Conference on Dialectology and Sociolinguistics
It is only the second time that the Congresso Internacional de Dialetologia e Sociolinguística has taken place not in Brazil, but in Europe: at the University of Augsburg. In addition to a majority of contributions on Portuguese (and, more precisely, on Brazilian), the conference gave participants the opportunity to present dialectological and sociolinguistic topics on the Spanish language.
A highlight of the conference was a roundtable about languages in contact, coordinated by Azucena Palacios and Sara Gómez Seibane, in which Élodie Blestel, Carolin Patzelt and Uli Reich also participated. All five contributions, as well as the subsequent discussion, were of great interest and testified to the broad, empirical experience of the participating researchers.
Sara Carreira and I took the opportunity to present the analysis of a selected syntactic phenomenon in Equatoguinean Spanish from both a structural and a sociolinguistic perspective. Specifically, we studied the use of unstressed pronouns in the following verb categories: reflexive verbs, pronominal verbs, doubly pronominal verbs, and reciprocal pronouns. The qualitative and quantitative analysis of our data clearly showed that the vast majority of cases correspond to the canonical use of Spanish: 94.3% of all cases (n = 1712). The remaining cases reflect three phenomena: use of (redundant) pronouns in verbs that are nor reflexive nor pronominal; omission of pronouns in reflexive or pronominal verbs; and duplication of pronouns in reflexive or pronominal verbs. We were able to show statistically that these non-canonical cases – which only occur in a minority of cases anyway – are clearly sociolinguistically marked. Such results are substantially important for updating and clarifying current descriptions of Equatoguinean Spanish.
In addition to the academic program, musical and culinary contributions were also part of the conference. One of the keynote lectures, followed by a reception, took place in the beautiful Kleiner Goldener Saal in the city center, close to the Cathedral of Augsburg.
