Sandro Sessarego

About

Sandro Sessarego is a Professor and the Associate Director of Undergraduate Studies at the University of Texas at Austin College of Liberal Arts. His academic focus includes Afro-Hispanic linguistics, language variation, and the African Diaspora in Latin America. He specializes in the linguistic study of the Afro-Latino Vernaculars of the Americas (ALVAs). His work involves exploring the linguistic diversity and cultural expressions within Afro-Latino communities across Latin America, contributing to a deeper understanding of language and identity in these contexts.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Linguistics
• Philosophy
• Political Science
• Natural Language Processing
• Artificial Intelligence
• Psychology
• History
• Communication

Selected publications

• Not all grammatical features are robustly transmitted during the emergence of creoles

  Humanities and Social Sciences Communications · 2020 · 10 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This paper addresses the long-standing debate on the nature and complexity of creole languages. Contrary to what has been claimed in the literature, it is argued that grammars are neither robustly transmitted during the emergence of creoles nor that creole languages represent the simplest grammars in the world. On the contrary, after laying down a theoretical framework that spells out the existence of at least three distinct second-language acquisition (SLA) processes shaping creoles, i…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Interfaces and Domains of Contact-Driven Restructuring

  2021 · 7 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  The Afro-Hispanic Languages of the Americas (AHLAs) present a number of grammatical similarities that have traditionally been ascribed to a previous creole stage. Approaching creole studies from contrasting standpoints, this groundbreaking book provides a new account of these phenomena. How did these features come about? What linguistic mechanisms can account for their parallel existence in several contact varieties? How can we formalize such mechanisms within a comprehensive theoretical framewo…

  PublisherDOI

• Some Remarks on the Origin of Afro-Puerto Rican Spanish

  Borealis – An International Journal of Hispanic Linguistics · 2022-10-17 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  A number of proposals have tried to account for the genesis and development of a set of Afro-Hispanic language varieties, the vernaculars ​​that formed in Latin America from the contact between African languages ​​and Spanish in colonial times (Sessarego 2021). This article presents a sociohistorical and linguistic analysis of Loza Spanish (LS), an Afro-Puerto Rican vernacular spoken in Loíza, Puerto Rico by the descendants of the Africans brought to this Caribbean island in colonial times to wo…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Afro-Peruvian Spanish declarative intonation

  Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone linguistics · 2020 · 2 citations

  Abstract This study offers an analysis of Afro-Peruvian Spanish (APS) declarative intonation. Our findings indicate that this dialect presents intonational features that diverge from other varieties of Spanish. It shows minimal downstepping across utterances and a predominant use of the L+H* pitch accent, even in prenuclear position, where L+>H* is more commonly cited in neutral contexts. At intermediate phrase edges, the most common APS boundary tone is L- rather than H-, which is usually em…

  DOI

• Concordantia Temporum in Andean Spanish

  2021-09-02 · 1 citations

  book-chapterSenior author

  This chapter addresses the Concordantia Temporum principle in Andean Spanish. Given this principle, the verb in a subordinate clause follows the tense of the verb in the main clause, as in Quería que comieras ‘I wanted (past) you to eat (past).’ However, some varieties of Spanish, and in particular Andean varieties, show a frequent tendency not to follow the rule, as in Quería que comas ‘I wanted (past) you to eat (present).’ This chapter provides a review of the main quantitative and qualitativ…

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Rajiv Rao

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  11 shared

• Javier Gutiérrez‐Rexach

  10 shared

• Rafel Jiménez Baralt

  The University of Texas at Austin

  9 shared

• Melvin González Rivera

  University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez

  9 shared

• Irene Arias Quintero

  The University of Texas at Austin

  9 shared

• Piero Visconte

  The University of Texas at Austin

  4 shared

• Letania Ferreira

  Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco

  2 shared

• Juan José Colomina Almiñana

  Universidad del Noreste

  2 shared

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