Contemporary Advances in Theoretical and Applied Spanish Linguistic Variation ed. by Juan J. Colomina-Almiñana (review)

This compilation, devoted to Spanish linguistic variation and change, consists of ten chapters distributed into four parts. In the introduction of Contemporary Advances in Theoretical and Applied Spanish Linguistic Variation, Colomina-Almiñana reviews Spanish language variation scholarship discussing its development during the twentieth century and highlighting its coming of age in the twenty-first century to the point of providing major contributions to sociolinguistic research.

Chapter 1 constitutes part 1 (Historical Linguistics). John Ryan uses data from Cantar del Mio Cid, Jarchas, and Cartularios de Valpuesta searching for patterns to account for earlier stages of Peninsular Spanish. Findings reveal structures found in both contemporary Italian mainland dialects and primeval Spanish. Commonalities include preferential use of the diminutive ending -iello/-iella, infinitive verbs ending in -ir and -er, post nominal possessive adjectives, and preference for first-person singular future forms ending in -aggio. This analysis exemplifies how variationist research can contribute to diachronic linguistics.

Part 2 (Phonetics and Morphosyntax) has three chapters. Whitney Chappell and Francisco Martínez-Ibarra (chapter 2) explore /s/ to /ɾ/ reduction in the Spanish of Elche, a Mediterranean city. The analysis shows how recent migrations of monolingual Spanish speakers to this formerly Catalan-dominated area impact the /s/ rhotacization. An interplay of linguistic and social predictors reveals that /s/-rhotacization is conditioned by following segment and sex, respectively. The phenomenon is more likely among older men with no college education, among bilinguals, and in casual speech involving faster speech rates.

Irene Checa-García (chapter 3) explores resumptive pronouns in Peninsular Spanish relative clauses employing quantitative and qualitative approaches. Findings suggest that pragmatic meanings are expressed more frequently than semantic meanings through resumptive elements. Resumption and the gap strategy (no resumptive pronoun) are frequently found in free variation. This analysis evinces the need to consider multiple causation and to combine methodologies to differentiate which causation operates first and in what cases, as what could appear as a phenomenon with one causation is actually due to several factors.

In chapter 4, Sarah Sinnott explores the variation between discourse markers por tanto and por lo tanto in written Peninsular Spanish. Results reveal that por lo tanto is more frequent in volitional causality whereas por tanto is favored within nonvolitional relations. This concurs with previous findings and supports the hypothesis that the distribution of both discourse markers correlates with volitionality. This analysis contributes to a new perspective to the study of variation in Spanish discourse markers.

Part 3 (Linguistic Attitudes and Discourse Analysis) has three chapters. Mark Hoff and Rosa María Piqueres Gilabert (chapter 5) analyze attitudes toward three morphosyntactic variables in Argentina: (de)queísmo, differential object marking (DOM), and the use of the present subjunctive instead of the imperfect subjunctive. No significant differences exist for (de)queísmo and the present subjunctive/imperfect subjunctive alternation. In DOM, the nonstandard variant is more positively ranked than the standard. This study improves our conception of speech community consciousness and provides new perspectives on attitudes toward language variation.

María Irene Moyna provides a contrastive analysis of the vocatives che and bo, in Montevideo, Uruguay (chapter 6). Although both bo and che are colloquial, che is considered more neutral. Bo, considered a difference between Uruguayan and Argentinean Spanish, appears to retain certain pragmatic features that che has lost and is more frequent among young men interacting with other young men or in impolite exchanges. Whereas both female and male youngsters show neutral or positive attitudes, older women reject the use of bo.

Carolina Viera explores Hispanic linguistics and literature studies conference presentations delivered in the United States (chapter 7). Linguistics and literature are found to be two different genres. While linguistics presentations constitute reports of research findings, literature presentations are argumentative texts that work around a thesis statement. Although presentations are organized differently depending on genre, their shared structure includes interpersonal stages and a certain degree of informality...