Last update:
9 February 2010
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Quechua-Spanish BilingualismInterference and convergence in functional categories
2003. x, 189 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Hardbound
– In stock
978 90 272 5294 4 / EUR 99.00 978 1 58811 471 6 / USD 149.00
e-Book
– Available from e-book platforms
This book addresses how cross-linguistic interference is represented in the bilingual mind. Examining novel oral production data from older bilingual children representing two Quechua varieties, this research concludes that interference in the feature specification of functional categories leads to language change in a language contact situation, and links convergence, a common set of feature values for the same functional category in both languages to the activation of features related to the informational structure of the sentence. These mechanisms are illustrated in detail by the presence of overt determiners, canonical SVO word order and the absence of accusative marking in bilingual Quechua and by neutralization of case and gender distinctions in direct object pronouns as well as in the emergence of null pronouns with definite antecedents in bilingual Spanish.
Table of contents
“This exceptional book blends theoretical explanation and empirical evidence in a seamless web. It not only provides a uniquely new and precisely analyzed data set on Quechua-Spanish bilingualism, but also offers an elegant new theory on a source of language change. Its many discoveries and insights will surely recommend it to a wide audience, ranging across many subfields including Bilingualism, First and Second Language Acquisition, Language Contact and Linguistic Theory.”
Barbara Lust, Cornell University
“A very interesting study. It compares two communities, makes use of explicit elicitation techniques, and the theoretical analysis is very careful.”
“This work is a strong contribution to the fields of language contact and syntactic convergence. Although the scope of the book is clearly a syntactic analysis, this work is a useful tool for those interested in brushing up on certain aspects of either Spanish or Quechua grammar.”
Subject classification |
Linguistics