Reseña de =?iso-8859-1?Q?Guti=E9rrez?=, J. & =?iso-8859-1?Q?Mart=EDnez?=, F. 1999. Advances in Hispanic Linguistics.

Thu Jun 17 15:31:26 UTC 1999

INFOLING  Lista moderada de lingüística española
http://listserv.rediris.es/archives/infoling.html
http://www.rediris.es/list/info/infoling.html
Estudios de Lingüística Española: http://elies.rediris.es/
Envío de información: infoling-request at listserv.rediris.es
Editor: Carlos Subirats Rüggeberg <Carlos.Subirats at uab.es>
Colaboradoras:
Paola Bentivoglio <pbentivo at reacciun.ve>, U. Central Venezuela
Mar Cruz <mcruz at lingua.fil.ub.es>, U. Barcelona
Eulalia de Bobes <ebobes at seneca.uab.es>, U. Autónoma Barcelona
Emma Martinell <martinell at lingua.fil.ub.es>, U. Barcelona
Rosa Ribas <Ribas at em.uni-frankfurt.de>, U. Frankfurt
____________________________________________________________

    Gutiérrez-Rexach, Javier &  Martínez-Gil, Fernando.
(eds.)  1999. Advances in Hispanic Linguistics, 2 vols.
Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press. (578 pages, $40.00 U.S.)
      Reseña de David Eddington <davee at ra.msstate.edu>
  Información sobre esta publicación en Cascadilla Press:
             http://www.cascadilla.com/ahl.html
               Distribuido por LINGUIST List:
       http://linguistlist.org/issues/10/10-929.html
____________________________________________________________

     Advances in Hispanic Linguistics comprises a
collection of 37 papers which were originally presented at
the Second Hispanic Linguistics Symposium at the Ohio
State University, in October 1998. Volume one contains
studies in the fields of phonology, sociolinguistics,
historical linguistics, morphology, and applied
linguistics. Contributors include many well-established
scholars, (e.g. Rafael A. Núñez-Cedeño, José Ignacio
Hualde, John Lipski, and others), as well as up-and-coming
researchers whose influence is beginning to be felt.
Contributions range from groundbreaking studies to
reanalyses of well-worn topics, to less substantial
studies. Nevertheless, this first volume provides insight
into many cutting-edge topics and gives an overview of the
present state of the field of Hispanic Linguistics.

     Three studies are in the area of second language
acquisition. Marisol Fernández García studies gender
errors made by third-year college students. James F. Lee
reports a study in which he applied a think aloud
procedure to determine how comprehension and input
processing interact in a reading comprehension task.  In
both studies, a great deal of intersubject variability was
found. Ronald P. Leow reviews 23 studies on the role of
attention in second language acquisition. These studies
are evaluated in terms of the strengths and weakness of
their internal and external validity. Suggestions are
given on how future studies can improve in these areas.

     A number of issues in Spanish phonology have received
new interpretations within the framework of Optimality
Theory (OT). For example, John M. Lipski shows how
dialectal differences in s-reduction ( s > h > deletion)
may be attributable to different constraint orderings.
The same variability in these orderings may also account
for nasal velarization differences cross-dialectally.
Alfonso Morales-Front demonstrates that consonant harmony,
metathesis, and melodic harmony, of the type found in
young children's speech, are best explained as templates
based on alignment constraints, as opposed to the spread
of features. Carlos-Eduardo Pineros provides an OT
analysis of a Pig Latin-type game called Jerigonza. Two
studies focus on the ever sticky hiatus versus diphthong
issue in Spanish. Sonia Colina makes use of correspondence
relations in OT to account for variations such as
[di.a.blo] versus [dja.blo].  Her analysis lends
credence to the idea that glides are not phonemic in
Spanish. Jose Ignacio Hualde examines the issue as well,
and discusses the contexts in which hiatus most often
occurs, and some possible motivations for it.

     Several contributions to Spanish sociolinguistics are
included in the volume.  Mary Ellen Garcia traces the
development of 'nomas' into Latin American Spanish, and
documents its functions in San Antonio Spanish. Diane
Ringer Uber reports her findings on the uses of forms of
address (tu, Usted and vos) in business settings, in five
large cities in Latin America. She focuses on how
solidarity and power relationships influence the choice
of term of address. Rafael A. Núñez-Cedeño demonstrates
that men and women are equally likely to use masculine
pronouns in ambiguous contexts. Robert M. Hammond provides
evidence that the voiced alveolar multiple vibrant [rr] is
actually a highly uncommon pronunciation of /rr/. This
contrasts with the widely-held notion that [rr] is the
standard realization.

     The role of certain linguistic units has been
(re)examined in several contributions.  Steven Lee Hartman
examines 'solo' as a focuser and diminisher, along with
its movement away from its operand and toward the front of
the sentence. Regina Morin challenges the idea that
Spanish nouns have word-final markers. She demonstrates
that the criteria proposed to distinguish between words
which end in word markers and those that do not, do not
hold up under closer scrutiny. Holly J. Nibert provides
evidence that there is intermediate phrasing in Spanish
intonation, and that native speakers make use of these
cues to disambiguate different semantic interpretations of
a sentence.

     In the diachronic realm, Ray Harris-Northall
discusses the 13th century move from Latin to Romance
documents in Spain. He notes that this gradual move was
not instituted by decree, but was the result of sweeping
social and political forces which forced scribes to cut
corners by writing documents in Romance, instead of making
latinate versions of them. D. Eric Holt offers an analysis
in which consonant degemination, loss of vowel length, and
vocalization of syllable-final velars are attributed to
the same forces. In an OT framework, he argues that they
are due to progressively tighter constraints on moriac
consonants. Thomas J. Walsh traces the origin of 'atinar'.
He demonstrates that its common medieval meaning was 'to
guess', and that it evolved from DIUINARE 'to guess, to
divine' by regular phonetic evolution, making it a doublet
of 'adivinar'.

     Finally, Frank Nuessel analyses the Quijote for
linguistic and metalinguistic commentary made by the
characters and narrator, and finds a surprising amount of
commentary, some of which sheds light on the linguistic
milieu of the period.

    The reviewer, David Eddington, is an Associate
Professor of Spanish Linguistics at Mississippi State
University. He is particularly interested in experimental
and cognitive approaches to phonology and morphology.

David Eddington
e-mail: davee at ra.msstate.edu
http://www2.msstate.edu/~davee

----------------------------------------------------
Archivos de INFOLING: http://listserv.rediris.es/archives/infoling.html
------------------------------------------------------