CSET Spanish (145, 146, 147) cheat sheet

Phoneme = smallest contrastive sound unit; allophone = contextually predictable variant of the same phoneme (Spanish [d] and [ð] are allophones of /d/).

Minimal-pair test establishes phonemic status: if swapping one sound yields a different word (pata/bata, casa/tasa), the two sounds are separate phonemes.

Consonants are described by place, manner, and voicing; vowels by height, backness, and rounding; IPA symbols are language-independent.

Free morphemes stand alone as words; bound morphemes must attach. Derivational affixes create new lexemes and may change category; inflectional affixes mark tense, person, number, gender without creating a new lexeme.

Constituency tests include substitution (pronoun replacement), movement (fronting, clefting), and coordination; strings that pass all three behave as single syntactic constituents.

Entailment is one-directional and is cancelled by negation; presupposition is backgrounded content that survives negation and questioning.

Gricean maxims: quantity, quality, relation, manner. Flouting a maxim deliberately produces a cancellable conversational implicature inferred by the hearer.

Comparative method reconstructs proto-forms from systematic cognate sets and regular sound correspondences; irregular correspondences point to borrowing or analogical change.

Typological contrast: isolating languages use free morphemes and word order, agglutinating languages string distinct affixes, fusional languages (Spanish) fuse several grammatical meanings into one ending.

Spanish has five vowel phonemes /a, e, i, o, u/ with no contrastive length or nasality; most dialect variation is consonantal.

Default stress: words ending in a vowel, -n, or -s stress the penultimate syllable; words ending in any other consonant stress the final syllable; a written accent marks every exception.

Voiced stops /b, d, g/ are realized as approximants [β, ð, ɣ] between vowels and after liquids, but as stops after a pause or a nasal.

Spanish is a pro-drop language: verbal morphology encodes person and number, so overt subject pronouns signal emphasis, contrast, or disambiguation.

Ser encodes identity, origin, and inherent traits; estar encodes location, transient state, and result of change (está aburrido vs. es aburrido).

Subjunctive triggers: doubt, emotion, volition, impersonal expressions of opinion, non-assertive or indefinite antecedents, and conjunctions such as para que, antes de que, a menos que.

Distinción keeps /θ/ separate from /s/ (central-northern Spain); seseo merges both to [s] (most of Latin America, Canary Islands, Andalusia); ceceo merges both to [θ] in parts of Andalusia.

Yeísmo neutralizes /ʎ/ and /ʝ/ in most varieties; voseo replaces tú with vos and carries a distinct verbal paradigm in Rioplatense and Central American Spanish.

Syllable structure is onset + nucleus + coda; Spanish strongly favors CV syllables, and word-initial /s/ + consonant clusters are repaired with prothetic e- (escuela, estudiante).

Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1200) belongs to the mester de juglaría; Berceo and the Libro de Alexandre exemplify the learned mester de clerecía with cuaderna vía verse.

La Celestina (1499) by Fernando de Rojas is a dialogue novel in prose with a tragic ending, marking the transition from medieval to Renaissance sensibility.

Lazarillo de Tormes (1554) founds the picaresque: first-person pseudo-autobiography, low-born rogue, successive masters, satirical social critique.

Baroque duality: culteranismo (Góngora) foregrounds Latinized syntax and sensory imagery; conceptismo (Quevedo) foregrounds wit, puns, and compressed concepts.

Romanticism: Bécquer's Rimas and Espronceda's poetry; Realism and Naturalism: Galdós's novelas contemporáneas, Clarín's La Regenta, Pardo Bazán's Los pazos de Ulloa.

Generation of '98 (Unamuno, Machado, Valle-Inclán, Baroja) responds to the loss of the last colonies with introspection on national identity; Modernism begins with Darío's Azul (1888).

Generation of '27 (Lorca, Alberti, Salinas, Guillén, Cernuda) fuses Gongorine metaphor with avant-garde form and folk traditions such as the romancero.

Latin American Boom (García Márquez, Vargas Llosa, Cortázar, Fuentes) employs magical realism and experimental structure; indigenismo appears in Icaza and Arguedas.

Pre-Roman Iberia included Iberians, Celts, and Basques; Roman conquest from 218 BCE imposed Latin, law, and urbanism, producing the linguistic base of Spanish.

Al-Andalus (711–1492) transmitted Greek and Arabic science through translation schools such as Toledo's; thousands of Arabic loanwords entered Spanish (alcalde, aceite, azúcar).

1492 marks the fall of Granada, the expulsion of the Jews, Nebrija's Gramática castellana, and Columbus's first voyage.

Catalan, Galician, and Basque are co-official in their autonomous communities; Basque is pre-Indo-European and unrelated to the Romance languages.

The 1978 Constitution established a parliamentary monarchy and the State of Autonomies, decentralizing government and recognizing regional languages and cultures.

Latin American independence (1810s–1820s) was led by Bolívar, San Martín, and Hidalgo; the new republics faced caudillismo, regional fragmentation, and foreign economic pressure.

Día de los Muertos (November 1–2) blends Catholic All Saints' and All Souls' observances with Indigenous practices, featuring ofrendas, calaveras, and cempasúchil.

Flamenco (Andalusia) joins cante, toque, and baile, with Romani, Moorish, and Andalusian roots; mariachi (Jalisco) and tango (Río de la Plata) are other recognized national symbols.

Written accent by class: agudas (last syllable) take an accent when ending in vowel, -n, or -s; llanas (penultimate) when ending in any other consonant; esdrújulas and sobresdrújulas always carry one.

A diphthong (tierra, fuerte) contrasts with a hiatus (día, país, baúl); a written accent typically marks the stressed weak vowel that breaks the diphthong.

Address forms: tú and vosotros (informal, Spain), usted and ustedes (formal), vos with its own verb paradigm in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and parts of Central America.

Falsos amigos: actual = current, realizar = to carry out, largo = long, embarazada = pregnant, asistir = to attend, éxito = success.

Verb spelling shifts preserve pronunciation: c → qu before e (busqué), g → gu before e (llegué), z → c before e (empecé), unstressed i → y between vowels (leyó).

Cohesive devices signal logical relations: sin embargo and no obstante (contrast), por lo tanto and en consecuencia (result), además (addition), a pesar de (concession).

Expository essay structure: introduction with an explicit thesis, body paragraphs each developing one argument with evidence, conclusion synthesizing without introducing new claims.

Listening comprehension: the main idea is usually stated early and restated at the close; markers such as es decir, por ejemplo, and en resumen announce paraphrase, illustration, and summary.

ACTFL modes: interpretive (listening and reading), interpersonal (negotiated two-way interaction), presentational (prepared speaking or writing for an audience).