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Bilingualism and sound change: perception in the /ʎ/-/j/ merger process in Majorcan Spanish

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Published/Copyright: March 12, 2020
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Abstract

Yeísmo has been accounted for as a merger process occurring in Spanish irrespective of language contact effects though some scholars have claimed that the interference between Spanish and the variety of Catalan spoken in Majorca (Balearic Islands, Spain) has an inhibiting effect on yeísmo. This paper focusses on whether this inhibiting effect can be demonstrated at the perception level and whether it has an effect in the linguistic behaviour of bilinguals. To examine these effects, we conducted an identification experiment with three groups of listeners (Majorcan Catalan-dominant bilinguals, Spanish-dominant bilinguals and a control group of Spanish monolinguals). Results show that Catalan dominants do recognise [ʎ] stimuli, but Spanish dominants only identify [ʎ] at chance level. Consequently, it would seem that bilingual subjects display a bimodal performance at the perception level.


Acknowledgement

This research has been funded by grant FFI2014-59135-R awarded by the Spanish Research Agency (AEI/FEDER, UE). I would also like to thank Dr Beatriz Méndez for her help in recruiting control group subjects, as well as all the voluntary participants in the experiment. Finally, I really appreciate Dr Victoria Marrero and Dr Chiara Celata’s suggestions, which contributed greatly to the improvement of this paper.


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Appendix

Table 5

Stimuli employed in the identification test and the real sequences from they were extracted. The numbers in parentheses indicate different repeated utterances of a certain sequence

stimuli real word/sentence
[ʎ] [a’ʎi] allí
gallina (2)
[ˈeʎe] elle (3)
[eʎe] le llevaron
[eˈʎa] se llama
[eʎa] le llamábamos
[ˈiʎa] astilla
[oʎe] lo llevábamos
[ˈoʎo] pollo (2)
[oʎo] cuando llovía
lo llorábamos
[j] [ˈaja] playa
vaya (4)
[aja] Valladolid ([β̞ajað̞oˈli])
[aˈjo] mayor (2)
cayó
[ajo] mayoría (2)
[ˈoje] oye
[l] [ile] y le
[elo] se lo (2)
[ale] ya le
[oˈli] Valladolid
Published Online: 2020-03-12
Published in Print: 2020-03-06

© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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