Spanish in Context - Online First

This study uses an innovative contextualized translation task method and a quantitative variationist approach to offer an integrated look at second person singular address forms in Chilean Spanish, a Latin American variety with a tripartite address system that includes tuteo, ustedeo, and voseo forms. Results reveal that ustedeo has remained largely unaffected by recent changes in Chile’s address system and that this system’s main alternation is between tuteo and voseo, which function as competing variants. Results also provide further evidence that the documented shift towards a preference for voseo forms over tuteo forms in familiar address is led by members of the younger generation, especially men, and has the Central Region of the country as its epicenter. Finally, results suggest that, notwithstanding the shift from tuteo to voseo, the latter is unlikely to completely oust the former from Chile’s address system due to both linguistic and social reasons.

El análisis de la pronunciación de los segmentos consonánticos en ataque silábico como la neutralización /θs/ o la conservación de /x/ en Granada han permitido comprobar la convergencia lingüística de esta variedad hacia el español común. Sin embargo, desde los años noventa no se ha realizado una nueva investigación para comprobar la situación de la pronunciación de /tʃ/, que tradicionalmente, en Granada, se pronunciaba como fricativa [ʃ]. En esta investigación, a partir del análisis del corpus PASOS-GR, recopilado entre los años 2007 y 2009, se ha analizado la posible variación de la /tʃ/ según variables lingüísticas y extralingüísticas y los resultados se han comparado con trabajos anteriores (Moya Corral y G. Wiedemann 1995). Se han utilizado, también, otros factores como el barrio de residencia de los informantes, así como el análisis individual. En los resultados se han advertido conclusiones relevantes: la variante [ʃ] aún pervive en Granada, con resultados similares a estudios anteriores. Además, los factores sociales son fundamentales para advertir la variación de la /tʃ/.

Since the turn of the 21st century, research on phonation (the production of sound via the vibration of the vocal folds, also known as voice quality) has increased significantly. However, non-modal phonation is highly understudied in Spanish. Therefore, this study comprises a sociophonetic analysis of voice quality in Spanish, examining voice quality categorically from sociolinguistic interview speech conducted with 41 native monolingual Chilean Spanish speakers. The aim of the present paper is to interrogate how phonation varies among residents of Santiago, Chile. Specifically, it asks: what is the sociolinguistic distribution of non-modal voice quality in Chilean Spanish? How does this distribution align with work on voice quality in Spanish and in other languages? Results indicate that non-modal voice quality is used by speakers to mark prosodic boundaries such as phrase finality, aligning with robust cross- linguistic findings. Non-modal phonation is also incorporated when speakers are reporting speech, as well as when they are speaking about emotionally-charged subjects. I draw connections between these findings and those of other dialects of Spanish, and show that utterance-final devoicing, while often associated with “tierras altas” dialects of Spanish, may be more frequent in other dialects than previously indicated. I argue that further examinations of non-modal phonation should also examine third-wave approaches of attitude, emotion, and stance.