Tap/trill variation and change across generations of Spanish-Creole bilinguals in San Andrés, Colombia

Abstract

This work examines the behavior of vibrant (presenting linguo-alveolar contact) tap/trill variation across generations of bilingual Afro-Caribbean speakers of Spanish and an English-Lexifier Creole, known here as Raizal Creole, in the Archipelago of San Andrés, Colombia. In these islands, a bilingual Spanish variety, known here as Raizal Spanish, coexists with a monolingual Spanish variety spoken by Colombian immigrants (Costeño Spanish). Data consists of over 3,300 tokens (867 trills and 2531 taps) compared across three generations of Raizal Spanish speakers with a sample of 528 segments (133 trills and 395 taps) produced in Costeño Spanish. Results show that although the frequency of use of vibrant taps and trills in younger generations increasingly resembles those presented in the monolingual variety, the behavior of rhotic variation is different in both Spanish varieties. In addition, non-vibrant or approximant variants are increasingly prevalent in the first and second generation informants with rates doubling those of the younger generation and monolingual Costeño Spanish. Results of the cross-variety comparison show that Raizal Spanish displays a generational continuity where a restructuring of the constraint ordering starts in the second generation and is completed with younger Raizales. On the contrary, Costeño Spanish behaves differently in terms of the systematic linguistic conditionings. The evidence suggests that rhotic variation has changed internally within both varieties.