Bienvenidos

La Tertulia al mediodía tiene una duración de una hora debido a nuestro limitado tiempo estudiantil. El blog tendrá la misión de continuar la conversación dada en la Tertulia, inquietudes sobre la misma, presentar nuevas ideas, preguntas y comenzar nuevas discusiones. Con este fin, a todos aquellos que quieran participar, pueden enviar un correo electrónico a latertulia.uf@gmail.com, o escribir un comentario al final de cada blog.

Monday, December 1, 2008

A Variation Analysis of the Tense/Aspect System of Stative Verbs in Salmantino Spanish

por Stephanie Knouse, para la Tertulia, jueves 4 de diciembre del 2008, Periodo 7 (1:55-2:45pm)

In my dissertation entitled “A Variation Analysis of the Tense/Aspect System of Stative Verbs in Salmantino Spanish,” I unite the areas of Spanish Language Variation and Change, Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and Discourse Analysis to analyze how native speakers use verbs referring to states (i.e. ser, estar, tener) when narrating in the past tense. This research is based on a corpus of 25 oral interviews that I collected while in Salamanca, Spain. Until now this research topic has never been exhaustively explored, nor has it been investigated under a framework that incorporates both qualitative and quantitative analyses of linguistic and social factors. This research seeks to identify the specific grammatical elements (e.g. person, verb type, polarity) and social characteristics of speakers (i.e. sex and age) that shape how past tense forms are chosen by the Salmantino speech community. By exposing which linguistic and social factors influence speaker choice, many unanswered questions can be brought to light concerning the Spanish past tense system, as well as the exact role that verbs referring to states play in this phenomenon. This investigation also will determine whether the different forms of stative verbs in the past tense point toward linguistic change or whether the preference of one form over another is a defining characteristic of speakers of a particular social group, thus offering a connection to the broader picture of Spanish language evolution. Finally, the findings of this research will help to revise and refine grammatical explanations in Spanish textbooks to appropriately reflect native speaker face-to-face conversation, which will allow non-native students to attain a more native-like proficiency in the language.