SPANISH LANGUAGE ACQUISITION IN TERTIARY EDUCATION: THE ACTUAL SITUATION IN LATVIA

The data published by The Instituto Cervantes (2021) prove that Spanish language use in the world is constantly rising. The current number of native speakers is 489 million people, and there are more than 22 million learners worldwide. It is the fourth most spoken language in the EU and the third in the UN. The newest Latvian Educational Standard states that the first and second-level educational institutions should offer a minimum of two foreign language acquisition. Nevertheless, the Latvian Educational Curriculum does not include Spanish as an option; therefore, it lacks institutional support to establish Spanish studies in all educational levels with the proper follow-up. The article presents the current situation in various study programs proposed by several Latvian tertiary education institutions in 2020/2021. The data has been collected by contacting current Spanish lecturers and analyzing the current study programs offering Spanish language acquisition in tertiary education institutions mentioned in the article. The analysis presents the content of the study programs in the bachelor and master study levels and the estimated number of students in each study program. It is a panoramic insight into Latvia's Spanish language teaching situation, which is necessary to understand Latvian-speaking Spanish learners' needs, existing resources for Spanish language teaching, and a further perspective for promoting Spanish studies in Latvia. It proves a lack of institutional cooperation to provide the constant Spanish language acquisition from the first till the tertiary educational level that would improve the general recognition of Spanish and its need in Latvian society as a part of the European Union.

Northern Pame-Spanish language acquisition in the context of incipient language loss

Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions: Northern Pame (autonym: Xi’iuy) is an Otopamean language situated in the Mexican state of San Luís Potosí. Today over 90% of the Pame population speaks Spanish, and two-year-old children only speak Northern Pame in two Northern Pame villages. The paper explores differences in two-year-old Pame children’s production of words in Northern Pame and Spanish in order to assess the possibility that developmental constraints and/or language shift influence the form and distribution of the children’s words in the two languages. Design/Methodology/Approach: The study is based on video recordings of five Northern Pame children around the age of 2;0. The adult speakers included one father and four mothers. Four hours of production data were analyzed from each of the five children. Data and Analysis: We analyzed the following: (1) the proportion of major lexical categories; (2) the use of the Spanish copula ser in Pame; (3) the mean segmental length of words in Pame and Spanish; and (4) the syllable structure of words in Pame and Spanish. Findings/Conclusions: The overall results demonstrate that the children’s Pame and Spanish words have distinct linguistic properties. Originality: The study is the first to report acquisition data for the Northern Pame language. Northern Pame differs from Spanish on a wide range of lexical and grammatical features. The analysis includes four lexical features. The outcomes for these four features produce a multi-dimensional measure of language differentiation. Significance/Implications: The study shows that Northern Pame parents are successfully passing their home language to their children despite pressure from the contact language. The children acquired the features of Pame words even though some mothers produced over 40% of their nouns in Spanish. The Spanish vocabulary does not inhibit the children’s developing Pame lexical structures.

Early lexical development in Spanish-speaking infants and toddlers

ABSTRACTThis paper describes the early lexical development of a group of 328 normal Spanish-speaking children aged 0;8 to 2;7. First the development and structure of a new parent report instrument,Inventario del Desarollo de Habilidades Communcativasis described. Then five studies carried out with the instrument are presented. In the first study vocabulary development of Spanish-speaking infants and toddlers is compared to that of English-speaking infants and toddlers. The English data were gathered using a comparable parental report, theMacArthur Communicative Development Inventories. In the second study the general characteristics of Spanish language acquisition, and the effects of various demographic factors on that process, are examined. Study 3 examines the differential effects of three methods of collecting the data (mail-in, personal interview, and clinic waiting room administration). Studies 4 and 5 document the reliability and validity of the instrument. Results show that the trajectories of development are very similar for Spanish-and English-speaking children in this age range, that children from varying social groups develop similarly, and that mail-in and personal interview administration techniques produce comparable results. Inventories administered in a medical clinic waiting room, on the otherhand, produced lower estimates of toddler vocabulary than the other two models.