Syntactic Complexity in Spanish Narratives

1994 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 645-654 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vera F. Gutierrez-Clellen ◽  
Richard Hofstetter

Syntactic complexity in the movie retellings of 77 school-age Spanish-speaking children was examined using a structural constituent analysis. The results demonstrated developmental differences in the length of T-units, index of subordination, use of relative clauses, and prepositional phrases. There were also differences in the length of T-units, use of nominal clauses, and adverbial phrases across Spanish language groups. The analysis underscores the significance of subordination as a cohesive device and as an indicator of narrative proficiency.

2010 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 194-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel A. Newman ◽  
Christine A. Limbers ◽  
James W. Varni

The measurement of health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in children has witnessed significant international growth over the past decade in an effort to improve pediatric health and well-being, and to determine the value of health-care services. In order to compare international HRQOL research findings across language groups, it is important to demonstrate factorial invariance, i.e., that the items have an equivalent meaning across the language groups studied. This study examined the factorial invariance of child self-reported HRQOL across English- and Spanish-language groups in a Hispanic population of 2,899 children ages 8–18 utilizing the 23-item PedsQL™ 4.0 Generic Core Scales. Multigroup confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed specifying a five-factor model across language groups. The findings support an equivalent 5-factor structure across English- and Spanish-language groups. Based on these data, it can be concluded that children across the two languages studied interpreted the instrument in a similar manner. The multigroup CFA statistical methods utilized in the present study have important implications for cross-cultural assessment research in children in which different language groups are compared.


Author(s):  
Craig Allen

The first completely researched history of U.S. Spanish-language television traces the rise of two foremost, if widely unrecognized, modern American enterprises—the Spanish-language networks Univision and Telemundo. It is a standard scholarly history constructed from archives, original interviews, reportage, and other public materials. Occasioned by the public’s wakening to a “Latinization” of the U.S., the book demonstrates that the emergence of Spanish-language television as a force in mass communication is essential to understanding the increasing role of Latinos and Latino affairs in modern American society. It argues that a combination of foreign and domestic entrepreneurs and innovators who overcame large odds resolves a significant and timely question: In an English-speaking country, how could a Spanish-speaking institution have emerged? Through exploration of significant and colorful pioneers, continuing conflicts and setbacks, landmark strides, and ongoing controversies—and with revelations that include regulatory indecision, behind-the-scenes tug-of-war, and the internationalization of U.S. mass media—the rise of a Spanish-language institution in the English-speaking U.S. is explained. Nine chapters that begin with Spanish-language television’s inception in 1961 and end 2012 chronologically narrate the endeavor’s first 50 years. Events, passages, and themes are thoroughly referenced.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (25) ◽  
pp. 129-134
Author(s):  
Alexandra I. Makarova ◽  

The article analyzes theoretical works that raise the problem of analyzing the use of the subjunctive mood in subordinate relatives in Spanish based on the concept of «reality». This topic is relevant and widely discussed among Spanish researchers. Earlier, the author has already attempted to study a different concept – the concept of «statement». This concept, based on the hidden semantics of the whole sentence, is applicable to the analysis of subordinate object sentences. The aim of the study is to determine the features of the subjunctive mood use in subordinate relative sentences in the Spanish language, based on the semantic features of the concepts of «statement» and «reality». This article attempts to implement the concept of «statement» in the analysis of subordinate relative clauses. The author concludes that this concept is not always applicable to the analysis of this type of subordinate clauses. However, we cannot completely exclude it from the analysis. The concept of «reality», which is in its own way a consequence of the concept of «statement», helps to explain the modal alternation in subordinate relative clauses. The subjunctive mood indicates the abstractness of the antecedent or the speaker's doubts about the existence of the antecedent in reality. The indicative mood, on the contrary, indicates the reality of the object or the speaker's belief in its existence. The materials of this study raise questions related to the application of concepts within other types of subordinate clauses and in other closely related languages (French).


2013 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 461-495 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Levy ◽  
Evelina Fedorenko ◽  
Edward Gibson

Author(s):  
Rosina Lozano

In 1902, U.S. Senator Albert Beveridge led four senators from the senate committee on the territories into New Mexico, Arizona, and Oklahoma territory. While New Mexico had operated in Spanish in its courts, schools, and politics for decades, Beveridge’s team exposed the rest of the nation to this Spanish language reality in their campaign to portray the territory as unfit for statehood. During the Senate subcommittee hearings, dozens of New Mexicans relayed their connection to both their United States citizenship and their use of the Spanish language. From census takers to court interpreters to principals, Spanish-speaking New Mexicans defended their use of Spanish. While the use of the Spanish language did not definitively delay statehood, the increased national scrutiny in the media of the language did result in a shift in territorial policies related to language that increasingly favored English in order to better conform to the country's expectations.


2019 ◽  
pp. 277-280

The essays in this volume trace the development of Spanish-language anarchist print culture in relation to the United States. As a whole, these chapters provide a historical and ethno-linguistic, rather than national, perspective on how Spanish-language anarchist print culture responded to social struggles, economic oppression, and political repressions. Despite such obstacles, anarchist periodicals, writers, editors, correspondents, couriers, distributors, and readers established networks for the maintenance and furtherance of transoceanic and transnational flows of information and culture, and they established a level of solidarity among Spanish-speaking peoples promoting social revolution. It might seem reasonable to doubt the overall significance of this network in the United States or its ability to gain widespread public acceptance, but it was, in fact, the perseverance of the anarchist Ideal manifest in print culture (now including digital print) that exhibits the continuity of the struggle for social justice in the modern age, as well as its resistance to assimilation into dominant politics and cultures. The influence of Hispanic thinkers, writers, readers, and operatives in this narrative is undeniable and should be recognized as an integral component of U.S. society, culture, and history....


Author(s):  
Jan Terje Faarlund

In subordinate clauses, the C position is occupied by a complementizer word, which may be null. The finite verb stays in V. SpecCP is either empty or occupied by a wh-word, or by some other element indicating its semantic function. Nominal clauses are finite or non-finite. Finite nominal clauses are declarative or interrogative. Declarative nominal clauses may under specific circumstances have main clause word order (‘embedded V2’). Infinitival clauses are marked by an infinitive marker, which is either in C (Swedish), or immediately above V (Danish). Norwegian has both options. Relative clauses comprise several different types; clauses with a relativized nominal argument are mostly introduced by a complementizer; adverbial relative clauses relativize a locative or temporal phrase, with or without a complementizer; comparative clauses relativize a degree or identity. Under hard-to-define circumstances depending on language and region, subordinate clauses allow extraction of phrases up into the matrix clause.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (262) ◽  
pp. 17-37
Author(s):  
David Divita

AbstractIn this article I analyze artifacts that teach domestic Spanish, a register of the language meant to facilitate communication between Anglo employers and their Spanish-speaking employees. Comprising a limited range of features, including imperatives, second-person pronouns, and lexical items, domestic Spanish provides its users with a means to overcome the “language barrier” that often characterizes relationships in the domestic sphere. Drawing on the concepts of raciolinguistic ideologies and indexical field, I show how domestic Spanish ultimately works to maintain asymmetrical relationships by constricting the range of social meanings that its use can activate; I also shed light on the ambivalent and often conflicting notions among employers about the Spanish language and its speakers. My analysis lays bare the possible disjuncture between the intention of those who use domestic Spanish and the effect it may have on the relationships that it mediates – a disjuncture that enables its speakers to misrecognize their efforts as benevolent, ignoring the ways that language functions in practices of racial discrimination and social control.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 205630511989400
Author(s):  
José M. Tomasena

BookTubers (from the acronym book + YouTuber) have become key players for the publishing industry, given their influence on children and teens to promote reading and book consumption. Based on an 18-month digital ethnography that combines direct observation, digital interactions on YouTube channels, and other social media and semistructured interviews with 17 Spanish-speaking BookTubers, this study uses Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of field and capital to analyze how BookTubers negotiate their practices with other agents of the publishing world. This article characterizes the challenges the Spanish-language publishing industry is facing in the context of digitalization to attract readers; describes the position that BookTubers have within the YouTube ecosystem, and how they relate with the platform’s actors, politics, and affordances; and analyzes the exchanges that BookTubers establish with publishers—often referred as collaborations—and their implications for their autonomy. This case study helps to understand how platformization allows new agents to transfer capital gained in social media to other cultural industries.


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