Volume 8, Issue 2 -

This article investigates the sociolinguistic perception of contact features in Asturian Spanish, a linguistic variety spoken in Northwestern Spain and characterized by the alternation between features from Asturian and Spanish. A matched guise experiment was used to test the participants’ social categorization of the following morphophonological variants: Asturian [u] and [es] vs. Spanish [o] and [as], respectively. The manipulation of the variants had a significant effect on how listeners perceived the social attributes of the speakers. However, while both variables were used to situate speakers in an urban/rural spectrum, only (o) was associated with status. The results of this study show that individual contact variants can index social information and that not all contact features are equally salient. I propose that, in this case, social salience is determined by the cognitive salience of the variables under study and the transparency of the link between linguistic form and social information.

This study explores the impact of study abroad (SA) on second language Spanish phonetic development. Twenty-seven English-speaking learners of Spanish, 15 who were participating in a 4-week SA program in the Dominican Republic and 12 who were studying at their home (AH) institution, were recorded 5 weeks apart (at the approximate beginning and end of their respective programs). Recordings were analyzed acoustically, and four groups of segments were examined: word-initial /p t k/, intervocalic /b d ɡ/, intervocalic /ɾ/ and /r/, and word-final /l/. Productions at Time 1 and Time 2 as well as between the SA and AH groups were compared. Results suggested a minor benefit of the SA environment for phonetic development of some of the segments but with notable individual variation in both groups.

In this paper, we submit data on variable plural marking in non-verbal predicates, preceded or not by a copula, to sociolinguistic treatment. The data was extracted from a corpus collected in the northwestern region of the state of São Paulo, in Brazil. The study was intended to examine whether variable plural marking in non-verbal predicates such as nouns, adjectives and past participles can be explained either by exclusively formal or exclusively functional constraints, or by the interaction between both, that is, by competing motivations. Results show that neither functional nor formal motivations alone rule these types of phenomena, which happen to be strongly constrained by a specific external factor: years of schooling.

The present contribution compares Caribbean Spanish (CS), especially the Dominican variant (DS), and Brazilian Portuguese (BP). These dialects, which show several similarities with respect to the loss of pro-drop (and related grammatical features), are described in a framework based on Toribio (1996, 2000): both in CS/DS and in BP the inflectional head seems to partly have lost not only its capacity of identifying the contents of a null pronoun, but also the possibility to assign nominative Case in a rightward direction. Speakers of BP have replaced the morphology-based identification mechanism by a special kind of antecedent identification, and it is argued that their competence is expanded by a “grammatical bolt-on” along the lines of Rowlett (2013). The situation in DS is much more complex due to the fact that null subjects are still possible in virtually all contexts where General Spanish has them. Although antecedent identification is a plausible mechanism (attested in other languages, for instance Icelandic and Russian), there is no conclusive evidence that it is at work in DS. Furthermore, and in contrast to BP, contact with, and exposure to, an educated variety of the language can hardly be made responsible for the actual variation in DS, with the exception of the use of ello as an overt expletive, which is disfavoured by more educated, urban speakers. The paper discusses also alternative proposals to the “competing grammars model” (cf. Toribio 2000) for DS, especially Holmberg et al.’s (2009) explanation for the partial null subject status of BP and other languages. Apart from exhibiting theoretical problems, it fails to do justice to the actual language variation in BP and is incompatible with the DS data. On the other hand, Sessarego and Gutiérrez-Rexach’s (in press) model for Chinchano Spanish (an Afro-Hispanic dialect spoken in Peru), which is based on the idea that input consisting of variable L2 outputs is responsible for variation in L1, may be promising, if similar acquisition processes can be established to have taken place in the dialects under scrutiny. For the moment, however, there is still some mystery about the partial pro-drop nature of CS/DS.

The present study outlines the current Portuguese language offerings in select New England universities and colleges vis-à-vis a call for more specialized heritage learner programs in Portuguese. Building on and garnering theoretical support from more established heritage language programs in Spanish, this study details the learner profiles and goals of existing programs in local educational institutions. The goal is to delineate the gaps and opportunities in Portuguese heritage language programs and to offer suggestions for further research.

Research on Spanish heritage language pedagogy has flourished in the past few decades, revealing both challenges and successful models to address them. The discussion here will focus on some of these major challenges and models, specifically, heritage language assessment, language variety validation, biliteracy approaches, and connections beyond the classroom. Students enroll in heritage language courses to develop their language repertoires and to become better prepared for professional opportunities that require formal uses of Spanish. However, one of the problems that heritage language instructors may face is guiding learners to develop biliteracy skills while also validating students’ language varieties. Heritage language learners frequently enter the classroom with feelings of inferiority about their language use either because their variety is stigmatized (e.g., they speak a rural variety), their Spanish is limited to oral/informal registers and/or their Spanish has English language influence. For these reasons, instructors’ role in empowering students and their language use is particularly crucial. Heritage language classrooms are also ideal for establishing stronger connections with local communities and professional sectors where Spanish is in demand (e.g., health care).

The goal of this article is to provide an overview of current issues in the field of Spanish heritage speaker bilingualism from a formal-generative linguistic perspective. We consider previous research findings and how these have shaped our understanding of the differential nature of heritage speaker grammars. Finally, we identify a list of future lines of investigation.

This paper overviews what we currently know about the phonetics/phonology of heritage speakers of Spanish based on previous research on this topic, and also provides suggestions for future directions to pursue, as inspired by previous work on heritage Spanish, adult learners of Spanish, native Spanish, and other heritage languages. Specifically, we examine the past and future of heritage Spanish phonetics/phonology at both the segmental (i.e., consonants and vowels) and suprasegmental (i.e., intonation, rhythm, stress) levels in terms of how this part of heritage Spanish grammars differs from that of other Spanish-speaking populations. Finally, we discuss a series of methodological factors to consider as investigators continue to advance this area of linguistic inquiry.

This paper reviews findings about linguistic features of Portuguese as a heritage language (PHL) in contact with English and German. The paper reviews some of the issues that have been uncovered in relation to morphosyntatic and sociopragmatic knowledge among heritage speakers of European and Brazilian Portuguese. The paper also discusses a few possible directions for future research in PHL that might shed light on morphosyntactic issues and on whether certain features illustrate examples of attrition or incomplete acquisition.

The variation that characterizes bilinguals and bilingualism is perhaps even more prominent when it comes to bilinguals who are heritage speakers of one of their languages. This variation is highly influential over the course of a lifetime in shaping and reshaping bilingual cognition, which we understand to be at once socially and individually embedded and guided. We first summarize some of the qualities that distinguish bilingual cognition from monolingual cognition. We then consider heritage speakers as a particular profile of bilingual, and discuss how variation that is specific to heritage speakers’ bilingual experience influences cognition across the lifespan.