Labialization of Word-Final Nasals in Yucatecan Spanish and Yucatec Maya: Language Contact, Prosodic Prominence Marking, and Local Identity

Abstract

This paper provides a comparative analysis of word-final nasals in Yucatecan Spanish and Yucatec Maya based on speech data from Quintana Roo (Mexico). In Yucatecan Spanish, a nasal is often pronounced as [m] if placed at the end of a word (e.g., Yucatá[m] instead of Yucatá[n]). Since this phenomenon is widespread on the Yucatán Peninsula, but largely unknown in other Spanish-speaking regions, it is often linked to the influence of the indigenous language Yucatec Maya. Our Spanish dataset differs from our Yucatec Mayan one in that the labialization rate significantly increases with the length of the subsequent pause in the former, but not in the latter. Thus, even if the feature was originally transferred from Yucatec Maya to Spanish, it seems that it has taken on a life of its own in Yucatecan Spanish, determined by its function as a marker of prosodic prominence.

Circumflex Nuclear Configurations in Yucatecan Spanish as a Supraregional Feature: The Roles of Bilingualism and Gender

“…From a sociolinguistic perspective, two of the most interesting factors that might influence the distribution of this supraregional feature in Quintana Roo are the language profile (Maya–Spanish bilingual or Spanish monolingual) and the gender (male or female) of the speakers, for the following reasons. Regarding language profiles, the socio-anthropological analysis by Uth (2018b) suggests that the Spanish monolingual and Spanish-dominant speakers of the region strongly identify with the local Spanish language and culture, whereas the Maya–Spanish balanced bilingual speakers are more oriented toward the Mayan language and culture, and less toward the local Spanish ones (see Section 2.3 of the present article for details). Accordingly, the first research hypothesis of our experimental study (Section 3) is that, when speaking Spanish, Spanish monolingual and Spanish-dominant speakers behave more locally than Maya–Spanish balanced bilinguals, meaning that the number of supraregional contours should be lower among the Spanish monolingual speakers of our experiment, compared to the Maya–Spanish balanced bilingual participants.…”

“…Thus, the main aim of the present study is to test the role of language profile (i.e., Spanish monolingualism vs. Maya–Spanish balanced bilingualism) and gender in the realization of nuclear pitch accents in declarative broad focus statements in Quintana Roo Spanish. Against the background of Martín Butragueño’s (2004, 2011, among others) findings with respect to the usage of circumflex contours in Mexico City and Uth’s (2018b) anthropological results for Quintana Roo, our research questions are (i) whether Spanish monolingual and Maya–Spanish bilingual speakers differ with respect to their use of the Central Mexican circumflex nuclear configuration L+¡H* (L%) in declarative broad focus utterances, and (ii) whether gender plays a role in the preference for the circumflex nuclear pitch accent.…”

“…Another type of evidence in favor of the Yucatecan fall is contributed by the different data sets discussed by Uth (2018a, 2018b, 2019). All these data sets were recorded in the same region as the data that we discuss in the present article.…”

“…In total, the group of participants was composed of five Maya–Spanish balanced bilingual speakers and 15 Spanish monolingual or Spanish-dominant speakers. As regards broad focus, the works by Uth (2018a, 2018b, 2019) are based on a subset of 100 broad focus utterances (50 belong to five balanced Maya–Spanish bilingual speakers and 50 to a subgroup of five Spanish-dominant or Spanish monolingual speakers) from a picture-based elicitation experiment similar to the one described in Section 3 of the current article. For the present purposes, the most important result of this investigation is that the 50 utterances of the five Spanish-dominant or Spanish monolingual speakers show a clear prevalence of falling or low (i.e., (H+)L*) nuclear pitch accents ( n = 37) over (L+)H* and L+¡H* contours ( n = 10 and 3, respectively).…”

“…Number of (H+)L*, (L+)H*, and L+¡H* nuclear pitch accents by language groups (YSYM = Maya–Spanish balanced bilingual speakers; YSdom = Spanish monolingual and Spanish-dominant speakers) according to Uth (2018b, p. 118).…”