Language Contact and Change Spanish in Los Angeles [Paperback]

Languages in contact are characterized by constant and rapid change; thus, they provide a testing ground for hypotheses about processes of linguistic change. In this study, Silva-Corval??n looks at an inter-generational sample of Spanish-English bilinguals in Los Angeles County. Bringing together analytical techniques employed in sociolinguistics, functional syntax, and discourse analysis, she uncovers the linguistic, cognitive, and social processes underlying language maintenance, as well as changes characteristic of language shift and loss.

The presentation of the material is very clear and well organized....This book is an important contribution not only to the study of the Spanish spoken in the United States, but also to studies of language contact, sociolinguistics, dialectology, and the sociology of the language, among other fields. --Anthropological Linguistics