CSET Spanish (145, 146, 147) flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Phoneme

The smallest contrastive sound unit of a language; substituting it changes word meaning, as with /p/ and /b/ in Spanish pata and bata.

Allophone

A predictable phonetic variant of a phoneme conditioned by context, such as Spanish /d/ surfacing as the approximant [ð] between vowels in nada.

Free versus bound morpheme

A free morpheme can stand alone as a word (sol, pan); a bound morpheme must attach to another form, as in the plural -s or the -ble of amable.

Derivational versus inflectional affixes

Derivational affixes build new words and may change grammatical category (verbo to verbal); inflectional affixes mark tense, person, number, or gender without creating a new lexeme.

Minimal pair

Two words identical except for one phoneme in the same position (casa and tasa); the contrast proves that the differing sounds are separate phonemes in the language.

Presupposition versus entailment

Entailment is a logical consequence that disappears under negation; presupposition is backgrounded content that survives negation, as in His sister left, which assumes he has a sister.

Grice's cooperative maxims

Quantity, quality, relation, and manner guide conversation; deliberately flouting one of them generates a conversational implicature that the hearer infers and that can be cancelled.

Spanish five-vowel system

Spanish has the vowel phonemes /a, e, i, o, u/ with no contrastive length or nasality; dialect variation affects consonants far more than vowels.

Spanish default stress rule

Words ending in a vowel, -n, or -s stress the penultimate syllable; words ending in any other consonant stress the final syllable; written accents mark every exception.

Spirantization of voiced stops

In Spanish, /b, d, g/ are pronounced as approximants [β, ð, ɣ] between vowels and after liquids, but as full stops after a pause or a nasal consonant.

Pro-drop parameter

Spanish permits omission of subject pronouns because verb endings encode person and number; overt pronouns are used for emphasis, contrast, or to avoid ambiguity.

Ser versus estar

Ser expresses identity, origin, and inherent characteristics; estar expresses location, transient states, and results of change, and some adjectives shift meaning with the choice.

Spanish subjunctive triggers

The subjunctive appears in subordinate clauses expressing doubt, emotion, volition, impersonal opinion, or non-existent antecedents, and after conjunctions such as para que and a menos que.

Seseo, ceceo, distinción

Distinción keeps /θ/ distinct from /s/ as in central-northern Spain; seseo merges both into [s] as in Latin America; ceceo merges both into [θ] in parts of Andalusia.

Cantar de mio Cid

The earliest preserved Spanish epic poem, composed around 1200, narrating the Cid's exile, his conquest of Valencia, and the restoration of his honor.

La Celestina

Fernando de Rojas's 1499 dialogue novel in prose centered on the go-between Celestina; its tragic ending marks the shift from medieval to Renaissance sensibilities.

Picaresque novel

A first-person pseudo-autobiography of a low-born rogue serving successive masters; Lazarillo de Tormes (1554) established the genre and its satirical social critique.

Culteranismo versus conceptismo

Two Baroque styles: culteranismo, as in Góngora, foregrounds Latinized syntax and sensory imagery; conceptismo, as in Quevedo, foregrounds wit, puns, and compressed concepts.

Generation of '98

Spanish writers including Unamuno, Machado, Baroja, and Valle-Inclán who responded to the 1898 loss of the last colonies with introspection about national identity.

Magical realism

A narrative mode of the Latin American Boom in which supernatural events are narrated as ordinary, exemplified by García Márquez's Cien años de soledad.

Al-Andalus

The Muslim-ruled territory in the Iberian Peninsula from 711 to 1492, which transmitted Greek and Arabic learning through translation centers such as Toledo.

1492, año clave

The year of the conquest of Granada, the expulsion of the Jews, the publication of Nebrija's Gramática castellana, and Columbus's first voyage to the Americas.

Co-official languages of Spain

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

Spanish Constitution of 1978

It established a parliamentary monarchy and the State of Autonomies, decentralizing government and granting recognition to regional languages and cultural identities.

Día de los Muertos

A November 1–2 Mexican observance blending Catholic All Saints' and All Souls' practices with Indigenous beliefs, featuring ofrendas, calaveras, and cempasúchil flowers.

Latin American independence

Wars of the 1810s and 1820s led by Bolívar, San Martín, and Hidalgo that ended Spanish rule and produced new republics marked by caudillismo and regional fragmentation.

Spanish accent classification

Agudas stress the last syllable, llanas the penultimate, and esdrújulas the antepenultimate; esdrújulas always carry a written accent, while the other two do only when they break the default rule.

Hiatus and written accent

A written accent often breaks a diphthong into a hiatus, keeping the weak vowel in its own syllable, as in día, país, baúl, and caída.

Register and address forms

Spanish distinguishes informal tú and vosotros from formal usted and ustedes, while vos with its own verb endings is used in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and parts of Central America.

False friends in Spanish

Words resembling English but differing in meaning: actual means current, realizar means to carry out, largo means long, and embarazada means pregnant rather than embarrassed.

Text cohesion markers

Connectors such as sin embargo, por lo tanto, además, and en consecuencia signal contrast, consequence, and addition, making written and spoken discourse easier to follow.

Spelling changes in conjugation

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