American Language Journal

Mixing Spanish and English in the Noun Phrase 

Dr. Daniel Smith, pp. 8-15

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Abstract. Spanish and English contact data from 56 speakers in an Hispanic community in Northeast Georgia are examined to see how speakers manage the two languages they use daily to structure their noun phrases.  Noun phrases in utterances and sentences often consist of a single noun or a noun with a determiner (such as the articles, 'the, a, some, el, la, los, las, un, una, unas, unos'; possessives such as 'my, your, mi, mis, tu, tus, su, sus'; or demonstratives such as 'this, that, este, ese, esta, esa'; etc.).  In Spanish and English code-switching, in which words from both Spanish and English are used in the same utterance, there are various possible combinations between the two languages.  This study, based in part in research on the noun phrase in other bilingual contexts in Myers-Scotton and Jake (2017) and more specifically for Spanish and English in Blokzijl, Deuchar and Parafita Couto (2017), categorizes the code-switching patterns in noun phrases in the Hispanic community in Northeast Georgia.  We compare our data with noun phrase code-switching in other bilingual contexts to observe universal grammar tendencies in noun phrase structure.
                                                        

Keywords: Noun phrase, determiner phrase, codeswitching, bilingualism, language contact

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Real Communities for Invented Languages. Dothraki and Klingon on the Web
Dr. Chiara Meluzzi, pp. 16-29
  
Abstract. Are invented languages used outside their domain? Nowadays, some languages created for TV series are widely used for creating new messages by fans on the web. In this paper, two of these languages, Klingon and Dothraki, are analyzed in their use in forums and in fictions written by fans for entertainment purposes. We will argue that users of these languages may constitute what sociolinguistics call a community of practice (Eckert & McConnell-Ginet 1992), which seems to be a more proper label than the traditional speech community.

 

Keywords: Invented Languages, Speech Community, Community of Practice, Conlang. 

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Classroom Approaches to Advanced Second Language Writing 

Maria Pritchett, pp. 31-41 
  
Abstract. This paper overviews current pedagogical approaches to teaching second language writing (SLW) in higher education. To do so, I first briefly overview history of the conversation on advanced SLW pedagogies and the fields that contribute to both the theory and the practice of teaching SLW. Next, I introduce the process orientation to SLW, as this orientation is incorporated into almost every current approach to teaching SLW. I then present three primary approaches to structuring SLW classes: portfolio, content-based, and corpus-informed SLW classes. Finally, I review several pedagogical tools that have been suggested as ideal supplements to the various process approaches: incorporating literature, translation, literary translation, and peer feedback. These approaches and tools all provide SLW teachers with practical advice on how to make the best use of a SLW course.  

 

Keywords: Pedagogy; second language writing; corpus linguistics.

 

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