Many studies have been done on language attitudes, including attitudes toward languages in contact, various dialects of a language, nonnative speech, and attitudes of second-language (L2) learners toward the language that they are learning. Typically the studies of second-language learning deal with the attitudes toward the language in general rather than toward specific varieties within the language. The present study measures the attitudes of L2 learners of Spanish who lived in Spain, Mexico and Argentina toward native speakers from Spain and Mexico. The nonnative speakers listened to recordings of four native speakers, a male and a female from Spain, and a male and a female from Mexico, and rated each on a series of characteristics such as intelligence, education, attractiveness, work ethic, and honesty. T-tests were run to determine whether or not the time spent in one of the countries affected the attitudes toward each variety of Spanish. The results show that the judges had a tendency to give higher ratings to the speakers that they could understand the easiest. In addition, there was an overall tendency to rate both of the speakers from Spain higher, as was found in studies by Álvarez, Martínez and Urdaneta (2001), as well as Montes-Alcalá (2011), and to rate the females higher, supporting what both González Martínez (2008) and Labov (1972) found.

This study analyzes the production of Voice Onset Time (VOT) of natural Spanish-English bilinguals. VOT is a linguistic characteristic that measures the amount of aspiration occurring after the release of a stop consonant. In terms of VOT, English stop consonants differ substantially from their Spanish equivalents. This study analyzes whether or not natural bilinguals produce VOTs that approximate VOTs of monolingual speakers of each language. Participants completed two surveys to quantify their linguistic dominance in English and Spanish. They were then recorded performing similar speaking tasks in both languages. The conclusions show that natural bilinguals do not produce their English or Spanish VOTs within the monolingual norms defined in previous studies. If conclusions were to be drawn solely from this data, then the participants would theoretically have no monolingual-like language production of VOT. There is also no correlation between language dominance scores and production of VOT. These results support the conclusion that a natural bilingual is not the equivalent of two natural monolingual speakers. Significant correlations exist between VOT production and gender, age of learning English, and amount of time spent watching TV in each language. Another interesting conclusion is that many of the participants score more Spanish-dominant when a survey is given in Spanish and more English-dominant when the very same survey is given in English. This shows that even the language of a survey may skew responses slightly.

In 1639, a law prohibiting women any head covering; veil, mantilla, manto for example, is promulgated for the fifth time in the Iberian Peninsula under the penalty of losing the garment, and subsequently incurring more severe punishments. Regardless of these edicts this social practice continued. My dissertation investigates the cultural representation of these covered women (tapadas) in Spain and the New World in a vast array of early modern literary, historical and legal documents (plays, prose, and regal laws, etc.). Overall, critics associate the use of the veil in the Spanish territories with religious tendencies and overlook the social component of women using the veil to simply explain it as a mere fashion practice. In my dissertation, I argue that it is more than just a garment; the veil was used by women to make political statements, thereby challenging the restrictive gender and identity boundaries of their epoch. A critical analysis of early modern historical and legal peninsular texts and close-readings of Golden Age literary works, together with colonial cultural productions, allow me to identify patterns in how the tapadas were represented both artistically and culturally. Accordingly, my project attempts to reassess the significance of the tapadas in Hispanic culture for 350 years and demonstrate how their resilience to stop using the veil publicly is symptomatic of the absolutist monarchy inefficiencies in imposing social control. I move away from the tendency to investigate works including tapadas exclusively, and I conclude by reconstructing more accurately their cultural impact on the social dynamics in Spain as well as the New World.

This study analyzed how six Heritage language learners at the university level gained conscious awareness and control of the concept of modality as revealed in student verbalizations (Vygotsky, 1998) throughout five different written communicative events. This work took place in the only course designed for Heritage language learners at a large public suburban university in the Northeast part of the United States. Grammatical simplification in bilingual speakers is due to incomplete acquisition of Spanish, attrition or loss of an underused linguistic system (Lynch, 1999; Martínez Mira, 2009a, 2009b; Mikulski, 2010b; Montrul, 2007; Ocampo, 1990; Silva-Corvalán, 1990, 1994a, 1994b, 2003; Studerus, 1995). The result of the process of simplification is reduction or loss of forms and/or meanings. In this work, I investigated in which ways Gal’perin’s (1989) systemic-theoretical organized instruction promoted awareness, control and internalization of the concept of modality in three sets of data: definition, discourse and verbalization (Negueruela, 2003). In addition, I examined how the concept of modality emerged and proceeded. By focusing students’ attention in Negueruela’s (2003) Concept of Mood in Spanish orienting chart in a top down fashion, students were able to strengthen their theoretical understanding in practical activity while still accessing empirical knowledge, and eventually generalizing its use in new contexts across nominal, adjectival and adverbial clauses. At the definition level, Gal’perin’s Systemic-theoretical instruction promoted emergence and progress of their conceptual understanding from perceptual to semantic. At the discourse level, students’ theoretically based semantic understanding had a positive impact as revealed in student’s discourse progress throughout tasks. At the verbalization level, semantic, abstract and systematic verbalizations showed students’ emergence of awareness of the interrelated categories of modality. The conceptual category of anticipation was appropriately verbalized and contextualized 68% of the time. The absence of quality verbalizations referring to a specific conceptual category in some students lead me to conclude that students did not fully understand the meaning of some conceptual categories. On the contrary, their presence in any of the tasks showed emergence of conceptual meaning(s) in appropriate contexts, further appropriate recontextualization may provide full awareness and control.

No description available.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Un estudiante que empieza a aprender el español en la universidad sin experiencia previa generalmente no tiene un vocabulario amplio en el tercer año de la carrera cuando va a tener que hacer un curso de literatura. Este estudio investiga el reto que enfrenta el estudiante cuando empieza a estudiar la literatura hispánica. Se enfoca en los siguientes aspectos de este tema: 1) la brecha que existe entre el vocabulario limitado de un estudiante de segunda lengua y el vocabulario amplio de un hablante nativo; 2) en qué consiste un vocabulario mínimo; 3) cómo el leer extensivamente ayuda a desarrollar el vocabulario; 4) la necesidad de utilizar y saber utilizar el diccionario para aumentar el vocabulario; 5) la literatura infantil y juvenil como un recurso útil para desarrollar el vocabulario y 6) un análisis de unos libros escritos para niños de varias edades.

Variation in Cuban Spanish Abstract The aim of this thesis is to deal with the topic of variation in Cuban Spanish, with a special emphasis on the Havana variety, one of the most innovative and recognizable within the island's linguistic landscape. The work is divided into three sections: phonetics and phonology, lexis and semantics, morphology and syntax. The cases described are illustrated with entries taken from a lexico- graphical work of personal authorship, or likewise with usage examples mainly taken from the Reference Corpus of Contemporary Spanish (CREA). On the basis of the analysis of the collected data, this paper examines the state of variability and balance inherent to the system, in order to deepen in the understanding of the mechanisms that shape this language variety. Keywords: Spanish language, Cuban Spanish, variation, dictionary of Cuban Spanish Variación lingüística en el español de Cuba Resumen El objetivo de la presente tesis es abordar el tema de la variación en el español hablado en Cuba, con especial énfasis en la modalidad de La Habana, una de las más innovadoras y representa- tivas del panorama lingüístico insular. El trabajo se halla dividido en tres grandes bloques: fonética y fonología, léxico y semántica, morfología y sintaxis. Los casos descritos se hallan ilustrados con...

Within the field of second language acquisition of phonology, the role of immersion experiences on language learners' pronunciation has recently become a topic of greater interest. While students of a foreign language with study abroad experience (one to six months) have shown relatively little progress in pronunciation gains, language learners group with extended immersion experience—approximately 24 months abroad—have demonstrated more native-like pronunciation. This study compares the pronunciation of L2 Spanish /u/ among native English speakers enrolled in the same third-year Spanish course who belong to two different groups based on the context of their previous language learning: extended immersion in a Spanish-speaking country or traditional classroom instruction. The effects of syllabic stress and speech task type on the pronunciation of these two groups are also examined. Acoustic data from participants' speech is used to conduct statistical analyses. Words and phrases are subject over time to a process called grammaticalization, especially those that are used frequently. This process causes a gradual shift from use as lexical items to use as grammatical devices. Semantic bleaching also occurs, which means that the earlier or original lexical content of a word or phrase is partially or completely lost. Verbs expressing the idea of possession are particularly susceptible to this type of change. The Spanish verb tener ('to have'), while still retaining its lexical content, has come to be used in constructions that do not represent the explicit idea of possession—they incorporate a bleached usage of the word. This alteration is evident in four construction types examined in this paper. These constructions all have three essential elements: a "possessor" argument, a "possessed" argument, and a third modifying component. The analyses of these constructions include templates that describe both their semantic content and their syntactic structure.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina at Wilmington, 2006. / In English and Spanish. Includes bibliographical references (p. 35-40)

This thesis examines the products and impact of the language contact situation produced in Argentina between Italian immigrants and the local Argentine population from the late 1800s to the present day. This thesis is composed of two main parts: historical research and first-hand research, including a comparison between the linguistic situations in Argentina and Uruguay. Despite the high percentage of people of Italian descent in Argentina, we find a case of language shift and loss. Though in the past Italian immigrants were subject to discrimination, now Italian culture is a sense of pride. Nonetheless, the Italian language is only one marker of culture, and one that is lost in the home environment after a few generations. There have been, and still are, some Argentine efforts toward language maintenance, which could perhaps be improved after a thorough comparative study of Uruguay's Italian education model.