Book contents
- English and Spanish
- English and Spanish
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- 1 Introduction: English and Spanish in Contact – World Languages in Interaction
- 2 The Emergence of Global Languages
- 3 Some (Unintended) Consequences of Colonization
- 4 Dialect Contact and the Emergence of New Varieties of English
- 5 The Emergence of Latin American Spanish
- 6 Creole Distinctiveness?
- 7 Contact Scenarios and Varieties of Spanish beyond Europe
- 8 Pluricentricity and Codification in World English
- 9 Spanish Today
- 10 Uncovering the Big Picture
- 11 Morphosyntactic Variation in Spanish
- 12 English and Spanish in Contact in North America
- 13 ‘The Spanish of the Internet’: Is That a Thing?
- 14 Alternating or Mixing Languages?
- 15 The Persistence of Dialectal Differences in U.S. Spanish
- 16 Identity Construction
- Index
- References
15 - The Persistence of Dialectal Differences in U.S. Spanish
/s/ Deletion in Boston and New York City
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 September 2021
Book contents
- English and Spanish
- English and Spanish
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- 1 Introduction: English and Spanish in Contact – World Languages in Interaction
- 2 The Emergence of Global Languages
- 3 Some (Unintended) Consequences of Colonization
- 4 Dialect Contact and the Emergence of New Varieties of English
- 5 The Emergence of Latin American Spanish
- 6 Creole Distinctiveness?
- 7 Contact Scenarios and Varieties of Spanish beyond Europe
- 8 Pluricentricity and Codification in World English
- 9 Spanish Today
- 10 Uncovering the Big Picture
- 11 Morphosyntactic Variation in Spanish
- 12 English and Spanish in Contact in North America
- 13 ‘The Spanish of the Internet’: Is That a Thing?
- 14 Alternating or Mixing Languages?
- 15 The Persistence of Dialectal Differences in U.S. Spanish
- 16 Identity Construction
- Index
- References
Summary
This study examines syllable-final /s/ deletion in sociolinguistic interviews with sixty-two Spanish speakers. Twenty are residents of New York City and forty-two are residents of Boston. Previous research in these cities has documented intergenerational shifts in the use of a range of variable linguistic features. Two types of linguistic interaction – language contact and dialectal contact – have been suggested as catalysts for these shifts, resulting in use of Spanish that is both more English-like and less regionally differentiated. Though coda /s/ represents a potential site for convergence with English, as well as for dialectal leveling, the present analysis finds evidence of neither trend. Patterns of variation in /s/ are intergenerationally stable, both in terms of speakers’ rates of /s/ deletion and the set of linguistic and social factors that give rise to structured variability. The intergenerational persistence of dialectal differences in /s/ highlights the need to investigate contact outcomes on a feature-by-feature basis and cautions against the assumption that linguistic contact guarantees language change.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- English and SpanishWorld Languages in Interaction, pp. 312 - 334Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021
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