In this study, linguistic and anthropological research methods are employed in investigating the use of one salient feature in the speech of a small community in northern Spain. Though set in rural Spain, the study is of interest both to readers with special interest in Spain and to those concerned mostly with broader possibilities of inference from linguistic data. In the first case, findings provide insight into social change experienced by generations of villagers marked by the Spanish Civil War and the Franco regime. In the second, data provide evidence that, in this small and relatively homogeneous community, sex and political orientation are factors that influence the use of an established sociolinguistic variable. Speech data used in the study were obtained in a series of recorded interviews conducted by the author. Material of an ethnographic nature was collected during field research over a period of approximately two years. (Linguistic variation, social motivation, Spanish dialectology, Spanish regionalism, Cantabria, montañés)
This study examines subject personal pronoun expression in the Spanish of the westcentral highlands of Puerto Rico. Although rates of s-deletion are comparably high, rates of overt subject expression are shown to be much lower than rates reported for varieties of coastal Puerto Rican Spanish and U.S. mainland Puerto Rican Spanish. The linguistic constraints on overt versus null pronoun usage in the data are shown to coincide to a very large extent with constraints identified for other Puerto Rican dialects and also Castilian Spanish in central Spain, whereas of the social factors, only the distinction between farmers and nonfarmers is significant.The study suggests that, if rates of personal subject pronoun expression are an indication of dialectal variation, the rates presented here for this syntactic phenomenon represent the continuing effects of a conservative dialect in the interior of the island of Puerto Rico.
Aims and objectives: The goals of this study are to examine attitudes toward Kaqchikel Maya and Spanish in domains of life in a village and a town in central Guatemala and to examine the influence of indigenous participants’ attitudes toward Kaqchikel on Kaqchikel acquisition. Method: The study draws on fieldwork employing interviews and a sociolinguistic questionnaire. To investigate attitudes, we employed questions focusing on the importance of Kaqchikel and Spanish for domains of community life. The questionnaire also tested conversational ability in Kaqchikel. Data and analysis: Responses to the survey questions are examined in quantitative analyses of valuations of the importance of Kaqchikel and Spanish in domains for participants from the village and the town and of the importance of Kaqchikel for indigenous adults and students. Also gauged through quantitative analysis are correlations between attitudes toward the importance of Kaqchikel in the domains and acquired conversational ability in Kaqchikel of indigenous adults and students. Findings: The findings underscore differences and similarities in attitudes toward the two languages in the town and the village as well as differences in the attitudes of indigenous adults and students. The effects of instrumental and integrative attitudes toward Kaqchikel on Kaqchikel acquisition are highlighted for the students. Originality: Points of originality include the size of the participant sample (252), the breakdown of the sample by village and town, and by non-indigenous and indigenous participants and age groups. They include the focus on attitudes toward Kaqchikel as related to the acquisition of conversational ability in Kaqchikel for indigenous adults and students. Implications: The study confirms a shift in attitudes toward the importance of Kaqchikel for indigenous students compared to indigenous adults. For Kaqchikel-language programs for youth, the study underscores the need for fomenting awareness of the importance of Kaqchikel in domains of community life.
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