Three naming experiments were conducted to examine the role of the first and the second syllable during speech production in Spanish. Facilitative effects of syllable frequency with disyllabic words have been reported in Dutch and Spanish (Levelt & Wheeldon, 1994; Perea & Carreiras, 1998). In both cases, the syllable frequency effect was…

"The Story of California" is a history and geography of the state of California, intended for classroom use by limited-English-proficient, native Spanish-speaking students in California's urban middle schools. The book is designed with the left page in English and the right page in Spanish to facilitate student transition into…

A program shown on Spanish television is a linguistic survey of Spain. Spontaneous conversations were filmed and taped in all regions of the country. It is evident that the mass media are spreading a standard form of speech and that regional differences are becoming blurred. (Text is in Spanish.) (CHK)

An American family lived for 12 months in the Spanish province of Galicia as participant observers in the daily performance of the cultural roles and rituals of people living in the city of Santiago de Compostela. Since focus was on the performative dimensions of the culture, 38 people were formally interviewed, along with more than 100 on an…

Describes five types of schools presently functioning in Catalonia, a Spanish state with its own language existing alongside Spanish. The typology accords with the role of Catalan and Spanish in instruction and in student activities. The expected evolution of this situation is discussed along with a description of the Catalan-education project.…

Presents a psycholinguistic experiment focusing on whether common phonological alterations play a role in native speakers' perceptions of whether two words share a morpheme. Results indicate they are a significant factor in speakers' perceptions of morphemic relatedness. These findings show that phonological generalizations are psychologically…

Examines whether dual-route models of spelling account for the misspellings of Spanish children of different educational levels. Finds that second graders relied heavily on phonological mediation, whereas eighth graders seemed to use a lexical strategy, and fourth-grade children showed an intermediate pattern. Finds support for dual-route spelling…

A sociolinguistic analysis of pronunciation patterns of postnuclear occlusive consonants in northern peninsular Spanish resulted in (1) understanding of the vitality of the use of distinct allophonic variations; (2) characterization of sociolinguistic usage tendencies in relation to speakers' demographic characteristics; and (3) identification of…

Lists Spanish language books for children ranging from wordless picture books to adolescent love stories and translated popular novels. This year's list includes publishers from Latin America, in particular Mexico's Fondo de Cultura Economica. (MMU)

Investigated metalinguistic awareness in learning to read Spanish, focusing on print awareness, phonological awareness, decoding, and reading comprehension. Studies of 136 preliterate Spanish children indicated a relationship between phonological awareness and reading and revealed the importance of syllabic awareness in developing other levels of…

Brule and Isleno dialects of Spanish came to Louisiana from the Canary Islands simultaneously in the 18th century but have remained relatively isolated from each other and face extinction. Although they show common evidence of their origin, each has distinctive lexical, phonological, and syntactic features, some from contact with Acadian French or…

This article outlines strategies for the inferring of English scientific terms by Spanish speakers. The article considers factors affecting the process of inference, the use of context morphology, and word origin in inferring word meaning. (SR)