This book is concerned with the diachronic development of selected topic and focus markers in Spanish, Portuguese and French. On the one hand, it focuses on the development of these structures from their relational meaning to their topic-/ focus-marking meaning, and on the other hand, it is concerned with their current form und use. Thus, Romance topic and focus markers - such as sp. en cuanto a, pt. a propósito de, fr. au niveau de or sentence-initial sp. Lo que as well as clefts and pseudo-clefts - are investigated from a quantitative and qualitative perspective. The author argues that topic markers have procedural meaning and that their function is bound to their syntactic position. An important contribution of this study is the fact that real linguistic evidence (in the form of data from various corpora) is analyzed instead of operating with constructed examples.

This book introduces readers to basic concepts of sociolinguistics with a focus on Spanish in the US. The coverage goes beyond linguistics to examine the history and politics of Spanish in the US, the relationship of language to Latinx identities, and how language ideologies and policies reflect and shape societal views of Spanish and its speakers. Accessible to those with no linguistic background, this book provides students with a foundation in the study of language and society, and the opportunity to relate theoretical concepts to Spanish in the US in a range of contexts, including everyday speech, contemporary culture, media, education and policy. The book is a substantially revised and expanded 2nd edition of Spanish Speakers in the USA, including new chapters on the history of Spanish in the US, the demographics of Spanish in the US, and language policy; and expanded chapters on language ideologies, race, identity, media, and education. A Spanish-language edition of this book is also available: https://www.multilingual-matters.com/page/detail/?K=9781800413931.

The Spanish Empire was a complex web of places and peoples. Through an expansive range of essays that look at Africa, the Americas, Asia, the Caribbean, and the Pacific, this volume brings a broad range of regions into conversation. The contributors focus on nuanced, comparative exploration of the processes and practices of creating, maintaining, and transforming cultural place making within pluralistic Spanish colonial communities. The Global Spanish Empire argues that patterned variability is necessary in reconstructing Indigenous cultural persistence in colonial settings. The volume’s eleven case studies include regions often neglected in the archaeology of Spanish colonialism. The time span under investigation is extensive as well, transcending the entirety of the Spanish Empire, from early impacts in West Africa to Texas during the 1800s. The contributors examine the making of a social place within a social or physical landscape. They discuss the appearance of hybrid material culture, the incorporation of foreign goods into local material traditions, the continuation of local traditions, and archaeological evidence of opportunistic social climbing. In some cases, these changes in material culture are ways to maintain aspects of traditional culture rather than signifiers of new cultural practices. The Global Spanish Empire tackles broad questions about Indigenous cultural persistence, pluralism, and place making using a global comparative perspective grounded in the shared experience of Spanish colonialism. Contributors Stephen Acabado Grace Barretto-Tesoro James M. Bayman Christine D. Beaule Christopher R. DeCorse Boyd M. Dixon John G. Douglass William R. Fowler Martin Gibbs Corinne L. Hofman Hannah G. Hoover Stacie M. King Kevin Lane Laura Matthew Sandra Montón-Subías Natalia Moragas Segura Michelle M. Pigott Christopher B. Rodning David Roe Roberto Valcárcel Rojas Steve A. Tomka Jorge Ulloa Hung Juliet Wiersema

Diachronic linguistics has been experiencing a strong revival during the last few decades, since an increasing number of researchers have assumed that evolutionary and historical factors must be considered to properly understand how natural languages work. This book offers new data and insights on some of the research lines which are currently being developed within the framework of diachronic language research. The papers brought together in this volume are characterized both by their originality and by their methodological diversity; the reader will thus find herein theoretical as well as empirical works, undertaken from various perspectives of analysis (diachronic cognitive semantics, grammaticalization theory, discursive traditions, historical phraseology, etc.). The final outcome is an eclectic volume which offers valuable information for every reader, regardless of whether they are experienced linguists or junior researchers willing to know the latest epistemological advances in this discipline.

The first book-length treatment of the phonetics and phonology of heritage languages, spanning a range of linguistic areas and communities.

"This is the most comprehensive book I’ve ever read about the use of Spanish in the U.S. Incredible research. Read it to understand our country. Spanish is, indeed, an American language."—Jorge Ramos An American Language is a tour de force that revolutionizes our understanding of U.S. history. It reveals the origins of Spanish as a language binding residents of the Southwest to the politics and culture of an expanding nation in the 1840s. As the West increasingly integrated into the United States over the following century, struggles over power, identity, and citizenship transformed the place of the Spanish language in the nation. An American Language is a history that reimagines what it means to be an American—with profound implications for our own time.

This book offers a systemic-functional account of Spanish, and analyses how Spanish grammatical forms compare and contrast with those of English. The authors analyse Spanish according to the three main 'metafunctions': ideational, interpersonal, and textual. The result is a comprehensive examination of Spanish grammar from the clause upwards. Presupposing little or no knowledge of Spanish, this book will be of interest to researchers in Spanish language, systemic functional linguistics or contrastive linguistics.