The well-known sampling limitation of most longitudinal corpus data can be even more consequential in the study of morphosyntactic variation in child language. An analysis of caregiver input suggests that variable use in overlapping contexts may be hard to find by solely relying on corpus data collected under the sampling procedures that are…

During the last years there has been an increasing interest in examining the brain responses to word order variations. In one ERP study conducted in Spanish, Casado, Martin-Loeches, Munoz, and Fernandez-Frias (2005) had participants read Spanish transitive sentences with either an SVO (subject-verb-object) or an OVS order. The word order of a…

Any person who has taught Spanish as a second language or who has interacted with a non-native speaker of Spanish can easily tell that mastering the correct use of the copulas "ser" and "estar" is very difficult in both spoken and written production. But L2 learners are not alone. The Spanish copulas also present difficulty and frustration for L2…

Argues in favor of a syntactic analysis of secondary predication and against the semantic approach to predication. Most of the evidence to be adduced comes from Spanish. It is posited that secondary predicates are base-generated inside VP in Spanish, confirming Culicover and Wilken's (1984) and Robert's (1988) analysis for English. (40 references)…

Explores the interrelationships among mood usage, syntactic contrast and past temporal reference in Spanish. Describes specific effects of varying temporal reference on mood and syntactic signaling, and employs an inventory of five subjunctive determining matrices to show that such effects are best explained by means of a…

Discusses the use of the comma in Spanish and gives examples of its use in Spanish literature. (NCR)

Discusses the uses of the comma in Spanish and shows a poem that can be interpreted in different ways with different punctuation. (NCR)

Summarizes some findings on mood selection in Spanish resulting from various research projects and suggests guidelines for teaching the subjunctive at the beginning level. Suggests that teachers concentrate on commands and adverbial expressions in the beginning levels because they constitute the structures most needed to engage in speech. (SED)

Discusses the infrequently used Spanish future subjunctive ending "-re." (NCR)

Regardless of the syntactic variation of the direct object "a" in Spanish, a great deal of semantic unity underlies its use. Argues that it carries an invariant meaning that is present in every use of the form, and, concomitantly, its absence before a direct object carries an equally invariant meaning within the systematic semantic structure of…

Analyzes the uses of "quien" as an interrogative and a relative pronoun with numerous examples from standard spoken Spanish. Emphasizes syntactic and contextual factors, as well as stylistic variations, and explains the contrast between "quien" and "que" as subjects of a relative clause. (MES)

Investigates the apparent correspondences for infinitival "to," and analyzes the basis for the common error of equating it with "a"--the mistaken identification of an English grammatical complementizer with a Spanish lexical preposition. (SL)

Illustrates with numerous examples and analyses the various uses of "quien." Discusses alternation between "quien" and the groups "el cual"/"el que," variation in the verb agreement, the function of "quien" as an indefinite pronoun, as well as questions of stylistic preference and correctness. (MES)

Examines the syntactic characteristics of Spanish verbs of motion dividing them into two classes, those that designate movement and those that designate both movement and change of place. Analyzes the differences between the two classes by contrasting Spanish and English usage. (MES)

Presents a critique of John Knowles' (1975) analysis of Spanish impersonal "se." (AM)