Boletín de Filología

Estrategias evidenciales en lenguas romances: léxico, sintaxis y pragmática

Silvia Gumiel-Molina — 2024-12-28

Este número especial pretende contribuir al conjunto de investigaciones empíricas y teóricas sobre la evidencialidad poniendo su foco en el español.

The Evidential Interpretation of estar with Individuallevel Predicates. Foundations and Challenges

Victoria Escandell-Vidal — 2024-12-28

In recent studies, it has been argued that a semantic mismatch arises when the copula estar is combined with an individual-level predicate due to the incongruity between the aspectual requirements of the copula and the boundless nature of the predicate. The mismatch is interpretively resolved by inferring that the information comes from direct experience. The combination of estar with individual predicates consistently yields an evidential interpretation. This proposal may raise some additional questions: questions: Why does the evidential solution repair the mismatch? What is the status of the evidential content? What is the level of representation the evidential content contributes to? How can an individual-level predicate appear with a direct experience evidential? This paper offers data, evidence, and arguments to answer these questions. Experiential interpretation arises from a semantic requirement that imposes a particular geometry of connected but not identical situations. The evidential content behaves as a presupposition that contributes to the explicit content of the utterance. The individual-level predicate retains its aspectual characteristics because it is not part of the anchored situation. In this way, the explanatory potentialities of the feature mismatch hypothesis are shown.

From Lexicon to Pragmatics: The expression of evidenciality and perspective in Spanish

Silvia Gumiel-Molina — 2024-12-28

The aim of this paper is to analyse the limits and relations between the notions of evidentiality and subjectivity using Spanish (pseudo) copulative predication structures in which the predicate is an evaluative adjective. In these constructions an internal experience of the speaker is expressed, based on the perception of a situation, as the centre of perspective or source of knowledge. We will show that the subjective reading which occurs in (pseudo)copulative sentences in which an adjective of taste and personal judgement or an adjective of maximum degree appears is due to the fact that these adjectives possess in their structure an experiencier argument, which can be an implicit DP or be shown explicitly through an PP. Aesthetic adjectives, on the other hand, lack such an argument, which explains the contrasts between the different classes. This proposal sheds light on the relationship between the notions of evidentiality and subjectivity through the perspectivization of the utterance. We propose that perspectivisation is the result of the relationship between Lexicon, Syntax and Pragmatics while evidential meaning seems to be lexically encoded in the argument structure of the adjective. Thus, perspectivization and evidentiality should be considered as different but closely related concepts.

Evidentiality and bilingualism: conjectural future in Catalan/Spanish bilingual speakers

Aoife Ahern — 2024-12-28

This article explores variation in strategies for expressing evidentiality in two Romance languages, Catalan and Spanish, analysing differences in the knowledge and use of the strategies shown by bilingual speakers of these two languages in contact. In our study, 96 bilingual speakers from the Balearic Islands, with different degrees of Catalan/ Spanish language dominance, performed two tasks: (a) choosing between future and two other ways of expressing conjecture in a set of utterances; and (b) judging the acceptability of a set of utterances that involve using the future tense for expressing conjecture (with different aspectual configurations that impact on grammaticality). The bilingual participants’ responses were compared with those of a group of 32 monolingual Spanish speakers. We examine the correlations between the participants’ linguistic profile (including factors like the frequency of use of each language and their language attitudes) and their acceptability judgements in each language. Group and individual analyses inform on possible effects of the bilingual speakers’ language experiences and the types of linguistic competence that they develop, as well as on their preferences and choices when using the two languages and when interpreting utterances. Finally, our results are related to the possible convergence of the structures in the two languages. We conclude that the semantics of the future tense, for our bilingual speakers, is the same in Catalan as in Spanish. Regarding the use of the future to express conjecture, Majorcan Spanish is similar to Catalan and diverges from the tendencies observed in most varieties of Spanish

Concealing evidential reading of uno/una

Edita Gutiérrez Rodríguez — 2024-12-28

The indefinite pronoun uno/una (‘one’) receives three readings: existential (Ha llamado uno ‘He has called one’), arbitrary (Uno debe evitar ciertas amistades ‘One should avoid certain friendships’) and covert (Uno debió haber evitado esas amistades ‘One should have avoided those friendships’). The last two can be characterized as direct or indirect evidential readings, depending on whether the generalization is made on the basis of the speaker’s experience or apart from it. When uno encodes indirect evidentiality, it is associated with general knowledge. As for the formal analysis, the indefinite article behaves as a variable that can be bound by existential closure or by a generic operator, which gives rise to the first two readings. The concealing uno behaves as a third person personal pronoun, as shown by the verbal agreement and the behavior with respect to anaphora, which when controlled by the Speaker would have a first person meaning. Its pronominal nature explains its distribution in definiteness contexts, the type of modifiers it accepts and pronominal doubling.

Personal knowledge and general knowledge in the uses of pronouns uno and one: a parallel corpus study

Elena Vilinbakhova — 2024-12-28

This article is dedicated to Spanish pronoun uno and English pronoun one, focusing on their evidential properties. Based on the data from parallel corpus Europarl, we examine 375 examples with uno and one and their equivalents in English and Spanish. We show that the distribution of uses based on different types of knowledge is different for Spanish and English: while for uno the uses based on general knowledge are more common, for one the uses based on personal knowledge prevail. Next, we analyse encountered differences in the choice of strategies for transmitting the same meaning. In particular, for Spanish uno the most frequent strategies are the use of English one and the second person pronoun you. For English one the most frequent strategy was the impersonal construction followed by the pronoun one and passive construction. Finally, we demonstrate that the type of knowledge referred to by the pronouns is associated with the choice of strategy both for Spanish and English.

On Spanish colloquial igual as an inferential adverb

Jennifer Tan — 2024-12-28

This paper analyses a colloquial use of the adverb igual, an epistemic modal with the meaning of ‘maybe’, which has been mainly analysed from a diachronic, corpus-based, and discourse-analysis point of view. Our aim is to characterise this peculiar use in comparison with the other uses of igual and other epistemic modals with which it is usually grouped, by examining its felicity conditions in different evidential contexts, especially inferential ones, through a questionnaire of acceptability judgment tasks. In doing so, we show how the conceptual domains of epistemic modality and evidentiality overlap. Analyzing this use of igual as inferential not only allows us to define its function(s) more objectively, by contributing to the sentence a crosscut section between epistemicity and possibility modal force, but it also enables us to account for its interaction with different sentence types, its ways of updating the discourse participants’ common ground, and, of course, its fixed position, in the left periphery of the sentence.

School inspectors and Spanish grammar instruction in elementary education: new actors in language standardization and the grammatical and pedagogical field (1850-1861)

Juan Cifuentes Sandoval — 2024-12-28

This article identifies the social actions carried out by school inspectors to determine the curriculum, methodologies, and textbooks to be used for Spanish grammar elementary education during the early stages of the Chilean school system (1850-1861). The corpus includes inspection reports published in the El Monitor de las escuelas primarias and the Fondo del Ministerio de Educación, Archivo Histórico Nacional, between 1852 and 1861. The analysis reveals three categories related to specific actions made by primary school inspectors regarding the teaching of Spanish grammar:1) actions regarding the methodology and curriculum, 2) actions regarding textbooks to be used in the classroom, and 3) the original production of teaching resources. We conclude that, through these actions, primary school inspectors positioned themselves as agents of language standardization from above and, at the same time, contributed to shaping the grammatical and pedagogical field in the second half of the 19th century. Moreover, the analysis of grammar instruction through administrative documentation with a metalinguistic perspective is a methodological innovation that allows for an interdisciplinary dialogue between historical sociolinguistics and linguistic historiography.

Language regards of Chilean Spanish in Santiago: the influence of socioeconomic status in the conceptualization of the dialects of Santiago.

Isabel González Pastrán — 2024-12-28

This research is an exploratory descriptive study framed in the area of Language Regards, specifically Perceptual Dialectology (Preston 2009, 2010, 2011, 2018, 2019), that seeks to examine the language regards of the speakers of Spanish in the Greater Santiago area, by means of recognizing which lingüistic areas are recognized, the features they associate with these and the influence that the socioeconomic status has in the conceptualization of them. The methodology followed the proposals of perceptual dialectology, so the 48 participants drew a map and characterized both the linguistic and socioeconomic areas of the city that they recognized. The result of this research accounts for the need to study in greater detail how non-linguists conceptualize the linguistic mental map of the city, where three major linguistic areas are recognized, which are created based on the pattern of economic territorial segregation (Fuentes et al. 2017) and the intersection of this with the number of school years. These three areas also account for the degree of standardization, where the east-area is perceived as a supra-standard form of the language -too correct-, the west-south-area as a sub-standard form –too incorrect–, and the center-area as a standard form that gives unity to the language by allowing access to the different meanings indexed in the different zones.

Comparison to modality and connection. Regional variation, macrosyntax and communicative behavior of más vale as an epistemic operator and as an reformulative connector

Ramón González Ruiz — 2024-12-28

This study is based on the use of valer (better, as its English translation) as a tertiopersonal verb introduced by the quantifier más (more, as its English translation) used in comparative structures in which the verb acts as main clause of subject subordinate clauses in the subjunctive or infinitive: Más vale/valdría que estudies/estudiaras/estudiar (You’d better study/ It would be better if you studied/ You had better study/ It would be better to study). In the first part of the article there is a description of the syntax and semantics of this pan-Hispanic structure and some specialized pragmatic functions. Likewise, information is given on some units of a communicative type (taggers, phraseological units) in whose organizational structure includes some form of the verb valer, especially in the third person singular of the present indicative tense. In the second part of the study, three forms, two modal indicators and a connector, are reported, which have been classified as más vale. In a previous article it was explained that the use of más vale (que + indicativo [that + indicative]) in current Spanish has a geographic variation that is limited to Navarre (Spain) and, apparently, to Argentina as well. However, the meaning that más vale has in each of these geographical areas is different. In the first case it works as a categorical locution that shares the semantic features of the pattern menos mal (less bad). Meanwhile, the other categorical locution, on which this study will focus its attention, is an epistemic categorical adverb that would be integrated in the paradigm of statement reinforcers, among which we find por supuesto, claro, desde luego, evidentemente, etc (of course/ sure/ certainly/ obviously). Based on these facts, in the current study the following objectives are pursued: a) based on the information of several corpus, especially the macro corpus Spanish Web 2018 (esTenTen18), it is intended to offer an approach to the local distribution of the epistemic categorical adverb más vale; b) secondly, bearing in mind descriptions of other statement reinforcers in Spanish, the macro syntax and the communicative performance of this disjunctive conjunctions will be discussed; c) finally, after mentioning the presence of más vale as a rephrasing connector, some reflections on the use of the three más vale mentioned in the article are sketched, following the trail of studies that have shown the semantic shift from comparison to modality and rephrasing.

the student movement and the discourse construction of the “telaraña” event in chilean press

Valentina Henríquez Fuentes — 2024-12-28

This inquiry analyses the discourse construction of the “telaraña” event, an intervention protest which occurred at a regional university in Chile during the student movement in 2016. This article seeks to evidence the different senses acquired by the event in the discourses both in press and social media, and for students, as well as identify the underlying social representations within. The corpus of this work consists of press articles and reports from regional and national newspapers, along with three public statements and forty one tweets. This study was carried out following the French Discourse Analysis theoretical viewpoint (Charaudeau and Maingueneau 2005), along with the social representations theory (Moscovici 1979; Jodelet 1986). The results show the semantic instability of the “teleraña” event, given that different versions of the event’s aim, particularly regarding the identity of the group the intervention was directed towards (masked people, the police or both), circulated in the analysed media. Furthermore, a tendency towards positively perceiving the student responsible for the “telaraña” was observed, which is a novelty among research on the representation of the student movement.

Allophony of /s/ of no professionals speakers of santiago: gender and age

Eduardo Llanquiman Iturrieta — 2024-12-28

This article describes the phonetic variation of syllable final /s/ in sample of work-class Santiago residents from the low sociocultural stratum and according to three sociolinguistic variables: sex, age range and educational level. In particular, the realization of the phoneme /s/ was shown before plosive, fricative, approximant and sonorant consonants; before stressed and unstressed vowels and before pause. In addition, in cases of retention, the /s/ duration was measured. The results indicate that there is a slight tendency for
women to retain more of the segment in the form of aspiration and for men to elide. The contexts that showed the most variation between the sex variable were the occlusive preconsonantal and the tonic prevocalic. The duration of the segments was almost identical, except for coda [s] in men, which had a slightly longer duration. Regarding
the age distinction, there was a greater preference for elision in group A of adults than in group B of young people. This shows that, at least
for the allophonic phenomenon of /s/, the distinctions between men and women, as well as between young people and adults, are directly conditioned by the sociocultural strata of the speakers.

New perspectives on toponomastics: foreign names in mining toponymy

Francisco Molina-Díaz — 2024-12-28

This study deals with the existence of foreign names used in the geographical onomastics for the naming of mining operations. The specific case of the mining toponyms of Alosno (Huelva) is notable for the significant presence of toponyms of foreign origin due to the arrival of concessionaires from other countries and their consideration as a feature of the socio-cultural level. Given the lack of affective links with the territory, the concessionaires opt for the use of names that refer to culturemas from different areas.

Originality and dependence in the history of Spanish lexicography. The evolution of the articles devoted to the concept ‘giraffe’

Stefan Ruhstaller — 2024-12-28

This study carries out a detailed contrastive diachronic analysis of the articles devoted in the most outstanding works in the history of Spanish lexicography to the concept ‘giraffe’, present in the European cultural sphere until recently only through the confusing information offered by erudite written sources from Antiquity and Humanism. This analysis, through the identification of the origin of the data included in each dictionary, makes it possible to differentiate between the works, clearly the majority, which do not go beyond the reuse of information from other dictionaries, and those which have represented an important innovation. Among the latter, Nebrija’s dictionaries and specific editions of the dictionary of the Real Academia Española, as well as certain general and encyclopaedic dictionaries of the 19th century, clearly stand out. In this way, the study highlights in an exemplary way how the lexicography of Spanish has developed from the beginning of the Modern Age to the present day, and how the objective knowledge about the referent of the lemmatised terms and their dissemination in society has evolved in parallel.

Presence, Exercise, and Relevance of Women in Linguistics (Some Reflections on Women in the History of Linguistics, by Wendy Ayres-Bennett and Helena Sanson, Editors)

Soledad Chávez Fajardo — 2024-12-28

This note is the result of some reflections generated from reading the book Women in the History of Linguistics (Ayres-Bennett and Sanson, editors, Oxford University Press, 2020). Some of the most relevant aspects of this text, related to codifications and linguistic fieldwork, will be presented below in a thematic data format. The purpose is to chronologically account for various issues, namely: the history of women in linguistics, first as assistants often silenced by official historiography, and secondly, the contribution of women as producers, authors, and compilers of different textualizations in their coding phase, such as grammars, dictionaries, metalinguistic studies, among others. The goal is to present a panoramic document that provides a comprehensive overview of an absolutely necessary state of affairs in an era where the inclusion and recognition of the work of these women must be acknowledged and valued.