Carol A Klee

Communication as an Organizing Principle in the National Standards: Sociolinguistic Aspects of Spanish Language Teaching

The Standards for Foreign Language Learning present a definition of language teaching that ex- tends beyond a focus on grammar and vocabulary to include the sociolinguistic and cultural aspects of lan- guage. An analysis of the concept of communicative competence, as defined by anthropologists and sociolinguists, elucidates the types of cultural knowledge that underlie the three communicative modes: the interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational, defined in the Standards.

Andean Spanish and the Spanish of Lima: Linguistic Variation and Change in a Contact Situation

One of the frequently mentioned results of globalization has been its detrimental effects on the maintenance of minority languages. It has been estimated that of the roughly 6,000 languages spoken across the globe in 2000, between 50 per cent and 90 per cent will not survive the twenty-first century. For the Quechua-speaking masses in Peru, who lived in relative isolation in the Andean region following the Spanish invasion in the sixteenth century, the twentieth century brought increased opportunities for contact with Spanish speakers as a result of the modernization of the economy, the development of communication networks and the initiation of massive migration from the Andean region to the coast. These changes have brought about a rather rapid language shift from Quechua to Spanish, as is apparent in census data. In 1940 over half the population of Peru spoke an indigenous language. However, by the 1980s only one-quarter of the population claimed some proficiency in one of these languages. According to census data, approximately 60 per cent of those who speak an indigenous language in Peru also speak Spanish (Pozzi-Escot, 1990). Thus, there has been fairly rapid language shift in Peru over the past 65 years. Mufwene (2004: 207) has described language shift among Native Americans in ecological terms, as ‘an adaptive response to changing socioeconomic conditions, under which their heritage languages have been undervalued and marginalized’.

Spanish-Quechua language contact: The clitic pronoun system in Andean Spanish

(1990). Spanish-Quechua language contact: The clitic pronoun system in Andean Spanish. WORD: Vol. 41, No. 1, pp. 35-46.

Measuring /s/ variation among younger generations in a migrant settlement in Lima, Peru

Abstract This study analyzes the pronunciation of /s/ in the Spanish of young adults in a newer migrant settlement in metropolitan Lima, Peru. The participants have parents and/or grandparents who migrated to Lima primarily from the Andean provinces, where the sibilant pronunciation of /s/ prevails. The study examines a variety of social factors, including migrant generation, family origin, gender, education, occupation, and social networks to determine the factors that correlate with /s/ weakening, which is more prevalent in Classic Limeño Spanish than in Andean Spanish (Caravedo 1990; Hundley 1983; Klee and Caravedo 2006). A proportional-odds mixed effects model was used to treat the repeated measurement categorical data on a continuum of acoustical variation ([s]>[h]>Ø) and the advantages of this model are explained. Results indicate that an important social predictor of /s/ variation is migrant generation: there is a progressive weakening in /s/ with each subsequent migrant generation. In addition to the generational effect, higher levels of education correlate with less /s/ weakening. Two variables were more weakly correlated with /s/ pronunciation: gender and social networks. Overall, the results indicate that young adults in this community, especially those of the third-generation, seem to be assimilating to some degree to coastal norms of /s/ weakening, although there is also a possibility that they may be forming their own norm.

The role of language contact in semantic change: Ser and estar – a response to Geeslin and Guijarro-Fuentes

The role of language contact in linguistic change remains a polemic issue in the field of contact linguistics. Many researchers (Weinreich, 1953; Lefebvre, 1985; Prince, 1988; Silva-Corvalan, 1994; King, 2000; Sankoff, 2002; Labov, 2007) believe that there are limits on the types of linguistic patterns that can be transmitted across languages, while others (Thomason and Kaufman, 1988, p. 14) deem that “any linguistic feature can be transferred from any language to any other language”. Regardless of the differences of opinion on this issue, there is widespread recognition that the social context, including such features as the size and characteristics of the bilingual groups, the attitudes toward the languages spoken, and the intensity and duration of language contact, play an important role in determining the linguistic outcomes of language contact.