This dissertation focuses on the apparent linguistic discontinuity reflected in notarial texts from the twelfth to the thirteenth century in the Iberian Peninsula. Particular attention is given to the historical development of Spanish personal a (the direct object animacy marker), which can be used to trace the communicative continuity that must…

This dissertation presents results from a series of experiments investigating adult learning of an artificial language and the effects that input frequency (high vs. low token frequency), frequency distribution (skewed vs. balanced), presentation mode (structured vs. scrambled), and first language (English vs. Japanese) have on such learning.…

The present study investigates the degree to which social, experiential and usage-related factors correlate with Spanish linguistic competence among adult Hispanic Heritage Language (HL) speakers in the United States. Two online survey instruments were developed in furtherance of this research aim: a Likert-scale survey measuring five areas of…

Many scholars have proposed concepts relevant to spatial reference. Herskovits (1982) proposed that the topological concepts support, contiguity and containment are basic in English, while Levinson et al.'s (2003) examination of nine unrelated languages revealed that the concept attachment is primary. Neither of these proposals is confirmed in…