Desde una perspectiva variacionista, este estudio compara el uso del presente perfecto en Buenos Aires, la Ciudad de Mexico y Madrid, basado en la produccion de esta variable en blogs personales de la red electronica. El analisis de GoldVarb confirma que los hablantes mexiquenses mantienen la funcion tradicional del presente perfecto y el preterito mientras los madrilenos tienden a extender el presente perfecto hacia el pasado, cumpliendo con funciones anteriormente del preterito. En el habla portena, el preterito tiende a extenderse hacia el presente, dejando que el presente perfecto pierda funciones al preterito. Los resultados son comparables con estudios previos, demostrando que el blog puede ser considerado valido como un medio para estudiar el habla vernacula. Ademas, esta investigacion establece los contextos lingui­sticos y extralingui­sticos que condicionan la realizacion del PP en los tres dialectos, el efecto paralelo siendo un factor muy importante para los tres dialectos en este estudio.

Se examino la produccion de vocales tonicas y atonas por parte de tres grupos de hablantes de espanol (dos grupos con diferencias en anos de experiencia y un grupo nativo). Los hablantes participaron en un experimento de produccion cuyos datos fueron sometidos a varios analisis. Se encontraron efectos robustos de los anos de practica con una segunda lengua, por el hecho de que los hablantes avanzados fueron capaces de reproducir vocales que no produjeron los intermedios. Para las vocales tonicas, la /e/ es la vocal mas difi­cil de aprender para los hablantes no-nativos, seguida por la /a/ y la /u/, mientras que la /o/ y la /i/ son mas faciles. Para las vocales atonas, la /e/ y la /o/ son las mas difi­ciles de aprender para los hablantes no-nativos, seguidas por la /a/ y la /u/, y finalmente por la /i/, la cual es la mas facil.

The Spanish voiced alveolar multiple vibrant consonant /r/, or trill, is often regarded as one of the most difficult sounds in the Spanish phonological inventory for second language (L2) learners. Trills are particularly difficult segments because of their exacting articulatory requirements for production. The highly restricted gestural and aerodynamic configuration required to successfully produce trills could lead to non-native trills automatically being native-like once acquired by learners, unlike other segments which generally show measurably gradient approximation of native values over time. This study employed two experiments to investigate the characteristics of L2 acquisition of Spanish /r/ by adult native speakers of English. The first experiment broadly surveyed the frequency of trill production at four levels of proficiency and among a comparison group of native speakers of Mexican Spanish when trills were the target segments in words. This experiment was designed to show the rate of trill frequency at different learner-levels and to compare it with the rate at which native speakers produce trills. A pattern of increasing ability to produce trills as proficiency level increased was found, as was a pattern of substitution of the alveolar tap as an intermediate strategy among learners who had ceased to transfer American English <italic>r</italic> but who had not yet acquired the ability to produce trills consistently. The second experiment investigated the aerodynamic properties of successfully produced trills to see if the trills of learners who had acquired the ability to produce trills displayed different physical properties from native speakers' trills. Patterns of both "categorical" and "gradient" acquisition were found. On the several measures studied, non-native trills showed patterns of acquisition in which their trills either were immediately native-like, acquired with non-native-like properties which fossilized with no further improvement, or showed gradient improvement in the direction of nativeness as proficiency level increased.

Language production involves two stages of lexical retrieval with a word’s lemma (meaning, syntax) accessed before its lexeme (form). Adult speakers of gendered languages are said to access gender via the lemma (Vigliocco, Antonini and Garrett, 1997). However, presenting gender incongruous distractors during picture naming does not produce interference for Spanish speakers (Costa, Sebastián-Gallés, Miozzo & Caramazza, 1999; O’Rourke, 2007). Spanish demonstrates predictability between determiner gender and noun form: 96.3% of nouns ending in /a/ are feminine, taking the definite determiner la, and 99.87% of nouns ending in /o/ are masculine, preceded by el (Teschner & Russell 1984). Morphophonological regularity might allow Spanish speakers to bypass lemma-level gender. This dissertation addressed the question of whether young children learning Spanish access gender with the lemma of individual words, utilize language-specific morphophonological regularities alone, or use a combination of lexical familiarity and morphophonological regularity. This was tested in an elicited imitation task manipulating lexical status, congruity and gender. Spanish-English bilingual children (2;0-4;0) and Spanish-speaking adults repeated Spanish words and non-words preceded by gender congruous and incongruous definite articles. If children access gender with lemmas, children should omit fewer articles for words vs. non-words in congruous (el libro-them bookm) versus incongruous conditions (la libro-thef bookm). If children use morphophonological patterns, words should show no advantage; however, children should omit fewer feminine than masculine 12 articles in congruous (la f fupa f) versus incongruous conditions (elm fupa f) since feminine is more regular than masculine. Alternately, if lexical familiarity and morphophonological regularity play a role, children should omit fewer articles for words than non-words and fewer feminine than masculine articles in congruous versus incongruous conditions. The results suggest that children, like adults, use both lexical familiarity and morphophonological regularity to produce determiner-stem sequences. Words exerted an influence, but only in processing efficiency while regularity affected patterns for both words and non-words. Unlike adults, for children regularity was preferred over distributional frequency and lexical familiarity was only advantageous if familiar words demonstrated regular feminine morphology. The data suggest that children use language specific input statistics from early in language production and, additionally, provide evidence for developmental processing strategies.

This dissertation examines the negotiation of language ideologies and identity construction amongst university intermediate level Spanish Heritage Language (SHL) learners in the U.S. Southwest. Combining sociolinguistic and ethnographic methods with discourse analysis, this study seeks to provide deeper insight into the linguistic practices and the negotiation of language ideologies that takes place amongst SHL learners. Data from participant observation of interaction in the SHL classroom throughout the semester, questionnaires, interviews with students and instructor, and student focus group discussions were used to analyze discourses about language and the multiple values placed on English and Spanish in general, and on standard and local varieties of Spanish in particular. More specifically, this study analyzes, through the application of Bourdieu's (1991) notions of linguistic capital and symbolic power, how SHL learners negotiate these values and discourses as they study their heritage language. In addition, this study examines performances of identity observed during interactions within this group of SHL learners, recognizing the construction of multiple social identities, including bilingual, heritage learner and ethnic identities, as a dynamic and complex process that is recurrently shaped by interaction and the negotiation of competing language ideologies.

This dissertation explores the mechanisms behind the linguistic expression of causation in English, Hiaki (Uto-Aztecan) and Spanish. Pylkkänen's (2002, 2008) analysis of causatives as dependent on the parameterization of the functional head v(CAUSE) is chosen as a point of departure. The studies conducted in this dissertation confirm Pylkkänen's claim that all causatives involve the presence of vCAUSE. They further confirm that variation is conditioned by both the selectional and 'Voice-bundling' properties of the causative head. I show that this pattern triggers differences across languages, although other factors are also responsible for the existence of multiple causative configurations within languages. In some languages (e.g. English), causatives require the obligatory presence of an external argument (i.e., Causer). I provide additional data supporting Pylkkänen's proposal that causation (in certain languages) may also exist in the absence of a syntactic Causer. In particular, I offer data from Hiaki indirect causatives and Spanish desiderative causatives (e.g., .Te hace salir? '2sg.dat (expl)makes go.out, Do you feel like going out?’), and weather/temporal constructions (e.g., Hace mucho calor '(expl) makes much heat, It’s very hot') in support of this hypothesis. The results of this research, however, question Pylkkänen's claim that certain languages may allow the Root-causativization of transitives and unergatives. I show that this is not possible even in languages that exhibit Causer-less causatives (e.g., Hiaki). Moreover, certain unaccusatives (e.g., arrive) also resist (Root) causativization crosslinguistically, regardless of the 'Voice-bundling' properties inherent to the causativizing head. I claim that this happens in contexts in which unaccusative verbs exhibit 'unergative' behavior (i.e., whenever they involve syntactic elements that are base-generated in positions higher than the root). Cross-linguistic variation in the expression of causation is not always a direct consequence of the internal properties of the causative predicate. Because of language-internal requirements, different languages impose specific limitations on the syntactic realization of causative structures. For instance, English and Spanish heavily rely on Agreement relations among their constituents. The consequence of this is that it is difficult in these languages to discern what elements really are part of causation and what elements are not, as well as the nature of the elements involved in causatives (e.g., whether the dative in Spanish productive causatives is an external argument or an applicative). This dissertation addresses all these questions.

This study examines the language attitudes of entrepreneurial students enrolled in the Academy for Creating Enterprise (ACE) in Mexico City toward six rural and urban varieties of Mexican Spanish to consider whether their attitudes towards these varieties influence their decisions about hiring. A verbal guise test and focus groups were used to determine the current attitudes held by 98 ACE students towards the popular and upper-class dialects of Mexico City; the urban dialect of Mérida, Yucatan; the urban dialect of Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua; the urban dialect of Monterrey, Nuevo León; and the rural dialect of San Jeronimito, Guerrero. It was determined that the ACE students, who are current and future entrepreneurs and employers, do engage in “linguistic profiling” (Purnell et al., 1999), preferring the northern varieties of Spanish and the variety spoken by the upper class of Mexico City in all three dimensions of attractiveness, status, and hireability. These results indicate that speakers of the popular variety of Mexico City and the southern varieties of Yucatán and Guerrero are less likely to be hired. In addition, the students’ ratings of hireability were also influenced by the students’ age, gender, business owner status, and exposure to the dialect in question. The students’ level of income was found to be the most likely to influence the ratings of speaker attractiveness and status. This case study of current and future employers enrolled at ACE responds to a call for the application of language attitudes research (Edwards, 1982; Garrett, 2010) and provides a model for working with an organization. Based on these findings, it was determined that ACE should modify its curriculum to include explicit training regarding linguistic attitudes and hiring practices.

No description available.

No description available.

The object of this thesis is to study the monologue, a dramatic genre that re-emerged on the Spanish literary scene in the 1970s. Despite the fact that a number of well-known Iberian playwrights have cultivated this genre assiduously over the past three decades, their work has received relatively little critical attention from either academic or theatre circles. What is sought here, therefore, is the means to demonstrate the importance and richness of the monologue as an autonomous dramatic creation. To do this it was necessary to establish a sufficiently large corpus--some eighty long and short monologues--and identify those particular conventions and the structural diversity that would make possible the formulation of a theory of connected language functions in the monologue by adapting existing theoretical principles to the study of this singular genre. The application of this theoretical construct enabled me to determine the nature of the functions of expression, communication and persuasion present in the discourse of a single speaker. / Specifically, in considering the function of expression I reflect both upon the coherent discourse that derives from the (exterior) verbalization of (interior) thought and emotion, and upon the objectives and consequences of such expressions of the mental and emotional states of the individual. Secondly, I focus attention on the same verbal discourse inasmuch as it reflects the complex function of communication manifested in both an immanent and in a transcendental form. Such complexity derives from the fact that, if verbal discourse here is enunciated either in isolation or before an interiorized addressee (a fictional being), it is always emitted in the "presence" of an external addressee (the theatre audience/or reader). Finally, my study of the function of persuasion underscores the idea of empowerment: the authority of the word that is wielded by the monologist upon his/her addressee(s), a verbal manipulation that takes place both within the fictional world and beyond. / In short, this thesis seeks to show how the monologue as a fictional dramatic genre questions the viability of interpersonal relationships.