Journal of Portuguese
Linguistics
Volume
4 No. 1
2005
Special issue: Variation and Change in the Iberian Languages: the Peninsula and beyond
Guest-edited by
Abstracts
Daniel Recasens & Aina Espinosa
This paper looks for an interpretation of the phonetic factors causing consonant lenition and elision to occur through an analysis of intervocalic [j] in Majorcan, a dialect of Catalan spoken in the Mediterranean island of Majorca. Articulatory and acoustic data for several Majorcan Catalan speakers still producing the palatal glide in all word positions and segmental environments show that the consonant is lower and more variable in intervocalic position than word initially and word finally. Lowering is enhanced by the presence of contextual low and mid low front vowels, mostly so if stressed and placed immediately after the palatal glide. Inspection of [VjV] formant trajectories suggests that, in spite of undergoing articulatory reduction, [j] is produced with an independent articulatory gesture; moreover, coarticulatory effects between the palatal glide and the following vowel may render the former phonetic segment perceptually indistinguishable from the latter and thus prone to undergo elision. Strongly lenited variants of intervocalic [j] appear to be receding, and conservative speakers show specially low realizations of the palatal glide which may have been widely spread among the speaking population at the time that the intervocalic consonant underwent systematic elision in some areas of Majorca in the past. These findings are in support of the notion that the lenition and subsequent elision of intervocalic consonants are assisted by contextual and prosodic factors.
Charlotte Galves, Helena Britto & Maria Clara Paixão de Sousa
In this paper we
study the syntax of clitic-placement in Portuguese authors born from 1542 to
1836, as regards their patterns of clitic pronouns placement. The motivation for
the research was to enquire: what is the pattern of enclisis (V-cl) and
proclisis (cl-V) variation in those texts; is it indicative of linguistic change;
if so, when in the timeline can the change be located?
Manuel Perez-Saldanya & Gemma Rigau
In this article we analyze the formation of Spanish and Catalan phrases with an intransitive locative adverb preceded by a bare noun. These constructions can have a meaning of path and direction (i. e. Sp. río abajo, Cat. riu avall ‘downriver’) as well as body orientation (i. e. Sp. cara abajo, Cat. cara avall ‘face down’). A detailed analysis of the available historical documentation suggests the hypothesis that these constructions derive from more complex expressions headed by a preposition that lost its phonological properties, without losing its semantic and syntactic features. The presence of a phonologically null preposition is licensed both by the meaning of the incorporated noun and by the presence of a predicative directional adverb phrase. The case of the Catalan preposition cap ‘towards’, from the noun cap ‘head’, shows one step further in the evolution of these constructions.
This paper proposes an analysis of a redundant use of que ('that') found in Andean Spanish as an expression which has undergone a grammaticalization process. Evidence suggests that the function of que as subordinate marker is much more generalized in this variety than in other dialects of Spanish. que is found to be used as a marker introducing both nominal and adjectival clauses, suggesting that adjectival subordinates behave as nominal subordinates in this variety of Spanish. An intrusive que appears in restricted syntactic and semantic contexts with clauses that have nominal and adjectival functions, and even appears replacing adverbial expressions in some adverbial subordinates (temporal, spatial, and manner). Furthermore, it is found to be sensitive to the degree of the argument’s thematic/semantic function in the subordinate clause. In particular, it seems to occur more often with low-agency arguments in adjectival and nominal contexts, and, in nominal subordinates, tends to appear with a restricted set of epistemic and evidential main verbs (e.g. creer 'to believe', saber 'to know', decir 'to say'). The analysis suggests that que has developed a new function in this variety of Spanish, namely, one of indicating that the information contained in the subordinate clause does not constitute background information (as would be expected in non-contact varieties of Spanish) but instead contains information relevant to the discourse.
This article examines the role of tense and mood factors in
the selection of complement clauses in Basque, arguing against
apparent cases of free variation, discussed here with respect to choice of
complement types. In particular, the article concentrates on the ability of some
verb classes to take complements in the nominalized form. As with Spanish
infinitives, the availability of nominalized complements correlates with the
class membership of the main predicate into one of the subjunctive-taking groups.
Apparent counterexamples, i.e., predicates which can take both a
nominalized/subjunctive complement and an indicative one,
will be shown to stem from differences in modality and tense. Variation is
considered from a cross-linguistic perspective, and the discussion of the Basque
examples is linked to 'double selection' phenomena in Spanish and Romance
complements. Particular attention is paid to prospective complements, and a
semantic approach is offered to explain why double selection phenomena emerge in
this particular case. As expected, while the morphology of Basque and Spanish
complement types is strikingly different, the semantic factors intervening in
the choice and distribution of complement types will be shown not display the
same degree of variation.
This paper argues that, in order to understand the language use of Basque immigrants to southern California, it is essential to consider how language ideologies intersect with gender. First, although traditional Basque culture privileges men, the culture has changed in the American context in ways that may make it more welcoming to women. Second, speaking Basque has different social meanings for men and women when it comes to “performing” gender identities. For men, speaking Basque is appropriate for presenting oneself as a man and as a Basque. For women, speaking Basque is often incompatible with presenting oneself as a fashionable woman. Third, men are more likely to speak Basque in the public domain even in America, because of their greater access to employment and social networks composed of Basque speakers. At the same time, some women have increased their use of Basque after emigration, in part because the American context provides a less negative semantic space when it comes to women speaking Basque. The implications of these findings for Fishman’s theory on Reversing Language Shift are discussed.
In order to account for some key structures in immigrant Spanish, 15th-16th-century African Portuguese, pidgin Portuguese, and the Portuguese-based creoles, we appeal to a model of Emergent Grammar in which linguistic structure emerges from frequency and perceptual saliency. We argue that key traits of the Portuguese-based creoles evolved from L2 varieties of Portuguese initially spoken by Africans in Portugal in the 15th and 16th centuries. First, we show how certain verb forms make their way into the speech of immigrants due to frequency of occurrence of verb forms based on their respective verb class. We also note that some forms become part of immigrant speech because of their more perceptually salient form (e.g. son over es, and são over é). Second, we point out that the many traits that characterize Chinese immigrant Spanish also define African Portuguese, and are those that also have found their way into the Portuguese-based creoles. We claim that regardless of whether pidgin Portuguese had its beginnings in Portugal or emerged in the interaction between the Portuguese and Africans in Africa, the same relative frequency of occurrence of forms would apply, as would the same processes used in naturalistic L2 acquisition, including sensitivity on the part of the speakers/learners to perceptual saliency of items. Thus, this study contributes to the understanding of the role that naturalistic L2 acquisition played in the formation of the pidgin Portuguese and, subsequently, the Portuguese-based creoles.
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