Intensifiers have been the focus of a number of studies over the past decade, with considerable interest in their meaning and variability. Several scholars have discussed the use of such forms, particularly in English (Ito and Tagliamonte 2003, Tagliamonte 2008) and Spanish (Brown and Cortés-Torres 2013; Kanwit et al. 2017), exploring their…

Central America, including El Salvador, has been cited as the least studied of the Spanish-language dialect zones. The paucity of linguistic research extends to the language use of these populations in the United States, including that of Salvadorans who have relocated there. This paper analyzes Salvadorans' utilization of "voseo" and…

This investigation contributes to the understanding of language attitudes toward consonantal deletion by examining its perception using a matched-guise experiment (Casesnoves and Sankoff 2004; Lambert, Hodgson, Gardner, and Fillenbaum 1960) with fifteen listeners. Two experiments were designed for testing language attitudes, one toward…

The aim of the present paper is to provide an overview of the so-called "Spanglish" phenomenon and its linguistic repertoires (code-switching utterances). We propose that it is necessary to link all different forms of analysis in order to verify hypotheses regarding the relationship among social, linguistic, and cognitive processes behind…

Due to the recent shift in the linguistic pragmatics literature from the analysis of isolated speech acts to the focus on phenomena which affect the global meaning of a message, discourse markers (DMs) have become a frequent research topic. Despite their popularity, the evolution and development of these forms is often neglected in investigations…

The interrogative intonation of Cubans and Cuban Americans living in Miami is investigated. Two different intonation patterns are used in this variety of Spanish to convey absolute interrogative meaning: one with a falling final contour, as has been observed in Cuban Spanish, and one with a rising final contour, as is used in American English and…

Provides pedagogical rules for selecting relative pronouns in Spanish. Sixteen different linguistic environments in which relative pronoun usage occurs are categorized according to their different syntactic relationships and semantic intentions. (SL)

Describes the study of the use of /s/ vs. /h/ or O (in Spanish) in Valdivia, Chile, by speakers who differed in sex and age. No marked differences in relation to sex and age were found, indicating a relatively homogeneous community. (MLS)

Analyzes inter-dialect contact at the lexical level among the four largest Hispanic groups in New York City and investigates whether each group maintained its country's regional lexicon, assimilated that of the city's largest Spanish speaking group or the most prestigious variety, or produced another, "New Yorker Spanish" lexicon. (37…

An assessment of the substantive progress made regarding the study of language contact and bilingualism in the Hispanic world explores research concerning language contact and grammars, the bilingual speech community and linguistic structure, and bilingual discourse. (45 references) (CB)

Examines the nonstandard constructions in Caipira Portuguese, a dialect spoken in southeastern Brazil, which illustrate a tendency to reduce morphological redundancy at the noun phrase level. This is accomplished by restricting plural markers to only one of the elements of the noun phrase--not the noun, as might be expected, but, rather, one its…

Describes some of the current research on Brazilian Portuguese phonology. Various techniques are discussed that analysts utilize to investigate Brazilian Portuguese nasality. (49 references) (CB)

Examines such universal linguistic phenomena as simplification, overgeneralization, transfer, analysis, and convergence, and their corresponding theories regarding creolization, language acquisition, and language loss. A study of the Spanish verb system of Los Angeles bilinguals indicates that the continuous influx of new Spanish-speaking…

Discusses hybrid verbs as a linguistic product of the anglophone cultural influence on the Spanish spoken by Cubans in southeastern Florida. (NCR)