Paul O'Neill

This special issue stems from two thematic panels on language and education in the Lusophone world which took place in 2019-one at the University of Santiago de Compostela, and the other at the University of Sheffield. The issue examines the tensions between the linguistic diversity in the Lusophone world and the largely monolingual education systems that remain in place to this day. Taking the education system as a key site for both the reproduction and the contestation of inequality, the issue reflects on how deeply ingrained monolingual and monoglossic ideologies serve to marginalise local languages and local varieties of Portuguese, and the implications of this for access to and participation in education, and for broader questions of social mobility and social justice. As such, in this issue we take a critical approach and contend that linguistic research and insights from Lusophone countries can make a crucial contribution to understanding key social, ideological, and political power struggles and help to bridge the perennial gap between theory and practice in language and education contexts.

Neste artigo, ofereço um amplo panorama sócio-histórico da língua portuguesa no Brasil desde a independência até os tempos modernos, a fim de estabelecer por que existe tal abismo entre a norma padrão empregada na linguagem formal escrita e o uso linguístico real. Refletiu-se sobre como a linguagem é muitas vezes vista como um problema nos contextos educacionais e que a resposta dos acadêmicos tanto em Linguística quanto em Estudos da Educação tem sido geralmente focada no combate ao preconceito linguístico contra variedades não-padrão da língua. Essa ênfase no preconceito linguístico é identificada como uma estratégia orientada para o reconhecimento e destinada a mudar atitudes em relação a formas não-padrão do português brasileiro e seus falantes; questiona-se a eficácia de tais estratégias. Argumenta-se que há problemas estruturais mais fundamentais com a linguagem e a educação no Brasil. Estas são identificadas como (a) a distância linguística entre a fala da grande maioria dos brasileiros e a norma-padrão oficial e (b) a incerteza se o sistema de ensino está desenhado para ensinar essa norma-padrão ou, paradoxalmente, para avaliar a medida em que é adquirida. O artigo conclui-se com uma análise de documentos de políticas educacionais modernas onde não é encontrada forte ênfase para garantir que os alunos alcancem proficiência ativa e avançada na norma padrão. Sugere-se que as estratégias orientadas ao reconhecimento precisam ser acompanhadas de estratégias que defendam mudanças estruturais (a) na língua-padrão para torná-la mais parecida com a fala real dos brasileiros e (b) como essa língua-padrão é usada como meio de instrução e avaliação

Este estudio explora cuáles son las pistas fonéticas de las que se sirven los hablantes del español de Andalucía para distinguir las palabras de tipo pasta ~ pata, pisto ~ pito, casco ~ caco, es decir, las palabras que contienen las grafías Vocal + Sibilante + Oclusiva sorda + Vocal (VSOV) de las palabras en las que el elemento sibilante no está presente: las secuencias Vocal + Oclusiva sorda + Vocal (VOV). También explora las diferencias fonéticas entre éstas últimas secuencias y las secuencias Vocal + Aproximante Espirante + Vocal (VAV); pares mínimos como pipa ~ piba, pito ~ pido, caco ~ cago. Nuestros resultados demuestran que la diferencia entre las secuencias VSOV y VOV no se basa principalmente en la presencia de algún tipo de aspiración antes de la oclusiva puesto que en un tercio de los casos no hay ningún indicio fonético de aspiración en esta posición. La pista fonética más fiable parece residir en la pronunciación de las oclusivas. Las de las secuencias VSOV son siempre ...

In this article we make a distinction between the prejudice and discrimination towards (a) different languages and their speakers and (b) different non-standard varieties of the same language and their speakers, and argue that while the discrimination and prejudice towards (a) have been denounced by international institutions and both national and international laws are in place to guarantee the rights of speakers of different languages, the same protection has not been afforded to speakers of non-standard varieties of a language. We examine a specific case of this type of linguistic prejudice in Brazil. We discuss the effectiveness of efforts of linguists to combat linguistic prejudice based on the principle of error correction (Labov 1982) and, drawing on work by Cameron (2012) and Bourdieu (1986), suggest that linguistic prejudice cannot be disentangled from other types of prejudice and that linguists need to have a much deeper understanding of and engagement with the values atta...

In this article I offer an extended socio-historical overview of the Portuguese language
in Brazil from independence to modern times in order to establish why there is such
a gulf between the written official standard and actual linguistic usage. I reflect on
how language is often regarded as a problem within educational contexts and how
the response of academics in both linguistics and education studies has largely been
focused on combating linguistic prejudice against non-standard varieties of Portuguese.
I identify this as a recognition-oriented strategy aimed at changing attitudes towards
non-standard forms of the language and its speakers and I question the effectiveness
of such strategies. I argue that there are more fundamental structural problems with
language and education in Brazil. These are identified as (a) the linguistic distance
between the speech of the great majority of Brazilians and the official standard norm
and (b) the uncertainty whether the education system is designed to teach this standard
norm or, paradoxically, to assess the extent to which it is acquired. I conclude with an
analysis of modern education policy documents where I find no strong emphasis for
ensuring that students achieve active, advanced proficiency in the standard norm. I
argue that recognition-orientated strategies need to be accompanied by strategies
that advocate for structural changes in (a) the standard language to make it more
readily resemble the actual speech of Brazilians and (b) how this standard is used as a
means of instruction and assessment.

Resumo Neste artigo, comparo e contrasto as visões prejudiciais sobre a raça e a língua e analiso os cruzamentos e as intersecções entre elas na história do Brasil. Relaciono as discussões latino-americanas sobre a civilização e a barbárie com a distinção entre o português brasileiro culto e o português brasileiro popular. Focalizo o trabalho do Movimento Antropofágico modernista e como esse movimento, combinado com desenvolvimentos subsequentes, ajudou a quebrar a dicotomia civilização / barbárie e redefinir a identidade brasileira e colocar em seu centro as características de raça mista. Sugiro que um movimento semelhante seja necessário para superar os preconceitos contra o português brasileiro popular. Palavras-chave: preconceito linguístico, racismo, civilização, barbárie O preconceito linguístico e o preconceito racial: comparações, contrastes e soluções antropofágicas a Periodicidade: Fluxo contínuo Volume X Número Y Recebido em: XX/XX Aprovado em: XX/XX Como citar este texto: Espaço destinado aos editores. LOGO DA REFAMI

In this article I compare and contrast how prejudicial views about race have/have not intersected with prejudicial views about Language in the history of Brazil. I examine both within Latin American discussions related to civilisation and barbarism, onto which the distinction between Educated and Popular Brazilian Portuguese maps. I focus on the work of the modernist Anthropophagic Movement and how this movement combined with subsequent developments helped to break the dichotomy civilisation/barbarism and redefine Brazilian identity and place at its centre mixed-race characteristics. I suggest that a similar movement is necessary to overcome the prejudices against popular Brazilian Portuguese. Palavras-chave: preconceito linguístico, racismo, civilização, barbárie Racial and Linguistic prejudice in Brazil: comparisons, contrasts and anthropophagic solutions.

This article examines the concept of defectivity in the verbal system of Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan. Building on previous studies on defective verbs in Spanish and Portuguese I investigate why there are no such defective verbs in Catalan. I conclude that the structure of the verbal paradigm in Catalan non-first conjugation verbs is radically different from that of the other languages; Catalan verbs constitute paradigms which correspond to regular patterns of inflection whereas Spanish and Portuguese display non-predictable types of root allomorphy which require all non-first conjugation verbs to have a memorised form for the rhizotonic forms of the verb. Theoretically, this type of defectivity poses problems for models of inflectional morphology and suggests that the patterns of frequent verbs can become general rules for all verbs of a particular conjugation.

This article examines the origin and spread of the verbs which display a velar allomorph in Spanish and, in particular, the paradigmatic pattern which this allo-morphy exhibits. I draw upon Maiden's studies (1992, 2001b) of velar allomorphy in Italian and Spanish which define the different cells that display this allomorphy as an autonomous morphological structure, or morphome (Aronoff 1994) and I argue that the theoretical construct of the morphome offers a more convincing, rigorous and theoretically motivated account for the origin and spread of velar allomorphy in Spanish, as opposed to recourse to the word 'analogy'. However, I maintain that Maiden's conclusions for the spread of the velar in Italian are not entirely valid for Spanish since they predict the wrong result. I argue that the explanations offered by Maiden need to be nuanced, along with the concept of the morphome itself. More specifically, I argue that in Spanish the velar allomorph should not be considered as part of the lexical root but rather a semantically vacuous formative which is an allomorph of the verbal 'endings'. I present evidence from within the history of Spanish to support this hypothesis. Resumen Este trabajo examina el origen y la extensión de aquellos verbos que presentan un alomorfo velar en el verbo español (tengo, pongo, salgo) y se hace especial hincapié en la distribución paradigmática de este alomorfo. Hacemos referencia a los estu-dios de Maiden (1992, 2001b) sobre el español y el italiano en los que se define el conjunto de celdas paradigmáticas en las que aparece el alomorfo velar como una estructura puramente morfológica, o un morfoma (Aronoff 1994). Sostenemos que la noción teórica del morfoma ofrece una explicación más convincente y rigurosa para el origen y la extensión del alomorfo velar; además esta explicación tiene una justificación más teórica y no simplemente recurre a la analogía. Defendemos, sin embargo, que las conclusiones de Maiden para el español no son de todo válidas ya que producen resultados equivocados y proponemos que se ha de matizar la tesis de Maiden junto con la del morfoma. Específicamente, defendemos que en el español el alomorfo velar no se analizaba como un alomorfo de la raíz léxica sino de las terminaciones verbales y a este elemento no se le atribuía semántica alguna. Presentamos datos diacrónicos del español para apoyar nuestra hipótesis.

This paper examines the pronunciation of the underlying sibilant in the word internal sequences Vowel + Sibilant + Voiceless Occlusive + Vowel (e.g pasta 'pasta') in the Spanish spoken in Seville. In this position the sibilant can not only be pronounced as some type of aspiration e.g [pa  t ha] but also there is an alternative pronunciation in which no aspiration occurs and the following occlusive consonant is heavily post-aspirated, e.g [pat a]. I hypothesize that this latter pronunciation cannot be derived from the former via an interplay of timing of gestures of a purely phonetic nature but rather corresponds to an underlying aspirated occlusive phoneme. On the basis of this hypothesis I form a number of predictions regarding the phonetic nature of these sequences and via statistical methods come to the conclusion that the Spanish of Seville possesses a set of aspirated occlusive phonemes.

This article examines the concept of defectivity in the verbal system of Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan. Building on previous studies on defective verbs in Spanish and Portuguese I investigate why there are no such defective verbs in Catalan. I conclude that the structure of the verbal paradigm in Catalan non-first conjugation verbs is radically different from that of the other languages; Catalan verbs constitute paradigms which correspond to regular patterns of inflection whereas Spanish and Portuguese display non-predictable types of root allomorphy which require all non-first conjugation verbs to have a memorised form for the rhizotonic forms of the verb. Theoretically, this type of defectivity poses problems for models of inflectional morphology and suggests that the patterns of frequent verbs can become general rules for all verbs of a particular conjugation.