A multidimensional analysis of the Spanish reportative epistemic evidential dizque

This paper investigates the syntactic and semantic properties of American Spanish dizque (lit. ‘it is said’). We claim that the not-at-issue meaning of this evidential is reportativity, while it also contributes epistemic modal semantics ranging from doubt/negative attitude, weak possibility to almost complete lack of commitment. This semantics can be derived from ways of updating the common ground and origo ground, and from the fact that evidentials may target evidence strength. We examine the types of speech report dizque introduces, and describe its syntactic behavior in terms of co-occurrence restrictions, scope, and Main Clause Phenomena. Evidential dizque follows patterns ascribable to both Speech Act operators and propositional modifiers. We analyze the semantic contribution of dizque along three tiers of meaning: a) speaker commitment to p, b) contribution to either Speech Act or Propositional level, and c) trustworthiness of the evidence, emerging from the ways dizque expresses presentational force, serving to update either only the origo ground or both the common ground and the origo groundThis work was supported by the Research Project from the Spanish MINECO, FF12017-87140.C4-4-

Evidentials dizque and que in Spanish : Grammaticalization, parameters and the (fine) structure of Comp

In this paper we study one type of Spanish que (the equivalent to the complementizer “that”) that can be shown to belong into the crosslinguistically restricted list of evidentials. In particular, we will claim that it encodes the (most basic) marks of nonfirst- hand or indirect (reported) evidence. Our point of departure is certain (apparently) independent clauses of Spanish headed by an overt complementizer (que). Some tests will be presented that support the idea that that one type of que introducing a well specified subset of root sentences shares most of the properties that have been claimed to characterize reportative evidentials in languages such as Quechua (Faller 2002, 2006). As for the properties of reportative que, it will be further shown that it does not encode any features related to epistemic modality (reliability or (im)probability) and we will propose that it is better analyzed as an illocutionary operator, affecting the illocutionary force (in line with Faller 2002 among others) and not as an epistemic modal (Izvorsky 1997 among others). In order to determine the nature of this reportative element and its origin, we contrast it with an old Spanish form, dizque, which exists nowadays in certain modern American varieties. This particle also has the properties of an evidential but behaves as an epistemic modal. In the last sections, we will propose that both evidential particles (que and dizque) are the result of a process of grammaticalization (i.e. ‘upward reanalysis’, or categorial change, of functional material, in the sense of Roberts and Roussou 2003) of the complex structure headed by a communication verb, dicen que “they say that”. We will tentatively describe such process and introduce a hypothesis as to the nature and role of the parameter involved in the claimed reanalysi

Force and finiteness in the Spanish complementizer system

The goal of this paper is to show that the structure of CP in Spanish is more complex than it appears to be in most descriptive approaches. In particular, we analyze five types of constructions, which are quite extended in all dialects of Spanish but which have remained almost unaddressed in grammatical studies. These data clearly reveal a complex structure for Spanish CP both in root and embedded clauses: They involve sentences with more than one instance of a complementizer heading the clause, sentences where a wh-element (interrogative or exclamative) can be preceded or followed by the complementizer que ‘that’, and matrix sentences (obligatorily) introduced by an explicit Comp, among other cases. Our point of departure will be the studies on the so called “sentence left periphery” (Rizzi 1997) containing an upper limit, ForceP and a lower limit, FinP. Our claim will be that in Spanish there are two instances of que: que1 and que2 which are respectively generated in the upper and in the lower part of the sentence periphery. In addition, we will provide data suggesting that there might even be a third instance of que, a kind of “reinforcement” of Force. In this sense Spanish resembles some languages which are very different from the typological point of view.The research behind this paper has been financed by the Spanish DGI (MEC) through a grant to the Project BFF2003-06053

Visibilidad de las mujeres y pertinencia comunicativa

Peer reviewe

Lengua estándar, norma y normas en la difusión actual de la lengua española

La noción de ‘lengua estándar’, y la de ‘norma lingüística’, consustancial con ella, es muy antigua ya; no tanto sin embargo como la vida misma de las lenguas. Aparece, próxima a las naciones-estado y los estados-nación, cuando las sociedades más estructuradas y jerarquizadas empiezan a producir textos, a alfabetizar, a buscar lenguas de relación o lenguas francas, y no se limitan a usar su lengua sólo para comunicarse oralmente. Las lenguas que se mantuvieron durante milenios como lenguas de cultura pese a haber dejado de ser lenguas habladas (el copto, el chino arcaico, el sánscrito) debieron pertrecharse para ello de una rígida norma. El náhuatl, la lengua de los aztecas, hoy dominada y dividida en dialectos, había de estar muy normalizada en el siglo XVI si podía ser el eje de un imperio que se extendía desdeTenochtitlán hasta Veracruz y el Istmo de Tehuantepec. Norma ha habido casi siempre.Peer reviewe

La investigación en lingüística hispánica en España y en el contexto europeo

Ejemplar dedicado a: Estudios Hispánicos: perspectivas internacionalesUn minicuento memorable de Augusto Monterroso dice sólo lo siguiente: “Cuando despertó, el dinosaurio todavía estaba allí”. La pequeña fábula produce zozobra, no tanto por el pobre dinosaurio condenado a vivir eternamente sino por los que pudieran encontrar dinosaurios al despertarse, aunque hayan pasado a su lado varias eras geológicas. Hace ya más de cuarenta años, el surgimiento de la lingüística teórica estableció un primer hito en un cambio disciplinar que marcaba el paso del estudio del lenguaje (de una parte de él al menos) del reino interpretativo de las humanidades al reino acotado, abstracto, matematizado de las ciencias experimentales y de la naturaleza; ni mejor ni peor en principio pero sí distinto.Peer reviewe