scholarly journals Learner Development of a Morphosyntactic Feature in Argentina: The Case of vos

Languages ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 193
Author(s):  
Rebecca Pozzi
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Language Learner ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Second Language Learner ◽  
Studying Abroad ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Latin American Spanish ◽  
American Spanish ◽  
Morphosyntactic Feature

Students have been found to improve their sociolinguistic competence, particularly regarding the acquisition of dialectal features, while studying abroad. Nevertheless, most of the research on learner development of morphosyntactic features in Spanish-speaking immersion contexts has examined that of variants characteristic of Peninsular Spanish in Spain, namely clitics and the informal second-person plural vosotros. Since the informal second-person singular, vos, is more prevalent than its equivalent, tú, in several Latin American countries, learner acquisition of this feature also merits investigation. This article explores second-language learner production of vos among 23 English speakers during a 5-month semester in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a popular study abroad destination. The findings from the multivariate analysis of over 1200 tokens of tú and vos indicate that learners used vos verb forms over 70% of the time by the end of the sojourn. Factors including social networks, proficiency level, mood, and task significantly influenced this use. Most notably, the stronger the learners’ social networks, the more they used vos verb forms and learners with high proficiency levels used these forms more than lower-proficiency learners. This study provides one of the first accounts of the acquisition of a widespread morphosyntactic feature of Latin American Spanish.

Morphological and Syntactical Variation and Change in Latin American Spanish

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Lipski
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Direct Object ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
Haitian Creole ◽  
Object Clitics ◽  
Latin American Spanish ◽  
American Spanish ◽  
Demographic Shifts

The Spanish language, as it spread throughout Latin America from the earliest colonial times until the present, has evolved a number of syntactic and morphological configurations that depart from the Iberian Peninsula inheritance. One of the tasks of Spanish variational studies is to search for the routes of evolution as well as for known or possible causal factors. In some instances, archaic elements no longer in use in Spain have been retained entirely or with modification in Latin America. One example is the use of the subject pronoun vos in many Latin American Spanish varieties. In Spain vos was once used to express the second-person plural (‘you-pl’) and was later replaced by the compound form vosotros, while in Latin America vos is always used in the singular (with several different verbal paradigms), in effect replacing or coexisting with tú. Other Latin American Spanish constructions reflect regional origins of Spanish settlers, for example, Caribbean questions of the type ¿Qué tú quieres? ‘What do you (sg)want?’ or subject + infinitive constructions such as antes de yo llegar ‘before I arrived’, which show traces of Galician and Canary Island heritage. In a similar fashion, diminutive suffixes based on -ico, found in much of the Caribbean, reflect dialects of Aragon and Murcia in Spain, but in Latin America this suffix is attached only to nouns whose final consonant is -t-. Contact with indigenous, creole, or immigrant languages provides another source of variation, for example, in the Andean region of South America, where bilingual Quechua–Spanish speakers often gravitate toward Object–Verb word order, or double negation in the Dominican Republic, which bears the imprint of Haitian creole. Other probably contact-influenced features found in Latin American Spanish include doubled and non-agreeing direct object clitics, null direct objects, use of gerunds instead of conjugated verbs, double possessives, partial or truncated noun-phrase pluralization, and diminutives in -ingo. Finally, some Latin American Spanish morphological and syntactic patterns appear to result from spontaneous innovation, for example, use of present subjunctive verbs in subordinate clauses combined with present-tense verbs in main clauses, use of ser as intensifier, and variation between lo and le for direct-object clitics. At the microdialectal level, even more variation can be found, as demographic shifts, recent immigration, and isolation come into play.

A cross-cultural analysis of the Test of Memory Malingering among Latin American Spanish-speaking adults.

2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (5) ◽  
pp. 422-428 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alicia Nijdam-Jones ◽  
Diego Rivera ◽  
Barry Rosenfeld ◽  
Juan Carlos Arango-Lasprilla
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Test Of Memory Malingering ◽  
Spanish Speaking ◽  
Latin American Spanish ◽  
American Spanish ◽  
Cross Cultural Analysis

Face-Name Associative Memory Exam--Latin American Spanish Version

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clara Vila-Castelar ◽  
Kathryn V. Papp ◽  
Rebecca E. Amariglio ◽  
Valeria L. Torres ◽  
Ana Baena ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Associative Memory ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Spanish Version ◽  
Latin American Spanish ◽  
American Spanish

La variation dans les Constructions Verbales Figées de l’espagnol d’Amérique

2015 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 276-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pedro Mogorrón Huerta
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Complete Data ◽  
Research Papers ◽  
Data Bases ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
Fixed Expressions ◽  
Latin American Spanish ◽  
American Spanish ◽  
Peninsular Spanish ◽  
Near Future

Traditionally, research papers on fixed expressions emphasize the fact that those sequences are fixed compared to constructions with free components. After one study which was carried out in 2010 through which we were able to prove that a considerable number of verbal fixed expressions in common Peninsular Spanish allow changes in some of their components without causing a change in the meaning and maintaining their fixed state, in this paper we analyze verbal fixed expressions in the Latin American Spanish variety. This analysis allows us to observe the modes of variation in the Latin American Spanish verbal fixed expressions (paradigm, lexic, morphology, grammar) by following the same patterns and syntactic structures as in common Penninsular Spanish which we find in the case of diatopic expressions formed in the verbal fixed expressions of common Penninsular Spanish as well as in new diatopic verbal fixed expressions. The fact that there are so many verbal fixed expressions in the Latin American Spanish variety and also that this number will only increase in the near future reinforces the idea that we should create very complete data bases.

A cognitive sociolinguistic approach to metaphor and denominative variation

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 193-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Manuel Ureña Gómez-Moreno ◽  
Pamela Faber
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Marine Biology ◽  
Scientific Language ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Domain Specific ◽  
Automatic Retrieval ◽  
Latin American Spanish ◽  
American Spanish ◽  
Peninsular Spanish ◽  
Quantitative Account

This research applied corpus analysis techniques to a corpus of marine biology texts in Peninsular Spanish (PS) and Latin American Spanish (LAS). The results explain why these varieties of Spanish have different designations for the same sea organism. The focus of our research was thus on types of formal onomasiological variation (Geeraerts, Grondelaers, & Bakema, 1994) and its pervasiveness in Spanish scientific discourse. Also addressed was the incidence of metaphor in specialized concept formation and designation. Domain-specific and standard strategies were used for the semi-automatic retrieval of metaphorical terms. The resulting qualitative and quantitative account of terminological diversity reflected the pervasiveness of intralingual denominative variation in scientific language and also identified its causes.

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