This paper has two purposes. First, it reviews the semantic and functional status nowadays conferred on the discourse marker entonces. Secondly, it offers a classification of its semantic and pragmatic values, based on the analysis of a sociolinguistic corpus of semi-directed interviews in synchronic Colombian Spanish: the PRESEEA-Medell & iacute;n. The analysis focuses on a central Andean Colombian diatopic variety, in which a wide number of meaningful and functional realizations of the marker are observed (Borzi 2013, 2014; Tr & iacute;podi and Garc & iacute;a 2018, Tr & iacute;podi and Borzi 2019). The results propose a comprehensive definition of entonces values, from semantic to discursive, with a descriptive basis supported by cognitive semantics. The aim is to fill the gaps in the scarce literature on entonces, and to present a study of values extensible to other diatopic varieties of Spanish.
Formal debates are a necessary discourse genre in language learning (CEFR and PCIC). One of the linguistic elements that learners must master in order to produce them is the use of Discourse Marking Mechanisms (DMMs) to guide their contributions, defend the theses held and manage the interaction. This study aims to analyse the repertoire and use of DMMs used by B2 learners in debate activities. The corpus examined consists of 12 debates (113 minutes of recording) which are analysed from a pragmatic approach using mixed methods (qualitative and quantitative). The results indicate that DMMs mainly fulfil a cognitive function and students use a basic repertoire of DMMs, which are introduced, according to the PCIC, at the initial levels. From the analysis we derive the need for the explicit teaching of DMMs linked to the debate genre.
This study examines how the distribution of two common Mexican Spanish slang phrases - "no mames" (no shit) and "no manches" (no way) - is related to the gender of the speaker. We use data from Twitter and self-report surveys. We find that both men and women use "no mames" (perceived as vulgar) more than "no manches" (non-vulgar) overall on Twitter, but women use "no manches" more frequently than men. Speaker intuitions regarding the use of the phrases in face-to-face interactions provide evidence that many speakers might be unaware of the gendered distribution of the phrases as seen online. This study contributes to our understanding of slang, context, and gendered variation in everyday social life, showing that gender is a relevant factor in slang usage in an online context despite speakers being seemingly unaware of how gender conditions slang usage in everyday social interactions.
Adjective position in Spanish offers a window into how multiple levels of the grammar interact in shaping variable structures. Using a corpus of spontaneous Venezuelan speech, we extracted all noun-adjective pairings for 10 adjectives that permitted variation between pre- and post-position in prior research, yielding 928 variable tokens. Tokens were coded for differences in the syllable length and lexical frequency of the adjective relative to the noun, in addition to the adjective's semantic class. Results showed that for these adjectives pre-position occurred at a rate of 44.94%, consistent with prior cross-dialectal trends. Mixed-effects modeling demonstrated that adjectives lighter and more frequent than the modified noun significantly favored pre-position, and there was no significant difference across these semantic classes. These findings highlight the interplay of phonological and frequency factors in adjective placement and suggest that frequent pairings may have been reanalyzed as entrenched units, consistent with usage-based approaches to grammar building.
Using a corpus of Spanish tweets, this study offers an analysis of the [dijo nadie nunca] construction, an expression of ironic negation. This paper defends the argument that the [dijo nadie nunca] construction is modeled upon the English 'said no one ever', and has been adapted in Spanish through a remote language contact situation. Specifically, this study demonstrates that there is a register effect at play that shapes the linguistic outcome of the pragmatic borrowing. This analysis sheds new light on novel forms regarding negative concord in Spanish and makes the argument that register effects can modulate the linguistic outcomes of a given borrowing.
