In this paper we examine the use of Guarani affixes and clitics in colloquial Paraguayan Spanish. We depart from the traditional view of these as "borrowings," and instead explore the idea that these phenomena can be integrated within Muysken's (2000, 2013, 2014) typology of code-mixing. We claim that most of these uses may stem from a…

The use of English-origin spontaneous loanwords (e.g., "la babysitter," "el counter," etc.) in otherwise Spanish discourse is criticized by many as a strategy that bilinguals use to compensate for a lack of lexical knowledge in Spanish. The purpose of the current research is to examine the question of lexical proficiency as a…

In recent years, much research has shown that the first language (L1) is being used in the majority of foreign language classrooms. However, these findings have often failed to include secondary foreign language teachers and their teaching context. The current mixed-methods study explores Spanish teachers' use of and beliefs about first and target…

This study explores various linguistic strategies that characterize what is commonly referred to as "Spanglish"; namely, code-switching, code-mixing, borrowings and other language contact phenomena commonly employed by Chicana/o bilinguals. The analysis of linguistic features is based on creative pieces of writing produced by Chicana/o…

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…

The study examined heritage speaker grammars and to what extent they diverge with respect to grammatical gender from adult L2 learners. Results from a preference task involving code-mixed Determiner Phrases (DPs) and code-mixed copula constructions show a difference between these two types of operations. Heritage speakers patterned with the…

Following observations and interviews with transnational children that have one or more years of school in the United States and are now in school in Mexico, it was determined that the Mexican public school system has no mechanism in place to offer them the support they need. Therefore, I collaborated with Mexican university students to seek…