Abstract

This article investigates the use of right-dislocation in Catalan and Spanish. We have measured the productivity of right-dislocation in a corpus of an original Catalan text and its Spanish translation regarding four variables: category, grammatical function, discourse function, and distance with respect to the antecedent. The analysis shows that right-dislocation is a marginal phenomenon in Spanish, not only from a quantitative (10 occurrences vs. 232 occurrences in the Catalan text), but from a qualitative point of view: right-dislocation in Catalan affects all the categories, grammatical functions, discourse functions, and distances with respect to the antecedent, whereas in Spanish it is restricted to nominals (SD and DEM) and sentences (SC), to subject and object functions, mainly to a the (re)introduction of a topic in the discourse, and to extreme distances (1 and 4). So then, in order to fulfill the tasks covered by right-dislocation in Catalan, Spanish must resort to other mechanisms — the placement of the dislocate in situ, its omission, or left-dislocation—, which suggests that the difference between these languages has to do with the different discourse management of the same collection of syntactic resources.

Abstract

The article sets out to relate the intentional element of discursive activity with some translating strategies, starting on the basis that the translated text, which is subjected to the demands of a prior communicative act, is a good tool to highlight both the intentional capacity of some linguistic resources and their constraints. Many grammatical forms have an important role, as much or more than the one associated with lexical elements in the creation of this purpose. As a consequence, this paper is based on the analysis of the translation of the French connector pourtant into Catalan and Spanish in a corpus of literary texts and its respective translations. Particularly, it focuses on those ones which, despite their correctness at formal level, have discarded intentional aspects, so they have given rise to an eroded translation from the communicative point of view. At the same time, this work can be used to discover some semantic-pragmatic nuances attached to the connector pourtant that are more difficult to notice from a monolingual perspective.

Abstract

The category of determination (or indetermination) is typical of all languages. In Italian, this category is grammaticalized in the forms of articles. Articles — the relationship between definite and indefinite — have always been one of the features of Italian grammar that Russian-speaking students find challenging. This is in part because of the frequency of exceptions to the stated rules and in part because of a terminology which, instead of simplifying, complicates the situation. The analysis of essays written by Russian students of Italian showed that approximately one third of their mistakes concerns the failure to recognize the need to use the indefinite article in the plural (ho passato le/delle vacanze bellissime - I enjoyed my holidays). The discussion of these mistakes made clear that students cannot feel the difference from a pragmatic (and implicational) point of view in the usage of the two articles. In light of this, Valency Grammar can be a valid tool to shorten the gap existing between theoretical knowledge and practical competence.

Abstract

Abstract: The study of neology is inextricably linked with the study of language change and, therefore, with diachrony. The aim of this paper is to describe the semantic change process undergone by the Catalan verb esmar, which is the etymological form of the Latin verb *ADAESTIMARE, parallel to the Latinism estimar. This research is corpus-based, using large corpora along with other manually processed materials. The concepts of subjectivation and inferences according to the Invited Inference Theory of Semantic Change (IITSC) have been applied to these materials. Key words: Diachronic semantics, inference, subjectivization, evidentiality, pragmatics, semantic change.