CUBAN SPANISH DIALECTOLOGY: Georgetown Studies in Spanish Linguistics series

This edited volume aims to provide a comprehensive collection of current research on Cuban Spanish linguistics from different theoretical perspectives and linguistic areas. It features studies from four major areas relative to Cuban Spanish dialectology: phonological and phonetic variation, morphosyntactic approaches, sociolinguistic perspectives, and heritage language acquisition. Due to Cuba's relative isolation since the mid-20th century, there has been little empirical research on this Spanish dialect. This volume seeks to fill that gap in the literature, conceiving of Cuban Spanish as both the Spanish spoken in contemporary Cuba as well as that spoken by Cuban immigrants to the United States. The Cuban Spanish dialect has intrinsic characteristics common to other Caribbean Spanish dialects, including Dominican and Puerto Rican Spanish, but differs from these and other Caribbean varieties in many respects, crucially in its intonation and lexicon. Furthermore, Cuban Spanish has a high linguistic prestige in the US compared to other Spanish dialects for various socioeconomic, educational, historical, and political reasons. Thus Cuban Spanish spoken in the US is worth examining in terms of language contact and change, intergenerational language maintenance and transmission, and heritage language acquisition, among other issues.