Strikingly apparent within the demographics of New England, Portuguese is a language rich in standard and nonstandard varieties. In studying Portuguese, it is common for some students to acquire language more easily than their peers, despite receiving the same linguistic input, and others display negative attitudes toward their instructor's…

A great deal of the research on cross-linguistic phonetic influence demonstrates that a speaker's knowledge of their first language (L1) significantly affects their ability to perceive and produce sounds in any other language. While current studies show that cross-linguistic transfer occurs at the L3 level, some research suggests that properties…

Across the centuries, the question of the origin of language has captivated the human imagination. Many theories have been proposed to address fundamental questions such as: Where do languages come from? How do they evolve? What are the societal drivers of this change? Historically, one of the biggest challenges in addressing these questions has…

This study examines the frequency effect of two-word collocations involving "para" "to," "for" (e.g. "fui para," "para que") on the reduction of "para" to "pa" (in Spanish) and "pra" (in Portuguese). Collocation frequency effects demonstrate that language speakers…

Brazilian Portuguese (henceforth BP) has for long been considered as a Null-subject language due to its variability in regards to subject expression (e.g. "Era bom porque eu diminuia de peso...era muito gordinha" "That was good because then I could lose some weight...(I) was a bit chubby." C33:179). Such variability has been…

This dissertation presents an instrumental study of variation in fricative voicing in Buenos Aires Spanish (BAS), particularly with respect to the devoicing change of the postalveolar fricative: /y/greater than/[function of]/. It proposes a novel way of determining the completion of this change by comparing the percentage voicing of the…

Language acquisition research frequently concerns itself with linguistic development and result of the acquisition process with respect to a first or subsequent language. For some, it seems tacitly assumed that a first language, once acquired, remains stable, regardless of exposure to and the acquisition of additional language(s) beyond the first…

This study focuses on the analysis of variation at the phonological level, specifically the variable realization of palatalization of dental stops before the high vowel /i/ and vowel nasalization in the speech of bilingual speakers of Uruguayan Portuguese (UP) in the city of Rivera, Uruguay. The data were collected in participant-observation and…