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…

The present study examines the production and intuition of Spanish clitics in clitic left dislocation (CLLD) structures among 26 Spanish heritage speakers (HSs) born and raised in Brazil. We tested clitic production and intuition in contexts in which Spanish clitics vary as a function of the semantic features of the object that they refer to.…

Across the centuries, the question of the origin of language has captivated the human imagination. Many theories have been proposed to address fundamental questions such as: Where do languages come from? How do they evolve? What are the societal drivers of this change? Historically, one of the biggest challenges in addressing these questions has…

This study examines the frequency effect of two-word collocations involving "para" "to," "for" (e.g. "fui para," "para que") on the reduction of "para" to "pa" (in Spanish) and "pra" (in Portuguese). Collocation frequency effects demonstrate that language speakers…

Brazilian Portuguese (henceforth BP) has for long been considered as a Null-subject language due to its variability in regards to subject expression (e.g. "Era bom porque eu diminuia de peso...era muito gordinha" "That was good because then I could lose some weight...(I) was a bit chubby." C33:179). Such variability has been…