Resnick, Melvyn C.

By reexamining the concept of regularity and irregularity
as applicable to the Spanish verb, a set of rules has
been devised and presented here to enable the regularization
of the vast majority of the Spanish traditionally termed
irregular verbs.
To accomplish such regularization, we have introduced
or redefined several terms. The dichotomous division of
verbs into regular and irregular is reexamined, and a third
group of verbs is formed and treated as REGULABLE, Six
constituents have been distinguished in each verb form as
followsa Stem, STEM MODIFIER, theme vowel, THEME VOWEL
MODIFIER, TENSE-MOOD-STRESS MARKER, and person-number marker.
These are used to permit the consistent use of phonologically
predictable paradigms for almost all Spanish verbs including
the vast majority of the so-called irregular verbs in the
language,
The stem and theme vowel of each verb are always constant
to enable identification and classification of all verbs from
these two constituents.
No two forms out of the fifty finite forms which constitute
each paradigm are identical (excluding defective verbs
and those with more than one paradigm); distinction between
two generated forms is never based on stress alone. Furthermore,
the stress distribution, tense and mood are always predicted by tense-mood-stress constituent.
The thesis contains seventy-four tables, five charts,
and three appendices. However, neither defective verbs
(unless the defective verbs follow a definite regulable
pattern) nor non-finite forms have been treated here.
These rules demonstrate that the apparent arbitrariness
of many Spanish verb irregularities are reasonable consequences
of phonological principles.

Competence errors reveal a learner's lack of knowledge of target
language (TL) rules. Other errors may be corrected immediately and are
regarded as performance errors. Some errors involve rules also within
the learner's TL competence even though these errors are left uncorrected
in speech, possibly because the still-unconsolidated rules
require conscious monitoring which has been impeded in a stressful
situation.
This study proposes and tests the hypothesis that such uncorrected
errors are also performance errors. Five adult Spanish-speaking
learners of English were asked to perform three speech tasks under differing
degrees of monitoring difficulty. They later edited a transcription
of their speech and attempted to discriminate the correct form
on a test. Errors that a subject edited and discriminated correctly
were considered performance errors. Stabilized variability errors were
inconsistently edited or discriminated, while true competence errors
were not recognized by the subjects.

This thesis presents an overview of the paths taken
by the proponents of contrastive analysis and error analysis,
addressing specific positions held and studies done in
these two areas of linguistics. A brief historical survey
of linguistics, learning theories, and teaching strategies
is given, dating from pre-structuralism through to poststructuralism.
Following a discussion of contrastive
analysis and its influence on the development of error
analysis, the merits of interlanguage are discussed for
the purpose of demonstrating its very vital contributions
to the field of second-language learning.

Selected segmental phonemes of the Spanish of the city and canton
of Liberia, in Guanacaste, Costa Rica, are described and analyzed on
articulatory criteria. Tabulation of frequencies of occurrence of principle
allophones of each phoneme show the rural and urban speech of this
area to be similar in all but one feature, the pronunciation of /tr/.
A comparison of the Spanish of Liberia with published data on the Spanish of nearby Nicaragua and the socially and politically influential
Valle Central of Costa Rica shows the sharing of important phonological
features with the speech of these two areas.

This study is intended as an aid to the teaching of English as
a foreign (or second) language to speakers of Yoruba. Four
areas are discussed in relation to this aim:
1. the need for Nigeri an teachers who have studied the
sound system of English
2. the theoretical basis and applications of contrastive
analysis and error analysis (It is suggested that the
two can operate together to reveal a learner's problems
at the performance and competence levels respectively.)
3. the actual contrastive analysis (using Ladefoged's
prime features as criteria for compariLon and prediction)
4. the error analysis, where errors are classified and
discussed in regard to their explanation.
It is shown that the articulatory parameters which cause allophonic
variation in the native language (e.g. rate of
breath release, vocal tract tension and coarticulation) are
carried over into the pronunciation of the language being
learned, and are major factors in producing a nonstandard
accent.

Thi s study consists of a descriptive phonological
analysis of the Spanish of Tampa, Florida. Selected segmental
features are then compared with those of the Castilian of Asturias
and Galicia, as well as with present-day Cuban Spanish. The predominant
influence in the phonology of Tampa Spanish is determined
to be Cuban, rather than the Castilian of Asturias or Galicia spoken
by many of the early settlers of Tampa.
Several highly distinctive traits of Tampa Spanish are
pointed out which would facilitate dialect identification.

The phoneme /s/ appEars as the sibilant [s] in standard Spanish and
has a high functional load. In those dialects of Spanish in which /s/ -->
[ø], however, the question arises as to how, apart from context, those
morphological distinctions carried by /s/ are maintained. This study attempts
to verify experimentally the often-repeated hypothesis that a compensatory
phonemic change in quality takes place in the vowel immediately preceding this
[ø] allophone of /s/ in syllable-final and word-final positions.
Speech samples were elicited from four native speakers of Cuban Spanish;
a perception test was constructed from these samples and was administered to
20 test subjects. The items used on the perception test were also studied
spectrographically.
In neither the acoustic nor the perceptual portions of this study could
we find evidence of any phonemicization of differences in vowel quality before
word-final /s/ --> [ø].
This investigation did show that vowel length is phonemic, in this particular
dialect of Spanish, in syllable-final position before /s/ appearing as
[ø]. A significant increase in vowel length provided the test subjects used
in this study with sufficient acoustic cues to correctly discriminate pairs
of words such as patillas [patiyas] and pastillas [paøtiyas] at a rate of 91.6%.

This thesis investigates articulatory tenseness in French and English
oral vowels. Chapter I reviews notions of tenseness, Chapter II
presents experimental procedure, Chapter III contains results and
conclusions. Tense vowels within a language demonstrate greater formant frequency
deviation from a neutral vowel position than lax vowels. The deviations
of the French nuclei [...] and the English nuclei [...] are compared using spectrograms made from
recordings of Standard French and American English speakers. Measurement
is based on the difference in Hertz of the first three formant
frequencies of each vowel and the corresponding frequencies of the
neutral vowel position of that language. The French nuclei [...] exhibit greater deviation than the English
nuclei [...] from their respective neutral vowel positions and are
said to be comparatively more tense. The same measurement and
criteria show that the English nuclei [...] are comparatively
more tense than their French counterparts.

The Spanish verb is obligatorily inflected for aspect in the
past tense: the speaker must indicate by his use of either a
preterite or an imperfect form whether an action is perfective or
imperfective. Because no such obligatory morphological distinction
exists in English, the English-speaking student of Spanish may not
always make the proper distinction between tense and aspect in the
forms of the target language. The problem, then, is to teach the
student to express the aspect of any past verbal action so that he
will be able to choose correctly between the preterite and the
imperfect.
A contrastive analysis of the role of aspect in all tenses of
the verb systems of English and Spanish is presented for the purpose
of ultimately formulating the best possible set of rules for differentiating
between perfective and imperfective past actions.

The first chapter of this thesis examines the influences of
Spanish and Portuguese on the development of Papiamento, and concludes
that Papiamento is most likely of Afro-Portuguese origin. The influence
of Spanish, however, has grown steadily and to such an extent that Papiamento,
regardless of its origin, has definitely become a Spanish
creole.
A contrastive analysis of the internal constituents of Papiamento
and Spanish verb phrases, constituting the principal objective of this
thesis, is presented in chapter two. Points of conflict and agreement
in the formation of verb constructions in the two languages are emphasized
in the course of the contrastive analysis, and the salient points
are summarized in charts.
The last part of the the sis consists o f a thematic index of works
on Papiamento and a linguistic bibliography.