is considered as an impersonal construction meaning ‘instruction’, ‘advice’ or ‘recommendation’. On the contrary, due to its possible conjugation with personal and verbal forms the periphrasis tener que + infinitive means an unavoidable or normative duty to be accomplished by someone. In this paper both periphrases are compared and analyzed as resources that help to create (de)subjectivizing communicative styles which are unequally distributed across different communicative situations and participants.

La posición de las cláusulas temporales con cuando

Previous typological studies have shown that temporal clauses, unlike other adverbial clauses, can occur before or after the main clause, and this order variation has been observed across languages and within the same language. In the case of Spanish, some studies have found that temporal clauses tend to occur at the beginning of the clause. In this paper, we extend the assumptions of typological studies into the analysis of temporal clauses introduced by cuando ‘when’. Based in used data, we found that the initial position is preferred in oral data, while both positions are equally common in writing data. We examine some semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic motivations that, together, may explain this order variation: the semantic nature of cuando, sequential iconicity, length, and syntactic complexity, as well as pragmatic order.