No abstract
This variationist study compares the extension of estar in contexts where normatively one would expect the use of the ser, in the Spanish varieties spoken in Sonora, Mexico and Arizona, United States. An analysis of 1,582 tokens in 36 interviews shows an overall innovative use of estar of 16.2% in Sonora and 20.8% in Arizona, percentages comparable to previous studies. Place of origin of the speaker (Sonora/Arizona) is not statistically significant and the distribution of the factors is very similar in the two communities, suggesting bilingualism (Spanish-English) does not result in an accelerated innovative use in this corpus. A discussion of previous research also provides evidence against a general tendency towards an accelerated use of innovative estar as the result of Spanish-English bilingualism in US Spanish. The methodology implemented in this study (comparing Sonoran monolinguals and Arizonan bilinguals from Sonoran families), provides a needed control when discerning between contact-induced change and language-internal dialectal variation.
The present study investigates language choice in two bilingual speech communities in the United States: Nogales, AZ and San Ysidro, CA. Ethnically distinct fieldworkers approached members of these two communities under the guise of being lost tourists in order to engage in casual speech encounters. It was found that language choice varied between the two communities, with participants of the San Ysidro community more likely to engage in codeswitching. Ethnicity was also found to be a significant predictor of language choice, with more codeswitching taking place with the fieldworker of a Hispanic phenotype. Potential explanations and factors for future research are discussed.
ABSTRACT. Spanish has a restriction on palatal nasals and laterals in the coda so that they are normally realized as dental or alveolar coronals. In the onset position, the palatal point of articulation is retained, bello (be. [ʎ]o) 'beautiful-masc. ', beldad (be[l].dad) 'beauty'; doña (do.[ɲ]a) 'Madam', don (do[n]) 'Mister'. Alternations such as these led phonologists to propose a rule of depalatalization that turns an underlying palatal nasal or lateral into a coronal (Contreras 1977;Harris 1983). More recently, within an optimality-theoretic framework and on the basis of loan word evidence, Lloret and Mascaró (2006) argue again in favor of an active process of depalatalization in the phonology of Modern Spanish. Taking the proposal of Lloret and Mascaró as its point of departure, this paper expands the discussion on depalatalization to consider diachronic data, the role of the underlying representation and the perception grammar, in particular regarding loanword phonology. Historical data support depalatalization as an active phenomenon in Old Spanish and Medieval Spanish; yet the morphophonological alternations cannot be considered active/productive synchronically. Unlike previous serial models of phonology, an OT framework allows for the incorporation of diachronic data into the analysis, through constraints, constraint re-ranking and Lexicon Optimization, thus explaining how the current situation came about and shedding light on apparent synchronic alternations. OT also provides a formalization of the role of the underlying representation in diachronic change and in synchronic loanword evidence, in connection with the perception grammar, thus providing support for depalatalization as an active phonotactic restriction in Spanish.Keywords: depalatalization, coda neutralization, nasals, laterals, optimality theory, loan words, language change RESUMEN. El español posee una restricción acerca de la presencia de palatales nasales y laterales, de manera que normalmente emergen como coronales dentales o alveolares. En la posición de ataque, el punto de articulación palatal se retiene - bello (be.[ʎ]o), beldad (be[l].dad); doña (do.[ɲ]a), don (do[n]). Tales alternancias llevaron a los fonólogos a proponer una regla de despalatalización que convierte una palatal nasal o lateral subyacente en una coronal (Contreras 1977;Harris 1983). Más recientemente, dentro del marco de la teoría de la optimidad, Lloret y Mascaró (2006) también argumentan, mediante datos de préstamos, a favor de un proceso activo de despalatalización en la fonología del español actual. Partiendo de la propuesta de Lloret y Mascaró, este artículo expande la discusión sobre la despalatalización para considerar datos diacrónicos, el papel de las representaciones subyacentes y la gramática de la percepción, en particular en lo que toca a la fonología de los préstamos. Los datos históricos apoyan la despalatalización como un fenó-meno activo en español antiguo y medieval; no obstante, las alternancias morfofonológicas no pueden considerarse activas o p...
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