Using Chomsky's minimalist program as a framework, this volume explores the role of formal (or functional) features in current descriptions and accounts of language acquistion. In engaging, up-to-date articles, distinguished experts examine the role of features in current versions of generative grammar and in learnibility theory as it relates to native, non-native, and impaired acquisition.

This collection of articles, contributed by both experienced and novice researchers, addresses core issues in three different domains of Hispanic Linguistics: theoretical linguistics, language acquisition and language contact. Together these papers provide an overview of how the analysis of Spanish contributes to current formal and experimental linguistics, while on an individual level offering fine-grained analyses and innovative proposals covering a wide range of areas such as semantics and pragmatics, syntax, morphology, phonology, prosody, dialectal variation, first, second and bilingual...