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Language Change in the 20th Century: Exploring micro-diachronic evolutions in Romance languages
Edited by Salvador Pons Bordería and Shima Salameh Jiménez
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 340] 2024
► pp. 120–157

Chapter 4
Diatopic variation as evidence for diachronic changes in the 20th and 21st centuries

The pragmatic markers tipo, onda and como

| Tübingen University
| Tübingen University

In Latin American varieties of Spanish there is a series of pragmatic markers that fulfil similar functions. Tipo, onda and como are mitigators, but they also express approximation, exemplification, focalisation, discourse structuring and quotation. Pragmatic functions arise in the 20th century, although approximating como goes back to Old Spanish. Corpus data, metalinguistic comments and cross-linguistic observations point to the countercultures of the 20th century as a probable trigger leading to pragmaticalisation. We propose a comparative study of acceptability judgements of the three markers in their Argentinian and Mexican varieties, contributing to a semantic map showing different stages of pragmaticalisation which, combined with other data, offers insights into diachronic processes that emerged in the 20th century.

Keywords: pragmatic markers, diatopic variation, Mexican Spanish, Argentinian Spanish, semantic maps, acceptability judgements
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: The pragmatic markers tipo, onda and como
  • 2.Sources of the pragmatic functions
    • 2.1Como – from comparison marker to pragmatic marker
    • 2.2Tipo – from taxonomic noun to comparison marker
    • 2.3Onda – from ‘vibes’ to pragmatic marker
  • 3.Diatopic variation and semantic maps as diachronic evidence
    • 3.1Semantic maps as a heuristic for visualising diachronic tendencies
    • 3.2A semantic map of approximation, mitigation, discourse structuring
  • 4.Evidence for a timeline for the diachrony of tipo, onda and como
    • 4.1General remarks on real-time and apparent-time data
    • 4.2Lexicographic data
    • 4.3Corpus data
    • 4.4Metalinguistic comments
    • 4.5A note on countercultures of the 20th century as linguistic turning points
    • 4.6Cross-linguistic evidence
  • 5.Acceptability judgements as evidence for diachronic processes
    • 5.1General remarks and earlier studies
    • 5.2An acceptability judgement study of tipo, onda and como in Argentina and Mexico
    • 5.3General results
    • 5.4Early stages of pragmaticalisation: From comparison to approximation and mitigation
    • 5.5The right periphery of the semantic map: Focalisation and structuring functions
    • 5.6The special case of rounder uses
    • 5.7Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 5 January 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.340.04mih
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