Richard Cameron

Ambiguous Agreement, Functional Compensation, and Nonspecific "tu" in the Spanish of San Juan, Puerto Rico and Madrid, Spain.

Richness of subject-verb agreement is implicit in the functional compensation interpretation of variable second person /-s/ in Puerto Rican Spanish (PRS). Because /-s/ is not variable in Madrid Spanish (MS), richer agreement is assumed, and a lower rate of pronominal expression is expected. Central to this interpretation are effects associated with ambiguous marking of person on finite singular verbs. Although an increase of pronominal expression correlates to ambiguous marking for PRS speakers, a similar result has not been reported for MS speakers. Nonetheless, a varbrul analysis yields similar weights for this constraint in both dialects. Moreover, ambiguity effects are best understood as constraints on null subject variation that interact with switch reference. Identity of varbrul weights for constraints on pronominal and null subject variation in PRS and MS also supports the Constant Rate Hypothesis. However, the two dialects do show a diametrically opposed effect associated with nonspecific tu .

The Effect of Multiple-Choice L1 Glosses and Input-Output Cycles on Lexical Acquisition and Retention.

The objective of the study was to determine the effect on lexical acquisition and retention of: (a) L1 multiple-choice glosses, (b) L2 text reconstruction with opportunities to recheck input and (c) combined treatments. These treatments were chosen for the following reasons: multiple-choice glosses are said to require ‘mental effort’, increasing the likelihood of retention. Reconstructing the text in the L2 may prompt learners to notice ‘holes’ in their lexicon and focus their attention on subsequent input. Seventy-six fourth-semester learners of German read a text in one of the four conditions (3 experimental; 1 control). Productive and receptive word gains were tested immediately after the treatment and again five weeks later. Findings suggest that the multiple-choice gloss treatment resulted in significantly deeper productive and receptive word gains immediately after the treatment. A significant receptive word gain was retained for five weeks only for the combined treatment condition.

A variable syntax of speech, gesture, and sound effect: Direct quotations in Spanish

A variationist account of how direct quotations are framed in spoken Spanish requires definition of the variable and the envelope of variation followed by investigation of linguistic, stylistic, and social constraints. The variable is defined as a set of three strategies for directly quoting the speech, gestures, and sound effects of people, animals, or things in the natural world, real or imagined, faithfully or not. These strategies involve verbs of direct report, a bare noun phrase ( Y yo , “i? Ay que hago ?!” ‘ And I , “Oh, what should I do?’), and freestanding quotation with no frame. Investigation of linguistic constraints finds influence both from within and above the sentence. These include clause type, person, number, animacy of speaker, quotation content, switch reference, and a “birds of a feather” effect. Data on stylistic constraints provide evidence for style as a function of attention to form. Social constraints reveal complicated, yet familiar influences of age, sex, and class, with teenagers showing parallels to Eckerts work on gender and variation. Evidence also emerges for both age grading and a change in progress.

A community-based test of a linguistic hypothesis

The Functional Compensation Hypothesis (Hochberg 1986a, b) interprets frequent expression of pronominal subjects as compensation for frequent deletion of agreement marking on finite verbs in Puerto Rican Spanish (PRS). Specifically, this applies to 2sg. tu where variably deleted word-final - s marks agreement. If the hypothesis is correct, finite verbs with agreement deleted in speech should co-occur more frequently with pronominal subjects than finite verbs with agreement intact. Likewise, social dialects which frequently delete agreement should show higher rates of pronominal expression than social dialects which less frequently delete agreement. These auxiliary hypotheses are tested across a socially stratified sample of 62 speakers from San Juan. Functional compensation does show stylistic and social patterning in the category of Specific tu , not in that of Non-specific tu . However, Non-specific tu is the key to frequency differences between - s -deleting PRS and - s -conserving Madrid; hence the Functional Compensation Hypothesis should be discarded. (Functionalism, compensation, null subject, analogy, Spanish, Puerto Rico)

Aging and gendering

ABSTRACT Unlike class or ethnicity, gender-based differences are assumed to resultfrom social difference, not distance, yet across multiple societies, research-ers find that gender separation is practiced to varying degrees. Such sepa-ration creates distance. Preference for same-gender affiliations emergesaround age three, peaks in middle childhood, and lessens during the teenyears, yet persists in the workplace and later life. Though reasons for thisare many, Thorne (1993:51) identified one finding in these terms: “Whereage separation is present, gender separation is more likely to occur.” Be-cause age segregation varies with stage of life, one may predict that gendersegregation would wax and wane across the lifespan. This study investi-gates this prediction with three sociolinguistic variables of Puerto RicanSpanish. In turn, it explores the prediction across other varieties of Spanish,German, and English, focusing on variables that are stable, undergoingchange, or in the end stage of loss. (Gender segregation, age segregation,variation.)*

Accessibility theory in a variable syntax of Spanish

Abstract One prediction and one extension derived from Accessibility Theory are explored in response to questions concerning the variable alternation of personal pronominal and null subjects in dialects of Spanish. First, are split antecedents to personal plural subjects informationally inferior to antecedents which are not split? Second, why do the categories of specific and nonspecific second person singular subjects show differing frequencies of null subject expression? With respect to the first question, the answer is no. This contradicts a prediction of Accessibility Theory and calls for a reappraisal of the issue of inferior antecedents. With respect to the second question, the criterion of informativity is extended from its initial scope of specific reference to that of nonspecific reference in order to account for the statistical favoring of pronominal subject expression by nonspecific tu, usted, and uno. However, where Accessibility Theory is unable to account for a favoring of null subjects by nonspecific second person singular tu in Iberian dialects, research from generative treatments of proarb, provides a basis for, if not explaining, then strongly expecting this particular pattern. Also included, is an analysis of nonspecific second person reference in Latin American dialects which reveals paradigm leveling of the nonspecific tu constraint on subject pronoun expression in the Latin American dialects by analogy to that of nonspecific uno or usted, a direction of change which Accessibility Theory would predict.

Growing up and apart: Gender divergences in a Chicagoland elementary school

A characteristic of children’s social orders is gender segregation. When children can choose, girls play more with girls and boys with boys. This begins around age three and peaks in later childhood. If children separate into same-gender groups, their interactions across the gender line will not be as frequent as those with members of the same sex. Following on Bloomfield’s assertion (1933:46) that “density of communication” results in the “most important differences of speech” within a community, I predict that differences will increasingly emerge between girls and boys. I test this using two sociolinguistic variables, (dh) and (ing), in the English spoken by children in an elementary school. The prediction is supported. Results contribute to research into language socialization and the acquisition of gendered linguistic expression.

Generating summaries of hospitalizations: A new metric to assess the complexity of medical terms and their definitions.

Our system generates summaries of hospital stays by combining information from two heterogenous sources: physician discharge notes and nursing plans of care. It extracts medical concepts from both sources; concepts that are identified as “complex” by our metric are explained by providing definitions obtained from three external knowledge sources. Finally, relevant concepts (with or without definition) are realized by SimpleNLG.

Puerto Rico: Language Situation

The main language of Puerto Rico is Spanish, which is spoken by 85% of the population. Due to the long historical and political relation with the United States, English is an important language on the island, spoken to varying degrees by about 55% of the population. Approximately 1% speaks other languages as well.