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Changing the focus: An empirical study of "Focalizing ser" (‘to be’) in Dominican Spanish

This article examines the perception and production of the Focalizing Ser (FS) structure by Dominican speakers living in three urban communities: Santiago de los Caballeros, Sosúa, and Santo Domingo de Guzmán. FS has received increasing attention over the past years and several studies have investigated it from various linguistic perspectives in Spanish varieties where it is typically found (e.g. Venezuelan Spanish and Colombian Spanish). Although previously reported in Dominican Spanish (Toribio 2002, Alba 2004), FS has still not been extensively analyzed in this variety. The results of three different tests (two acceptability judgment tests and one semi-production test) indicate that FS is certainly entrenched in Dominican speakers’ linguistic inventory and that certain focus types (e.g. FS-focused subject and object DPs, FS-focused CPs and IPs, FS- focused complex VPs, and FS-focused prepositional phrases) are more favorably perceived and more frequently produced across all FS dialects

Isogloss, vol 1, núm. 1 (2015)

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona; Universitat de Girona

Author: Méndez Vallejo, Dunia Catalina
Date: 2015
Abstract: This article examines the perception and production of the Focalizing Ser (FS) structure by Dominican speakers living in three urban communities: Santiago de los Caballeros, Sosúa, and Santo Domingo de Guzmán. FS has received increasing attention over the past years and several studies have investigated it from various linguistic perspectives in Spanish varieties where it is typically found (e.g. Venezuelan Spanish and Colombian Spanish). Although previously reported in Dominican Spanish (Toribio 2002, Alba 2004), FS has still not been extensively analyzed in this variety. The results of three different tests (two acceptability judgment tests and one semi-production test) indicate that FS is certainly entrenched in Dominican speakers’ linguistic inventory and that certain focus types (e.g. FS-focused subject and object DPs, FS-focused CPs and IPs, FS- focused complex VPs, and FS-focused prepositional phrases) are more favorably perceived and more frequently produced across all FS dialects
Format: application/pdf
ISSN: 2385-4138
Document access: http://hdl.handle.net/10256/10131
Language: eng
Publisher: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona; Universitat de Girona
Is part of: Isogloss, vol 1, núm. 1 (2015)
Rights: Attribution 3.0 Spain
Rights URI: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/
Subject: Lingüística comparada
Comparative linguistics
Llenguatge i llengües -- Variació
Language and languages -- Variation
Lingüística
Linguistics
Dominicanismes
Title: Changing the focus: An empirical study of "Focalizing ser" (‘to be’) in Dominican Spanish
Type: info:eu-repo/semantics/article
Repository: DUGiDocs

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