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Document Details :

Title: Análisis de errores en las relativas
Subtitle: Un ejemplo de tensión entre economía gramatical y eficiencia comunicativa
Author(s): DI TULLIO, Ángela , SUÑER, Avel•lina
Journal: ITL - International Journal of Applied Linguistics
Volume: 139    Date: 2003   
Pages: 7-26
DOI: 10.2143/ITL.139.0.2003196

Abstract :
The relativization devices of a language can be hierarchized according to case codification on the basis of linguistic typology, diachrony and acquisition studies. Yet, such a scale is sensitive to the variation between spoken and written language. In Spanish, the canonical relative, proper of the written language, fills a clause internal slot of the relative. Spoken language, however, drastically reduces morpho-syntactic marling (as shown, e.g., by the depronominalization of the relative marker and by quesuismo), while at the same time simplifying the semantic compatibility relations with the antecedent (extending, e.g., the use of donde 'where'). We propose to analyse native speakers' and language learners' errors, including those stemming from hypercorrection, in order to find out which are the prevailing relativization strategies. The tension between grammatical economy and communicative efficiency explains the fluctuation between simplification, on the one hand, characterized by the loss of prepositions and by the use of marked relative forms (e.g. cuyo 'whose'), and on the other, the recovery of information, e.g. through the use of resumptive pronouns. Special attention will be paid to the so-called 'subordinate subject relative attraction', which privileges clause-internal concordance relations.