Armin SchweglerProfessor, Spanish and Portuguese Associate Editor, Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages Director, Global Cultures (UCI) |
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Research Interests |
History of Spanish, dialectology, historical linguistics, typology, Creoles | |
| URL | www.humanities.uci.edu/spanishandportuguese/old/faculty/schwegler/schwegler.shtml | |
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Academic Distinctions |
ACADEMIC HONORS (Selection) 1988 President’s Fellow in the Humanities. University of California, Berkeley. 1991 Fulbright Award to study African influences in Colombian Spanish. 2006 Outstandig Professor of the Humanities, UCI |
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Research Abstract |
My research and course offerings emphasize the study of the Spanish language from a linguistic perspective, while also exploring language in its social, cultural and historical contexts. Courses I routinely teach include the History of the Spanish Language, Intro to Spanish Phonetics and Phonology, Latin American Spanish, Spanish in the USA, and Introduction to Pidgin and Creole Languages. Upon completing my Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, my focus was on the history and typology of the major Romance languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian). Since then, I have become fascinated by "marginal" speech communities that are of great historical importance to understanding the evolution of American Spanish. Included among these communities is the maroon village of El Palenque de San Basilio (Colombia), where a Spanish Creole is still spoken today. More recently my field work and research have taken me to Highland Ecuador and Cuba. In 2005, I completed a book on the Cuban ritual language of Palo Monte (a religious practice somewhat akin to Santería), whose true African roots can now be traced for the first time. I am also actively researching Central West-African languages (especially Kikongo), once widely spoken in the Americas during the slave trade. In 2007,the third and completely revised edition of my FONETICA Y FONOLOGÍA ESPAÑOLAS (Wiley Publishers) appeared. My publications include several books and over 40 scholarly articles. I am founding co-Editor of the Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana (RILI, and Associate Editor of the Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages. I have presented over 150 papers at national and international meetings, and taught as Visiting Professor at several institutions (University of Amsterdam, Brigham Young University of Utah, Academia de Ciencias in Havana, etc.). From 1999 to 2001 I worked in Costa Rica as Director of UC's Education Abroad Program. I am currently Director of Global Cultures (an interdisciplinary B.A. program) at UC Irvine, and a regular faculty member in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. LANGUAGES: Native - Swiss-German Fluent - French, German, Spanish, English, Portuguese, Italian, Palenquero (Spanish-based Creole of Columbia) Read - Romansh, Catalan, Occitan, Latin, Russian From 1987 to the present, has been the principal organizer of over a dozen national and international conferences on Romance Linguistics and Pidgin and Creole languages. Latin American Spanish/Portuguese (especially synchrony and diachrony of colloquial Afro-American speech [Caribbean Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, etc.]). African influences in Latin America (language & culture) Iberian-based Creoles (Palenquero, Papiamentu, etc.) Ritual languages of Black America ("Habla Congo" of [Cuba], "lumbalú" of Palenque [Colombia], etc.) Africanizing religious practices of Latin America TEACHING AREAS My course offerings emphasize the study of the Spanish language from a linguistic perspective, while also exploring language in its social, cultural and historical contexts. Courses I routinely teach include History of the Spanish Language, Intro to Spanish Phonetics and Phonology, Latin American Spanish, Spanish in the USA, and Introduction to Pidgin and Creole Languages. I very much enjoy teaching, and have always sought to inform and engage my students. Over the past five years I have taught as Visiting Professor at several institutions (University of Amsterdam, Brigham Young University of Utah, etc.) and worked in Costa Rica as Director of UC's Education Abroad Program (1999-2001). In 2002 and 2003, I offered a series of research seminars at various institutions in Cuba (e.g. Academia de Ciencias in Havana). In the summer of 2008, I am scheduled to teach a course on creole languages at the University of Coruña (Galicia, Spain). |
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| Publications |
 Una lengua en la diáspora: el judeoespañol de Oriente. (2006). Co-edited with Yvette Bürki & Beatrice Schmid. Special volume of Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana (RILI), 7.
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 2007 Fonética y fonología españolas: teoría y práctica. 3d edition. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Co-authored with J. Kempff.
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 2005 Lengua y ritos del Palo Monte Mayombe: dioses cubanos y sus fuentes africanas. Frankfurt: Vervuert Verlag / Madrid: Iberoamericana. [Co-authored with Jesús Fuentes]
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 2004 Creoles, Contact, and Language Change [Co-authored with Genevieve Escure]
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 2002 Palenque, Cartagena y Afro-Caribe: historia y lengua [Co-authored with Yves Monino]
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 1996 "Chi ma nkongo": lengua y rito ancestrales en El Palenque de San Basilio (Colombia). 2 vols. To be published by Vervuert Verlag, Frankfurt am Main.
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 1990 Analyticity and Syntheticity: A Diachronic Perspective with Special Reference to Romance Languages. Empirical Approaches to Language Typology, 6. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
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| Link to this profile | http://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=2476 | |
| Last updated | 10/31/2007 | |