Pekka Posio

University of Helsinki | HY · Department of Languages

Previous research has identified differences in language use between speakers representing different genders and sexual orientations, as well as stereotypical beliefs about the existence of such differences. The present paper investigates such stereotypical beliefs among speakers of two varieties of Spanish and explores whether linguistic stereotyp...

The Spanish discourse marker bueno, literally 'good', is a notoriously polyfunctional item that has been argued to serve several seemingly divergent functions, ranging from the expression of agreement to the expression of disagreement. It has also been observed that, as bueno frequently occurs at the beginning of reported speech, it may be grammati...

Is the use of the first-person singular becoming more prevalent in journalistic writing, like often claimed, and what is it used for? In order to tackle these questions, we analysed 11,775 articles published between 1960 and 2010 in the cultural sections of ABC and El País (Spain), Dagens Nyheter (Sweden), Helsingin Sanomat (Finland), Le Monde (Fra...

El presente estudio examina la forma y la función de los introductores cuotativos con el verbo decir, a saber, secuencias utilizadas para introducir diálogo construido en el discurso, en el español peninsular y argentino. Se identifican y se investigan varias diferencias morfosintácticas y distribucionales entre las dos variedades en cuanto a la ex...

The Cambridge Handbook of Spanish Linguistics - edited by Kimberly L. Geeslin August 2018

Cambridge Core - Latin American Studies - The Cambridge Handbook of Spanish Linguistics - edited by Kimberly L. Geeslin

o La presente investigación compara las estrategias de impersonalización individualizadoras en el español peninsular y en el portugués europeo. Dichas estructuras incluyen pronombres y formas verbales como la segunda persona del singular y el pronombre indefinido-impersonal uno. La comparación entre español y portugués resulta interesante, ya que e...

The present investigation deals with the variable use of referential devices expressing generic or speaker-oriented reference in a corpus of sociolinguistic interviews where Spanish informants talk about their studies and work experience. The analysis focuses on impersonal second person singulars (2SG-imp), which are compared with the first person...

La presente investigación compara el uso de dos construcciones impersonales con referencia humana (CIRH) –construcciones con se y la tercera persona del plural– en dos corpus orales de español peninsular, uno de conversaciones familiares y otro de medios de comunicación. El objetivo es averiguar hasta qué punto el uso de estas dos construcciones es...

Subject pronoun usage in Romance null-subject languages is often presented as a general, binary, language-wide phenomenon conditioned e.g. by sociolinguistic or information-structural factors. This paper argues that subject expression or omission should also be examined in specific local contexts where it may exhibit patterns of usage that diverge...

The frequency of expressed first-person-singular subjects is significantly higher in European Portuguese (EP) than in Peninsular Spanish (PS). In both languages, subject expression is sensitive to the relative focusing of attention on different participants of the event and same/switch reference. In addition, in both PS and EP, subject-pronoun usag...

This article is a contribution to recent discussion on impersonality. The focus is on speaker-inclusive and speaker-exclusive interpretation of European Portuguese (EP) and Finnish impersonal constructions where the range of potential human referents is left open and, by default, construed as human and plural. These include reflexive-based se-imper...

Peninsular Spanish (PS) and European Portuguese (EP) are null subject languages where subject person is expressed by verbal affixes and the use of subject pronouns is considered to be reserved e.g. for such purposes as the expression of contrast or emphasis. However, the use of pronominal subjects differs strikingly between the two languages. The p...

Although both constituent order and variation in the expression of pronominal subjects are well-established research topics in Hispanic and Lusophone linguistics, the placement of pronominal subjects has received relatively little attention in previous research. The goal of the present study is to fill this gap by examining postverbal pronominal su...

A considerable body of literature exists on the use of subject pronouns in Spanish. However, the influence of semantic and pragmatic factors on subject pronoun usage has not been examined thoroughly enough. This paper deals with the frequency and patterns of usage of first and second person singular subject pronouns with 14 different verbs in a cor...

In my ongoing research I deal with the problem of applying semantic roles to the analysis of spoken language corpora in order to find out to what extent semantic roles correlate with the presence vs. absence of pronominal subjects in Spanish and Portuguese (Posio 2011, in press). This presentation focuses on the problems of using semantic roles as...

Tutkimuksen aihe on subjektipronominin ei-pakollinen käyttö finiittisten verbimuotojen yhteydessä espanjan ja portugalin kielessä. Tutkimuskohteena ovat yksikön ensimmäisen persoonan verbimuodot Espanjassa ja Portugalissa kerätyissä puhekielen korpuksissa. Tutkimuksen tarkoitus on selvittää, mitkä semanttiset ja pragmaattiset tekijät vaikuttavat su...