Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T03:16:05.731Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

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

By
Daniel Erker  and
Madeline Reffel
Edited by
Danae Perez ,
Marianne Hundt ,
Johannes Kabatek  and
Daniel Schreier
Danae Perez
Affiliation:
University of Zurich
Marianne Hundt
Affiliation:
University of Zurich
Johannes Kabatek
Affiliation:
University of Zurich
Daniel Schreier
Affiliation:
University of Zurich
Get access

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.

Keywords

BostonNew York Spanish/s/deletionintergenerational shiftbilingualismconvergence
Type
Chapter
Information
English and Spanish
World Languages in Interaction
 , pp. 312 - 334
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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

Aaron, Jessi Elana and Hernández, José Estebán (2007). Quantitative evidence for contact-induced accommodation. In Potowski, Kim and Cameron, Richard (eds.), Spanish in contact: Policy, social and linguistic inquiries, 327–341. Studies in Language and Society. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Alba, Orlando (1990). Variación fonética y diversidad social en el español dominicano de Santiago. Santiago: Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra.Google Scholar
Barrera-Tobón, Carolina (2013). Contact-induced changes in word order and intonation in the Spanish of New York City bilinguals. PhD thesis. City University of New York.Google Scholar
Benevento, Nicole M. and Dietrich, Amelia J. (2015). I think, therefore digo yo: Variable position of the 1sg subject pronoun in New Mexican Spanish-English code-switching. International Journal of Bilingualism 19(4):407–422.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boersma, Paul and Weenink, David (2019). Praat: Doing phonetics by computer. Online: www.praat.org.Google Scholar
Bookhamer, Kevin (2013). The variable grammar of the Spanish subjunctive in second-generation bilinguals in New York City. PhD thesis. Graduate Center City University of New York.Google Scholar
Brown, Esther and Cacoullos, Rena Torres (2002). Que le vamoh aher? Taking the syllable out of Spanish /s/ reduction. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 8(3):17–31.Google Scholar
Cacoullos, Rena Torres and Travis, Catherine E. (2016). Two languages, one effect: Structural priming in spontaneous code-switching. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 19(4):733–753.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Canfield, D. Lincoln (1981). Spanish pronunciation in the Americas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Cepeda, Gladys (1995). Retention and deletion of word-final /s/ in Valdivian Spanish (Chile). Hispanic Linguistics 6–7:329–353.Google Scholar
Erker, Daniel (2012). An acoustically based sociolinguistic analysis of variable coda /s/ production in the Spanish of New York City. PhD thesis. New York University.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(2):9.Google Scholar
Erker, Daniel and Bruso, Joanna (2017). Uh, bueno, em: Filled pauses as a site of contact-induced change in Boston Spanish. Language Variation and Change 29(2):205–244.Google Scholar
Erker, Daniel, Ho-Fernández, Eduardo, Otheguy, Ricardo, and Shin, Naomi (2017). Continuity and change in Spanish among Cubans in New York: A study of placement of subjects of finite verbs. In Cuza, Alejandro (ed.), Cuban Spanish dialectology: Variation, contact and change, 63–82. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Erker, Daniel and Otheguy, Ricardo (2016). Contact and coherence: Dialectal leveling and structural convergence in NYC Spanish. Lingua 172:131–146.Google Scholar
File-Muriel, Richard J. (2009). The role of lexical frequency in the weakening of syllable-final lexical /s/ in the Spanish of Barranquilla, Colombia. Hispania 92:348–360.Google Scholar
Flores-Ferrán, Nydia (2004). Spanish subject personal pronoun use in New York City Puerto Ricans: Can we rest the case of English contact? Language Variation and Change 16(1):49–73.Google Scholar
Fontanella de Weinberg, María Beatriz (1974). Aspectos sociolingüísticos del uso de -s en el español bonaerense. Orbis 23:85–98.Google Scholar
Hernández, José Esteban and Maldonado, Rubén Armando (2012). Reducción de/s/final de sílaba entre transmigrantes salvadoreños en el sur de texas. Lengua y migración/Language and Migration 4(2).Google Scholar
Johnson, Daniel Ezra (2009). Getting off the GoldVarb standard: Introducing Rbrul for mixed-effects variable rule analysis. Language and Linguistics Compass 3(1):359–383.Google Scholar
Kerswill, Paul (2010). Contact and new varieties. In Hickey, Raymond (ed.), The handbook of language contact, 230–251. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Labov, William (1972). Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Lamboy, Edwin M (2004). Caribbean Spanish in the metropolis: Spanish language among Cubans, Dominicans, and Puerto Ricans in the New York City area. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Lipski, John M (1994). Latin American Spanish. New York: Longman Linguistics Library.Google Scholar
Lynch, Andrew (2009). A sociolinguistic analysis of final /s/ in Miami Cuban Spanish. Language Sciences 31(6):766–790.Google Scholar
Ma, Roxana and Herasimchuk, Eleanor (1971). The linguistic dimensions of a bilingual neighborhood. In Fishman, Joshua (ed.), Bilingualism in the barrio, 349–464. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Mason, Keith William (1994). Comerse las eses: A selective bibliographic survey of /s/ aspiration and deletion in dialects of Spanish. PhD thesis. University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Otheguy, Ricardo and Zentella, Ana Celia (2012). Spanish in New York: Language contact, dialectal leveling, and structural continuity. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Parodi, Claudia (2003). Contacto de dialectos del español en los ángeles. In Perissinotto, G (ed.), Ensayos de lengua y pedagogia, 23–38. Santa Barbara: University of California, Linguistic Minority Research Institute.Google Scholar
Pellicia, Michelle F. Ramos (2012). Retention and deletion of /s/ in final position: The disappearance of /s/ in the Puerto Rican Spanish spoken in one community in the U.S. Midwest. International Journal of the Linguistic Association of the Southwest 31(1):161–175.Google Scholar
Poplack, Shana (1981). Mortal phonemes as plural morphemes. In David, Sankoff and Cedergren, Henrietta (eds.), Variation omnibus, 59–71. Edmonton: Linguistic Research Inc.Google Scholar
Poplack, Shana and Levey, Stephen (2010). Contact-induced grammatical change: A cautionary tale. In Auer, P. and Schmidt, J. E. (eds.), Language and space: An international handbook of linguistic variation (vol. 1): Theories and methods, 391–419. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Poplack, Shana, Walker, James A., and Malcolmson, Rebecca (2006). An English like no other: Language contact and change in Quebec. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique 51(2–3):185–213.Google Scholar
Rácz, Péter (2013). Salience in sociolinguistics: A quantitative approach. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Risso, Rocío Raña (2010). Subject pronoun placement as evidence of contact and leveling in Spanish in New York. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2010(203):101–114.Google Scholar
Sankoff, Gillian (2002). Linguistic outcomes of language contact. In Chambers, Jack, Trudgill, Peter, and Schilling-Estes, Natalie (eds.), The handbook of language variation and change, 638–668. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Shin, Naomi Lapidus and Montes-Alcalá, Cecilia (2014). El uso contextual del pronombre sujeto como factor predictivo de la influencia del inglés en el español de Nueva York. Sociolinguistic Studies 8(1):85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silva-Corvalán, Carmen (1994). Language contact and change: Spanish in Los Angeles. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sorenson, Travis (2013). Voseo to tuteo accommodation among Salvadorans in the United States. Hispania 96(4):763–781.Google Scholar
Torres Cacoullos, Rena and Travis, Catherine E., (2011). Testing convergence via code-switching: Priming and the structure of variable subject expression. International Journal of Bilingualism 15(3):241–267.Google Scholar
Trudgill, Peter (1986). Dialects in contact. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Varra, Rachel Marie (2013). The social correlates of lexical borrowing in Spanish in New York City. PhD thesis. Graduate Center City University of New York.Google Scholar
Woods, Michael R. and Rivera-Mills, Susana V. (2012). El tú como un mask: Voseo and Salvadoran and Honduran identity in the United States. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 5(1):191–216.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
×