Written entirely in Spanish, this is the ideal introduction to Spanish linguistics for students. Using clear explanations, it covers all the basic concepts required to study the structural aspects of the Spanish language - phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics - as well as the history of Spanish, its dialects, and its linguistic variation in Latin America, Spain, and the US. This third edition incorporates new features designed to enhance its usefulness for classroom teaching: a new chapter on the teaching and learning of Spanish as a second language, expanded discussion of syntax, and more detailed coverage of Spanish semantics and pragmatics. Numerous exercises have been added throughout the text, some of which are now presented as problems for students to solve, allowing students to gain a more complete mastery of the analytical concepts at hand.

Author Biography

Jose Ignacio Hualde is Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Department of Linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he has been teaching for over 30 years. He specializes in Phonology, Phonetics and Historical Linguistics. He is author of Basque Phonology (1991), Euskararen azentuerak [the accentual systems of Basque] (1997), and The Sounds of Spanish (CUP, 2005, Spanish ed., Los sonidos del espanol 2014), among other books; co-author of The Basque Dialect of Lekeitio (1994) and co-editor of Generative Studies in Basque linguistics (1993), Towards a History of the Basque Language (1995), A Grammar of Basque (2003), and Laboratory Phonology 9 (2007), among other books. He has also published articles and book chapters on aspects of Basque, Spanish, Romance linguistics, Phonology and Historical Linguistics. Antxon Olarrea is Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Arizona, where he has been teaching for over 20 years. He specializes in Syntax and Biolinguistics. He is author of Origenes del Lenguaje y Seleccion Natural (2005); co-author of Romance Linguistics (2010) and The Handbook of Hispanic Linguistics (1994). He is the recipient of over a dozen local and national teaching awards. Anna Maria Escobar is Professor of Spanish, Linguistics, French, and SLATE at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She specializes in the socio-historical dynamics of morpho-syntactic and semantic change in language contact contexts. She has published two books on Andean Spanish (1990, 2000), co-written a book on Spanish of the U.S. (2015, with Kim Potowski), and edited a book on language contact in Latin America (2009, with Wolfgang Woelck). Presently, she is co-editing The Cambridge Handbook of Language Contact (with Salikoko Mufwene), co-editing a book on Spanish diversity in the Amazon (co-edited with Margarita Jara, Roberto Zariquiey and Pilar Valenzuela), and working on an historical sociolinguistic book project on the development of subjectivity and evidentiality in Spanish-Quechua contact. Catherine Travis is Professor of Modern European Languages at the Australian National University. Her research addresses questions related to linguistic and social factors impacting on language variation and change, in particular in socially diverse communities. She is co-author of the book Bilingualism in the Community (2018, CUP), deriving from her NSF-funded research on Spanish in New Mexico, USA, and she is currently leading a project on variation and change in English spoken in Sydney, Australia, funded by the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language in which she is a Chief Investigator. Cristina Sanz is Professor of Spanish and Linguistics at Georgetown University, where she directs the Intensive and School of Foreign Service Spanish Programs, the Barcelona Summer Program, and is Coordinator of the Catalan Lectureship. Her area of expertise is multilingualism across the lifespan. She has published over 90 volumes, articles and chapters in such journals as Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, PLoS ONE, Bilingualism Language and Cognition, Language Learning, and Applied Psycholinguistics. Her recent books include The Routledge Handbook of Study Abroad. Her 2005 volume with GU Press received the MLA's Mildenberger Award, and she is a recipient of the 2019 President's Awards for Distinguished Scholar-Teachers.