UBC Theses and Dissertations

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UBC Theses and Dissertations

La lengua española en los Estados Unidos Sun, Wei

Abstract

Speakers of Spanish in the United States are living perhaps the most interesting linguistic experience in the entire Hispanic world. The present study deals with the theme of the Spanish language in contact with English and the problems related with social bilingualism. The first part of Chapter I recounts the principal incidents in the history of Spanish expansion, and outlines the route of the advance of the Spanish language throughout the American continent. The second part of Chapter I presents statistical tables pertaining to immigrants, and explains the geographic and demographic distribution of Hispanics in the United States. Chapter II is a linguistic study of the varieties of Spanish found in the United States, along with lexical examples from daily use, and grammatical characteristics. Chapter III provides an academic classification according to the sociolinguistic and sociocultural factors which affect the Spanish language. Chapter IV presents the linguistic deviations produced by factors at the phonological, morphological, syntactical, lexical, semantic and grammatical level. Chapter V concentrates on the bilingual element of U.S. society. Three tables demonstrate the distribution of English and Spanish according to the sociolinguistic context and the type of text involved. In addition, three studies are presented to deepen our knowledge of bilingualism, as well as its causes and consequences. The conclusion must take into account the fact that it will not be possible to assimilate Hispanics as easily as has been done with people of other cultures in the United States, since the group renews itself continuously through the presence of recently arrived Hispanic immigrants, and those who have recently returned.

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