The acquisition by monolingual children of the knowledge of whether their language requires overt subjects is one of the most studied phenomena in the language acquisition literature, but this phenomenon has not received the same degree of attention in bilingual children. The present study contributes to closing this gap by focusing on subject use in an overt subject language, English, and a null subject language, Spanish, by a child acquiring these two languages from birth. We determine the frequency of subject usage at five MLUw stages between the ages of 1;5:8 and 2;8:9, and examine discourse-pragmatic and processing factors that may account for the variable realization of subjects in each language. The analysis shows that the child realizes at a very early age that English requires overt subjects and Spanish does not. The results also indicate that in regard to subject use in Spanish, there does not exist an immature interface between grammar and the discourse-pragmatic domain. The child expresses subjects in contexts where monolingual speakers would also use them: contrastive and focal subjects are expressed, and coreferential subjects are not. With respect to the issue of interlinguistic influence, the study leaves no doubt that Spanish and English develop autonomously with respect to subject expression. The child seems to be matching the input he receives in English and Spanish without showing any effect of one language on the other.
This chapter focuses on the mental representation of mood in Spanish heritage speakers (2nd generation immigrants of Spanish background living in the US). A variety of studies have amply documented the loss and/or incomplete acquisition of subjunctive mood in these speakers (Merino 1983, Lipski 1993, Silva-Corvalán 1994, 2003; Lynch 1999). These studies analyzed production data and showed that subjunctive morphology is replaced by indicative in cases where the use of subjunctive or indicative is variable and subject to different semantic or pragmatic implications. The goal of this study is to gobeyond production of morphological forms and probe into theinterpretations bilinguals assign to sentences with indicative and subjunctive in obligatory and variable contexts. The study assumes the theoretical framework of generative grammar by which mood is represented as a functional category MoodP in Spanish. Subjunctive morphology carries the feature [+ MOOD], which are crucial for the interpretation of the morphology. We know that bilinguals have difficulty producing subjunctive morphology in speech. If MoodP is absent from the bilinguals' grammars, then they should have difficulty with the interpretation of mood morphology as well. Monolingual and bilingual heritage Spanish speakers completed a task testing recognition of subjunctive in obligatory contexts and a judgment task which tested interpretation of subjunctive in variable contexts. The task tested relative clauses, and adverbial clauses withcuando and withde manera que. Results showed a correlation between recognition of indicative/subjunctive morphology and semantic interpretations. Those bilinguals whose apparent loss of Spanish subjunctive mood was most pronounced in the morphological recognition task had difficulty discriminating between indicative and subjunctive sentences in the sentence conjunction judgment task, suggesting that the feature [+ MOOD] was not operational. In short, it appears that the loss of a functional category involves loss of morphophonology and semantic features.
The degree of English present in the available lexicon of adolescent first and second generation Hispanics in Chicago is analyzed. Available lexicon is defined as (1) the sum of words that speakers have in their mental systems and (2) whose use is conditioned by a particular topic. Given the English environment in which these youth live and are educated, we hypothesize that their Spanish would show a notable number of English lexical loans. The author elicited available lexicon by asking the teens to list words by association within 22 different semantic fields. These include, the human body, clothing, parts of the house, food and drink, school, transportation, means of heating and cooling interior spaces, etc. In turn, the frequency of the words was calculated to arrive at a statistical index of availability. Of the 20 words most commonly listed in each of the semantic fields, only 26 (6.5%) were Anglicisms, indicating that the Spanish lexicon of these young U.S. Latinos is sufficiently solid to permit communication about general topics. A greater number of English words were present in more esoteric fields such as “means of heating and cooling interior spaces,” which is to be expected given that this field is not part of the everyday experience of most teenagers. There were no significant differences related to gender or even to generation; it was the participants' level of Spanish, defined by the level of Spanish course in which they were enrolled, that showed the greatest correlation with the presence of English lexical items.
Current approaches to foreign language teaching can be characterized as one-size-fits-all. This is true in the sense that within a given class or instructional level, uniform learning objectives, activities, pacing, and assessment tools are in place for all students. Such approach is not well suited to teaching Spanish to bilingual Latinos who present divergent academic and linguistic backgrounds. Needed for such students is a means to configure Spanish-language instruction along individual learner specifications. An overview of Latino demographics indicates that bilingual Latinos study Spanish in different instructional contexts, depending on where they go to school. Typically, those attending schools with a sizable Latino population study the language in specialized Spanish-for-native-speakers (SNS) classes. Others study in classes with non-native students. Regardless of the type of the class, when bilingual Latino students are enrolled in Spanish-language courses, learning inevitably takes place in the context of a mixed-ability language classroom. Demographic realities being what they are, such classrooms may be on the way to becoming the norm, rather than the exception in Spanish-language programs throughout the country. Predicated on the notion that teaching should be responsive to student differences and reach out to learners at their own level of readiness, Differentiated Teaching (Tomlinson 1999, 2003) is designed to deal with the very type of mixed-ability issues that arise when teaching Spanish to bilingual Latinos. Additionally, this approach represents an effective way to address issues of equity and access to learning – key considerations when dealing with Latino students. Following Tomlinson's work, this paper explores five instructional strategies that support instruction in mixed-ability classes, including: (1) stations; (2) centers; (3) agendas; (4) learning contracts; and (5) multiple-entry journals/reading logs. In addition, it presents samples of differentiated activities for use in mixed-ability Spanish classes.
Discussions of Puerto Rican language practices are inextricably tied to issues of nationalism and political loyalties both in Puerto Rico and the United States. The linguistic behavior and the language ideologies of island and mainland Puerto Ricans are often presented in polarized ways; island Puerto Ricans are defined as fervently loyal to Spanish and mostly uninterested in speaking English and mainland Puerto Ricans are presented as English dominant and unable to communicate in Spanish. A more nuanced analysis suggests that a greater degree of bilingualism exists in both contexts. Recent proposals that seek to promote bilingualism in both settings provide promise for increasing the range of Puerto Rican bilingualism both stateside and on the island.
This paper explores the importance of acknowledging speakers' attitudes in lexical purification by focusing on Valencian, a dialect of Catalan spoken in the Autonomous Community of Valencia, eastern Spain. The Valencian vernacular is heavily Castilianized at the lexical level, despite more than twenty years of planning aimed at raising the status of Valencian and purging this variety of Spanish borrowings. Throughout this paper, I contend that planners who wish to widen the current scope of the lexical de-Castilianization of Valencian should first change speakers' attitudes towards the non-Castilian replacements. Positive attitudes towards these lexical items are expected to strongly correlate with linguistic behavior, i.e., with the use of these lexical replacements. Finally, I advance an attitude-changing construct that local planners could follow should they decide to intensify the lexical de-Castilianization of Valencian.
Galician is a minority Romance language spoken in the northwestern Spain, where it shares co-official status with Spanish. Over the centuries, the status of Galician has changed due to the political situations within Spain, ultimately affecting speakers' attitudes and the use of both languages. Spanish has always enjoyed high status while Galician has been considered a non-standard and much stigmatized dialect since the 15th century to Franco's dictatorship (1939–1975). Due to its rural economy, the native language of Galicia remained a linguistic variety principally used by lower-class rural dwellers. Democracy (1978) transformed the linguistic conditions of Galicia, elevating the status of Galician to that of “language” and declaring it co-official with Spanish. This paper will analyze the legal language used to refer to Spanish and Galician in the Spanish Constitution, the Autonomy Statute of Galicia, and the Linguistic Normalization Act. In addition, I will examine the relatively new construct of “standard” Galician and its use in school curriculum, public institutions, and the media. Finally I will analyze speakers' attitudes towards “standard” Galician as well as their linguistic choices in Galician society: Spanish, “standard” Galician, and the local dialects. The theoretical background for this paper relies on the idea of (1) diglossia (Ferguson 1959; Fishman 1967; Fernández 1978), an embedded phenomenon in the socio-linguistic history of Galicia; (2) the intermingled concepts of language revitalization (Fishman 1991; Del Valle 2000), and (3) language identity (Fishman 1991; Shannon 1995; Lécours 2001). The data are drawn from ethnolinguistic and sociolinguistic studies of Galician and Spanish (Mapa Sociolingüístico de Galicia1996; Del Valle 2000; Ramallo 2000; Beswick 2002), and observations from my own continuing ethnolinguistic research of the region (2002–2004). Recent standardization efforts have attempted to extend “standard” Galician to formal contexts meant to confer linguistic prestige. Having a Galician standard would allow citizens to converge into this variety instead of Spanish, avoiding the common Spanish/Galician diglossia. Furthermore, the standardization movement has tried to reinforce Galician identity and attract the loyalty of speakers. But, “standard” Galician has become a source of diglossia in and of itself. Speakers may shift into “standard” Galician because they consider it more appropriate and higher in status than the local varieties. This may lead to a more traditional diglossic society where speakers who are not competent in standard Galician shift into Spanish in formal contexts. These ramifications will be discussed in light of the ethnograpthic data.
This paper employs data from elementary school children in a bilingual classroom to examine the applicability of two models for bilingual speech: the Markedness Model (Myers-Scotton 1993; Myers-Scotton & Bolonyai 2001) and Sequential Approach (Auer 1988, 1995; Li Wei 1988). The majority of the switches can be explained within either model, but each approach stresses different aspects of bilingual discourse. While the Markedness Model is preferred by these authors because it sheds light on social identities, in cases of codeswitching as the unmarked choice, it cannot account for individual switches. In such interactions, we show how the additional application of the Sequential Approach can be used to shed light on the conversational structure of bilingual discourse.
This paper examines the style and register variation in heritage language speakers of Spanish at the college level, specifically, the use of discourse markers across situations. Of particular interest in this study is the analysis of the markercomo ‘like’, which seems to be spreading in the same way as the markerlike in American English (Sankoff et al. 1997), adopting some of its functions thatcomo has never been previously reported to have in the Spanish literature. The results of this study show that the choice of discourse markers, their distribution, and relative frequency varies across registers. This indicates that bilinguals understand the difference among registers in their non-dominant language and the fact that academic language is characterized by a variety of features not present in informal interactions.2
Focusing on code switching in the Spanish-English lyrics ofbachatasongs, we find that speakers/singers use code switching stylistically to achieve the effect of subjectification. According to Bürki (2003: 91), subjectification, in contrast to objectification, occurs when speakers achieve a degree of increased or decreased emotional involvement by switching from one language to another. In other words, a degree of identification with or distance from may be indexed and brought about by an expressive code switch. These types of switches are investigated here.
Speakers of Quechua, the native language spoken today in South America by an estimated over 10 million descendants of the Incan Empire, convey their attitudes toward the knowledge they pass on through the use of five epistemic markers. In Cuzco Quechua, these include three epistemic suffixes,-mi/-n,-si/-s, and-chá (-miand -siare placed after consonants and -n and -s follow vowels), and two past tense verb forms,-rqa- and-sqa-. There has been much debate and inconsistency in the literature concerning the semantics and pragmatics of these epistemic markers as well as the ways in which these markers exert cross-linguistic influence on Andean Spanish. This work attempts to clarify and inform these current debates. Evidence will be provided that has been obtained through fieldwork carried out in Cuzco, Peru among seventy members of two non-profit governmental agencies, theAsociación Civil ‘Gregorio Condori Mamani’ Proyecto Casa del Cargador andEl Centro de Apoyo Integral a la Trabajadora del Hogar. Specifically, this evidence (1) supports meanings and uses for the Cuzco Quechua epistemic system beyond the distinction of firsthand vs. secondhand information source, (2) addresses the claim that the Andean Spanish present perfect and past perfect verb tenses serve to communicate the epistemic meanings conveyed in Quechua through use of the Quechua epistemic system, and (3) presents ways in which speakers exhibit cross-linguistic influence of the Cuzco Quechua epistemic markers on Andean Spanish, such as through the use ofdice to calque the Quechua-si/-sepistemic marker and seven strategies, some of which have not been documented previously, for calquing the Quechua-mi/-nepistemic marker: (1)pues, (2)así, (3)sí, (4) elongated [s], (5) nonstandard pluralization, (6)siempre, and (7) word-final voiceless fricative [r].
We investigate pragmatic and sociolinguistic factors that condition the use of double negation along the Haitian-Dominican Republic border in the speech of Spanish monolinguals and in that of Haitian Creole/Spanish bilinguals. In Dominican Spanish, researchers have proposed two basic syntactic configurations for negation: a single pre-verbal negative marker of no + verb and a set of configurations that entail double negation. Double negation may involve simultaneous pre- and post-verbal negative markers, preverbal and sentence final negative markers, and a preverbal negative marker plus a negative polarity item such asnada‘nothing’, tampoco ‘neither/either’, ornadie ‘nobody’. With respect to social groups, two points emerge. First, monolingual speakers of Dominican Spanish show a higher frequency of double negation than do the bilingual Haitian Creole-Spanish speakers. Second, Haitian learners of Dominican Spanish, independent of their degree of proficiency in Spanish, predominantly acquire and use the pattern of single pre-verbal negation. They display very few cases of double negation. Those Haitian speakers who do display some double negation show certain patterns of negation that maybe interpreted as transfer from Haitian Creole. However, as these speakers increase in proficiency, they progressively diminish such transfer. Therefore, the relative absence of double negation in the Spanish of the Haitian Creole-Spanish bilinguals and the presence of double negation in the monolingual Dominican Spanish speakers does not provide support for claims that double negation in Dominican Spanish results from contact with Haitian Creole.
This article investigates data from the early stages of the development of Andean Spanish, focusing on bilingual documents written between 1595 and 1746. Given that Andean Spanish emerged initially in a context of language contact between the native Spanish community and the indigenous Amerindian bilingual community, it would seem reasonable to assume that early documents would provide evidence of contact-induced change in the developing Spanish of the community. This evidence could be apparent in patterns of variation that such documents would provide. However, after careful analysis, the bilingual documents written between 1595 and 1746 are discounted as evidence of early stages in the formation of the Andean Spanish dialect for various reasons. For such change to occur, extensive face-to-face interaction among communities, not merely select individuals, has to occur, but this in fact did not happen. Thus, a close variationist analysis of bilingual documents contributes to the social history of early Andean Spanish as well as models of language contact and dialect birth. In short, a study of the linguistic features of texts is transformed into social history.
Although the two copular verbs,serandestar‘to be’, have been the subject of extensive debate in theoretical linguistics (Fernández Leborans 1999), less in known about how the use of these two verbs varies from one Spanish-speaking region to another. The sociolinguistic research conducted to date (de Jonge 1993; Díaz-Campos & Geeslin 2004; Gutiérrez 1992; Silva-Corvalán 1994;) has shown that, in contexts where both copulas are allowed, some features (e.g., adjective class, frame of reference and susceptibility to change) can affect the degree to which one copula is favored over the other. We have recently begun to extend this body of research to the Spanish spoken in Spain and found that while several linguistic factors predict copula use in the Spanish spoken in Galicia (Guijarro-Fuentes & Geeslin, forthcoming), our results showed less of an effect for individual variables. In the current study, we seek to further explore the Spanish spoken in Galicia and the individual characteristics related to language use and language learning by expanding our participant group (N=155 in total) to include a less homogeneous population. Our participants include a group of monolingual Spanish speakers residing outside Galicia to whom our bilingual participants will be compared, and a group of Spanish speakers in Galicia (N=73) who vary in degree of bilingualism, language learning histories, and language use profiles. Each participant completed a background questionnaire and a Spanish contextualized preference task. The data were coded for copula choice (the dependent variable) and several independent variables describing characteristics of language learning and language use. Our results show significant effects for gender, occupation, the first language of the participant's mother, and the language normally used by the participants.
This paper investigates the alternation of null and pronominal subjects across six dialects and various generations of Spanish speakers in New York City. Although past research of this variable has found virtually no social conditioning, a close analysis revealed a pattern of social influence derived in part from the source dialects, in part from regional dialects, and in part from English influence. A basic division exists between Dominican Spanish versus all others. There is some evidence to support a further distinction of Mexican Spanish from all others. However, with respect to pronominal subject expression, this data does not support considering Puerto Rican or Cuban or Ecuadorian or Columbian Spanishes as separate dialects. In contrast, a regional division of the dialects does emerge if one groups the six dialect groups into two: Caribbean speakers, with a relatively high rate of pronominal expression, and South American speakers, with a somewhat lower rate. In addition, the influence of English is identified through a close comparison of recent arrivals to long-term residents of New York City. The frequency of subject pronouns in New York Spanish is changing, slowly, as speakers from these two regional sets converge and as they continue to live in contact with English over many years.
This sociolinguistic study investigates the production of verb tenses in the Spanish of thirty Puerto Rican residents of New York City (NYC). It discusses how verb tense production is conditioned by the narrative unit, conflict narrative style and foreground and background information within the narrative. Two social factors are also analyzed: gender and age. The verb forms with the highest rate of production in this study are the present, the preterit and imperfect indicative, findings also documented by other scholars (Pousada & Poplack 1982; Torres 1997). With regard to foreground and background information, the results show that speakers recount stories mainly using the present, the preterit and imperfect indicative forms in the main skeleton of the storyline. Narratives that contain conflict however, had the tendency of being recounted with past tense verbs. As expected, age and gender did not show a significant difference in the verb tense production of these NYC residents.
Language contact often acts as a catalyst of language change. However, according to Guy's (2000) theory, the linguistic factors constraining language change and variation are consistent within different segments of a speech community. In this study, after determining the distribution of the morphological future, the periphrastic future, and the simple present as they are used to express futurity by New York Colombians, I identify the statistically significant linguistic factors most strongly affecting this distribution and explain their impact. Additionally, I test Guy's (2000) theory by contrasting these results to those from a comparable monolingual population based in Colombia. The data explored in this study was extracted from sociolinguistic interviews with twenty (ten men and ten women) Colombian residents of the New York City area. At the time of the data collection, their ages ranged from 16 to 70 years old, and the length of their stay in the United Stated ranged from five to thirty years. The distribution of forms found is congruent with the reports of the prevalence of the periphrastic future in all varieties of Spanish, including situations where Spanish is in contact with other languages, as well as those regarding the drastic reduction of use of the morphological future as a marker of futurity. The results of this study also revealed the same eight factor groups which significantly constrain the expression of futurity in Colombia. These findings lend validity to Guy's theory. That is, the similarity of constraint effects found in New York and in Colombia suggests that, despite the influence of language contact, the two populations are still members of the same speech community. Additionally, the results of this study indicate that the change in progress from the preferential use of the morphological future to that of the periphrastic future seems to have been accelerated in the immigrant setting. These results help explain other instances of morphosyntactic variation, especially those involving analytic and synthetic variants. Furthermore, these findings augment our knowledge of language variation and change in Spanish as well as in all Romance languages.
Studies on dialect accommodation, focusing on the acquisition of new features, have found age of arrival to be a significant factor in acquisition patterns (e.g. Chambers 1992). Regarding /s/ reduction among Salvadorans in Houston, quantitative analysis shows that accommodation may also involve the redistribution of already present features. Sociolinguistic data show that this contact situation has led many Salvadorans to accommodate their speech to Mexican patterns, particularly for socially salient features, like /s/ reduction. Various factors are tested for statistical significance in /s/ reduction: the social factor of age of arrival is found to have the strongest effect; surrounding phonological segments also show significance. Intensity of contact, however, does not, pointing to accommodation as a general social – rather than simply individual – phenomenon.
The presence in Spanish and other Romance languages of two copular verbs, both able to form constructions with the same adjectives and participles, has been the cause of competition for semantic space since the 12th century (Vaño-Cerdá 1982). Recent studies (Cortés-Torres 2004; De Jonge 1993; Gutiérrez 1994; and Silva-Corvalán 1986) have shown the struggle continues in bilingual varieties of Spanish as well as in monolingual varieties. The innovative use ofestarin contexts that were prescriptively reserved forserwas examined in New Mexico Spanish using data from the New Mexico Colorado Spanish Survey (Bills & Vigil 1999). Employing a variationist approach, the influence of several sociolinguistic factors on the variable use of the two copulas was evaluated quantitatively using GoldVarb (Rand & Sankoff 1999), a variable rule application program. Results for linguistic factors show the greatest magnitude of effect for type of adjective, followed by grammatical person, the presence of a time adverbial, codeswitching, the presence of an intensifier, and verb tense (which was not selected as significant). Of the three social variables evaluated, level of education was significant while gender was not, and the factor of age of speaker was eliminated due to incoherent results. These results concur with those of the other researchers and show that the same factors effecting the slow, gradual change in the usage ofestarin both educated and uneducated dialects in Mexico City, Caracas, Morelia, Cuernavaca, and Los Angeles are also at work in the archaic and stigmatized northern New Mexico/southern Colorado variety of Spanish.
Bozal Spanish – pidginized language once spoken by African-born slaves acquiring Spanish under duress – has usually been approached only through historical reconstruction based on second-hand written documents. Central to the debate over the reconstruction ofbozal language is the extent to whichbozal speech exhibited consistent traits across time and space, and the possibility that Afro-Hispanic pidgins may have creolized across large areas of Spanish America. Literary imitations – all of questionable validity – are insufficient to resolve the issue; only first-hand data from legitimate Afro-Hispanic speech communities may shed light on earlier stages of language contact. The present study reviews four sources of authentic data: surviving Afro-Hispanic linguistic isolates; collective memories of recently disappearedbozal speech; ritualized representations ofbozal language; descendents of return-diasporabozal speakers. The surviving Afro-Hispanic speech communities that have been studied to date are found in Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Ecuador. These speech communities exhibit only a few deviations from monolingual Spanish, and do not suggest the prior existence of a stable Spanish-derived creole. New data are presented on a recently-discovered Afro-Bolivian speech community, where a fully restructured Afro-Hispanic dialect still survives. The Afro-Bolivian dialect provides a scenario for the formation of reconstructed varieties of Spanish in the absence of a pan-American creole. Ritualized representations ofbozallanguage are found among thenegros congos of Panama and in Afro-Cubansantería andpalo mayombe ceremonies. Collective recollections of recentbozal language are found in Cuba, where the last African-bornbozales disappeared less then a century ago. Finally, return-diaspora speakers have been reported for Benin, Nigeria, and Angola, and may be found elsewhere in West Africa. By combining data from these remaining sources and comparing them with literary and folkloric texts, a more realistic reconstruction of emergent Afro-Hispanic contact varieties can be obtained.
Towards the end of the 19th century, in both Cuba and Brazil, scholars became increasingly interested in the contributions of African slaves to the formation of these societies. In Cuba, the ethno-historical and scientific studies of Fernando Ortíz, among others, inspired numerous writers to produce literary works reflectingel ethos del negro as an integral part of Cuban society. These writings, which evoked numerous Afro-Cuban themes, were supposedly written in a style of language that reflected how Afro-Cubans spoke as a consequence of contact between Spanish and various Sub-Saharan languages. Similar literary works were produced in Brazil. During the 19th century, waves of African slaves to Brazil, above all from the Kwa group, left an indelible imprint on the society. Along with the various scientific studies that emerged from this time, theSemana de Arte Moderna served to inspire authors to write literary works aimed at capturing cultural trends termed “neoafronegroide.” One important aspect of this was language use. This chapter analyzes the literary antecedents of these movements in Cuba and Brazil as well as the language of these texts. Did these texts authentically reproduce Creole orbozal varieties of language, or did they merely produce varieties of literary style that achieved a kind of “African ambiance”? This research also demonstrates a few ways in which these authors incorporatedbozal varieties into their writings, principally in poetry.
The acquisition by monolingual children of the knowledge of whether their language requires overt subjects is one of the most studied phenomena in the language acquisition literature, but this phenomenon has not received the same degree of attention in bilingual children. The present study contributes to closing this gap by focusing on subject use in an overt subject language, English, and a null subject language, Spanish, by a child acquiring these two languages from birth. We determine the frequency of subject usage at five MLUw stages between the ages of 1;5:8 and 2;8:9, and examine discourse-pragmatic and processing factors that may account for the variable realization of subjects in each language. The analysis shows that the child realizes at a very early age that English requires overt subjects and Spanish does not. The results also indicate that in regard to subject use in Spanish, there does not exist an immature interface between grammar and the discourse-pragmatic domain. The child expresses subjects in contexts where monolingual speakers would also use them: contrastive and focal subjects are expressed, and coreferential subjects are not. With respect to the issue of interlinguistic influence, the study leaves no doubt that Spanish and English develop autonomously with respect to subject expression. The child seems to be matching the input he receives in English and Spanish without showing any effect of one language on the other.
This chapter focuses on the mental representation of mood in Spanish heritage speakers (2nd generation immigrants of Spanish background living in the US). A variety of studies have amply documented the loss and/or incomplete acquisition of subjunctive mood in these speakers (Merino 1983, Lipski 1993, Silva-Corvalán 1994, 2003; Lynch 1999). These studies analyzed production data and showed that subjunctive morphology is replaced by indicative in cases where the use of subjunctive or indicative is variable and subject to different semantic or pragmatic implications. The goal of this study is to gobeyond production of morphological forms and probe into theinterpretations bilinguals assign to sentences with indicative and subjunctive in obligatory and variable contexts. The study assumes the theoretical framework of generative grammar by which mood is represented as a functional category MoodP in Spanish. Subjunctive morphology carries the feature [+ MOOD], which are crucial for the interpretation of the morphology. We know that bilinguals have difficulty producing subjunctive morphology in speech. If MoodP is absent from the bilinguals' grammars, then they should have difficulty with the interpretation of mood morphology as well. Monolingual and bilingual heritage Spanish speakers completed a task testing recognition of subjunctive in obligatory contexts and a judgment task which tested interpretation of subjunctive in variable contexts. The task tested relative clauses, and adverbial clauses withcuando and withde manera que. Results showed a correlation between recognition of indicative/subjunctive morphology and semantic interpretations. Those bilinguals whose apparent loss of Spanish subjunctive mood was most pronounced in the morphological recognition task had difficulty discriminating between indicative and subjunctive sentences in the sentence conjunction judgment task, suggesting that the feature [+ MOOD] was not operational. In short, it appears that the loss of a functional category involves loss of morphophonology and semantic features.
The degree of English present in the available lexicon of adolescent first and second generation Hispanics in Chicago is analyzed. Available lexicon is defined as (1) the sum of words that speakers have in their mental systems and (2) whose use is conditioned by a particular topic. Given the English environment in which these youth live and are educated, we hypothesize that their Spanish would show a notable number of English lexical loans. The author elicited available lexicon by asking the teens to list words by association within 22 different semantic fields. These include, the human body, clothing, parts of the house, food and drink, school, transportation, means of heating and cooling interior spaces, etc. In turn, the frequency of the words was calculated to arrive at a statistical index of availability. Of the 20 words most commonly listed in each of the semantic fields, only 26 (6.5%) were Anglicisms, indicating that the Spanish lexicon of these young U.S. Latinos is sufficiently solid to permit communication about general topics. A greater number of English words were present in more esoteric fields such as “means of heating and cooling interior spaces,” which is to be expected given that this field is not part of the everyday experience of most teenagers. There were no significant differences related to gender or even to generation; it was the participants' level of Spanish, defined by the level of Spanish course in which they were enrolled, that showed the greatest correlation with the presence of English lexical items.
Current approaches to foreign language teaching can be characterized as one-size-fits-all. This is true in the sense that within a given class or instructional level, uniform learning objectives, activities, pacing, and assessment tools are in place for all students. Such approach is not well suited to teaching Spanish to bilingual Latinos who present divergent academic and linguistic backgrounds. Needed for such students is a means to configure Spanish-language instruction along individual learner specifications. An overview of Latino demographics indicates that bilingual Latinos study Spanish in different instructional contexts, depending on where they go to school. Typically, those attending schools with a sizable Latino population study the language in specialized Spanish-for-native-speakers (SNS) classes. Others study in classes with non-native students. Regardless of the type of the class, when bilingual Latino students are enrolled in Spanish-language courses, learning inevitably takes place in the context of a mixed-ability language classroom. Demographic realities being what they are, such classrooms may be on the way to becoming the norm, rather than the exception in Spanish-language programs throughout the country. Predicated on the notion that teaching should be responsive to student differences and reach out to learners at their own level of readiness, Differentiated Teaching (Tomlinson 1999, 2003) is designed to deal with the very type of mixed-ability issues that arise when teaching Spanish to bilingual Latinos. Additionally, this approach represents an effective way to address issues of equity and access to learning – key considerations when dealing with Latino students. Following Tomlinson's work, this paper explores five instructional strategies that support instruction in mixed-ability classes, including: (1) stations; (2) centers; (3) agendas; (4) learning contracts; and (5) multiple-entry journals/reading logs. In addition, it presents samples of differentiated activities for use in mixed-ability Spanish classes.
Discussions of Puerto Rican language practices are inextricably tied to issues of nationalism and political loyalties both in Puerto Rico and the United States. The linguistic behavior and the language ideologies of island and mainland Puerto Ricans are often presented in polarized ways; island Puerto Ricans are defined as fervently loyal to Spanish and mostly uninterested in speaking English and mainland Puerto Ricans are presented as English dominant and unable to communicate in Spanish. A more nuanced analysis suggests that a greater degree of bilingualism exists in both contexts. Recent proposals that seek to promote bilingualism in both settings provide promise for increasing the range of Puerto Rican bilingualism both stateside and on the island.
This paper explores the importance of acknowledging speakers' attitudes in lexical purification by focusing on Valencian, a dialect of Catalan spoken in the Autonomous Community of Valencia, eastern Spain. The Valencian vernacular is heavily Castilianized at the lexical level, despite more than twenty years of planning aimed at raising the status of Valencian and purging this variety of Spanish borrowings. Throughout this paper, I contend that planners who wish to widen the current scope of the lexical de-Castilianization of Valencian should first change speakers' attitudes towards the non-Castilian replacements. Positive attitudes towards these lexical items are expected to strongly correlate with linguistic behavior, i.e., with the use of these lexical replacements. Finally, I advance an attitude-changing construct that local planners could follow should they decide to intensify the lexical de-Castilianization of Valencian.
Galician is a minority Romance language spoken in the northwestern Spain, where it shares co-official status with Spanish. Over the centuries, the status of Galician has changed due to the political situations within Spain, ultimately affecting speakers' attitudes and the use of both languages. Spanish has always enjoyed high status while Galician has been considered a non-standard and much stigmatized dialect since the 15th century to Franco's dictatorship (1939–1975). Due to its rural economy, the native language of Galicia remained a linguistic variety principally used by lower-class rural dwellers. Democracy (1978) transformed the linguistic conditions of Galicia, elevating the status of Galician to that of “language” and declaring it co-official with Spanish. This paper will analyze the legal language used to refer to Spanish and Galician in the Spanish Constitution, the Autonomy Statute of Galicia, and the Linguistic Normalization Act. In addition, I will examine the relatively new construct of “standard” Galician and its use in school curriculum, public institutions, and the media. Finally I will analyze speakers' attitudes towards “standard” Galician as well as their linguistic choices in Galician society: Spanish, “standard” Galician, and the local dialects. The theoretical background for this paper relies on the idea of (1) diglossia (Ferguson 1959; Fishman 1967; Fernández 1978), an embedded phenomenon in the socio-linguistic history of Galicia; (2) the intermingled concepts of language revitalization (Fishman 1991; Del Valle 2000), and (3) language identity (Fishman 1991; Shannon 1995; Lécours 2001). The data are drawn from ethnolinguistic and sociolinguistic studies of Galician and Spanish (Mapa Sociolingüístico de Galicia1996; Del Valle 2000; Ramallo 2000; Beswick 2002), and observations from my own continuing ethnolinguistic research of the region (2002–2004). Recent standardization efforts have attempted to extend “standard” Galician to formal contexts meant to confer linguistic prestige. Having a Galician standard would allow citizens to converge into this variety instead of Spanish, avoiding the common Spanish/Galician diglossia. Furthermore, the standardization movement has tried to reinforce Galician identity and attract the loyalty of speakers. But, “standard” Galician has become a source of diglossia in and of itself. Speakers may shift into “standard” Galician because they consider it more appropriate and higher in status than the local varieties. This may lead to a more traditional diglossic society where speakers who are not competent in standard Galician shift into Spanish in formal contexts. These ramifications will be discussed in light of the ethnograpthic data.
This paper employs data from elementary school children in a bilingual classroom to examine the applicability of two models for bilingual speech: the Markedness Model (Myers-Scotton 1993; Myers-Scotton & Bolonyai 2001) and Sequential Approach (Auer 1988, 1995; Li Wei 1988). The majority of the switches can be explained within either model, but each approach stresses different aspects of bilingual discourse. While the Markedness Model is preferred by these authors because it sheds light on social identities, in cases of codeswitching as the unmarked choice, it cannot account for individual switches. In such interactions, we show how the additional application of the Sequential Approach can be used to shed light on the conversational structure of bilingual discourse.
This paper examines the style and register variation in heritage language speakers of Spanish at the college level, specifically, the use of discourse markers across situations. Of particular interest in this study is the analysis of the markercomo ‘like’, which seems to be spreading in the same way as the markerlike in American English (Sankoff et al. 1997), adopting some of its functions thatcomo has never been previously reported to have in the Spanish literature. The results of this study show that the choice of discourse markers, their distribution, and relative frequency varies across registers. This indicates that bilinguals understand the difference among registers in their non-dominant language and the fact that academic language is characterized by a variety of features not present in informal interactions.2
Focusing on code switching in the Spanish-English lyrics ofbachatasongs, we find that speakers/singers use code switching stylistically to achieve the effect of subjectification. According to Bürki (2003: 91), subjectification, in contrast to objectification, occurs when speakers achieve a degree of increased or decreased emotional involvement by switching from one language to another. In other words, a degree of identification with or distance from may be indexed and brought about by an expressive code switch. These types of switches are investigated here.
Speakers of Quechua, the native language spoken today in South America by an estimated over 10 million descendants of the Incan Empire, convey their attitudes toward the knowledge they pass on through the use of five epistemic markers. In Cuzco Quechua, these include three epistemic suffixes,-mi/-n,-si/-s, and-chá (-miand -siare placed after consonants and -n and -s follow vowels), and two past tense verb forms,-rqa- and-sqa-. There has been much debate and inconsistency in the literature concerning the semantics and pragmatics of these epistemic markers as well as the ways in which these markers exert cross-linguistic influence on Andean Spanish. This work attempts to clarify and inform these current debates. Evidence will be provided that has been obtained through fieldwork carried out in Cuzco, Peru among seventy members of two non-profit governmental agencies, theAsociación Civil ‘Gregorio Condori Mamani’ Proyecto Casa del Cargador andEl Centro de Apoyo Integral a la Trabajadora del Hogar. Specifically, this evidence (1) supports meanings and uses for the Cuzco Quechua epistemic system beyond the distinction of firsthand vs. secondhand information source, (2) addresses the claim that the Andean Spanish present perfect and past perfect verb tenses serve to communicate the epistemic meanings conveyed in Quechua through use of the Quechua epistemic system, and (3) presents ways in which speakers exhibit cross-linguistic influence of the Cuzco Quechua epistemic markers on Andean Spanish, such as through the use ofdice to calque the Quechua-si/-sepistemic marker and seven strategies, some of which have not been documented previously, for calquing the Quechua-mi/-nepistemic marker: (1)pues, (2)así, (3)sí, (4) elongated [s], (5) nonstandard pluralization, (6)siempre, and (7) word-final voiceless fricative [r].
We investigate pragmatic and sociolinguistic factors that condition the use of double negation along the Haitian-Dominican Republic border in the speech of Spanish monolinguals and in that of Haitian Creole/Spanish bilinguals. In Dominican Spanish, researchers have proposed two basic syntactic configurations for negation: a single pre-verbal negative marker of no + verb and a set of configurations that entail double negation. Double negation may involve simultaneous pre- and post-verbal negative markers, preverbal and sentence final negative markers, and a preverbal negative marker plus a negative polarity item such asnada‘nothing’, tampoco ‘neither/either’, ornadie ‘nobody’. With respect to social groups, two points emerge. First, monolingual speakers of Dominican Spanish show a higher frequency of double negation than do the bilingual Haitian Creole-Spanish speakers. Second, Haitian learners of Dominican Spanish, independent of their degree of proficiency in Spanish, predominantly acquire and use the pattern of single pre-verbal negation. They display very few cases of double negation. Those Haitian speakers who do display some double negation show certain patterns of negation that maybe interpreted as transfer from Haitian Creole. However, as these speakers increase in proficiency, they progressively diminish such transfer. Therefore, the relative absence of double negation in the Spanish of the Haitian Creole-Spanish bilinguals and the presence of double negation in the monolingual Dominican Spanish speakers does not provide support for claims that double negation in Dominican Spanish results from contact with Haitian Creole.
This article investigates data from the early stages of the development of Andean Spanish, focusing on bilingual documents written between 1595 and 1746. Given that Andean Spanish emerged initially in a context of language contact between the native Spanish community and the indigenous Amerindian bilingual community, it would seem reasonable to assume that early documents would provide evidence of contact-induced change in the developing Spanish of the community. This evidence could be apparent in patterns of variation that such documents would provide. However, after careful analysis, the bilingual documents written between 1595 and 1746 are discounted as evidence of early stages in the formation of the Andean Spanish dialect for various reasons. For such change to occur, extensive face-to-face interaction among communities, not merely select individuals, has to occur, but this in fact did not happen. Thus, a close variationist analysis of bilingual documents contributes to the social history of early Andean Spanish as well as models of language contact and dialect birth. In short, a study of the linguistic features of texts is transformed into social history.
Although the two copular verbs,serandestar‘to be’, have been the subject of extensive debate in theoretical linguistics (Fernández Leborans 1999), less in known about how the use of these two verbs varies from one Spanish-speaking region to another. The sociolinguistic research conducted to date (de Jonge 1993; Díaz-Campos & Geeslin 2004; Gutiérrez 1992; Silva-Corvalán 1994;) has shown that, in contexts where both copulas are allowed, some features (e.g., adjective class, frame of reference and susceptibility to change) can affect the degree to which one copula is favored over the other. We have recently begun to extend this body of research to the Spanish spoken in Spain and found that while several linguistic factors predict copula use in the Spanish spoken in Galicia (Guijarro-Fuentes & Geeslin, forthcoming), our results showed less of an effect for individual variables. In the current study, we seek to further explore the Spanish spoken in Galicia and the individual characteristics related to language use and language learning by expanding our participant group (N=155 in total) to include a less homogeneous population. Our participants include a group of monolingual Spanish speakers residing outside Galicia to whom our bilingual participants will be compared, and a group of Spanish speakers in Galicia (N=73) who vary in degree of bilingualism, language learning histories, and language use profiles. Each participant completed a background questionnaire and a Spanish contextualized preference task. The data were coded for copula choice (the dependent variable) and several independent variables describing characteristics of language learning and language use. Our results show significant effects for gender, occupation, the first language of the participant's mother, and the language normally used by the participants.
This paper investigates the alternation of null and pronominal subjects across six dialects and various generations of Spanish speakers in New York City. Although past research of this variable has found virtually no social conditioning, a close analysis revealed a pattern of social influence derived in part from the source dialects, in part from regional dialects, and in part from English influence. A basic division exists between Dominican Spanish versus all others. There is some evidence to support a further distinction of Mexican Spanish from all others. However, with respect to pronominal subject expression, this data does not support considering Puerto Rican or Cuban or Ecuadorian or Columbian Spanishes as separate dialects. In contrast, a regional division of the dialects does emerge if one groups the six dialect groups into two: Caribbean speakers, with a relatively high rate of pronominal expression, and South American speakers, with a somewhat lower rate. In addition, the influence of English is identified through a close comparison of recent arrivals to long-term residents of New York City. The frequency of subject pronouns in New York Spanish is changing, slowly, as speakers from these two regional sets converge and as they continue to live in contact with English over many years.
This sociolinguistic study investigates the production of verb tenses in the Spanish of thirty Puerto Rican residents of New York City (NYC). It discusses how verb tense production is conditioned by the narrative unit, conflict narrative style and foreground and background information within the narrative. Two social factors are also analyzed: gender and age. The verb forms with the highest rate of production in this study are the present, the preterit and imperfect indicative, findings also documented by other scholars (Pousada & Poplack 1982; Torres 1997). With regard to foreground and background information, the results show that speakers recount stories mainly using the present, the preterit and imperfect indicative forms in the main skeleton of the storyline. Narratives that contain conflict however, had the tendency of being recounted with past tense verbs. As expected, age and gender did not show a significant difference in the verb tense production of these NYC residents.
Language contact often acts as a catalyst of language change. However, according to Guy's (2000) theory, the linguistic factors constraining language change and variation are consistent within different segments of a speech community. In this study, after determining the distribution of the morphological future, the periphrastic future, and the simple present as they are used to express futurity by New York Colombians, I identify the statistically significant linguistic factors most strongly affecting this distribution and explain their impact. Additionally, I test Guy's (2000) theory by contrasting these results to those from a comparable monolingual population based in Colombia. The data explored in this study was extracted from sociolinguistic interviews with twenty (ten men and ten women) Colombian residents of the New York City area. At the time of the data collection, their ages ranged from 16 to 70 years old, and the length of their stay in the United Stated ranged from five to thirty years. The distribution of forms found is congruent with the reports of the prevalence of the periphrastic future in all varieties of Spanish, including situations where Spanish is in contact with other languages, as well as those regarding the drastic reduction of use of the morphological future as a marker of futurity. The results of this study also revealed the same eight factor groups which significantly constrain the expression of futurity in Colombia. These findings lend validity to Guy's theory. That is, the similarity of constraint effects found in New York and in Colombia suggests that, despite the influence of language contact, the two populations are still members of the same speech community. Additionally, the results of this study indicate that the change in progress from the preferential use of the morphological future to that of the periphrastic future seems to have been accelerated in the immigrant setting. These results help explain other instances of morphosyntactic variation, especially those involving analytic and synthetic variants. Furthermore, these findings augment our knowledge of language variation and change in Spanish as well as in all Romance languages.
Studies on dialect accommodation, focusing on the acquisition of new features, have found age of arrival to be a significant factor in acquisition patterns (e.g. Chambers 1992). Regarding /s/ reduction among Salvadorans in Houston, quantitative analysis shows that accommodation may also involve the redistribution of already present features. Sociolinguistic data show that this contact situation has led many Salvadorans to accommodate their speech to Mexican patterns, particularly for socially salient features, like /s/ reduction. Various factors are tested for statistical significance in /s/ reduction: the social factor of age of arrival is found to have the strongest effect; surrounding phonological segments also show significance. Intensity of contact, however, does not, pointing to accommodation as a general social – rather than simply individual – phenomenon.
The presence in Spanish and other Romance languages of two copular verbs, both able to form constructions with the same adjectives and participles, has been the cause of competition for semantic space since the 12th century (Vaño-Cerdá 1982). Recent studies (Cortés-Torres 2004; De Jonge 1993; Gutiérrez 1994; and Silva-Corvalán 1986) have shown the struggle continues in bilingual varieties of Spanish as well as in monolingual varieties. The innovative use ofestarin contexts that were prescriptively reserved forserwas examined in New Mexico Spanish using data from the New Mexico Colorado Spanish Survey (Bills & Vigil 1999). Employing a variationist approach, the influence of several sociolinguistic factors on the variable use of the two copulas was evaluated quantitatively using GoldVarb (Rand & Sankoff 1999), a variable rule application program. Results for linguistic factors show the greatest magnitude of effect for type of adjective, followed by grammatical person, the presence of a time adverbial, codeswitching, the presence of an intensifier, and verb tense (which was not selected as significant). Of the three social variables evaluated, level of education was significant while gender was not, and the factor of age of speaker was eliminated due to incoherent results. These results concur with those of the other researchers and show that the same factors effecting the slow, gradual change in the usage ofestarin both educated and uneducated dialects in Mexico City, Caracas, Morelia, Cuernavaca, and Los Angeles are also at work in the archaic and stigmatized northern New Mexico/southern Colorado variety of Spanish.
Bozal Spanish – pidginized language once spoken by African-born slaves acquiring Spanish under duress – has usually been approached only through historical reconstruction based on second-hand written documents. Central to the debate over the reconstruction ofbozal language is the extent to whichbozal speech exhibited consistent traits across time and space, and the possibility that Afro-Hispanic pidgins may have creolized across large areas of Spanish America. Literary imitations – all of questionable validity – are insufficient to resolve the issue; only first-hand data from legitimate Afro-Hispanic speech communities may shed light on earlier stages of language contact. The present study reviews four sources of authentic data: surviving Afro-Hispanic linguistic isolates; collective memories of recently disappearedbozal speech; ritualized representations ofbozal language; descendents of return-diasporabozal speakers. The surviving Afro-Hispanic speech communities that have been studied to date are found in Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Ecuador. These speech communities exhibit only a few deviations from monolingual Spanish, and do not suggest the prior existence of a stable Spanish-derived creole. New data are presented on a recently-discovered Afro-Bolivian speech community, where a fully restructured Afro-Hispanic dialect still survives. The Afro-Bolivian dialect provides a scenario for the formation of reconstructed varieties of Spanish in the absence of a pan-American creole. Ritualized representations ofbozallanguage are found among thenegros congos of Panama and in Afro-Cubansantería andpalo mayombe ceremonies. Collective recollections of recentbozal language are found in Cuba, where the last African-bornbozales disappeared less then a century ago. Finally, return-diaspora speakers have been reported for Benin, Nigeria, and Angola, and may be found elsewhere in West Africa. By combining data from these remaining sources and comparing them with literary and folkloric texts, a more realistic reconstruction of emergent Afro-Hispanic contact varieties can be obtained.
Towards the end of the 19th century, in both Cuba and Brazil, scholars became increasingly interested in the contributions of African slaves to the formation of these societies. In Cuba, the ethno-historical and scientific studies of Fernando Ortíz, among others, inspired numerous writers to produce literary works reflectingel ethos del negro as an integral part of Cuban society. These writings, which evoked numerous Afro-Cuban themes, were supposedly written in a style of language that reflected how Afro-Cubans spoke as a consequence of contact between Spanish and various Sub-Saharan languages. Similar literary works were produced in Brazil. During the 19th century, waves of African slaves to Brazil, above all from the Kwa group, left an indelible imprint on the society. Along with the various scientific studies that emerged from this time, theSemana de Arte Moderna served to inspire authors to write literary works aimed at capturing cultural trends termed “neoafronegroide.” One important aspect of this was language use. This chapter analyzes the literary antecedents of these movements in Cuba and Brazil as well as the language of these texts. Did these texts authentically reproduce Creole orbozal varieties of language, or did they merely produce varieties of literary style that achieved a kind of “African ambiance”? This research also demonstrates a few ways in which these authors incorporatedbozal varieties into their writings, principally in poetry.