VARIATION IN CHICANO English: THE CASE OF FINAL (z) DEVOICING

Abstract

Despite the number of studies and overviews of Chicano english (Che) that have appeared in recent years, many Che features await full investigation. final (z) devoicing is one such feature. this study, based on multivariate analysis of 1,827 tokens extracted from sociolinguistic interviews with adolescents and young adults in a public housing project in south texas, shows that (z) devoicing is highly systematic and subject to multiple linguistic and social constraints. Specifically, devoicing is conditioned by features of the preceding and following segments. results also show that devoicing is constrained by the morphological status of the variable, with devoicing more likely for inflectional (z) than when it is part of a monomorpheme. in addition, although the prevalence of devoicing in Che is often attributed to Spanish interference, results show that devoicing is not affected by the speaker's first language. finally, speakers who express a desire to leave the community are less likely to produce the devoiced variant than those who express no such desire, and women are more likely to devoice than men.Compared to many english dialects, until recent decades Chicano english (Che) had received relatively little scholarly attention. Although the situation has improved greatly with the appearance of a number of survey articles and full-length studies (e.g.

A sociophonetic account of gradient /z/ devoicing among Chicanx high schoolers

“…For example, in a study of twenty-four Mexican American teens in San Antonio, Texas, Bayley and Messing (2008) found that final /z/ devoicing occurred in 39.1% of the tokens. In the same community a handful of years later, Bayley and Holland (2014) examined final /z/ devoicing among thirteen novel speakers and found that the rate of devoicing was almost identical to that obtained by Bayley and Messing.…”

“…The voicing and manner of the following segment and the morphological class of /z/ have consistently been identified as the best predictors of devoicing in Latinx Englishes. Unsurprisingly, given expected regressive assimilatory effects, Bayley and Messing (2008), Bayley and Holland (2014), Doviak and Hudson-Edwards (1980), and others have identified the voicing of the following segment as the most important determinant of /z/ devoicing. Most recently, Bayley and Holland (2014) found that /z/ was devoiced most frequently when followed by an /s/ (e.g., /dɑɡ z slip/ ‘dogs sleep’), a pause (e.g., /dɑɡ z / ‘dogs’), or another voiceless consonant (e.g., /dɑɡ z kʌdəl/ ‘dogs cuddle’).…”

“…Unsurprisingly, given expected regressive assimilatory effects, Bayley and Messing (2008), Bayley and Holland (2014), Doviak and Hudson-Edwards (1980), and others have identified the voicing of the following segment as the most important determinant of /z/ devoicing. Most recently, Bayley and Holland (2014) found that /z/ was devoiced most frequently when followed by an /s/ (e.g., /dɑɡ z slip/ ‘dogs sleep’), a pause (e.g., /dɑɡ z / ‘dogs’), or another voiceless consonant (e.g., /dɑɡ z kʌdəl/ ‘dogs cuddle’). While voiced following segments generally disfavor devoicing, manner matters: devoicing is most prevalent preceding nasals and liquids (e.g., /dɑɡ z noʊ͡/ ‘dogs know’) and least prevalent preceding glides and vowels (e.g., /dɑɡzit/ ‘dogs eat’).…”

Demographic Categories in Sociolinguistic Studies of US Latino Communities

“…Now, however, with the development of mixed models, particularly as implemented in Rbrul (Johnson ), researchers can easily consider the contribution of individual speakers, even in large‐scale studies. For example, Cory Holland and I recently used Rbrul to reanalyze data on final (z)‐devoicing, for example, girl/z/ — > girl/s/, by adolescent and young adult speakers in a south Texas barrio (Bayley and Holland ). The results of our original analysis with Goldvarb (Sankoff, Tagliamonte, and Smith ), which did not include a variable for individual speaker, showed that reported first language significantly affected use of the devoiced variant.…”

Distinguishing underlying and surface variation patterns in speech perception

“…These assimilations are phonologically determined in English, with novel words obeying the same set of parameters at work within the existing grammar (e.g., the final sounds in skorts, e-cigs ). However, this distinction has not only partially collapsed in some dialects (Bayley & Holland, 2014), there is also variation in the strength of the voicing of the [z] variant in general, resulting in a number of [z] tokens being realized closer to [s] (Davidson, 2016; Jose, 2010).…”