This analysis encompasses graphemic, phonological, lexical and syntactic variations of Chicano Spanish from standard Spanish and the functions of the vernacular within the speech community. (RM)

There exists a need to identify and recognize the Spanish dialect used in the Southwest United States in order to change the tradition of looking at it as inferior to standard Spanish and to English. The history of the Spanish-speaking people in the Southwest and of the changes in their culture brought about by colonialism is connected with the…

This paper reports on a preliminary quantitative study of syntactic constraints on code-switching within discourses in which no change in participants, setting or topic is evident. The goals of the study are to provide a syntactic description of the points at which switches from Spanish to English and English to Spanish are possible and to assess…

The English spoken by Spanish-surnamed Americans of the southwestern United States often has a Spanish flavor, even though the speakers may have no competence in Spanish. This Chicano English is discussed in a series of descriptions based on a number of previous studies of regional variations. Each description covers pronunciation, intonation,…

An overview of contemporary Hispanic dialectology, focusing on phonological phenomena, syntax, classification schemes, and bilingual communities, demonstrates that dialectology has long ceased to be the collection of innumerable surface deviations. It is suggested that dialectology is a theoretical discipline searching for universal principles to…

Discusses the Puerto Rican dialect and its peculiar placement of subject pronouns. Notes the linguistic variety in the dialect as well as its use of verbs connotating mental and communicative activity and constructions of relativity. These distinctions give rise to the functional hypothesis to account for the peculiarities of Spanish in the…

This document contains three reports in prepublication form on research conducted by linguists at the University of Colorado. The first paper presents an argument against the theories concerning the concept of the distributional syllable. Such theories are based on the assumptions that the syllable can and should be defined formally, without…

Foreign language teaching methodology is confronted with the problem of teaching Spanish to English-dominant native Spanish speakers. Linguistic documentation is lacking to accurately evaluate the linguistic competence of the bilingual student, documentation also useful in the preparation of adequate instructional materials. This paper describes…