María Irene Moyna was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, where she earned undergraduate degrees in Spanish-English and Spanish-French Translation from the Universidad de la República. After that, she attended the University of Florida, where she completed an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Linguistics. She worked at San Diego State University and is currently a Professor in the Department of Global Languages and Cultures at Texas A&M University.  

 

Dr. Moyna is the author of Compound Words in Spanish: Theory and history (John Benjamins, 2011), and co-editor of Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Linguistic Heritage (Arte Público Press, 2008) and of Forms of Address in the Spanish of the Americas (John Benjamins, 2016). More recently, she coedited It's Not All About You: New Perspectives on Address Research (John Benjamins, 2019). 

 

Her work has appeared in Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, Hispania, Journal of Historical Linguistics, Journal of Historical Pragmatics, Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics, Language and Communication, Language and Literature, Latino Studies, Linguistics, Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana, Romanische Forschungen, Southwest Journal of Linguistics, Spanish in Context, and Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics. Dr. Moyna was Associate Editor for the 5th and 6th editions of the Chicago Spanish Dictionary (University of Chicago, 2002, 2012).  She is currently a member of the editorial board of the series Topics in Address Research (John Benjamins). Dr. Moyna is an ATA Certified Translator (English > Spanish).

 

Dr. Moyna teaches phonology, morphology, sociolinguistics, dialectology, Spanish in the United States, and bilingualism, as well as grammar, translation, and Spanish for heritage learners and for the professions. In 2021, she received the Association of Former Students Distinguished Award for Teaching (College-Level).