Ana Maria Carvalho

Dr. Ana Maria Carvalho is a Professor of Portuguese and Spanish. She completed her PhD in Hispanic Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley in 1998, with a specialization in sociolinguistics. She teaches language and linguistics and directs the Portuguese Language Program. She is also a member of the faculty of the Latin American Studies (LAS) and the Second Language Acquisition and Teaching Program (SLAT). Her research interests include language variation and change, bilingualism, language contact, language attitude, and dialect and language acquisition. She is currently studying the contact between Spanish and Portuguese from two perspectives: first, the output of the contact of these two languages in Northern Uruguay, and its relation to the social context where this contact takes place; second, the acquisiton of Portuguese by Spanish speakers in the language instruction context, and the challenges that the typological similarity of these languages present to the use of traditional teaching methods. When not working she is enjoying family life, yoga, fiction, and cooking.

Research Interests:  Sociolinguistics, Portuguese linguistics, Spanish linguistics, Portuguese/Spanish contact, Language variation, Bilingualism, Second language acquisition