Assistenzprofessur für Iberoromanische und Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft

This PhD project focuses on language practices, ideologies and attitudes towards Spanish in the Sahrawi refugee camps in the Algerian desert. It examines how the position of Spanish is constructed and negotiated within the Sahrawi linguistic repertoire, in relation to Hassaniya, Standard Arabic, French, and English. To this end, the study considers the postcolonial, social, and political dimensions that shape how Spanish is perceived and valued, including its status as a co-official language of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) and its role in international cooperation. Particular attention is given to the educational sphere as a key space for the transmission and negotiation of linguistic ideologies and attitudes towards Spanish. The methodology combines semi-structured interviews, focus groups, language portraits, participant observation, and the analysis of educational materials, involving students, teachers, families, and educational authorities. Taken as a whole, this project contributes to a deeper understanding of the Sahrawi sociolinguistic context, while also advancing research on Spanish in Africa and a more pluricentric understanding of the Spanish language. At the same time, the findings provide an empirical basis for further research and reflection on the linguistic, educational, and political dimensions of the Sahrawi context.

Background: Equatorial Guinea presents an exceptional research field within the studies of the Spanish language. Geographically located in southern Africa, on the equator, in the Gulf of Guinea, it is today the only Hispanophone country in Africa (except for the politically sensitive case of Western Sahara) and thus offers a completely unique view of the world language Spanish, complementary to Europe and America. Despite this outstanding position, Equatorial Guinea still occupies a marginal status in studies on the dialectology, history, sociolinguistics and language contacts of Spanish. Although some important authors in the field of Spanish linguistics, such as De Granda, Quilis, Casado-Fresnillo or Lipski, have dedicated part of their work to Equatorial Guinea, modern publications are rare, which is why knowledge of the Equatoguinean variety of Spanish is still fragmentary. Its invisibility in studies about Spanish is intensified by a widespread lack of knowledge and consciousness about this only Hispanophone country in southern Africa and a still dominantly European view on African realities based on (post)colonial stereotypes, evaluations and hierarchizations. In fact, the general knowledge about Equatorial Guinea within the Spanish-speaking world is very incomplete, which is particularly surprising in the case of Spain, since Equatorial Guinea only gained its independence from Spain just over 50 years ago (1968).

Overall aim of the project: This research project aims at filling the existing research gap about Equatorial Guinea and at improving its visibility as part of the global Hispanophone world. Modern research data will be provided and critical questions answered, to show its relevance for Hispanic studies and to overcome traditional images about Equatorial Guinea and its Spanish, often perceived as a "peripheric", "incomplete", "incorrect", "exceptional" or "non-standard" variety.

Objectives, methods and expected results: The main part of this research project focuses on dialectological and sociolinguistic data collection in Equatorial Guinea (both on the island of Bioko and on mainland Río Muni). Its objective is to generate modern dialectological and sociolinguistic descriptions of Spanish in Equatorial Guinea through the collection and analysis of sociolinguistic guideline interviews and linguistic tests and questionnaires. The interview transcripts will constitute the first modern and digital corpus of spoken Equatoguinean Spanish. Sociolinguistic analyses on language perception, attitudes and ideologies will be possible; and the digital analyses of specific linguistic features combined with the results from the tests and questionnaires will allow to elaborate modern dialectological descriptions on different linguistic levels. Classical summaries about Equatoguinean Spanish in linguistic manuals can be revised and completed, and an answer can be given to the important question about the internal (diatopic, diastratic, diaphasic, ethnic) homogeneity or diversity of Equatoguinean Spanish. Furthermore, this Equatoguinean corpus can be compared with existing interviews with Equatoguineans in Madrid, Spain (habilitation project S. Schlumpf-Thurnherr).

Impact: The proposed project offers multiple and diverse views on Equatorial Guinea, raises awareness about its importance within the linguistic research community and in Equatorial Guinea itself, and contributes considerably to the knowledge about and the visibilization of this unique Hispanophone country in Africa.

For several years now I have been teaching Spanish courses for students of Hispanic Philology at the University of Basel. It is the observation of problems of several of my students in the acquisition of certain syntactic features of Spanish that has led me to initiate this line of research which has a double aspect: I intend, on the one hand, to investigate the acquisition of some of these features; on the other hand, to make didactic proposals to improve their teaching and learning.

The project began with a didactic proposal on concessive sentences; at present, I am focusing on the acquisition of the prepositional direct object.

El objeto de investigación lo constituyen una serie de oraciones complejas que pertenecen a un sector de la sintaxis que hasta ahora apenas ha sido estudiado para el caso del judeoespañol. La base textual es el Corpus MemTet, que incluye textos de distintos géneros, publicados entre 1880 y 1930 en diferentes ciudades de la región mediterránea oriental.

El interés principal reside en el análisis de las oraciones condicionales y concesivas en judeoespañol moderno escrito. Aparte de las construcciones prototípicas, también se consideran ejemplos que se acercan –tanto por su forma como por su semántica– a otras clases oracionales, tales como las oraciones causales, finales y adversativas. Todas ellas comparten la característica de expresar una implicación lógico-causal entre la cláusula principal y la subordinada.

El objetivo del proyecto es la identificación y descripción de las diferentes estructuras sintácticas que se hallan en los textos estudiados para expresar las categorías oracionales mencionadas. Asimismo, se describen sus características semánticas y sus funciones pragmáticas y discursivas. En primer lugar, el estudio se centra en las construcciones más frecuentes y se ocupa de aspectos como, por ejemplo, el empleo de los tiempos y modos verbales en la frase principal y la subordinada, las conjunciones y locuciones conjuntivas empleadas, el orden de las dos cláusulas, etc. Además, se tienen en cuenta cuestiones diacrónicas, por ejemplo para identificar posibles influencias de parte de las lenguas de contacto, y se llevan a cabo comparaciones entre el judeoespañol y el castellano peninsular.

Desde un punto de vista teórico, el enfoque principal reside en la definición y descripción de conceptos como los de la condicionalidad, la concesividad y otros ámbitos relacionados, así como en la cuestión sobre posibles delimitaciones, por un lado, e interferencias, por otro, entre los diferentes tipos de oraciones estudiados.