The Role of the Lexicon
Becky Gonzalez, Ph.D.
In their keynote article, Lohndal and Putnam (2024, henceforth “L&P”) argue for an exoskeletal approach to grammar, which they argue can be employed to analyze data from diverse populations, and which eliminates the need for further specific mechanisms, namely Feature Reassembly (henceforth, FR) as proposed by Lardiere (2008, 2009) for second language acquisition (SLA). L&P posit that bilingual grammars are constrained in the same sense as monolingual grammars, “making them equally important in trying to understand the nature of our linguistic capacity” (p.1). It would be easy to argue that multilingual grammars are even more important for linguistic theory at this point, as bi-/multilinguals represent more than half of the world’s population and challenge many theoretical assumptions based on monolingual data alone. The proposal of a single model which seeks to account for all linguistic populations and their grammatical representations is important and valuable. In their proposal, L&P outline fundamental differences between lexical and syntactic approaches to grammar, ultimately presenting a series of arguments in favor of the syntactic (i.e., exoskeletal) approach, which they argue is a “suitable host for the core principles of Feature Reassembly.” My response centers on the idea of the exoskeletal model as a natural extension of FR, specifically considering the ambiguous role of the lexicon and how exactly exponents are mapped to features under this model.


La angustia del idioma para los hablantes de herencia
Claudia Pozzobon Potratz, PhD
Hace unos años entrevisté a una estudiante mexicoamericana de la Universidad de Iowa sobre su lengua materna. Yo estaba realizando la investigación para mi tesis doctoral sobre hablantes de herencia del español, y algo que Celeste dijo me sorprendió mucho: que la lengua que hablan en su casa era "Tex-Mex." a la que describió como "no es español correcto." Lamentablemente muchos estadounidenses bilingües consideran el idioma que hablan en sus casas, que tiene un gran influencia del inglés, incorrecto porque no es igual al idioma que ven en libros o en los medios. 


Red Pen or Cursor? Assimilation and Resistance in a Digital Writing Workshop
Bonnie S. Sunstein, Michael Goldberg, and Claudia Pozzobon Potratz
In her 1982 speech to writing teachers, rhetorician Maxine Hairston offered a meticulous historical look at what was then new research, but recognized that most writing teachers were still teaching in the ways they’d been taught. Hairston invoked physicist/philosopher Thomas Kuhn, declaring that composition was shifting its paradigm from an emphasis on product to process: “ … the writing teachers’ frustration and disenchantment may be less important than the fact that if they teach from the traditional paradigm, they are frequently emphasizing techniques that the research has largely dis-credited” (78). Why are so many writing teachers teaching the same way they were taught? It’s forty years later. And now, in 2021, in an educational culture that demands quantification and replication, product is even more valued than when Hairston spoke of a paradigm shift. Not much has changed or shifted, and we are in the midst of a new paradigm— the increasingly digital educational space.


El cómic: Intertextualidades, discursividades y paratextos en el arte secuencial de América Latina y el Caribe
Edited by Ana Merino with Tania Pérez-Cano and Britanny Tullis
Desde su surgimiento, entre finales del siglo XIX y principios del XX, el cómic latinoamericano registra las contradicciones entre cultura popular y letrada, entre lo autóctono y lo universal, al tiempo que hace crónica de la vida cotidiana. Es imposible desligar al cómic en sus distintos formatos de la plástica, la literatura, y los medios masivos de comunicación. Además, el cómic se ha consolidad abriendo importantes espacios de diálogo y reflexión académica sobre la cultura del siglo pasado y las realidades contemporáneas que lo inspiraron. Los once artículos en este dossier continúan un diálogo necesario e interdisciplinar que el estudio académico de los cómics ha ido sedimentando desde finales del siglo XX.


La pulsión literaria en la narrativa gráfica de los Hermanos Hernández
Ana Merino, Ph.D.
Este ensayo reflexiona sobre algunos de los aspectos literarios que definen los cómics de los Hermanos Hernández y el concepto de tiempo que se evoca en sus respectivas series dentro del ciclo Love and Rockets. Compara algunos ejemplos de cuadernillos de 2016 con ejemplos tempranos de 1985 con tramas de Jaime. Analiza las formas en las que los personajes de Maggie, Hopey, Izzy o Penny Century interactúan y definen los Cómics Alternativos y el poder e impacto de “Locas” a la hora de explicar a las Latinas en Estados Unidos. Los personajes femeninos de Jaime y Gilbert representan importantes modelos que motivaron a los lectores a pensar sobre género y multiculturalismo en los cómics. El cómic seriado en formato de cuadernillo ha permitido a lo largo de los años una mayor comprensión de la importancia de las tramas con sentido creativo. Este ensayo también trabaja la dimensión poliédrica de las protagonistas y las transformaciones que experimentan al crecer y definir su propia identidad. El trabajo de Jaime y Gilbert ha sido fundamental y una gran influencia en la obra de las autoras que han ido desarrollando sus propios personajes ficticios femeninos mientras buscaban su propia voz.

Keywords: Love and Rockets; el tiempo en el cómic seriado; modelos feminista; Latinas; cómic alternativo.


La consciencia de la voz adulta en el cómic: transiciones estéticas y miradas políticas
Ana Merino, Ph.D.
Los jóvenes autores españoles que vivieron la Transición, fueron conscientes de la fuerza que tenía su mirada creativa y de que estaban en un período de transformación y cambio del género. Este ensayo recorrerá los trabajos y vivencias de autores como Max, Gallardo y Nazario que presenciaron la Transición con una mirada consciente de lo que significaba el nuevo espacio de libertad que estrenaban. Por un lado, digerían la fuerza de las estéticas internacionales que se filtraban y ya daban paso a posicionamientos adultos contraculturales. A ellos les tocó aprender a modular sus propias voces adultas y reconocer la realidad circundante de un nuevo país en formación. Los discursos políticos impregnaron un presente que ellos articularon con nuevas propuestas narrativas donde el cómic generó algunos de los diálogos más interesantes y subversivos de la historia de la cultura contemporánea española. Gracias al cómic y su capacidad para entender lo que significó la Transición, se abordaron desde mediados de los setenta y comienzos de los ochenta temas claves como la memoria, la identidad sexual, el ecologismo, o la libertad de expresión. De pronto un espacio cultural que se asumía como infantil, ofrecía y sumaba nuevas pautas vitales que redefinían la España futura.

Keywords: El Víbora, Transición española, Los cómics del underground, Nazario, Max, Gustavo, Cómix


Hacia el cómico contemplativo
Ana Merino, Ph.D.
Ensayo sobre la obra de Evan McCohen, practicador de un cómic contemplativo que provoca la evocación poética.

Keywords: Evan M. Cohen, Cómic contemplativo, Gráfica poética, Poesía gráfica, Poesía


L2 proficiency and L2 dialect processing during study abroad
Christine Shea, Ph.D.
In this chapter, we examine how proficiency and L2 dialect processing interact over the course of a three-month study abroad program in Buenos Aires, Argentina in L1 English/L2 Spanish learners. To measure dialect processing changes, participants completed an auditory form-priming task in which primes and targets were taken from Mexican and Buenos Aires Spanish. The pretest results show differences within and across proficiency levels for dialect processing, as do the posttests. This study adds to the literature on advancedness and language acquisition by highlighting how dialect-specific knowledge develops over the course of study abroad and how advanced learners (vs. less-advanced) develop dialect-specific representations. 

Keywords: advanced L2 proficiency, dialect processing, dialect representation, study abroad


Mapping different L1 dialects to L2 words
Christine Shea, Ph.D.
We ask how dialect experience affects the perception of modified L2 words by speakers of different L1 dialects. Colombian Spanish speakers from Barranquilla (s-aspirating dialect) and Bogota (non-s-aspirating dialect) carried out cross-dialect phonological priming experiments in Spanish and L2 English. For Spanish, primes and targets were counterbalanced across dialect features. For English, half the primes and targets exhibited /s/-aspiration of the Barranquilla dialect. Results showed an interaction between trial type and group for the s-aspirated forms; the Barranquilla group showed a significant priming effect in Spanish and also for the nonword /s/-aspirated forms in English. Further analysis revealed that the priming effect for English /s/-aspirated forms was attenuated in Barranquilla listeners with greater English proficiency. These results show that second language listeners transfer abstract native language dialect knowledge to L2 input even when this knowledge is not directly part of the L2 input, providing evidence for the transfer of abstract, socially-indexed knowledge to the processing of L2.

Keywords: Spanish, phonological form priming, second language, variability, dialects


Spanish speakers' English schwar production: Does orthography play a role? 
Christine Shea, Ph.D.
Abstract This study examines how input mode – whether written or auditory – interacts with orthography in the production of North American English (NAE) schwar (/ɝ/, found in fur, heard, bird) by native Spanish speakers. Greater orthographic interference was predicted for written input, given the obligatory activation of orthographic representations in the execution of the task. Participants were L1 Mexican Spanish/L2 English speakers (L2, n = 15) and NAE (n = 15, rhotic dialect speakers). The target items were 10 schwar words and 10 words matched in graphemes to the onset and nucleus of the schwar words (e.g., bird was matched with big), for a total of 20 items. The degree of overlap between schwar productions across group and input mode (L2 only) was analyzed, followed by a generalized additive mixed model analysis of F3, one of the acoustic cues to rhotacization. Results showed that L2 schwar productions were different from the NAE productions in both the overlap and F3 measures, and the written input mode showed greater L1 orthographic interference than the auditory input mode, supporting the hypothesis that L1 orthography–phonology correspondences affect L2 productions of English schwar words.

Keywords: plain vowels; neutral vowels; English schwar; L2 English; L1 Spanish; pronunciation


Within- and between-language competition in adult second language learners: implications for language proficiency
Christine Shea, Ph.D.
Second language (L2) learners must not only acquire L2 knowledge (i.e. vocabulary and grammar), but they must also rapidly access this knowledge. In monolinguals, efficient spoken word recognition is accomplished via lexical competition, by which listeners activate a range of candidates that compete for recognition as the signal unfolds. We examined this in adult L2 learners, investigating lexical competition both amongst words of the L2, and between L2 and native language (L1) words. Adult L2 learners (N = 33) in their third semester of college Spanish completed a cross-linguistic Visual World Paradigm task to assess lexical activation, along with a proficiency assessment (LexTALE-Esp). L2 learners showed typical incremental processing activating both within-L2 and cross-linguistic competitors, similar to fluent bilinguals. Proficiency correlated with both the speed of activating the target (which prior work links to the developmental progression in L1) and the degree to which competition ultimately resolves (linked to robustness of the lexicon).

Keywords: Second language acquisition; spoken word recognition; lexical competition; language proficiency; visual world paradigm