Purpose
To transculturally adapt the Neck Disability Index to Mexican Spanish (NDI-Mx) and to evaluate its psychometric properties.
Methods
Translation and transcultural adaptation of the NDI were ...conducted according to published guidelines. The test–retest reliability of the NDI-Mx was assessed with intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC
3,1
), the student t
-
test, standard error of measurement, minimal detectable change and Bland–Altman plot. Cronbach’s α coefficient was used to evaluate internal consistency. Floor and ceiling effects were also evaluated. Convergent validity was assessed by comparison of the NDI-Mx with the Northwick Park Neck Pain Questionnaire (NPQ) through the Spearman correlation coefficient. Finally, a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted.
Results
The sample was composed of 113 subjects (38 men and 75 women) with a mean age of 30 (SD, 12.19) years. All items of the NDI-Mx showed good test–retest reliability (ICC
3,1
= 0.86) and good internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = 0.85). Floor and ceiling effects were not observed. There was good convergent validity with a high correlation between NDI-Mx and NPQ (ρ = 0.83). The CFA revealed that a one-factor solution fitted adequately the data (χ
2
(32) = 41.18, p = .13).
Conclusion
The NDI-Mx seems to be a valid and reliable tool that can be used in clinical practice and research on Mexican populations with neck pain.
This study tests if New Mexican Spanish speakers’ productions of words that variably display paragogic /e/ (
‘corner’) are predictable from their lexical frequency, utterance position, and the ...frequency with which these words occur in an utterance position that conditions paragoge. In the study, the variable that measures the frequency with which words occur in the conditioning context is referred to as the
. The analysis of 77 word types and 2,235 tokens produced by 24 speakers demonstrates that the likelihood that a speaker produces paragogic /e/ increases when words are produced at the end of an utterance. The study also finds novel evidence for the mediating effect of lexical frequency on the effect of the FCC variable: the influence of the frequency with which words are produced in utterance-final position on the likelihood of paragogic /e/ is strengthened as lexical frequency
. Together with research on reductive phonological processes (e.g., Forrest, John. 2017. The dynamic interaction between lexical and contextual frequency: A case study of (ING).
29(2). 129–156), it seems that the effect of the FCC variable is amplified by lexical frequencies that already harbor the phonological process. These novel findings invite scholars to reconsider the assumption that such effects require many exemplars to shape lexical representation and speech production.
The current study analyzes variable subject pronoun expression (SPE) for first-person singular (1sg) and third-person subjects in a variety of Mexican Spanish spoken by first-generation Mexican ...immigrants in the state of Georgia, Southeastern U.S. Conversational data from sociolinguistic interviews are employed to examine tokens of 1sg and third-person variable SPE and their usage patterns, considering factors such as tense-mood-aspect (TMA), switch reference, polarity, and verb class by means of logistic regression analyses. Results suggest that all four factors influence 1sg variation, but that third-person variation is restricted to switch reference and TMA. In addition, a significant link between switch reference and TMA is found for third-person subjects, but not for 1sg. The findings lend further support to previous scholars advocating the importance of studying individual grammatical persons in SPE research as this can reveal previously obfuscated nuances in the patterns of subject variation.
Com base em pressupostos e princípios da Linguística Funcional Centrada no Uso (Bybee 2010 e Furtado da Cunha et al. 2013), analisamos, neste artigo, a intercalação de Cláusulas Hipotáticas ...Circunstanciais Temporais em dados de 54 entrevistas do Corpus Sociolingüístico de la Ciudad de México (CSCM), tratando-a como uma categoria de protótipos. Os 514 dados revelam 13 types, entre os quais o exemplar Verbo auxiliar de perífrase (∆) Temporal (∆) Verbo principal de perífrase foi considerado o caso mais prototípico de intercalação de Temporais, com base em alta complexidade estrutural, baixa frequência token e baixa produtividade (frequência no type). Percebemos, também, que a função textual-discursiva mais típica das temporais intercaladas é guia/orientação circunstancial. Do ponto de vista cognitivo, os usos de cláusulas intercaladas, do protótipo à margem, são motivados por mecanismos que tendem a reduzir esforços de codificação, refletindo marcação, iconicidade (Givón 1995, 2001) e expressividade (Dubois e Votre 2012).
Current end-to-end speech recognizer systems report an excellent performance for Spanish. However, this is not reported for specific variants. Moreover, it is unclear if there would be a benefit in ...creating a fine-tuned version for a particular variant. To investigate these aspects, particularly for Mexican Spanish, we evaluate four different of-the-shelf speech recognizers (one commercial and three open-source); additionally, we fine-tune two systems for Mexican Spanish. We evaluate read and spontaneous speech, present an error analysis and show that fine-tuning for a variant decreases the error rate. As a result of our experimentation, we build two new systems available to the community.
Rhotic assibilation is a common sociolinguistic variable observed in different Spanish speaking countries such as Argentina, Ecuador, and México. Previous studies reported that rhotic assibilation ...alternates with the flap and/or with the trill. In this study, we explore three aspects of rhotic assibilation in the Spanish of the state of Chihuahua, Mexico/El Paso, TX, United States: (1) Its diachronic development; (2) the linguistic and social factors that affect this variation and; (3) the possible effect of contact with English in this variable. Fifty-eight participants, including Spanish monolingual and Spanish-English bilingual subjects, performed one formal and two semi-informal speech production tasks. Acoustic and perceptual analysis of the tokens showed that the variation is not binary (standard vs. non-standard variant), but that it includes other rhotic variants with varying degrees of frication. Variation is restricted to phrase-final position and heavily favored by preceding front vowels (/e/ and /i/). These effects have a clear aerodynamic and articulatory motivation. Rhotic assibilation is not receding, as previously reported. It continues to be a prestigious variable prevalent amongst females, but also present in male speakers. The comparison between bilingual and monolingual speakers shows that contact with English does not significantly affect the occurrence of assibilation.
El objetivo de este trabajo es describir los rasgos prosódicos –tonema y campo tonal– de los enunciados interrogativos neutros y orientados en la variedad del español de la Ciudad de México. Se ...analiza una muestra de enunciados absolutos y qu- registrados en el módulo de conversaciones libres del corpus Norma Lingüística Culta (Lope Blanch 1971) y Habla Popular de la Ciudad de México (Lope Blanch 1976). Los resultados del análisis cualitativo muestran: i) el tonema L* (L)H% –con las variantes L* (L)¡H%, !H* ¡H%– en interrogativas absolutas de búsqueda y confirmación de información, ii) la configuración L* L% en los enunciados interrogativos qu de búsqueda de información y el tono de juntura H% asociado con la condición no neutra –hipotética o confirmativa– del enunciado; iii) se sugiere el uso del campo tonal como un recurso prosódico para la expresión de un menor o mayor conocimiento acerca de la respuesta esperada. Los datos de conversación libre confirman parcialmente las descripciones basadas en tareas de completamiento discursivo para esta variedad del español (de-la-Mota et al. 2010).
Introducción: Los videos y los videoblogs de cocina constituyen un formato popular de amplia divulgación. Desde un punto de vista lingüístico, se trata de un tipo de discurso altamente instructivo en ...el que llaman la atención algunas construcciones perifrásticas a partir del verbo de movimiento ir (ir a + INF, ir + gerundio y la cadena perifrástica ir a + ir + gerundio) cuyo análisis semántico-funcional está en el centro de interés de este artículo. Métodos: Después de haber resumido los diferentes valores semánticos de las construcciones con ir, se dará un breve resumen de los trabajos dedicados a su uso en el español hablado en Cuba y México. La parte empírica consiste en el análisis cuantitativo y cualitativo de un microcorpus, transcrito de manera ortográfica, de aproximadamente 130 minutos de discursos culinarios provenientes de programas de cocina cubanos y mexicanos. Resultados: El estudio demuestra que el uso de las construcciones en el contexto analizado, en términos generales, corresponde a las funciones ya conocidas. Sin embargo, hay que constatar que los valores semánticos de ir a + INF, ir + ger. y sus combinaciones no se limitan al uso aspecto-temporal, sino engloban también un valor pragmático-textual. Conclusiones: Más allá del análisis detallado, el tratamiento del tema muestra que la descripción de fenómenos gramaticales sigue fuertemente determinada por categorías sólidamente establecidas y visiones eurocéntricas que raramente son cuestionadas.
Resumen
En la actualidad, la detección de palabras fonéticamente similares se ha logrado de forma exitosa gracias a la utilización de algoritmos fonéticos. Sin embargo, tales algoritmos dependen del ...lenguaje al que pertenecen, por lo que generalmente no están optimizados para el español. Por esta razón, en el siguiente artículo se presentará el algoritmo PFS y su variante PFS-US, los cuales son algoritmos fonéticos que consideran la fonología del español hablado en el centro de México, y fueron diseñados para detectar palabras fonéticamente similares en grandes conjuntos de palabras. Ahora bien, a través de un análisis comparativo entre otros cuatro algoritmos fonéticos de estado del arte, analizaremos la consideración fonológica mencionada. Para ello, se definieron métricas independientes de la lengua para evaluar algoritmos fonéticos en general. Dichas métricas se basan en la estructura de los grupos de palabras fonéticamente similares entre sí y su relación con palabras que no son similares con ninguna otra. Adicionalmente, los recursos generados se comparten de forma libre para su uso y análisis.
•Spanish heritage speakers were tested on knowledge of Differential Object Marking.•Participants display omission of obligatory DOM with direct objects in written production.•Participants made errors ...in a comprehension task testing DOM objects.•Adult first generation immigrants display similar patterns as the heritage speakers.•Structural changes with DOM are observed in first and second generation immigrants.
This study investigated changes with Differential Object Marking (DOM)—the overt morphological marking of animate direct objects—observed in Spanish heritage speakers who are second generation immigrants in the United States. Previous studies of these speakers found that they omit the obligatory use of a with animate, specific direct objects in oral production (Montrul, 2004; Montrul and Bowles, 2009). The present study assessed the potential effects of quantity and quality of input on the degree of DOM erosion by controlling for age of onset of bilingualism and by establishing whether this phenomenon would also be subject to attrition in the first generation of immigrants. A total of 64 young adult heritage speakers, 23 adult immigrants from Mexico, and 40 native speakers from Mexico matched in age and SES were tested with a written/auditory comprehension and a written production task. Main findings indicated that native speakers from Mexico performed largely at ceiling in both tasks, whereas the three immigrant groups, including the first generation immigrants, omitted obligatory a in written production and made errors in comprehension. These findings suggest that structural changes with DOM in US Spanish occur at the representational level in some individuals are due to both insufficient input in middle childhood and different parental input in adolescence and early adulthood, in addition to potential transfer from English.
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