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In commemoration of Spanish Language Day

April 21st, 2022 (3:00-4:30pm Boston / 21:00-22:30 Madrid)

Online via Zoom | RSVP: https://bit.ly/RSVP-Observatorio o info-observatory@fas.harvard.edu

This session, dedicated to celebrating Spanish Language Day, will examine the current situation of Spanish in the United States, paying particular attention to heritage speakers of the language. After describing the characteristics that differentiate heritage speakers from other types of bilinguals, the lecture will focus on their linguistic behavior, which exhibits wide inter- and intra-individual variability; this can include both the appearance and loss of grammatical nuances, resulting in forms that do not always conform to conventions established in contexts where Spanish is the dominant language. The analysis will be illustrated with psychological verbs such as gustar or encantar, which heritage Spanish speakers use non-canonically, as shown by previous research. This linguistic innovation of U.S. Spanish will be posited as a change taking place in the language, motivated mainly by the reanalysis of its internal structure.

Diego Pascual y Cabo is Associate Professor of Hispanic Linguistics and Director of the Spanish Heritage Language Program at the University of Florida. His primary research interest is heritage speaker bilingualism, which he examines from theoretical and applied perspectives. Pascual y Cabo’s work has appeared in scholarly journals such as Applied Linguistics, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, and Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism. For his collective efforts in teaching, research, and service, he has received a number of awards, like the 2021 University of Florida-College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Teaching Award, the 2017 Texas Tech University New Faculty Award, and the 2014 National Heritage Language Resource Center - Russ Campbell Young Scholar Award. 

Language: Spanish

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