Contemporary Trends In Hispanic And Lusophone Linguistics

Contemporary Trends in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics offers a panorama of current research into multiple varieties of Spanish from several different regions (Mexico, Puerto Rico, Spain, Costa Rica, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Honduras), Catalan, Brazilian Portuguese, as well as varieties in contact with English and Purépecha. The first part of the volume focuses on the structural aspects and use of these languages in the areas of syntax, semantics, sociolinguistics, diachrony, phonetics, phonology and morphology. The second part discusses the effect of interacting multiple grammars, namely, first language acquisition, second language acquisition, varieties in contact, and bilingualism. As a whole, the contributions in this volume provide a methodological balance between qualitative and quantitative approaches to Language and, in this way, represent contemporary trends in Hispanic and Lusophone linguistics.

Current Theoretical and Applied Perspectives on Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics is a 15-chapter compilation written by both established and emerging scholars representing a wide array of theoretical, methodological, and empirical perspectives. Each chapter presents original and significant findings, contextualizes them within the broader empirical work, and identifies directions for future research on a variety of subfields of study such as phonetics/phonology studies, formal acquisition theory, second and heritage language acquisition, language variation, and linguistic landscapes. Given its scope and significance, this volume will be of relevance to not only academics and researchers of all theoretical stripes, but also to a more general audience new to the field of Hispanic and Lusophone linguistics.

The analysis of language attitudes is important not only because attitudes can affect language maintenance and language change but also because such reflections and discussions can bring light to social, cultural, political and educational matters that require an interdisciplinary approach. This volume fills a crucial void in the field of Hispanic and Lusophone linguistics by introducing the latest production in the discipline of attitudes toward Spanish, Spanish sign language, Portuguese, Guarani and Papiamentu around the world, from South America and the Caribbean to the United States, Spain and Japan. The studies presented in this collection – a variety of sociolinguistic scenarios and methodological approaches – will make an important contribution to theoretical discussions on linguistic attitudes, specifically in the domains of language integration through education, language policy, and language maintenance. This book is intended for sociolinguists, social scientists and scholars in the humanities as well as graduate students enrolled in sociolinguistics courses.

This volume addresses a wide range of phenomena including intonation, restructuring, clitic climbing, aspectual structure, subject focus marking, code-switching, lenition, loanwords, and heritage learning that are central in Hispanic linguistics today. The authors approach these issues from a variety of recent theoretical approaches and innovative methodologies and make important contributions to our current understanding of language acquisition, theoretical and descriptive linguistics, and language contact. This collection of articles is a testimony to the breadth and degree of specialization of the scholarly interest in the field. The selection of refereed chapters included in this volume were originally presented at the 20th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium (HLS) hosted at Georgetown University, 2016. The book should be read with interest by scholars and graduate students hoping to gain insight into the issues currently debated in Hispanic Linguistics.

Lusophone, Galician, and Hispanic Linguistics: Bridging Frames and Traditions examines the existing historiographic, foundational and methodological issues surrounding Lusophone, Galician, and Hispanic linguistics The volume offers a balanced collection of original research from synchronic and diachronic perspectives. It provides a first step to assessing the present and future state of Lusophone, Galician, and Hispanic linguistics and argues for an inclusive approach to the study of these three traditions which would enhance our understanding of each. Presenting the latest research in the field, this volume is a valuable resource for scholars in Lusophone, Galician, and Hispanic linguistics.

This volume offers a multidisciplinary view of cutting-edge research on bilingualism in Spanish and Portuguese-speaking regions, with the aim of building a bridge between sub-fields and approaches that often find themselves isolated from one another. The thirteen contributions in this volume offer a glimpse of the diversity of bilingualism present in the Hispanic and Lusophone world, shedding light on the sheer variety of speaker communities, language pairings (e.g., Spanish-English, Spanish-Basque, Spanish-Dutch, Portuguese-Spanish-English, Portuguese-English, Spanish-K’ichee Maya, and Spanish-Ixcatec) and speaker types (e.g., simultaneous bilinguals, and early and late sequential bilinguals). The diversity present in this collection of papers, both in empirical coverage and methodological and theoretical approaches, will be of interest to a wide range of students and researchers in bilingualism and Hispanic and Lusophone linguistics.

Studies on Variation in Portuguese offers a collection of studies on a range of variable phenomena attested within and across varieties of Portuguese. The volume starts out with an overview of current issues in the study of intralinguistic variation and is divided in two parts. Part 1 is dedicated to research on variation within national varieties (Brazilian and European). Here, a multidimensional analysis that combines both the geographic and the social dimensions of variation emerges as a way to identify possible regional specificities and the directionality of some of the variants. Part 2 collects studies that compare the behavior of a particular linguistic variable across different varieties. The variable phenomena discussed concern several levels of grammar and are framed within different conceptions of variation, thus promoting confrontation of theoretical and methodological alternatives. Overall, the volume constitutes a significant contribution to the essential question of how to model variation at different levels.

This volume comprises cutting edge research on language contact and change. The chapters present a wide scope of settings in which Spanish is in contact with other languages, such as Catalan, English, and Quechua; a large breadth of geographical areas (e.g., United States, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina); and varied participant groups, ranging from dialect contacts, second-language learners and heritage speakers to balanced bilinguals and code-switchers. Taken together, the chapters provide rich empirical descriptions of data pertaining to different levels of language, diverse – naturalistic and experimental – methodological approaches to data collection, as well as theoretical implications of the findings. The interdisciplinary perspective adopted by the authors contributes to the linguistic analysis and offers important insights into theoretical linguistics in general, and into theories of sociolinguistics, language variation, bilingualism, and second language acquisition.