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K-State Today

March 6, 2019

Modern languages' Master of Arts in Spanish graduate students present research at Texas Tech University

Submitted by Rebecca Bender

Three graduate students in the modern languages department's Master of Arts in Spanish program presented their research at the 20th annual Céfiro Conference, which was hosted Feb. 28-March 2, at Texas Tech University. This year's conference theme was "Cultural and Linguistic Exchanges in the Digital Humanities Era."

Hannah Harker presented a portion of her thesis work on the variations of the past subjunctive since the early modern era in her presentation, "A Diachronic Analysis of the Morphological Variation of haber in the Imperfect Subjunctive." Alejandra González, who also earned a bachelor's degree in Spanish from K-State in 2017, discussed the teaching of written accent marks to Heritage Spanish speakers/learners in her presentation, "La enseñanza de los acentos diacríticos y la silaba tónica para estudiantes de herencia del español." Daniel Román presented his findings on the evolution of Spanish future tenses and what their changing uses imply for teaching modern Spanish in his presentation, "La gramaticalización del futuro perifrástico y del futuro simple del español y su variación diacrónica entre los siglos XVII y XX en España y su impacto en la enseñanza del español moderno."

These research projects were supported by the College of Arts and Sciences' modern languages department. Mary Copple, associate professor of Spanish, advised Harker and Román on their research. Laura Valentín-Rivera, assistant professor of Spanish, advised González on her research, as well as all three students in submitting proposals and preparing to participate in the conference.