Anna María Escobar Ph.D.

My academic pursuits focus primarily on offering a new interpretation of the history of Andean Spanish by initiating innovative social and linguistic analyses of colonial documents and modern varieties of Andean Peruvian Spanish, where the majority of Andean Spanish speakers reside. Although my research has focused primarily on the socio-historical and linguistic study of the development of Andean Spanish, the wider aim has been to understand the diversity of human verbal behavior in plurilingual societies, and how it influences change in language generally. As evidenced by my publications, this intellectual journey has evolved as it is informed by the latest theories on how languages change in contexts of language contact and social competition; by research in general theoretical linguistics, including cross-linguistic studies focused on grammatical change; and by my reading and learning from the work of scholars in other disciplines who focus on sociocultural history, especially in Latin America and other ex-colonial regions.