Predicting the outcome of language contact situations is complicated by the fact that the primary agents of linguistic change--individual speakers--are unpredictable (van Coetsem, 2000; Thomason, 2001). My dissertation examines the variety of Spanish spoken in Galicia, Spain, where individual language choices are often motivated not by utility but…

In Spanish, aspectual morphology is a critical element that speakers use to narrate and discuss past events. Previous qualitative accounts have shown that native Spanish-speakers apply past-tense aspectual morphology to verbs in order to distinguish between events viewed as perfective (bounded, discrete events) and imperfective (unbounded,…