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This study investigates variation in the grammatical system of Spanish in the speech of three generations of Mexican Americans living in a community in South Texas, United States, characterized by high levels of bilingualism and long-term, sustained contact between languages. Two variables are studied using quantitative methods: (1) the extension of the copula verb estar into domains traditionally confined to ser and (2) the expansion of progressive forms at the expense of the simple present. The data reported here suggest changes-in-progress that appear to be accelerated by the linguistic and sociocultural conditions of the community including, especially, lack of access to formal education in Spanish. The sociolinguistic patterning for these variables is compared to patterning for the same variables reported in the literature in both monolingual communities in Spain and Latin America and bilingual communities in the United States.

This study analyzes the pronunciation of /s/ in the Spanish of young adults in a newer migrant settlement in metropolitan Lima, Peru. The participants have parents and/or grandparents who migrated to Lima primarily from the Andean provinces, where the sibilant pronunciation of /s/ prevails. The study examines a variety of social factors, including migrant generation, family origin, gender, education, occupation, and social networks to determine the factors that correlate with /s/ weakening, which is more prevalent in Classic Limeño Spanish than in Andean Spanish (Caravedo 1990; Hundley 1983; Klee and Caravedo 2006). A proportional-odds mixed effects model was used to treat the repeated measurement categorical data on a continuum of acoustical variation ([s]>[h]>Ø) and the advantages of this model are explained. Results indicate that an important social predictor of /s/ variation is migrant generation: there is a progressive weakening in /s/ with each subsequent migrant generation. In addition to the generational effect, higher levels of education correlate with less /s/ weakening. Two variables were more weakly correlated with /s/ pronunciation: gender and social networks. Overall, the results indicate that young adults in this community, especially those of the third-generation, seem to be assimilating to some degree to coastal norms of /s/ weakening, although there is also a possibility that they may be forming their own norm.

The present study explored development in Spanish vowel production during a short-term study abroad program. The production patterns of a group of learners studying abroad in a 4-week program in the Dominican Republic were compared in terms of overall vowel quality, tendency to diphthongize /e/ and /o/, and vowel duration to those of a similar group of learners studying in the at-home context. Results revealed no significant changes or differences between groups in vowel quality or diphthongization, but a significant improvement (i.e., reduction) in vowel duration for /a/, /o/, and /u/ for the at-home group only. Findings are discussed in relation to previous research, and areas for future research are outlined.

Resumen Este estudio de la expresión de pronombres personales de sujeto entre hablantes del castellano caribeño colombiano en Nueva York revela una tasa pronominal (43 %) significativamente más alta que la existente en el Caribe colombiano. Los resultados descubren que cinco predictores lingüísticos y dos sociales condicionan la expresión pronominal. Los predictores lingüísticos – entre los cuales persona y número del sujeto condiciona más fuertemente el uso pronominal – revelan tendencias similares a las existentes alrededor del mundo hispánico. Los predictores sociales reflejan aumentos significativos en las tasas pronominales tanto de mujeres como de hombres en los diferentes grupos etarios analizados y también entre los recién llegados a Nueva York. Aunque existen similitudes superficiales con el resto del mundo en los efectos condicionantes internos, un análisis minucioso de los efectos del verbo descubre tendencias opuestas entre verbos agrupados en una misma categoría semántica; por ejemplo, ir favorece los sujetos expresos pero salir los tácitos. Esto implica que clasificaciones basadas en criterios semánticos no constituirían la manera óptima de explorar los efectos del verbo en la expresión pronominal. Además, la tasa pronominal significativamente más alta entre los recién llegados tiene implicaciones metodológicas sugiriendo que estos hablantes no proporcionarían una muestra fidedigna de la expresión pronominal en sus comunidades de origen.

Resumen Las gramáticas del español describen como agramaticales oraciones en infinitivos con sujeto patente, como * Eso te pasa por tú ir demasiado rápido y * Para ella estar tranquila tiene que quitarse eso de la mente , frente a las cláusulas en indicativo, como, Eso te pasa porque vas demasiado rápido , o subjuntivo, como, Para que (ella/Ø) esté tranquila tiene que quitarse eso de la mente , como gramaticales. Hasta la fecha se ha estudiado la variación infinitivo/subjuntivo frente a la opcionalidad con el indicativo. La variación infinitivo/indicativo/subjuntivo ha sido ducumentada y estudiada en el Caribe, desde diversas perspectivas teóricas y se ha incorporado la anteposición del sujeto ante el infinitivo como variable independiente en hablantes bilingües. En cambio, no se ha examinado la presencia o ausencia del sujeto en la elección modal, ni se ha controlado el entorno oracional para investigar el efecto de la preposición en variación con el indicativo y el subjuntivo. Por ende, esta investigación examina este tipo de variación, desde la perspectiva de la microvariación modal, infinitivo/indicativo, y en relación con la variable sujeto (PRO vs. pro explícito y sujetos nominales) y la variable preposición “por” Para lograr ese ambiente controlado, se estudia una muestra de 96 participantes: 72 caribeños, y 24 mexicanos, a quienes se les administró un cuestionario de juicios de gramaticalidad, y 25 entrevistas orales a puertorriqueños y a 100 mexicanos, provenientes de PRESEEA. Los hallazgos se sometieron a un análisis variacionista, siguiendo GoldVarb 2010. Del análisis se desprende que los caribeños aceptan y usan con mayor frecuencia las formas verbales en infinitivo en C2s con sujeto patente, en primera persona singular, con sujetos pronominales, en primera persona singular, no específicos y actantes, que los mexicanos. Este comportamiento lingüístico evidencia que la gramática de los caribeños posee un subparámetro de interfaz sintaxis-pragmática que hace gramaticales este tipo de estructuras, con un significado procesal particular que posibilita la comprobación del rasgo nominativo en la Cláusula 2.

This study offers a prosodic analysis of broad focus declarative sentences in Chota Valley Spanish (CVS), an Afro-Hispanic dialect of Ecuador. Findings indicate that its phonological inventory of pitch accents and phrase boundary tones appears to be significantly simplified in comparison to what has been reported for other native, non-contact varieties of Spanish. In particular, we observe a strong tendency in CVS toward duplicating nuclear and prenuclear pitch accents, as well as phrase boundary tones. We analyze these results in terms of contact-induced phenomena related to a process of first language acquisition of advanced second language acquisition strategies, which appear to be hampered by processability constraints applying at the discourse-phonology interface. The study’s implications are discussed with respect to the debate concerning the origins of this dialect and several other Afro-Hispanic Languages of the Americas.

Previous work has shown that both native and nonnative listeners’ production and perception of regional variation changes with an individual’s residential history, social ties, and exposure to different dialects. The present study investigates the relationship between L2 learners’ dialect familiarity and their ability to understand and identify regional varieties in the read speech of native speakers from six different regions. The source and depth of participants’ past dialect exposure, as well as a measure of their proficiency in Spanish, were also accounted for in this investigation of 60 L1 English speakers’ performance on a transcription task and a dialect identification task. Results revealed that familiarity was a significant predictor of learners’ dialect identification regardless of level, and it also predicted the dialect comprehension of more advanced students. Comprehension but not identification was also more accurate when multiple types of exposure were reported and when exposure was through native instructors, study abroad, and media from a specific region. Ultimately, the present findings shed light on second language learners’ comprehension and identification of different regional varieties of Spanish with and without prior exposure to each dialect, including the effects of different sources of exposure on participants’ perception.

Although some researchers report the normative production of the rhotics in Traditional New Mexico Spanish, others have reported variability, including the presence of an English-like vocalized rhotic. In the present study, 29 speakers of Spanish from Taos, a city in northern New Mexico, were interviewed and the rhotics of their speech were categorized, quantified and analyzed using speech analysis and multivariate statistical analysis software. The results show variation and change when compared to previous reports (both recent and of over a century ago). In spontaneous and elicited speech, ten distinct rhotic variants, subsequently recoded into five categories, were observed and quantified. Moreover, approximant and assibilated variants have notable frequencies and conditioning factors. VARBRUL analyses reveal phonological context, stress, word position, age, and sex as significant conditioning factors.