Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T12:52:57.301Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

14 - On the Idiolectal Nature of Lexical and Phonological Contact: Spaniards, Nahuas, and Yorubas in the New World

from Part Two - Contact, Emergence, and Language Classification

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 June 2022

Salikoko Mufwene
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
Anna Maria Escobar
Affiliation:
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Get access

Summary

Linguists usually study the consequences of the sixteenth-century invasion of Mexico and the Caribbean by Castile through the constructs of the language (Nahuatl, Spanish, Yoruba, etc.) and the dialectitalic (Old Castilian, Andalusian, New World koine, pluridialectalism, etc.) and in terms of the contactitalic between these constructs. In contrast, contact is studied here at the level of individual speakers whose inventories of lexical and structural features change and evolve, as new features from other speakers are differentially acquired. These disaggregated processes crucially involve inter-speaker and intra-speaker variation dependent in part on the different frequencies of lexical exemplars. We stress the socially invented nature of named communal languages and argue that our focus on variable contact between idiolects and the disaggregated conception of lexical exemplars can overcome theoretical limitations that are unavoidable when contact is seen in terms of languages and dialects. The data come primarily from the well-documented history of Castilian /s/ in so-called loan phonology in sixteenth-century New Spain, supplemented by a secondary look at nineteenth-century Cuba.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Language Contact
Volume 2: Multilingualism in Population Structure
, pp. 370 - 400
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alvar, Manuel. 2010. El español en México. Estudios, mapas, textos. Santander: Fundación Comillas. Alcalá de Henares: Universidad de Alcalá.Google Scholar
Bialystok, Ellen. 2009. Bilingualism: The good, the bad, and the indifferent. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 12.311.Google Scholar
Bickerton, Derek. 2008. Bastard tongues: A trailblazing linguist finds clues to our common humanity in the world’s languages. New York: Hill & Wang Publishers.Google Scholar
Boyd-Bowman, Peter. 1976. Patterns of Spanish emigration to the Indies until 1600. Hispanic American Historical Review 56.580604.Google Scholar
Boyd-Bowman, Peter. 1988. Brotes de fonetismo andaluz en México hacia fines del siglo xvi. Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica 36.7588.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan. 2010. Language, usage, and cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan. 2015. Language change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan & Hopper, Paul (eds.). 2001. Frequency and the emergence of linguistic structure. Amsterdam & Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins Publishing Co.Google Scholar
Cepero Bonilla, Raúl. 1977. Azúcar y abolición. Barcelona: Editorial Crítica, Grupo Editorial Grijalbo.Google Scholar
Company, Concepción. 1993. Fonética novohispana a fines del siglo XVII. Anuario de Letras 31.557–75.Google Scholar
Erker, Daniel. 2010. A subsegmental approach to coda /s/ weakening in Dominican Spanish. International Journal of the Sociology of Language (IJSL) 203.926.Google Scholar
Erker, Daniel. 2012a. An acoustic based sociolinguistic analysis of variable coda /s/ production in the Spanish of New York City. PhD dissertation, New York University.Google Scholar
Erker, Daniel. 2012b. Of categories and continua: Relating discrete and gradient properties of sociophonetic variation. Penn Working Papers in Linguistics 18.1120.Google Scholar
Erker, Daniel. 2017. Contact, co-variation, and sociolinguistic salience: What Mr. Rogers knows about language change. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 23.6877.Google Scholar
Erker, Daniel & Otheguy, Ricardo. 2016. Contact and coherence: Dialectal leveling and structural convergence in New York City Spanish. Lingua 172.131–46.Google Scholar
File-Muriel, Richard & Brown, Earl K.. 2011. The gradient nature of s-lenition in Caleño Spanish. Language Variation and Change 23.223–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frago Gracia, Juan Antonio. 1992. El “seseo”: orígenes y difusión americana. In Historia y presente del español de América, ed. by Hernández Alonso, César. Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León.Google Scholar
García, Ofelia & Li, Wei. 2014. Translanguaging: Language, bilingualism and education. London & New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
García, Ofelia & Otheguy, Ricardo. 2015. Spanish and Hispanic bilingualism. In The Routledge handbook of Hispanic applied linguistics, ed. by Lacorte, Manel, 639–58. New York & London: Routledge Publishers.Google Scholar
Guy, Gregory. 2014. Variation and change in Latin American Spanish and Portuguese. In Portuguese-Spanish interfaces: Diachrony, synchrony, and contact, ed. by Amaral, Patricia & Carvalho, Ana María, 443–64. Amsterdam & Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins Publishing Co.Google Scholar
Harari, Yuval. 2015. Sapiens: A brief history of humankind. New York: Harper.Google Scholar
Hartsuiker, Robert, Pickering, Martin, & Veltkamp, Eline. 2004. Is syntax shared or separate between languages? Cross-linguistic syntactic priming in Spanish-English bilinguals. Psychological Science 15.409–14.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hidalgo, Margarita. 2001. Sociolinguistic stratification in New Spain. International Language of the Sociology of Language (IJSL) 149.5578.Google Scholar
Hidalgo, Margarita. 2016. Diversification of Mexican Spanish: A tridimensional study in New World sociolinguistics. Boston, MA & Berlin: de Gruyter/Mouton.Google Scholar
Kayne, Richard. 2000. Parameters and universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kerswill, Paul. 2002. Koinezation and accommodation. In The handbook of language variation and change, ed. by Chambers, J.K., Trudgill, Peter, & Schilling-Estes, Natalie, 669702. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1994. Principles of linguistic change: Internal factors. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.Google Scholar
Lapesa, Rafael. 1964. El andaluz y el español de América. In Presente y futuro de la lengua Española, 173–82. Madrid: Oficina Internacional de Información y Obsevación del Español (OFINES).Google Scholar
Lapesa, Rafael. 1981. Historia de la lengua española. Madrid: Editorial Gredos.Google Scholar
Lipski, John. 1994a. Latin American Spanish. London & New York: Longman Publishers.Google Scholar
Lipski, John. 1994b. Tracing Mexican Spanish /s/: A cross-section of history. Language Problems and Language Planning 18.223–41.Google Scholar
Lloyd, Paul. 1987. From Latin to Spanish. Philadelphia, PA: American Philosophical Society.Google Scholar
Lope Blanch, Juan. 1967. La influencia del sustrato en la fonética del español de México. Revista de Filología Española 50.145–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lope Blanch, Juan (ed.). 1990. Atlas Lingüístico de México, vol. 1. Mexico City: El Colegio de México.Google Scholar
Makoni, Sinfree & Pennycook, Alastair. 2007. Disinventing and reconstituting languages. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, Ltd.Google Scholar
Martín Butragueño, Pedro. 2010. Construcción de modelos variables en dialectología: la distribución de (s) en la geografía fónica de México. Revista de Filología Hispánica 68.517–61.Google Scholar
Martín Butragueño, Pedro. 2014. Fonología variable del español de México, vol. 1: Procesos segmentales. Mexico City: El Colegio de México. Centro de Estudios Lingüísticos.Google Scholar
Moreno de Alba, José G. 1994. La pronunciación del español en México. Mexico City: El Colegio de México.Google Scholar
Mufwene, Salikoko. 1996. The founding principle in creole genesis. Diachronica 13.83134.Google Scholar
Mufwene, Salikoko. 2001. The ecology of language evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mufwene, Salikoko. 2008. Language evolution: Contact, competition and change. London & New York: Continuum International Publishing Group.Google Scholar
Mufwene, Salikoko. 2014. Latin America: A linguistic curiosity from the point of view of colonization and the ensuing language contacts. In Iberian imperialism and language evolution in Latin America, ed. by Mufwene, Salikoko, 137. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Otheguy, Raquel Alicia. 2016. Education in empire, nation, and diaspora: Black Cuban’s struggle for schooling, 1850–1910. PhD Dissertation, Stony Brook University, New York.Google Scholar
Otheguy, Ricardo, García, Ofelia, & Reid, Wallis. 2015. Clarifying translanguaging and deconstructing named languages: A perspective from linguistics. Applied Linguistics Review 6.281307.Google Scholar
Otheguy, Ricardo, García, Ofelia, & Reid, Wallis. 2019. A translanguaging view of the linguistic system of bilinguals. Applied Linguistics Review 10.625–51.Google Scholar
Otheguy, Ricardo & Zentella, Ana Celia. 2012. Spanish in New York: Language contact, dialectal leveling and structural continuity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Parodi, Claudia. 2001. Contacto de dialectos y lenguas en el Nuevo Mundo: la vernacularización del español en América. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 149.3353.Google Scholar
Parodi, Claudia. 2002–3. Koinezación e historia del español americano: evidencia de las lenguas indígenas. Boletín de Filología 39.421–34.Google Scholar
Rosenblat, Angel. 1962. El castellano de España y el castellano de América: unidad y diferenciación. Caracas: Cuadernos del Instituto de Filología Andrés Bello.Google Scholar
Sánchez-Prieto, Pedro. 2004. La normalización del castellano escrito en el siglo XIII. Los caracteres de la lengua: grafías y fonemas. In Historia de la lengua española, ed. by Cano, Rafael, 423–46. Barcelona: Editorial Ariel, S.A.Google Scholar
Silva-Corvalán, Carmen. 1994. Language contact and change: Spanish in Los Angeles. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sosa Rodríguez, Enrique & Penabad Félix, Alejandrina. 2005. Historia de la educación en Cuba. Havana: Editorial Pueblo y Educación.Google Scholar
Torres-Cuevas, Eduardo. 1986. Esclavitud y sociedad: notas y documentos para la historia de la esclavitud en Cuba. Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.Google Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. 1986. Dialects in contact. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Weinreich, Uriel. 1967 [1953]. Languages in contact. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×