Operadores comprobativos y variación pragmática regional

From a variational pragmatics perspective (Schneider/Barron 2008), this paper focuses on regional variation (cf. Schneider/Placencia 2017) in the use of agreement-seeking markers (comprobativos) in Spanish. It is part of a broader project focussing on different aspects of language use among university students in Quito (Ecuador), Santiago (Chile), and Seville (Spain) on the basis of roleplay interactions in situations of close social distance (Fuentes/Placencia/Palma-Fahey 2016). The markers under scrutiny serve an attention-getting function and are also employed to seek agreement with what we say from our interlocutor) (Ortega Olivares 1985, 1986; Fuentes Rodríguez 1990a; Fuentes Rodríguez/Brenes Peña 2014); their presence is evident in our corpus. The study identifies important formal differences of these units across the three varieties of Spanish examined. It also considers variation in their use according to their position within a given turn and/or an utterance as well as in relation to the situation in which they occur and the role of the participants in the interaction. Finally, it highlights the multidimensionality of these forms as units with both modal and information functions.