Papers by Andrea Mojedano Batel
International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, 2023
Forensic authorship analysis is based on two assumptions: that every individual has a unique idio... more Forensic authorship analysis is based on two assumptions: that every individual has a unique idiolect, and that features characteristic of that idiolect will recur with a relatively stable frequency. Yet, a speaker’s language can change with age, affective states, according to audience, or genre. Thus, studies on authorship analysis should adopt the theory that while some linguistic parameters of an idiolect can remain stable, others can change depending on various circumstances. This investigation, which takes a constructional and functional-based approach to discourse-level phenomena in idiolectal stability, analyzes cross-genre data produced by nine Mexican participants throughout a twelve-year time span. This study contributes to a greater understanding of the linguistic elements that survive genre effects and are potentially useful in both investigative and evidential forensic linguistic work. We provide a detailed description of linguistic features, their specific values, and context-dependent interpretation, keeping in mind the context of expert linguistic testimony, with its preference for methods which “employ linguistically motivated analyses in combination with quantitative tools” (Solan & Tiersma, 2004, p.463). Our findings show that idiolectal style tends to remain stable across genres and communication modes in epistemic modality constructions. Epistemic markers —specifically, markers indicating low commitment by the speaker (e.g., no sé ‘I don’t know’) or expressing indirectness when introducing the illocutionary force (e.g., la verdad [es que] ‘the truth [is that]’)— display idiolectal stability, as these markers seem to be the most effective in terms of allowing speakers to strategically manifest the extent of their knowledge regarding what is said.
Language and Law / Linguagem e Direito, 2022
The current investigation addresses a vital lacuna in forensic authorship studies, and more concr... more The current investigation addresses a vital lacuna in forensic authorship studies, and more concretely, in Native Language Influence Detection (NLID) research: narrowing down a speaker’s native dialect instead of only their native language (L1), which might not be enough when carrying out sociolinguistic profiling tasks. Native Dialect Influence Detection (NDID), the focus of our study, can thus greatly aid at the investigative level. We approach this topic by providing a comprehensive analysis of linguistic features that serve to identify two non-contact dialects of L1 Spanish (i.e., Mexican and Peninsular varieties) when dealing with data written in L2 English, which come from Tripadvisor. Our main aim is to investigate if an author’s L2 features can point to their L1 native dialect, rather than only to their native language. Findings point to L1 dialectal transfer of punctuation signs, adjectives of affect, and intensifiers: these linguistic features, even when expressed in an L2, show a culturally bound use. Additionally, we implemented an automatic classifier that achieved an accuracy of 69% in categorizing test data, using only linguistic features that have explanatory power and can aid linguistic theory. This is key for explainability in the forensic context, which Native Language Identification (NLI) studies tend to neglect (Kingston 2019). Results show that L1 Spanish dialects can be differentiated by analyzing L2 English text, pointing to NDID as a fertile approach for narrowing down candidate L1 dialects of a language when analyzing L2 data.
Revista de Llengua i Dret , 2023
El análisis de autoría forense se basa en que cada hablante tiene su propia versión de una lengua... more El análisis de autoría forense se basa en que cada hablante tiene su propia versión de una lengua o idiolecto cuyos rasgos lingüísticos son recurrentes de manera relativamente estable (Coulthard et al., 2011). En lingüística, hay una gran disparidad entre el conocimiento del concepto del idiolecto y su estudio con datos empíricos (Barlow, 2013). En esta investigación multigenérica (cross-genre, en inglés) cubrimos parte de estas lagunas, con datos de corpus escritos y orales del español mexicano. A través de un análisis de n-gramas de palabra, identificamos cuatro áreas de estabilidad idiolectal en español: lenguaje evaluativo y expresiones de cantidad, de modalidad deóntica y de modalidad epistémica. Nuestros resultados muestran que las construcciones gramaticales son útiles en el análisis de autoría, considerando el contexto forense, con análisis motivados lingüísticamente combinados con herramientas cuantitativas. Asimismo, proporcionamos un análisis lingüístico fundamentado en la teoría de la gramática de construcciones basada en el uso, la cual da cuenta adecuadamente del uso recurrente y particular de las construcciones idiolectales. Palabras clave: idiolecto; análisis multigenérico; variación idiolectal; análisis de autoría; lingüística forense.
Algunos estudios sugieren que el pronombre de objeto indirecto en el español mexicano ha sufrido ... more Algunos estudios sugieren que el pronombre de objeto indirecto en el español mexicano ha sufrido desgaste semántico. Según Torres Cacoullos , esto aumentaría la copresencia de frases preposicionales aparentemente correferenciales con le, aunque algunas veces los referentes no inanimados y/o no haya concordancia de número (como ejemplo, que le reconozcan la sangre a las niñas, CSCM). Este trabajo intenta proveer una descripción de los predictores de la falta de concordancia entre el pronombre dativo singular y su referente nominal plural en diferentes dialectos del español (México, España y Colombia), estudiando qué factores lingüísticos y sociales la favorecen. Los datos provienen de 138 hablantes de diferentes corpus pertinentes a cada uno de los países mencionados. El análisis de los datos revela que aunque el pronombre dativo concuerde en número con su referente nominal plural en la mayoría de los casos (62%), la falta de concordancia es un fenómeno frecuente (38%) condicionado por factores lingüísticos (inanimación y posposición del OI con respecto del verbo, y que el OD de la frase sea singular) y sociales, ya que en Colombia la falta de concordancia de le está más generalizada que en España y México.
Historical Linguistics 2017: Selected papers from the 23rd International Conference on Historical Linguistics, San Antonio, Texas, 31 July – 4 August 2017, 2020
This study examines the diachronic change in argument structure in Spanish psych-verbs of ‘liking... more This study examines the diachronic change in argument structure in Spanish psych-verbs of ‘liking’, with emphasis on the change from nominative-experiencer gustar ‘to like’ to dative-experiencer gustar. While previous studies have looked at factors pertaining to frequency and semantics, this change must also be studied taking into account certain syntactic factors, and especially the evolution of prepositional finite clauses introduced by functional prepositions. Results suggest that the subcategorization properties of the preposition are grammatically relevant in determining the linguistic encoding of the arguments of Spanish ‘liking’ constructions. This study offers an extensive corpus study of ‘liking’ verbs, spanning the 13th to the 17th centuries, and adopts a constructionist usage-based view of syntactic productivity.
Contemporary Trends in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics: Selected papers from the Hispanic Linguistic Symposium 2015, 2018
Regarding studies of Spanish in contact with Latin American indigenous languages, there has been ... more Regarding studies of Spanish in contact with Latin American indigenous languages, there has been little research on contact between Spanish and Purépecha, a language isolate from western Mexico. The present paper addresses this lacuna by examining number marking and number agreement in the Spanish production of five L1 adult Purépecha speakers, and it contributes to both the fields of second language studies and contact linguistics studies, by detecting specific structural and semantic conditions under which Purépecha morphosyntactic patterns are incorporated into Spanish: Results show non-standard number marking and lack of number agreement across the noun phrase, between the subject and the verb, and between the noun and its predicative adjective, possibly due to a shift dynamic (Thomason, 2001).
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Papers by Andrea Mojedano Batel