Spanish in Context - Volume 20, Issue 3, 2023

Abstract

The current study examines the extent to which perceptual factors may account for the emergence of assibilated variants of the alveopalatal approximant /j/ in two geographically remote varieties of Spanish. Participants from Medellin, Colombia and Santiago, Dominican Republic completed a discrimination task and a matched guise. Both tasks presented listeners with stimuli containing affricate [ʤ] and approximant [j] allophones of /j/. Participants were more accurate when discriminating between sound pairs that included the affricate allophone, suggesting that the presence of (af)frication is a salient acoustic cue upon which judgments are reliably made. Therefore, we argue that the emergence of assibilated variants ([ʤ], [ʒ]) can be explained in part by more prominent acoustic cuing and thus greater perceptual salience. Evidence of the relationship between these findings and a possible sound change in progress is observed in the association of social characteristics with [ʤ] and [j].

Abstract

This study addresses a gap in the extensive literature on Spanish indirect objects by offering a study of unmarked datives (i.e., Ø eso le pones un papel de aluminio ‘to that you put an aluminum foil’; PRESEEA 2001). Analyzed are the linguistic constraints on the variable absence of dative marker a ‘to’ in corpora of spoken Puerto Rican Spanish, in which the rate of marker absence is 33% (n = 380). Results of logistic regression analysis reveal that unmarked datives occurred with low frequency, non-prototypical dative verbs. Inanimate referents favored the absence of the dative marker, as did complex DPs, where the dative phrase and the clitic pronoun+verb are not adjacent. The findings are discussed from the twin perspectives of analogy as a mechanism of change and frequency effects: unmarked datives seem to most affect items at the margins of the dative category, in terms of both verbs and referents.

Abstract

This study examines the use of discourse markers among speakers of Spanish residing in Tijuana, Mexican immigrants in San Diego, and heritage Spanish speakers in San Diego. We find a core set of discourse markers that is common to all speakers, as well as subsets of discourse markers for Tijuana, San Diego immigrant, and San Diego heritage speakers. Four English discourse markers are attested in the border: okay as a general, established borrowing; so only among immigrant and heritage speakers; and like and you know only among heritage speakers. In a language-contact situation, discourse markers whose lexical content is less analyzable and whose functions are more operational detach first from the pragmatically-dominant language (Matras 1998). We find that the operational properties of okay, like, and you know make them borrowable into the Spanish of the border. However, so is borrowed in San Diego with operational and content-related features by heritage speakers, and with content-related features only by immigrant speakers.

Abstract

In Border Uruguayan Spanish, intervocalic voiced obstruents have been known to be produced as stops due to the variety’s contact with Portuguese. The present study investigates intervocalic /ɡ/ in a corpus of sociolinguistic interviews. Using an acoustic measure, a consonant-vowel intensity ratio, as an index of constriction of /ɡ/, we found that, similar to /b/ and /d/, the speaker’s age, Spanish use, and sex have a strong impact on the realization of intervocalic /ɡ/. Specifically, younger speakers, those that speak Spanish most of the time, and men are likely to use less constricted variants such as approximants and elision. Given the parallels that these results have with findings of studies of intervocalic /d/ and, to a lesser extent, /b/ in this variety, we discuss support for the notion that the three phonemes behave as a series and not independently.

Abstracta

¿Sabes? y ¿entiendes? son partículas discursivas de control del contacto que desempeñan una función fático-apelativa, en mayor o menor medida fática o apelativa, a la que se añade ya sea como valor principal o subsidiario un valor modalizador, intensificador y, ocasionalmente, atenuante. En su descripción se subraya a menudo la importancia de la prosodia como rasgo determinante para establecer su función, pero son pocos los estudios que analizan de forma exhaustiva dicho comportamiento prosódico. Nuestra hipótesis de partida es que la diversidad funcional de estos marcadores va asociada a su versatilidad prosódica en virtud, entre otros factores, de la posición que ocupan en el discurso, atendiendo al modelo de unidades del discurso oral del Grupo Val.Es.Co. (Grupo Val.Es.Co. 2014). Analizamos así su realización prosódica para poder llegar a establecer tendencias de regularidad que enriquezcan su descripción: se trata de una propuesta que aúna los criterios funcional, posicional y prosódico.

Resumen

Uno de los recursos más productivos en la gestión de la imagen en interacción es la epistemicidad. Dada su elevada frecuencia con fines de modificación del compromiso del hablante con lo dicho (Albelda 2016; Figueras 2018; García 2020), el objetivo de este trabajo es determinar qué relación existe entre el uso de unos recursos epistémicos concretos y la gestión de la imagen que estos provocan en un género específico: la entrevista semidirigida. Para ello, se establece un repertorio de categorías formales epistémicas y se determinan los patrones relacionales entre la selección de estas y su afectación a las imágenes de quienes se ven envueltos en los actos comunicativos. El análisis sugiere que existen cuatro esquemas de comportamiento habituales en la entrevista de nivel sociocultural alto que permiten reconocer una gradualidad en la incidencia de las imágenes, derivada del foco y orientación que toman los recursos epistémicos.

Abstract

This variationist study analyzes the first-person subject pronoun expression (SPE) of speakers from Quito, Ecuador. To date, this morphosyntactic variable has not been explored in this Andean variety of Spanish. The data consists of 20 sociolinguistic interviews. Results reveal an SPE rate of 17%, comparable to other Andean Spanish varieties. As per Rbrul’s quantitative analysis, the predictors that promote the presence of the ‘yo’ in this variety of Spanish are co-referential Priming, switch reference, ambiguous TMA endings and main clauses. In addition, following Orozco and Hurtado (2021), lexical effects of the verb were observed by analyzing the verb lemma. This predictor revealed similarly opposing tendencies between verbs in the same lexical category. This study adds to the growing body of SPE research by examining which linguistic variables influence the use of ‘yo’ in this Ecuadorian Andean Spanish (EAS) variety and comparing these results to those of other Andean Spanish varieties.

Abstract

Research on Guatemalan Spanish has increasingly shown the effects of contact with Mayan languages. However, whereas most studies have focused on the structural outcomes of Spanish-Mayan contact, fewer studies have analyzed how native Guatemalans socially perceive these features and, by extension, those who employ them. This study presents an analysis of one contact feature of Guatemalan Spanish: the fortition of the voiceless labiodental fricative, or /f/ > [p]. Results of a matched guise of 116 native listeners of Guatemalan Spanish reveal that [p] guises index speakers as Maya and elicit more negative overt and covert attitudes than [f] guises. Furthermore, participants who self-identified as Maya were more likely to rate [p] guises as less prestigious than participants who did not identify as Maya, indicating that the Maya participants may display outgroup favoritism in order to disassociate themselves with the discrimination and racism that often accompanies their racial identity in Guatemala.

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