Document Type

Honors Project

Abstract

Numerous studies have been done in order to draw conclusions regarding languages in contact. This study looks at Spanish/English contact and departs from a more theoretical camp, focusing instead on documentation of Spanish in contact with English through the Spanish of fourteen Mexican immigrants in the Twin Cities. The main part of the study had a lexical focus and consisted of participants being asked to name forty everyday objects and concepts to determine language preference and patterns of lexical shifting in their Spanish. The results of the study contribute in a general manner to the existing body of work on Spanish in contact with English in the United States by providing documentation of Spanish in the Twin Cities, and more specifically, indicate that more time spent in contact with English correlates to a greater number of direct, unaltered lexical borrowings from English.

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