Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-v2bm5 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-10T21:36:38.502Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The role of contextual frequency in the articulation of initial /f/ in Modern Spanish: The same effect as in the reduction of Latin /f/?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 March 2017

Earl K. Brown  and
Matthew C. Alba
Earl K. Brown
Affiliation:
Brigham Young University–Provo
Matthew C. Alba
Affiliation:
Brigham Young University–Idaho
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The acoustic energy of 996 tokens of word-initial /f/ in the speech of 38 speakers of Mexican Spanish was analyzed. The results suggest that the frequency with which words occur in phonological contexts favorable to reduction (Frequency in a Reducing Context or FRC) conditions the reduction of /f/, even after taking into account the immediate phonological context. Despite this, it is also found that the conditioning effect of FRC is less robust than the influence of the immediate phonological context, thus confirming the preeminence in these data of the online articulatory factors in comparison to the usage-based frequency factors.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , March 2017 , pp. 57 - 78
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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

REFERENCES

Agüero Chaves, Arturo. (1962). El Español en Costa Rica. San José: Universidad de Costa Rica.Google Scholar
Alba, Matthew C. (2005). Hiatus resolution between words in New Mexican Spanish: A usage-based account. Ph.D. dissertation, University of New Mexico.Google Scholar
Alba, Matthew C. (2008). Ratio frequency: Insights into usage effects on phonological structure from hiatus resolution in New Mexican Spanish. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 1:247–286.Google Scholar
Alvar, Manuel. (2013). Paraguay. In Alvar, M. (ed.), Manual de dialectología hispánica: El español de América. Barcelona: Ariel. 196–208.Google Scholar
Anderson, John R. (1982). Acquisition of cognitive skill. Psychological Review 89:369–406.Google Scholar
Bates, Douglas, Maechler, Martin, Bolker, Ben, & Walker, Steve. (2015). Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software 67(1):1–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boersma, Paul, & Weenink, David. (2014). Praat: Doing phonetics by computer. Version 5.4. Available at: http://www.praat.org. Accessed: December 31, 2014.Google Scholar
Brown, Earl K. (2009). A usage-based account of syllable- and word-final /s/ reduction in four dialects of Spanish. LINCOM Studies in Romance Linguistics 62. Munich: Lincom Europa.Google Scholar
Brown, Earl K. (2012). Corpus of Mexican Spanish in Salinas, California. Available at: http://itcdland.csumb.edu/~eabrown/. Accessed November 1, 2016.Google Scholar
Brown, Earl K., & Brown, Esther L. (2012). Syllable-final and syllable-initial /s/ reduction in Cali, Colombia: One variable or two? In File-Muriel, R. & Orozco, R. (eds.), Colombian varieties of Spanish. Madrid: Iberoamericana. 89–106.Google Scholar
Brown, Esther L. (2004). The reduction of syllable initial /s/ in the Spanish of New Mexico and Southern Colorado: A usage-based approach. Ph.D. dissertation, University of New Mexico.Google Scholar
Brown, Esther L. (2005). New Mexican Spanish: Insight into the variable reduction of “la ehe inihial” (/s-/). Hispania 88:813–824.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Esther L. (2006). The effects of discourse context on phonological representation in memory. Paper presented at Linguistic Society of America, Albuquerque, New Mexico, January 5–8.Google Scholar
Brown, Esther L. (2015). The role of discourse context frequency in phonological variation: A usage-based approach to bilingual speech production. International Journal of Bilingualism 19: 387–406.Google Scholar
Brown, Esther L., & Raymond, William D. (2012). How discourse context shapes the lexicon: Explaining the distribution of Spanish f-/h words. Diachronica 29:139–161.Google Scholar
Brown, Esther L., & Torres Cacoullos, Rena. (2003). Spanish /s/: A different story from beginning (initial) to end (final). In Núñez-Cedeño, R., López, L., & Cameron, R. (eds.), A Romance perspective in language knowledge and use. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 22–38.Google Scholar
Bush, Nathan. (2001). Frequency effects and word-boundary palatalization in English. In Bybee, J. & Hopper, P. (eds.), Frequency and the emergence of linguistic structure. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 255–280.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan. (2000). Lexicalization of sound change and alternating environments. In Broe, M. & Pierrehumbert, J. (eds.), Papers in laboratory phonology V: Acquisition and the lexicon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 250–268.Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan. (2001). Phonology and language use. Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 94. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan. (2002). Word frequency and context of use in the lexical diffusion of phonetically conditioned sound change. Language Variation and Change 14:261–290.Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan. (2006). From usage to grammar: The mind's response to repetition. Language 82:711–733.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan. (2010). Language, usage and cognition. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan, Perkins, Revere, & Pagliuca, William. (1994). The evolution of grammar: Tense, aspect and modality in the languages of the world. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan, & Scheibman, Joanne. (1999). The effect of usage on degree of constituency: The reduction of don't in American English. Linguistics 37:575–596.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calvo Shadid, Annette. (1996). Variation of the phoneme /f/ in two Costa Rican sociolects. Revista de Filología y Lingüística de la Universidad de Costa Rica 22:119–127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Canfield, D. Lincoln. (1981). Spanish pronunciation in the Americas. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Craddock, Jerry R. (2006). The history of Spanish in the United States. Romance Philology 60:199–213.Google Scholar
De Rojas, Fernando. (1499). Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea (La Celestina). Burgos.Google Scholar
Du Bois, John W. (1985). Competing motivations. In Haiman, J. (ed.), Iconicity in syntax. Typological Studies in Language 6. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 343–365.Google Scholar
Erikson, Curtis. (1986). La “f” y la “j” en el español del oriente peruano. In Actas del II Congreso Internacional Sobre el Español de América (Ciudad de México, 27–31 de enero de 1986). México: Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. 301–306.Google Scholar
Erker, Daniel G. (2010). A subsegmental approach to coda /s/ weakening in Dominican Spanish. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2010:9–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Erker, Daniel G. (2012). An acoustically based sociolinguistic analysis of variable coda /s/ production in the Spanish of New York City. Ph.D. dissertation, New York University.Google Scholar
File-Muriel, Richard. (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
File-Muriel, Richard, & Brown, Earl K. (2011). The gradient nature of s-lenition in Caleño Spanish. Language Variation and Change 23:223–243.Google Scholar
Forrest, Karen, Weismer, Gary, Milenkovic, Paul, & Dougall, Ronald N. (1988). Statistical analysis of word-initial voiceless obstruents: Preliminary data. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 84(1):115–123.Google Scholar
Foulkes, Paul. (1997). Historical laboratory phonology—Investigating /p/ > /f/ > /h/ changes. Language and Speech 40:249–276.Google Scholar
Gries, Stefan Th. (2013). Statistics for linguistics with R: A practical introduction. 2nd ed. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Guy, Gregory. (2005). Variationist approaches to phonological change. In Joseph, B. & Janda, R. (eds.), The handbook of historical linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. 369–400.Google Scholar
Hay, Jennifer B., Pierrehumbert, Janet, Walker, Abby J., & LaShell, Patrick. (2015). Tracking word frequency effects through 130 years of sound change. Cognition 139:83–91.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hay, Jennifer, & Foulkes, Paul. (2016). The evolution of medial /t/ over real and remembered time. Language 92(2):298–330.Google Scholar
Hombert, Jean-Marie, Ohala, John J., & Ewan, William G. (1979). Phonetic explanations for the development of tones. Language 55(1):37–58.Google Scholar
Hooper, Joan Bybee. (1976). Word frequency in lexical diffusion and the source of morphophonological change. In Christie, W. (ed.), Current progress in historical linguistics. Amsterdam: North Holland. 96–105.Google Scholar
Hopper, Paul. (1998). Emergent grammar. In Tomasello, M. (ed.), The new psychology of language: Cognitive and functional approaches to language structure. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 155–175.Google Scholar
Jongman, Allard, Wayland, Ratree, & Wong, Serena. (2000). Acoustic characteristics of English Fricatives. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 108(3):1252–1263.Google Scholar
Jurafsky, Daniel, Bell, Alan, Gregory, Michelle, & Raymond, William D. (2001). Probabilistic relations between words: Evidence from reduction in lexical production. In Bybee, J. & Hopper, P. (eds.), Frequency and the emergence of linguistic structure. Typological Studies in Language 45. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 229–254.Google Scholar
Krug, Manfred G. (1998). String frequency: A cognitive motivation factor in coalescence, language processing, and linguistic change. Journal of English Linguistics 26:286–320.Google Scholar
Krug, Manfred G. (2001). Frequency, iconicity, categorization: Evidence from emerging modals. In Bybee, J. & Hopper, P. (eds.), Frequency and the emergence of linguistic structure. Typological Studies in Language 45. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 209–335.Google Scholar
Kuznetsova, Alexandra, Brockhoff, Per Bruun, & Bojesen Christensen, Rune Haubo. (2016). lmerTest: Tests in linear mixed-effects models. R package version 2.0–30. Available at: https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=lmerTest. Accessed November 1, 2016.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (1984). Field methods of the project on linguistic change and variation. In Baugh, J. and Sherzer, J. (eds.), Language in use: Readings in sociolinguistics. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall. 28–53.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (2001). Principles of linguistic change: Social factors. Vol. 2. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Lipski, John. (1994). Latin American Spanish. New York: Longman.Google Scholar
Lipski, John. (1995). [Round] and [labial] in Spanish and the “free-form” syllable. Linguistics 33:283–304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lloyd, Paul M. (1987). From Latin to Spanish. Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society 173. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society.Google Scholar
Lope Blanch, Juan M. (1971). El habla de la Ciudad de México: Materiales para su estudio. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.Google Scholar
Lope Blanch, Juan M. (1976). El habla popular de la ciudad de México: Materiales para su estudio. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.Google Scholar
Lope Blanch, Juan M. (1990). El español hablado en el suroeste de los Estados Unidos: Materiales para su estudio. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.Google Scholar
Mazzaro, Natalia. (2005). Aspiration and velarization of /f/ in Argentine Spanish. Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics 25:58–67.Google Scholar
Méndez Dosuna, Julián. (1996). Can weakening processes start in initial position? In Hurch, B. & Rhodes, R. (eds.), Natural phonology: The state of the art. New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 97–106.Google Scholar
Mendoza Cuba, Aída. (1976). Sistema fonológico del castellano y variantes regionales. Lima: Inide.Google Scholar
Merz, Geri W. (1979). The voiceless fricatives in Tucson Spanish. Journal of the Linguistic Association of the Southwest 3:113–124.Google Scholar
Milroy, Lesley, & Gordon, Matthew J. (2003). Sociolinguistics: Method and interpretation. Language in Society 34. Malden: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Minnick Fox, Michelle Annette. (2006). Usage-based effects in Latin American Spanish syllable-final /s/ lenition. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Montes Giraldo, Jose Joaquin. (1985). El español bogotano en 1983: Muestra fonética y gramatical. Thesaurus 40:293–307.Google Scholar
Moya, Ruth. (1981). Simbolismo y Ritual en el Ecuador Andino/El Quichua en el Español de Quito. Otavalo: Instituto Otavaleño de Antropología.Google Scholar
Paredes, Florentino, & Sánchez-Prieto Borja, Pedro. (2008). A methodological approach to the history of the sociolinguistics of the Spanish language. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 193/194:21–55.Google Scholar
Penny, Ralph. (2002). A history of the Spanish language. 2nd ed. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pharies, David A. (2007). Breve historia de la lengua española. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Phillips, Betty. (2006). Word frequency and lexical diffusion. Houndsmill: Palgrave MacMillan.Google Scholar
Pierrehumbert, Janet. (2001). Exemplar dynamics: Word frequency, lenition, and contrast. In Bybee, J. & Hopper, P. (eds.), Frequency and the emergence of linguistic structure. Typological Studies in Language 45. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 137–157.Google Scholar
Quesada Pacheco, Miguel Ángel. (2013). El español de América Central. In Alvar, M. (ed.), Manual de dialectología hispánica: El español de América. Barcelona: Ariel. 101–115.Google Scholar
Quilis, Antonio. (2013). La lengua española en Filipinas. In Alvar, M. (ed.), Manual de dialectología hispánica: El español de América. Barcelona: Ariel. 233–243.Google Scholar
Raymond, William D. & Brown, Esther L. (2012). Are effects of word frequency effects of context of use? An analysis of initial fricative reduction in Spanish. In Gries, S. & Divjak, D. (eds.), Frequency effects in language learning and processing. The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter. 35–52.Google Scholar
Raymond, William D, Dautricourt, Robin, & Hume, Elizabeth. (2006). Word-Internal /t, d/ deletion in spontaneous speech: Modeling the effects of extra-linguistic, lexical, and phonological factors. Language Variation and Change 18:55–97.Google Scholar
Resnick, Melvyn C. (1975). Phonological variants and dialect identification in Latin American Spanish. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Rodriguez Alfano, Lidia. 2005. Investigacion sociolinguistica el habla de Monterrey/Sociolinguistic research of Monterrey speaking: Su Trayectoria En Una Pagina Electronica/His Experience in a Web Page. México: Editorial Trillas.Google Scholar
Schuchardt, H. (1885). Über die Lautgesetze: gegen die Junggrammatiker. Berlin: Oppenheim.Google Scholar
Silbert, Noah, & de Jong, Kenneth. (2008). Focus, prosodic context, and phonological feature specification: Patterns of variation in fricative production. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 123:2769–2779.Google Scholar
Smith, K. Aaron. (2001). The role of frequency in the specialization of the English anterior. In Bybee, J. & Hopper, P. (eds.), Frequency and the emergence of linguistic structure. Typological Studies in Language 45. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 361–382.Google Scholar
Torreblanca, Máximo. (1983). La “f” prerromana y la vasca en su relación con el español antiguo. Romance Philology 35:447–463.Google Scholar
Torreblanca, Máximo. (1992). Sobre los orígenes de la distinción fonológica /f/:/h/ en el español medieval. Romance Philology 45:369–409.Google Scholar
Van Son, Rob. J. J. H., & van Santen, Jan P. H. (2005). Duration and spectral balance of intervocalic consonants: A case for efficient communication. Speech Communication 47:100–123.Google Scholar
Vaquero, María. (2013). Antillas. In Alvar, M. (ed.), Manual de dialectología hispánica: El español de América. Barcelona: Ariel. 51–67.Google Scholar
Vennemann, Theo, & Wilbur, Terence H. (eds.) (1972). Schuchardt, the Neogrammarians, and the Transformational Theory of phonological change: Four essays. Frankfort: Athenaum.Google Scholar
Zamora Vicente, Alonso. (1996). Dialectología española. 2nd ed. Madrid: Editorial Gredos.Google Scholar