Esther L. Brown

New Mexican Spanish: Insight into the Variable Reduction of "la ehe inihial" (/s-/)

For close to a century, a noted feature of the Spanish of New Mexico has been the variable aspiration and deletion of syllable-initial /s/ (Espinosa 1909), yet no empirical investigations have been undertaken to study this process within this variety of Spanish in the United States. In fact, syllable-initial /s/ world-wide is rarely quantified, with few exceptions (e.g., Garcia and Talion 1995). This relative lack of empirical analysis means that there is much to be learned from quantitative analysis of this variable phonological reductive process. The present study examines the exact nature of syllable-initial /s/ reduction using quantitative methods to challenge the notions that syllable-initial /s-/ reduction stems directly from syllable-final /-s/ reduction, and that intervocalic /s-/ reduction is found only in a limited set of lexemes.

Phonological Evidence of Interlingual Exemplar Connections

Abstract We conduct quantitative analyses of 5,569 tokens of Spanish word-final /s/ in the speech of Spanish/English bilinguals and monolinguals to test the Exemplar Model of Lexical Representation. We establish that reduction (aspiration, deletion) of word-final /s/ in the speech of New Mexico is significantly lower in Spanish words whose English translation equivalent has a word-final /s/ and significantly higher in words with no word-final sibilant in their English counterpart. The same crosslinguistic similarity effect is not found in a nearly identical (monolingual) variety of Spanish (Chihuahua), owing, we argue, to the lack of influence from word-final /s/ in English. Results of variable rule analyses reveal that the bilingual exemplar connections are not uniform across all words. Rather, the crosslinguistic ties are strongest where more phonological, orthographic, or semantic overlap can be posited (i.e., cognates). Results provide evidence of bilingual lexical connections in support of an exemplar model of lexical representation.

The role of discourse context frequency in phonological variation: A usage-based approach to bilingual speech production

Missing from the body of literature on contact-induced phonological influence are studies that examine language variation as it occurs in speech production among members of a speech community. This study uses a corpus of naturally occurring Spanish/English code-switched discourse to determine whether cross-language phonological effects are evident in the data. Specifically, 2629 tokens of word-initial /d/ were analyzed in spontaneous interactions to identify the linguistic factors that condition the variable reduction (unreduced [d], reduced [ð]/Ø) of /d-/ in Spanish words. Cognate words (doctor) were found to reduce significantly less often than non-cognate words (después ‘after’). However, a significant effect is found for a novel, contextually informed measure that estimates words’ proportion of use in online contexts promoting reduction (Frequency in a Favorable Context). The greater a word’s prior exposure to online contexts promoting reduction, the greater the likelihood of reduced articulations. Indeed, this work argues that the distinction between cognates and non-cognates in fact emerges through this cumulative effect of significantly different patterns of use in discourse. Cognate /d/ words are used overall (considering speakers’ use of both English and Spanish) less often in contexts that promote reduction than non-cognate words. As a result of the diminished net exposure to reducing environments, per usage-based grammar, the lexical representations of cognate words have strengthened non-reduced exemplars ([d]). The distinct rates of variation for cognate words thus emerge from distinct usage patterns. This paper proposes such a focus on usage patterns within naturally occurring speech for phonological analyses within contact linguistics.

Fine-grained and probabilistic cross-linguistic influence in the pronunciation of cognates: Evidence from corpus-based spontaneous conversation and experimentally elicited data

Abstract The present study examines variable realizations of Spanish word-initial voiced and voiceless dental stops in Spanish-English cognate pairs. Employing a variationist approach to naturalistic data, we report significantly decreased likelihood of reduced articulations of word-initial /d/ in cognates in spontaneous bilingual Puerto Rican discourse, and no such probabilistic effect for cognates in monolingual Spanish of the same speech community. Using experimentally controlled elicited data of Spanish word-initial /t/, we also find evidence of significant fine-grained effects of English on the articulations of Spanish cognates in the form of lengthened VOT for Spanish-English bilinguals. These results indicate that cross-language lexical connections affect phonetic categories in the speech production of Spanish-English bilinguals. It is proposed that both fine-grained and probabilistic effects of the phonology of one language on another can be explained within the Exemplar Model of Lexical Representation.

Cumulative context effects and variant lexical representations: Word use and English final t/d deletion

Word production variability is widespread in speech, and rates of variant production correlate with many factors. Recent research suggests mental representation of both canonical word forms and distinct reduced variants, and that production and processing are sensitive to variant frequency. What factors lead to frequency-weighted variant representations? An experiment manipulated following context and word repetition for final t/d words in read, narrative English speech. Modeling the experimentally generated data statistically showed higher final-segment deletion in tokens followed by consonant-initial words, but no evidence of increased deletion with repetition, regardless of context. Deletion rates were also higher the greater a words cumulative exposure to consonant contexts (measured from distributional statistics), but there was no effect of word frequency. Token effects are interpreted in terms of articulation processes. The type-level context effect is interpreted within exemplar and usage-based models of language to suggest that experiences with word variants in contexts register as frequency-weighted representations.

Stage-Level and Individual-Level distinction in morphological variation

This work examines the role of the stage-level (SL)/individual-level (IL) distinction applied to nouns in a case of morphosyntactic regularization in Spanish: variable reanalysis of the NP argument as subject in the presentational haber construction ( habia/habian perros ). We conduct variationist, quantitative analyses on all instances of existential haber with a plural NP in corpora of spoken Puerto Rican Spanish (>500,000 words) to determine the linguistic factor groups that promote reanalysis and, hence, pluralized forms. Results of variable rule analyses reveal that the SL-IL distinction constrains the regularization. IL predicates significantly favor haber regularization (e.g., habian muchas personas de las Antillas ‘there were a lot of people from the Antillas’) whereas SL predicates significantly disfavor pluralized forms ( este ano hubo menos tiros que en anos pasados ‘this year there were fewer shots fired than previous years’). These results are interpreted from within a usage-based framework in which the status of the noun introduced in the [ haber + NP] construction, as either a likely or unlikely subject for haber , influences the analogical leveling. IL predicates are more prototypical nouns than SL predicates because the former are temporally persistent. IL predicates promote nouns’ candidacy as subjects over direct objects because prototypical subjects present two temporally-persistent characteristics: independence existence and referentiality. As a result, IL predicates increase the likelihood of reanalyzing the direct object as subject, thus triggering agreement of the verbal form with plural NPs. SL predicates, on the other hand, because they display low temporal stability, inhibit regularization.

Velarization of labial, coda stops in spanish: a frequency account

In several varieties of spoken Spanish, word-medial, labial stops are articulated as velar stops (pepsi > pe[k]si). This work summarizes some previous attempts to explain this abrupt sound substitution. Then, building upon advances in phonotactic theory (e.g., Pierrehumbert, 1994) and patterns emergent from lexical representations (Bybee, 2001), this work presents a new theoretical perspective from which to examine the p > k phenomenon. Syllable-final, word-medial, velar stops (/g, k/) have a significantly higher token and type frequency than syllable-final, word-medial labial stops (/b, p/) in Spanish. As a result, the schema [..C VELAR

Correlaciones entre forma y función en las construcciones interrogativas parciales del español de Puerto Rico

C..], and not [..C LABIAL

Spanish /s/:: A different story from beginning (initial) to end (final)

C..], emerges as a stronger, more productive schema, promoting the abrupt sound substitution LABIAL > VELAR.

How discourse context shapes the lexicon: Explaining the distribution of Spanish f- / h- words

Previous studies on Spanish interrogative constructions, which focus primarily on the di versity of constructions and their multiple communicative functions, do not sustain the view of an isomorphic relationship between (interrogative) form and (information sought) function as proposed in traditional grammars. In this study, through a frequency based analy sis of all direct wh- questions in 27 hours of naturally occurring Puerto Rican conversations (N = 1210), we establish the existence of sig nificant correlations between the pragmatic function of the question and the syntactic form these interrogative structures take. Canonical forms (questions with Verb-Subject order and null subject questions) correspond with the function of information sought whereas noncanonical forms (cleft questions and nonin verted Subject-Verb interrogatives) are typically used with other discourse functions. The re sults of a variable rule analysis (Varbrul) detail the linguistic factors that significantly con strain the use of these non-canonical interrogative constructions.