Ricardo Otheguy
Professor Emeritus, Linguistics
Research Interests
sociolinguistics, language contact, functional linguistics
Education
Ph.D., The City University of New York
Ricardo Otheguy is well known for his work in theoretical and applied linguistics, which has appeared in major international journals such as Language, Language in Society, the Modern Language Journal, and the Harvard Educational Review. His publications in theoretical linguistics are in the areas of language contact, functional grammar, and the Spanish of the United States; in applied linguistics, his publications have been in the area of bilingual education and the teaching of Spanish to native speakers of Spanish. He is coauthor of Spanish in New York: Language Contact, Dialectal Leveling, and Structural Continuity (2012) and was founding editor of the journal Spanish in Context.
Otheguy has developed textbook materials for the teaching of Spanish to Latino students in the United States and is coauthor of Tu Mundo: Curso para hispanohablantes. He has also written Spanish materials for English-speaking students and is coauthor of one the most widely used high school Spanish textbooks in the United States, Avancemos. Otheguy has participated in national and international conferences throughout the United States, Europe, and Latin America, and has lectured and conducted research in universities and research centers in numerous countries, including Cuba, Germany, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Spain, and Uruguay.
Otheguy, who was appointed to the Graduate Center in 1998, is founding director of the CUNY Research Institute for the Study of Language in Urban Society, which conducts basic and applied research in urban linguistics, bringing to bear the research resources of the City University of New York on urban language issues. He holds a Ph.D. in linguistics from the Graduate Center (1976), as well as degrees and diplomas in Spanish from Louisiana State University, the City College of New York, and the University of Madrid, Spain.
Selected Publications
- Otheguy, Ricardo, Ofelia García and Wallis Reid. 2018. A translanguaging view of the linguistic system of bilinguals. Applied Linguistics Review. https://doi.org/10.1515/applirev-2018-0020
- Erker Daniel, Eduardo Ho-Fernández, Ricardo Otheguy, Naomi Lapidus Shin 2017. Continuity and change in Spanish among Cubans in New York: A study of subject placement with finite verbs. Cuban Spanish dialectology: Variation, contact, and change, ed. by Alejandro Cuza. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.
- Otheguy, Ricardo. 2017. La sociedad y el individuo en la competencia lingüística del bilingüe. ANAIS Congresso Internacional Seminário de Educação Bilíngue para Surdos. Universidade do Estado da Bahia. Departamento de Educação. Salvador/BA. Biblioteca Professor Edivaldo Machado Boaventura. CDD: 371.912 Volume 1, 2016. Páginas: 58-76. Publicação: 24 de Abril de 2017 ISSN: 2526-6195
- García, Ofelia & Ricardo Otheguy. 2016. Interrogating the language gap of young bilingual and bidialectal students. International Multilingual Research Journal 11.52-65. (Published online December 6, 2016, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19313152.2016.1258190)
- Otheguy, Ricardo. 2016. Foreword. Translanguaging with multilingual students: Learning from classroom moments, ed. by Ofelia García and Tatyana Kleyn. New York & London: Routledge Publishers, pp. xi – xiii.
- Erker, Daniel & Ricardo Otheguy. 2016. Contact and coherence: Dialectal leveling and structural convergence in New York City Spanish. Lingua 172-173.131-146.
- Otheguy, Ricardo. 2016. Espanglish. Enciclopedia de lingüística hispánica, ed. por Javier Gutiérrez-Rexach. London & New York: Routledge Publishers, Volumen 2, pp. 454-462.
- Otheguy, Ricardo. 2016. The linguistic competence of second-generation bilinguals: A critique of ‘incomplete acquisition.’ Romance Linguistics 2013. Selected papers from the 43rd Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), New York, 17-19 April, 2013, ed. by Tortora, Christina, Marcel den Dikken, Ignacio L. Montoya and Teresa O’Neill [RLLT 9]. John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp. 301-320.
Books
Spanish in New York: Language Contact, Dialectal Leveling, and Structural Continuity (Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics)
SPANISH IN NEW YORK: LANGUAGE CONTACT, DIALECTAL LEVELING, AND STRUCTURAL CONTINUITY
(Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics)
by Ricardo Otheguy
Professor Emeritus, Linguistics
Spanish in New York is a groundbreaking sociolinguistic analysis of immigrant bilingualism in a U.S. setting. Taking variationist sociolinguistics as its guiding paradigm, the book uses 140 interviews of speakers with origins in Colombia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, and Puerto Rico to compare the Spanish of New Yorkers born in Latin America with that of those born in New York City. Focusing on language contact, dialectal leveling, and structural continuity, the authors demonstrate the extent to which the language of Latinos in New York City represents a continuation of structural variation as it is found in Latin America, as well as the extent to which Spanish has evolved in New York City.
Published January 2012
Oxford University Press, 2012
Book cover: Signal, Meaning, and Message by Ricardo Otheguy
SIGNAL, MEANING, AND MESSAGE
by Ricardo Otheguy
Professor Emeritus, Linguistics
This volume, co-edited by Richard Otheguy is the second set of papers on sign-based linguistics to emerge from the Columbia School linguistics conferences. The collection covers a wide array of topics including: English full-verb inversion; Serbo-Croatian deictic pronouns; English auxiliary do; Italian pronouns egli and lui; the Celtic-influenced use of on (e.g. he played a trick on me”); and a monosemic analysis of the English verb break. A second set of essays deals with theoretical issues, such as the appropriateness of statistical tests of significance in text-based analysis and the future of “minimalist linguistics” in a maximalist world, while a third set explains phonotactic patterning in terms of ease of articulation. The introduction highlights the theoretical and analytical points of each article and relates them to the Columbia School framework.
Published July 2002
John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2002