Iberian Spanish Research Articles

Evaluation of microbial and oxidative changes of 100% Iberian Spanish salchichón in contact with a composite olive-leaf-extract food film and vacuum-packaged

Nowadays, consumer society is increasingly concerned about the environment and the foods production systems. Viable and efficient technologies that target a sustainable production are being developed in order to reduce the generation of agri-food residues, introducing them on the market on the basis of the so-called circular economy. In parallel, consumers are becoming more health conscious, demanding safe and natural products through the use of natural additives and ingredients. This study evaluated the stability of sliced ​​100% Iberian Spanish salchichón without added additives. It was wrapped in a biodegradable nanocellulose films incorporating olive leaf extract, then vacuum-packaged and stored at 5 and 25ᴼC for 90 days. The antimicrobial activity on lactic acid, aerobic mesophilic bacteria and Enterobacteriaceae was studied, as well as the evolution of lipid oxidation through the TBARS method. Significant differences were found between control and test sample during the evaluation of antimicrobial (aerobic mesophilic bacteria) and antioxidant activity at 25 °C. However, no significant differences were found during the evaluation of either antimicrobial or antioxidant activity at 5 °C. Olive leaf extract has a recognized antimicrobial and antioxidant activity tested in vitro; however, when tested in vivo and incorporated into a film, further refinements are needed to optimize the composite film and to obtain the desired effects of the extract as food preservative.

Perceptions of regional origin and social attributes of phonetic variants used in Iberian Spanish

AbstractSociodemographic information, such as a speaker’s regional origin, is intimately related to the judgments and social evaluations that listeners assign to that speaker. This association between linguistic form and social information can also lead to linguistic profiling, a harmful form of discrimination. The present study examines the geographic classifications and social attitudes attributed to ten phonetic variants used within regional varieties of Iberian (i.e., European) Spanish. We are specifically interested in understanding listeners’ geographical classifications and language attitudes held toward Andalusian Spanish, which is a less privileged regional variety spoken in Spain’s southern region, as compared to north-central Peninsular Spanish (NCPS). The results of an online survey show that 165 listeners were fairly consistent when geographically classifying Andalusian-sounding stimuli as originating from the south of Spain. Importantly, the respondents also attributed less favorable social meaning to the Andalusian-sounding stimuli in comparison to the NCPS-sounding stimuli. We link the findings to broader themes in sociolinguistics, such as language-based discrimination, linguistic insecurity, and the social motivations of language change.

The "Small World of Words" free association norms for Rioplatense Spanish.

Large-scale word association datasets are both important tools used in psycholinguistics and used as models that capture meaning when considered as semantic networks. Here, we present word association norms for Rioplatense Spanish, a variant spoken in Argentina and Uruguay. The norms were derived through a large-scale crowd-sourced continued word association task in which participants give three associations to a list of cue words. Covering over 13,000 words and +3.6 M responses, it is currently the most extensive dataset available for Spanish. We compare the obtained dataset with previous studies in Dutch and English to investigate the role of grammatical gender and studies that used Iberian Spanish to test generalizability to other Spanish variants. Finally, we evaluated the validity of our data in word processing (lexical decision reaction times) and semantic (similarity judgment) tasks. Our results demonstrate that network measures such as in-degree provide a good prediction of lexical decision response times. Analyzing semantic similarity judgments showed that results replicate and extend previous findings demonstrating that semantic similarity derived using spreading activation or spectral methods outperform word embeddings trained on text corpora.

The rhetorical structure of analytical writing: a developmental approach

Abstract Analytical writing is an academic genre that combines features of expository and argumentative discourse. Although the ability to write analytically is crucial to succeed at school and beyond, the pathway to master this type of writing mode has rarely been explored. We analyzed the writings of 226 native-speakers of Iberian Spanish from elementary school, high school and university levels, each of whom wrote two texts in Spanish. Three types of rhetorical moves were identified based on the communicative goals of analytical writing: expository, argumentative, and assertive. The findings show a developmental improvement in rhetorical structure and a transition from assertion-based texts, where writers focus on their own standpoint as the pivot of the text, to exposition-based texts, where presentation and discussion of data and of evidence become more dominant.

Superlative syntactic amalgams in an Iberian Spanish dialect

This article addresses an as yet unnoticed Spanish superlative construction attested in the mid area of Northern Spain. This construction features two striking properties: (i) it contains a relative pronoun which, at first glance, does not seem to introduce a TP (there is no overt verb to its right), which raises the question how the relative pronoun can obtain its Case/theta role; (ii) even if it were true that the relative pronoun actually introduces a TP and heads a full subordinate clause (presumably a free relative), the latter would arise in an anomalous position which disrupts the natural word order of the main clause and where it seems to lack any obvious licensor (as an adjunct, argument or predicate). A simultaneous answer to both problems will be obtained from the proposal that the construction at issue is a “syntactic amalgam” (Lakoff 1974): (i) assuming Kluck’s (2011) approach to amalgams, the relative pronoun of the construction can unproblematically be considered to introduce a sluiced TP, so it heads a full relative clause and does have a (covert) Case/theta-role licensor; (ii) the disruptive position of the relative clause and the opacity for licensing from the main clause are now expected as they are the defining properties of the so-called “interrupting clauses” in Horn-/Andrews-amalgams. As in Kluck (2011), such properties will be assumed to result from the operation “par-merge” giving rise to paratactical configurations (de Vries 2007).

Dialectal variation in the expression of <i>que</i> in <i>sí-que</i> ‘yes that’ contexts across Spanish: The case of some Latin American Spanish varieties

This paper investigates dialectal microvariation across the Spanish-speaking world in terms of the presence/absence of que in sí-que contexts. The function of this construction is to signal the speaker’s commitment to the truth of the proposition. In this connection, we argue that the syntactic account recently proposed by Villa-García & González Rodríguez (2020) for polarity-encoding sí ‘yes’ on the one hand and for sí-que ‘yes that’ sequences in Iberian Spanish on the other readily extends to a number of Latin American varieties where que in sí que is syntactically present albeit unpronounced (i.e., sí Ø/que), although it can be overt as well. We provide a variety of syntactic arguments together with Phonetic-Form- and Logical-Form-related arguments to this effect, and show that the dialectal split brought to light here is consonant with a view of (micro-)variation whereby Phonetic Form spellout plays a key role (Barbiers 2009; Rizzi 2013; Rizzi & Bocci 2017; inter alia).

REPRESENTATION OF THE LINGUOCULTURAL CONCEPT “BREAD” IN THE PHRASEOLOGY OF THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE AND THE PIRENEAN AND MEXICAN SPANISH

The article is focused on the comparison of concept “bread”, a culturally marked unit of the concept sphere “food” and the most important dominant of the Russian national identity, with its Spanish equivalent “pan” in the Iberian and Mexican versions of the Spanish language, and identification of the elements of the concept sphere “food” in the above mentioned variants, equal in importance to the concept of “bread” in Russian. Paremias of the Russian language, the Spanish language, and the Mexican Spanish with the “bread” / “pan” component were studied to determine the features of their implications. While analyzing the paremias, it was revealed that it is impossible to use parallel paremias in translation into Russian and Spanish because of the connotation differences phraseological phrases acquired in the course of their evolution. The proverbs with the “pan” component in the Iberian version are compared with their equivalents in the Mexican version to determine elements comparable in their evaluations to the “pan” component. The article may be of interest to linguists who specialize in studying the Iberian Spanish and its variants in Latin America, as well as for translators and translation teachers.

Who Are the Spanish Speakers? An Examination of Their Linguistic, Cultural, and Societal Commonalities and Differences

In this article, three different aspects of the Spanish-speaking community are analyzed: (1) The idiosyncratic characteristics of the Spanish language, (2) the social dimension of the Spanish speakers, and finally, (3) their cultural manifestations. Two major Hispanic subcultures are distinguished: Iberian Spanish culture and Hispano American culture. Initially, the distribution of Spanish speakers in the world and the major oral and written characteristics of Spanish language are presented. The social characteristics of the Spanish-speaking countries, including economic development, literacy, life expectancy, and Human Development Index, are later discussed. It is emphasized that they represent a group of countries with a significant degree of heterogeneity. Finally, the Iberian Spanish and the Hispano American cultures are analyzed. Five cultural elements are reviewed: (1) ethnic group, (2) language, (3) religion, (4) level of development, and (5) level of schooling. It is concluded that regardless that in Spain, there are important regional differences, it is possible to consider that there is a cultural background common to all Spaniards, which may have specific nuances in each region. Hispano America, on the other hand, from the point of view of its ethnic origin, is 50% descended from Europeans, Indians, and Africans. The other 50% represents a mixture in varying proportions of these ethnic groups and other groups. It is concluded that in Hispano America there is a “base” culture (Hispanic culture) that presents a great variability according to the particular country and region. This base culture emphasizes socially oriented values, such as solidarity, some temporary flexibility, and similar cultural values.

Speaker’s stance and subjectivity in the epistemic modal and evidential use of the Spanishimperfectoin journalistic texts

AbstractThis study contributes to the analysis of the epistemic modal and evidential use of the Spanishimperfectowith regard to the speaker’s stance and subjectively (rather than grammatically) motivated decision to use the Spanishimperfectoas an evidential strategy in journalistic texts: The speaker uses the Spanishimperfectoto express or tell a state of affairs from his perspective as a ‘narrator’, implying that he is not the author of such information and referring to third sources without mentioning it. The corpus data were obtained from theCorpus de la Real Academia Española(CREA) from the section ‘written journalistic texts’ of the standard Iberian Spanish to guarantee the authenticity of examples and avoid any case of misunderstanding it as a variety of Spanish.

A Farewell to the Iberian Spanish Macho? An Analysis of Masculinity in Spain. Conversations with Experts

The traditional model of masculinity in Spain (the so-called Spanish Macho) is heir to a long tradition of understanding how masculinity is framed as an omnipotent model assuming that “a man has license to do whatever he wants”. This idealized behavioral pattern is slowly changing in Spain, as it accompanies the transformations in Spanish society. Certain public policies have provided momentum for a change in the way that the issue of gender in general and gender violence in particular are approached. A study carried out under the auspices of the University of Valencia between 2013 and 2015 interviewed experts and activists from an association of men seeking equality with women in an attempt to analyze the present situation and, above all, and to examine the future of masculinity in Spain as it relates to the gains made in favor of feminism. Using the opinions of several actors as a basis, certain questions emerge and the difficulties confronting this process are revealed: Is a rupture with traditional models possible? What is the present status of the coexistence between the most traditional and the most egalitarian approaches?

Explaining the forces underpinning grammaticalization paths: The progressive-to-imperfective shift in three varieties of Spanish

We provide an account of the synchronic variation between the use of the Simple Present marker [Verb-a] and the Present Progressive marker [estar + Verb-ndo] in the expression of the habitual reading in Modern Spanish. Results from an acceptability judgment task in three distinct dialectal varieties (Rioplatense Spanish, Iberian Spanish, and Mexican Altiplano Spanish) show: (a) the presence of variation across dialects, (b) that this variation is constrained by a grammaticalization path, the Progressive-to-Imperfective shift, and (c) that a generalization process is already underway in all three different dialects but at different degrees of progress: more conservative in the Rioplatense and Iberian varieties, and less so in the Mexican Altiplano one. Specifically, our results show that whereas the Simple Present is the preferred form to express the habitual reading, the Present Progressive marker is already available to convey this reading in the three dialectal varieties. However, in Rioplatense Spanish and Iberian Spanish, this use is restricted to contexts that independently satisfy the presuppositional content of estar –the auxiliary in the Present Progressive periphrasis [estar + Verb-ndo]–, which requires the existence of alternative situations at which the prejacent does not hold. This restriction appears to be eroding in Mexican Altiplano Spanish, which is manifested as a loss in the context-dependence of the Present Progressive marker.

Indexing epistemic incongruence: uy as a formal sign of disagreement in agreement sequences in Spanish

This study explores epistemic incongruence in Spanish by focusing on the particle uy in Iberian Spanish. It is claimed that this interjection has a basic change-of-state meaning and that it is commonly used to stress disagreement. Despite its general association to disagreement, the particle can be used in agreeing responses, where it also treats the previous turn as problematic. In this sequential environment, however, it is not the content of the previous turn but rather the underlying assumptions (the basic epistemic configuration of an assertion-answer adjacency pair) that are challenged by the second speaker. The evidence for this analysis comes from the sequential context. Typically, in agreeing uy-responses, speakers upgrade the statement offered in first position and provide evidence of previous epistemic access. It is argued that, in these contexts, uy is used to index epistemic incongruence.

Offline interpretation of subject pronouns by native speakers of Spanish

Research on anaphora resolution reveals that speakers’ interpretation of pronominal subjects is often inconsistent, with results differing in terms of the antecedent preferences of these speakers and the factors that affect these preferences. The present study investigates anaphora resolution by native speakers of Spanish using an offline judgment task where participants are presented with globally ambiguous anaphora to test the predictions of Carminati’s (2002) Position of Antecedent Strategy (PAS) with Spanish intra-sentential Main-Subordinate anaphora. The results show that native speakers of Iberian Spanish have a clear preference for the object as the antecedent for the overt pronoun with this structure, while a preference for the subject as the antecedent for the null pronoun was not revealed. These findings appear to be at odds with the PAS and suggest that anaphora resolution is affected by clause order.

Focus-related operations at the right edge in Spanish: Subjects and ellipsis by Iván Ortega-Santos

Reviewed by: Focus-related operations at the right edge in Spanish: Subjects and ellipsis by Iván Ortega-Santos Timothy Gupton Focus-related operations at the right edge in Spanish: Subjects and ellipsis. By Iván Ortega-Santos. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2016. Pp. 204. ISBN 9789027258069. $143 (Hb). Ch. 1 of Iván Ortega-Santos’s book begins with a justification of syntactic inquiry into information structure in general and focalization processes in Spanish in particular. The fact that focalization phenomena incorporate multiple linguistic domains vis-à-vis alterations to word order, prosody, semantics, and pragmatics makes it a compelling challenge for any theoretical account of human language. O-S establishes the goals of the book: to motivate an analysis of subjects that appear at the rightmost edge of the sentence in Spanish. He suggests that right-edge subjects come to appear in this position as the result of three independent processes: (i) movement of a focused phrase to the leftmost clause edge (i.e. the left periphery) followed by topicalization movement of the remnant Tense Projection (TP), (ii) rightward movement, and (iii) absence of movement (i.e. in-situ position) for subjects of select unaccusative predicates. O-S notes that although the data set examined in the book consists primarily of intuition-based grammaticality judgments from Northern Iberian Spanish and Chilean Spanish, he also discusses experimentally gathered data and corpus data. This is largely reflective of the theoretical orientation of this work, which is formal syntactic analysis situated within Chomsky’s (1995 et seq.) minimalist program and the associated advances of multiple spell-out and phase theory (see e.g. Chomsky 1998, Uriagereka 1999). Although the author briefly sketches out the theoretical assumptions associated with the analysis undertaken in this work in a clear and concise manner, the intended audience [End Page 225] of this book is professional linguists and researchers. Not surprisingly, it is assumed that the reader already has a working knowledge of many of the theoretical tools employed in current generative syntactic theorizing. Ch. 1 concludes with a summary description of the three chapters that follow. Ch. 2 is in large part a literature review establishing the theoretical assumptions of the syntactic analysis proposed in subsequent chapters. O-S first examines neutral focus associated with sentence-level stress (1; sentence stress underlined) and then examines narrow focus (2; small capitals indicate marked prosodic stress).1 (1) [Context: What happened?] (2) [Context: Who bought a book yesterday?] He dedicates the subsequent section to an examination of focus-fronting processes, including important notes on two related, but discursively different, phenomena: verum focus and mirative focus. He provides a convenient summary of the features that have been proposed to encode these types of focus. In the following subsection, he examines focus fronting, as in 3 (from p. 25, ex. 19). (3) [Context: Little Jorge is looking at a toy car and motorcycle.] O-S defends a syntactic treatment of focus fronting (based primarily on Rizzi’s (1997) observation that focus is quantificational), addressing the well-known objection that postulating [+Focus] as a lexical feature violates Chomsky’s (1995:Ch. 4) inclusiveness condition (see e.g. Zubizarreta 1998, Szendrői 2004). He concludes that the positing of syntactic movement to a FocP position is justified in light of the Chomsky/Uriagereka conjecture that complex surface semantics have corresponding movement operations. Next, he examines well-known subject-verb ‘inversion effects’ resulting from wh-movement and focus fronting, making particular use of Gallego’s (2007) phase-sliding proposal for Romance. Given the special properties that it attributes to T (namely phasal status), O-S notes that this possibility raises doubts about the universality of Chomsky’s (1982) extended projection principle (EPP). In the next two sections, he examines the EPP in Spanish, considering challenges it poses for the availability of Spec, TP (Contreras 1991), as well as the suggestion that null-subject languages have an inactive or perhaps parameterized EPP (e.g. Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou 1998, Chomsky 2013). O-S concludes, in the vein of Lasnik (1989, 2003), that the EPP is active in Spanish based on null expletive data. In the remainder of the chapter, he examines...

Formas de tratamento: português e espanhol em foco

Ser competente linguisticamente, além de dominar as regras morfossintáticas e a semântica próprias de cada língua, é conhecer também o conjunto de normas que regulam o comportamento adequado dos membros de um determinado meio social. A língua, como meio de interação com outros indivíduos, não pode ser desvinculada de suas características socioculturais. Ao respeito, cada sociedade estabelece regras, nas quais se incluem as formas de tratamento, que sancionam as condutas comunicativas como sendo adequadas ou inadequadas. A forma como tratamos o outro se insere num código social que, quando transgredido, pode causar prejuízo no relacionamento entre os interlocutores. Especificamente, as formas de tratamento designam tanto os termos que se referem ao par falante-ouvinte, como os vocativos usados para chamar a atenção do destinatário, englobando os chamados pronomes pessoais de tratamento assim como as formas nominais. O objetivo deste trabalho é fazer considerações sobre as formas de tratamento no português do Brasil e no espanhol ibérico; apresentar teorias que abordam o tema da cortesia; e, a partir de dados obtidos de duas obras de teatro brasileiras do século XX, analisar e comparar as estratégias pragmáticas desenvolvidas mediante as formas de tratamento tanto no português do Brasil como no espanhol ibérico. Com este estudo, pretendemos, também, oferecer aos professores de língua estrangeira algumas apreciações acerca das dificuldades, pragmalinguísticas e sociopragmáticas que, no processo de aquisição/aprendizagem das formas de tratamento, podem ocorrer por nfluência da língua materna.

Patterns of vowel laxing and harmony in Iberian Spanish: Data from production and perception

We investigate the production and perception outcomes of sound changes involving phonological vowel harmony, and how phonetic processes (i.e., /s/ lenition and vowel laxing) bear on these outcomes. Our data come from two varieties of Iberian Spanish: Eastern Andalusian Spanish (EAS), a variety that undergoes lenition of word-final /s/, and North-Central Peninsular Spanish (NCPS), a variety that typically retains /s/. In Experiment 1 we show that EAS (but not NCPS) speakers lax the low and mid vowels /a e o/ (i.e., approximating [æ ɛ ɔ], respectively) of /as es os/-final words. In Experiment 2 we show that EAS (but not NCPS) speakers harmonize the mid vowels /e o/ when followed by laxed /a e o/. We analyze this right-to-left spreading as a phonologically-induced change, and argue that it cannot be interpreted as anticipatory coarticulation with word-final lax vowels. During Experiment 3, EAS and NCPS listeners judged the grammatical status of stimuli from the minimal pair [nene] – [nεnε] (‘boy’ – ‘boys’) in a forced-choice word identification task. While all listeners tended to associate [nene]-type stimuli as singular words, EAS listeners alone reliably associated [nεnε]-type stimuli as plural words. This suggests that EAS listeners have greater perceptual sensitivity to the /e/-/ε/ contrast than NCPS listeners. Altogether, our multifaceted approach offers insight on sound change from varied temporal perspectives: we explain what historical factors may have led to laxing and phonological harmony, and what synchronic motivations these processes may have.

Milton in Revolutionary Hispanoamerica

Milton in Revolutionary Hispanoamerica Mario Murgia In 1905, five years before the onset of the Mexican Revolution (ca. 1910–20), the Chilean historian and bibliographer José Toribio Medina Zavala published his Historia del Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición en México (A history of the tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition in Mexico), which he dedicated to the Mexican president Porfirio Díaz as a token of friendship and admiration.1 Medina devotes an entire chapter of his lengthy account of the life and deeds of this American branch of the Spanish Inquisition to the matter of prohibited books. In chapter 23, the historian relates how, given an evident growth in (illegal) book commerce between the Iberian Peninsula and the Viceroyalty of New Spain, and Mexico in particular, the Inquisition eventually found itself struggling to exert efficient control over the overseas book trade.2 The situation became so troublesome in the second half of the eighteenth century that, according to Medina, "los Inquisidores no lograban echar mano á ninguno que tuviese los libros que diariamente iban anatemizando" (Inquisitors did not manage to lay their hands on those who possessed the books that they anathemized on a daily basis).3 [End Page 203] This anecdote concerning the increasing failure on the part of the Inquisition's ecclesiastical court to deal with intellectual and literary smuggling in the late stages of the Spanish Empire would remain on the level of historical generalization were it not for the fact that Medina provides a most peculiar exception to such inquisitorial inefficiency. A certain Carlos—presumably Charles—Loret, a young French surgeon residing in the Mexican city of Jalapa in 1768, was "acusado de tener el Paraíso perdido de Milton y enjuiciado y castigado hacía poco con abjuración y destierro á España" (accused of having Milton's Paradise Lost, and tried and punished not long ago with abjuration and banishment to Spain).4 We do not know which edition of the epic Loret may have been reading, or if he approached the poem in the original English. However, since Paradise Lost had already been translated in its entirety into French and only partially into Iberian Spanish by the 1760s, we might speculate that Loret had been breaking the (ecclesiastical) law in either of these two languages, but most probably in his mother tongue.5 And yet, it is significant that out of the "muchos libros prohibidos" (many prohibited books) that were confiscated on that particular occasion, only Paradise Lost and Milton were explicitly mentioned by title and surname. This tells us, first, that given the magnitude of Loret's punishment, both the peruser and the poem in his possession were held up as particular examples of seditiousness for the reading public. Second, and perhaps more important, an educated man reading Paradise Lost illegally in provincial Mexico betrays the existence of a potential cultured readership, however limited it might have been, for Milton and at least his major poetry in that localized region of the Americas. This example confirms that reading Milton in Spanish-speaking America, even in intellectually selected circles, could be a difficult and even dangerous business. As has been documented, Milton's name first appeared in the 1707 edition of the Spanish Catholic Inquisition's Index Librorum Prohibitorum.6 The Index classifies Milton as a heretic and, moreover, as a "Class I" author whose entire oeuvre should be avoided: "Aquellos Autores cuyos Libros están todos prohibidos, se señalan, poniendoles una estrellita (*), [End Page 204] ó con esta señal I. cl. (I.a Classis ó de I.a Clase)" (Those authors whose books are all prohibited are signaled with an asterisk [*] or with this signal I. cl. [I.a Classis or of the 1st. Class]). This had changed in the 1790 Index, which simply reads, "Milthonius (Joan.), Angl. I. cl.," minus the asterisk.7 As Angelica Duran states insightfully, "The 1790 index moves away from bold assessments of individuals' personal and spiritual status as heretic. In some ways, that move participates in the construction of modern forms of reception that situate authors within their historical roles and emphasizes networks of power relations, overriding attention on individuals...

¿Gustas tú entrar? Una explicación post-sintáctica sobre el comportamiento gramatical del verbo gustar en contextos de cortesía del español hispanoamericano

This paper analyzes some issues regarding the case assignment of the verb gustar in their use in courtesy contexts such as Gustamos comprar carteras, ?Gustas tu entrar? , etc. In these constructions -practically disappeared in Iberian Spanish, but still productive in American Spanish-, the referred psychological verb does not only assign the nominative case to the experiencer and the accusative to the theme, but also shows a desiderative lexical meaning in much the same way as desear, querer, etc. I discuss its case assignment processes adopting a novel perspective, namely, m-case hierarchy and post-syntactic agreement hypothesis. Then, it is argued that the exponent /gust/ appears as a suppletive form of a garden-variety desiderative verbal root remaining in the domain of an honorific aspect head drawing on recent studies on the syntax-morphology interface.

Null Direct Objects in Spanish Conversation

The occurrence of Spanish ambitransitive verbs without an explicit object has been accounted for in previous studies by appealing to the semantic and pragmatic properties of the inferable referent of the empty object structural slot. In this line, null objects have been characterized within the category of low transitive objects because they display a low degree of individuation, specificity, and animacy. In addition, in terms of information structure, null objects have also been shown to display a low degree of topicality. An analysis of the null direct objects we find in a corpus of casual conversation of Iberian Spanish, however, shows that these semantic and informational properties can only account for over one-third of all the examples. A larger portion of null direct objects in casual conversation occurs in constructions that are undergoing a process of grammaticalization. Among these, we identify two main types: hendiadic constructions with the verb coger 'take', and constructions with a perception verb that have a turn-regulatory function. These are, by far, the most frequent usage pattern of null direct objects we find in the corpus.

Spanish is better than English for discriminating Portuguese vowels: acoustic similarity versus vowel inventory size.

Second language (L2) learners often struggle to distinguish sound contrasts that are not present in their native language (L1). Models of non-native and L2 sound perception claim that perceptual similarity between L1 and L2 sound contrasts correctly predicts discrimination by naïve listeners and L2 learners. The present study tested the explanatory power of vowel inventory size versus acoustic properties as predictors of discrimination accuracy when naïve Australian English (AusE) and Iberian Spanish (IS) listeners are presented with six Brazilian Portuguese (BP) vowel contrasts. Our results show that IS listeners outperformed AusE listeners, confirming that cross-linguistic acoustic properties, rather than cross-linguistic vowel inventory sizes, successfully predict non-native discrimination difficulty. Furthermore, acoustic distance between BP vowels and closest L1 vowels successfully predicted differential levels of difficulty among the six BP contrasts, with BP /e-i/ and /o-u/ being the most difficult for both listener groups. We discuss the importance of our findings for the adequacy of models of L2 speech perception.