Sessarego, Sandro; González-Rivera, Melvin (eds.): New Perspectives on Hispanic Contact Linguistics in the Americas
Lengua y Sociedad en el Mundo Hispánico
Language and Society in the Hispanic World
Consejo editorial / Editorial Board:
Julio Calvo Pérez (Universitat de València)
Anna María Escobar (University of Illinois)
Luis Fernando Lara (El Colegio de México)
Francisco Moreno Fernández (Universidad de Alcalá)
Juan Sánchez Méndez (Université de Neuchâtel)
Armin Schwegler (University of California, Irvine)
José del Valle (The Graduate Center, CUNY)
Klaus Zimmermann (Universität Bremen)
Vol. 35
Sessarego, Sandro; González-Rivera, Melvin (eds.):
New Perspectives on Hispanic Contact Linguistics in the Americas
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Sandro Sessarego and Melvin González-Rivera
Section 1.
Spanish in contact with Indigenous languages
Maya-Spanish Contact in Yucatan, Mexico: Context and Sociolinguistic Implications
Jim Michnowicz
Rapanui Features in the Morphosyntactic System of Easter Island Spanish
Verónica González López
The Formal Guaraní and Spanish of Paraguayan Bilinguals
Shaw Nicholas Gynan, Ernesto Luís López Almada, Carlos Marino Lugo Bracho and María Eva Mansfeld de Agüero
Continuity and Innovation in Peruvian Spanish: Pragmatics and Contact in (Differential) Object Marking
Elisabeth Mayer and Manuel Delicado Cantero
Borrowed Clause Combining Patterns in Two Arawakan Languages Baure and Paunaka
Swintha Danielsen and Lena Terhart
Section 2.
Spanish in contact with coerced-migration languages
Codeswitching and Borrowing in Aruban Papiamentu: The Blurring of Categories
Yolanda Rivera and Patrick-André Mather
Nominal Ellipses in an Afro-Hispanic Language of Ecuador: The Choteño Case
Sandro Sessarego and Javier Gutiérrez-Rexach
Cimarroneras in Venezuela: The Role of Isolated Communities in the Potential Development of a Spanish Creole
Avizia Yim Long and Manuel Díaz-Campos
The Individual as the Locus of Variation and Change in a Contact Situation in Panama
Delano S. Lamy
Section 3.
Spanish in contact with free-migration languages
Romance Language Contact in Mexico: The Case of Veneto-Spanish Bilingualism
Hilary Barnes
Portuguese/Portuñol in Misiones, Argentina: Another “Fronterizo”?
John M. Lipski
Preposition Stranding in a Non-Preposition Stranding Language: Contact or Language Change?
Melvin González-Rivera, Ramón Padilla-Reyes, and John Rueda-Chaves
Definite and Indefinite Articles in Nikkei Spanish
Ana María Díaz-Collazos
Section 4.
Latin American Spanish outside of Latin America
Doing Being Boricua on the Island and in the U.S. Midwest: Perceptions of National Identity and Lateralization of /ɾ/ in Puerto Rican Spanish
Wilfredo Valentín-Márquez
Castilian in New York City: What Can We Learn from the Future?
Rafael Orozco
Language Attitudes and Linguistic Identities in Miami
Diego Pascual y Cabo
Heritage Speakers’ Spanish in California: How Unbalanced Bilingualism Affects Reverse Construction of the gustar-type
Viola Miglio and Stefan Th. Gries
Spanish and English in Contact in the Cyber World
Antonio Medina-Rivera
Contributors
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to thank the panel of scholars who reviewed the chapters and provided valuable feedback for the authors: Michelle Ramos-Pellicia, Chad Howe, Jacqueline Toribio, Kimberly Geeslin, David Korfhagen, Pilar Chamorro, Edith Beltrán, Juliana de La Mora, Marisa Carpenter, Scott Schwenter, Emily Kuder, Rey Romero, Brenda Stelter, Nate Maddux, Jason Doroga, Bruno Estigarribia, Diego Pascual, Nick Faraclas, Ian Tippets, Fernando Tejedo, Ksenija Bilbija, Javier Gutiérrez-Rexach, Nina Longinovic, Bill Cudlipp, Rajiv Rao, Diana Frantzen, Cathy Stafford, Grant Armstrong, Johannes Kabatek, Rafael Orozco, Jim Michnowicz, Ana Carvalho, Tim Gupton, Iván Ortega Santos, Frankie Larson, Chelsea Pfaff, Francoise Rose, Rand Valentine, Haralambos Symeonidis, Cecilia Montes Alcalá, Miquel Simonet, Marcos Rohena Madrazo, Yayoi T. Aird, and Antonio Ruiz Tinoco. We also owe a debt of gratitude to all the authors whose works appear in this volume.
Very special thanks go to the University of Texas at Austin, the Universidad de Puerto Rico, Mayagüez, and the Centro de Investigaciones Lingüística del Caribe (CILC) for their support, which made this publication possible. Last but not least, we wish to thank Klaus Vervuert, Rebecca Aschenberg and the publishing team of Lengua y Sociedad en el Mundo Hispánico for their professionalism and help with the publication of this study.
INTRODUCTION
SANDRO SESSAREGO1 AND MELVIN GONZÁLEZ-RIVERA2
1 University of Texas at Austin and 2Universidad de Puerto Rico - Mayagüez
The present volume is an edited collection of original contributions, all of which focus on Hispanic contact linguistics in the Americas. The project is composed of four main sections, organized according to the type of socio-historical scenario that characterizes the nature of the contact situation: (i) Spanish in contact with indigenous languages; (ii) Spanish in contact with coerced-migration languages; (iii) Spanish in contact with free-migration languages; and (iv) Spanish in contact with languages outside of Latin America, but still within the Americas. In so doing, the present project covers a variety of languages distributed across Northern, Southern, Central America, and the Caribbean.
In Chapter 1, Jim Michnowicz provides an account of Yucatan Spanish (Mexico). The study describes certain lexical, phonological and morphosyntactic traits of this dialect, which at various times by various researchers have been directly or indirectly attributed to Maya influence (cf. Lope Blanch 1987). The present chapter seeks to present an overview of this contact situation in Yucatan, while addressing areas of possible or likely contact-induced change and the sociolinguistic factors surrounding the use of (perceived) indigenous language forms.
In Chapter 2, Verónica González López focuses on the extended patterns of language shift and diglossia between Rapa Nui and Spanish on Easter Island. Spanish, the prestigious language, is employed in all types of public contexts and official events, while Rapa Nui is relegated to the domestic and private spheres. After collecting the data by means of sociolinguistic interviews, the author provides an analysis of a wide range of morphosyntactic phenomena. Findings appear to be mostly in line with those of other studies on SLA, creolization and bilingualism (e.g., Clements 2009; Escobar 2000; Lipski 2007; Otheguy and Stern 2010), thus suggesting that apart from a set of specific Rapa Nui-driven constructions, the rest of these grammatical elements have to be seen as the result of universal processes that are at work in all cases of language contact.
In Chapter 3, Shaw Nicholas Gynan, Ernesto Luís López Almada, Carlos Marino Lugo Bracho, and María Eva Mansfeld de Agüero take us to Paraguay and present data on the mutual influence of Spanish and Guaraní, which reflect the differential status of urban bilinguals and rural Guaraní-speaking monolinguals (cf. Gynan 2007). This analysis of 100 Guaraní-Spanish guided oral interviews reveals that the phonology of even formal Paraguayan Spanish is influenced by the Guaraní substrate, but there is almost no lexical or morphological influence from Guaraní. This appears to be due to the fact that, for most Paraguayans, borrowing from Guaraní while speaking Spanish carries a stigma, while using Spanish words and phrases when speaking Guaraní is generally acceptable. This unequal acceptance of loanwords and other contact phenomena favors the Spanish norm over the Guaraní norm and has generated heated linguistic ideological conflicts in the past, especially between the Ateneo de Lengua y Cultura Guaraní and the Paraguayan Ministry of Education. Resolving the issue of standardization of Guaraní is now the responsibility of the Academia de la Lengua Guaraní, recently created by the Secretaría de Políticas Lingüísticas.
In Chapter 4, Elisabeth Mayer and Manuel Delicado Cantero analyze the evolution of differential object marking (DOM) on primary object marking in certain Peruvian Spanish contact varieties. In particular, they analyze the cases of extended DOM, that is, the extension of the prepositional accusative to topical inanimate objects. The authors argue that this change is regulated by pragmatic strategies, continuing the diachronically well-attested struggle between the dative and the accusative for primary object status in monotransitive clauses (Company 2003). This constitutes continuity as well as innovation of differential object marking. The paper highlights the contact avenues which arguably favored such changes (between Quechua and Spanish, and between Andean Spanish and Standard Peruvian Spanish), thus illustrating the role of contact as an integral mechanism of change.
In Chapter 5, Swintha Danielsen and Lena Terhart provide an account of contact phenomena in Baure and Paunaka, two Bolivian Arawakan languages, both seriously endangered and currently being documented by the authors (cf. Danielsen 2007; Danielsen & Terhart 2014). Arawakan languages are generally very verby and many concepts are therefore expressed by predicates and sometimes by lexicalized verb-like constructions. Clause coordination and subordination are done by specifically marked verbal serial constructions and less often by particles that act as conjunctions. Contemporary Baure and Paunaka show numerous constructions that do not appear to be the result of internal language change; they are better analyzed as the result of a prolonged language contact with Spanish. In particular, the authors find several Spanish conjunctions and adverbs functioning as conjunctions in Paunaka and Baure. Moreover, a few lexicalized verbal constructions in both languages appear to be applied like Spanish conjunctions. In this article, Danielsen and Terhart explore the distribution of these borrowed elements and try to explain the motivations for these types of contact-induced change.
In Chapter 6, Yolanda Rivera and Patrick-André Mather present results from a study carried out in Aruba (The Netherlands Antilles). They offer an analysis of borrowing, code-switching, and phonological adaptation phenomena in Papiamentu, a Spanish-based creole that is going through a significant process of Hispanization due to more recent contact with Spanish dialects from the Caribbean. Results suggest that code-switching, in the case under inspection, involves much phonological interpenetration of languages, thus showing that there is no clear-cut distinction between single-word codeswitches and integrated borrowings (Muysken et al 1996; Poplack 2004; Bullock and Toribio 2009).
In Chapter 7, Sandro Sessarego and Javier Gutiérrez-Rexach develop an analysis of nominal ellipses in Choteño Spanish, an Afro-Hispanic vernacular from Ecuador, and compare these grammatical phenomena to their respective counterparts in standard Spanish. The authors build on the literature dealing with Spanish N-drop (Brucart 1987; Kester and Sleeman 2002; Ticio 2003, 2005; etc.) to provide a unified account of nominal ellipses in these two dialects.
In Chapter 8, Avizia Yim Long and Manuel Díaz-Campos examine the potential for Creole language development in colonial Venezuela. They provide demographic, sociohistorical, and linguistic data to cast light on the ongoing debate concerning the (non)creole origin of Afro-Caribbean Spanish (Álvarez and Obediente 1998; Díaz-Campos and Clements 2008; McWhorter 2000; Schwegler 1996; etc.). They suggest that the conditions for creole development in Venezuela may have been in place in cimarroneras and cumbes, marooned communities where fleeing slaves hid during colonial times.
In Chapter 9, Delano S. Lamy studies the variability of voice onset time (VOT) in bilingual Creole English-Spanish speakers in Panama. Data are statistically analyzed through the incorporation of a mixed-effect linear regression in which the individual speaker is included as a random effect factor. The idea is that the individual speaker’s results represent stylistic variation in bilingual speech, which includes both Spanish-like and Creole English-like VOT duration (Lisker and Abramson 1964; Poplack and Meechan 1998). By gleaning information from the sociolinguistic interviews and language background questionnaires, it is observed that factors such as language attitudes, language loyalty and maintenance, and cultural identity affect VOT variability, thus shedding light on a variety of social factors that characterize this particular bilingual speech community.
In Chapter 10, Hilary Barnes examines the language contact situation observed in the small town of Chipilo, a Veneto-Spanish bilingual community in Mexico founded in 1882 by immigrants from Northern Italy (Barnes 2009). Data collected from sociolinguistic interviews and reading tasks are discussed, showing that while there are features of bilingual Chipilo Spanish that are common among other varieties of rural Spanish, several characteristics appear to be due to sustained contact with Veneto.
In Chapter 11, John Lipski offers data on a group of Portuguese/“Portuñol”-speaking enclaves within the northeastern Argentine province of Misiones. These communities were founded in the first half of the twentieth century, within living memory, and sufficient sociodemographic information is available to allow for a more accurate diachronic representation. This analysis of the factors responsible for the presence and characteristics of Portuguese in Misiones, supplemented by recently collected data from border areas of Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia (cf. Kaufmann 2009; Lipski 2010, 2011, among others), sheds additional light on the formation of border speech communities. The data also expand the possibilities for studying the contact and alternation—both voluntary and involuntary—between two closely related languages in ways that transcend commonly observed constraints on intrasentential language switching.
In Chapter 12, Melvin González-Rivera, Ramón Padilla-Reyes and John Rueda-Chaves examine preposition stranding under sluicing in Puerto Rican Spanish and argue that speakers of this Caribbean dialect tend to judge this construction acceptable, even though it is not allowed in standard Spanish (Bosque and Gutiérrez Rexach 2009; Campos 1991; Zagona 2002). They suggest that the grammatical judgment reflected by Puerto Rican Spanish speakers may be due to the contact situation between Spanish and English on the island.
In Chapter 13, Ana María Díaz-Collazos analyzes the linguistic outcomes of Spanish in contact with Japanese in Colombia, specifically in the Nikkei community (Befu 2002), and provides a variationist analysis of Spanish articles in the spontaneous speech of these Japanese/Spanish bilingual speakers. Since the Japanese language lacks of a system of articles, this feature is problematic for this population. Her results show that articles are linked to certain noun types or verbal complements in all types of speakers. Bilinguals show different levels of lexicalization according to their specific language situation.
In Chapter 14, Wilfredo Valentín-Márquez examines the sociolinguistic distribution of syllable-final (r) (Canfield 1981; Guitart 1978; Lipski 1994) in two Puerto Rican (PR) communities with different situations of language contact. He compares a community in which Puerto Rican Spanish (PRS) is the only language spoken by most of the population (Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico) with a community where PRS is a minority language (Grand Rapids, Michigan). Besides the contribution of linguistic context, life stage, and gender, the author explores whether the degree of integration into the PR community of the informants on the mainland offers explanatory insight into differences between the communities in terms of the variable’s distribution. Also, he considers the speakers’ perceptions of national identity—based on the meanings and uses of the word “boricua,” typically associated with core Puerto Ricanness—and he explores whether those judgments are related to the use of [l], the stigmatized variant of (r), in the two communities.
In Chapter 15, Rafael Orozco explores Spanish-English contact in New York City through the prism of the expression of futurity among speakers of Colombian and Puerto Rican origin. The distribution of the variants of futurity (simple present indicative, morphological future, and periphrastic future) reveals that the periphrastic future is the most frequent form while the morphological future occurs the least. Futurity is conditioned by an intricate combination of internal and external constraints. Internal factors largely condition the variants of futurity similarly in both speaker groups. However, apparently due to contact with English, several constraints no longer affect the Puerto Rican cohort. The impact of linguistic contact is also reflected in younger speakers’ lack of use of the morphological future. Furthermore, interesting similarities in the effects of external constraints reflect Colombians’ assimilation to their new sociolinguistic landscape as they follow the Puerto Rican lead. Orozco’s findings help explain other instances of morphosyntactic variation leading to change, especially those involving analytic and synthetic variants (cf. Silva-Corvalán 1994). They also provide important information that helps compare the sociolinguistic forces constraining variation in New York City to those in other Hispanic speech communities.
In Chapter 16, Diego Pascual y Cabo examines the perceived attitudes towards language and language use of three distinct groups of Cuban and Cuban-American young adults in Miami, Florida (cf. Lynch 2000; Alfaraz 2002). In this analysis, he presents combined data from semi-structured oral interviews and surveys that examine these speakers’ attitudes towards the Spanish and English languages, their language use, and the extent to which these languages’ social realities manifest in their everyday lives. The data presented show that these groups share many of the core aspects that form their social, cultural, and linguistic makeup, but present differences in terms of the linguistic values they assign to each language. These differences, coupled with the existence of additional complex divisions within this community, seem to suggest that language choice is employed to establish social boundaries which may point to a cultural and linguistic shift towards mainstream American monoculturalism and monolingualism.
In Chapter 17, Viola Miglio and Stefan Th. Gries focus on the Heritage Mexican Spanish speakers and L2 speakers from central and southern California. The authors study the recognition of different forms of the reverse construction with the Spanish verb gustar, ‘to like’. Using a questionnaire, they manipulate the grammaticality of gustar constructions. Results indicate that, on the whole, heritage speakers (HS) achieved a higher rate of correct judgments. However, the superior performance of HS is not found across the board; rather, it is part of significant interactions with other factors. In fact, in some cases (such as sentences with negation, or where the position of the syntactic subject is before the verb) HS perform on a par or worse than advanced learners, thus showing, in line with other studies, that “[…] HS’ initial linguistic advantages over L2 learners seem to diminish when both groups are compared at the high end of the proficiency spectrum” (De Prada Pérez and Pascual y Cabo 2011: 111).
Finally, in Chapter 18, Antonio Medina-Rivera builds upon Crystal’s work on cyber language (2001/2006) to explore language contact outcomes between English and Spanish speakers outside of the conventionalized national borders. He navigates the cyber space to focus on speech communities using different varieties of Spanish and different levels of Spanish/English proficiency. He analyzes a wide range of language contact situations, including, among other phenomena, cases of language innovation as well as the correspondences between oral and written language.
The current collection of articles is a contribution to the growing field of Hispanic contact linguistics. It consists of studies carried out by researchers with a solid and well-established academic profile in the field, as well as articles by younger academics applying the latest theoretical tools to the study of language-contact phenomena. We are honored to have had the opportunity of working with all of them and we hope that this volume will provide students and professors with a forward-looking perspective on Hispanic contact linguistics in the Americas.
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SECTION 1.
SPANISH IN CONTACT WITH INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES
MAYA-SPANISH CONTACT IN YUCATAN, MEXICO: CONTEXT AND SOCIOLINGUISTIC IMPLICATIONS
1 Introduction
Throughout the southern Mexican states of Yucatan, Campeche and Quintana Roo, as well as in northern Belize, Spanish is in contact with an indigenous language, Yucatec Maya (Lewis 2009). Yucatec Maya is part of a larger family of Maya languages that stretches from the Central American countries of Honduras and Guatemala in the south, to Tabasco on the Gulf of Mexico in the north, and is the second largest Maya language, after K’iche’, spoken in the highland region of Guatemala (Lewis 2009). As of 2005 (the last date for which these data are available), the Mexican census reported 752,316 Yucatec Maya speakers across the Yucatan peninsula, with a majority in the state of Yucatan (527,107), and lesser, but still substantial amounts, in Campeche (69,249) and Quintana Roo (155,960) (INEGI 2005).
This chapter will focus on the largest group of Yucatec Maya1 speakers in Yucatan State. First, I will contextualize the current situation of language contact by examining the historical background and demographics of Maya and Spanish speakers in Yucatan. I will then present the possible linguistic consequences of Maya-Spanish contact, synthesizing data from studies on phonetics/phonology, morpho-syntax and the lexicon. Finally, I will address the future of Maya-Spanish contact in Yucatan, outlining both efforts to revitalize the Maya language and the overall standardization of (possibly) Maya-influenced Spanish.
2 Historical background and context
According to historical records, Maya and Spanish first came into contact around 1511, when survivors of a Spanish shipwreck washed ashore in the southern Yucatan peninsula. Several short expeditions were made in the following decades, until 1527, when Francisco de Montejo, known as “El Adelantado”, landed at Cozumel to undertake the conquest of Yucatan for the Spanish Crown. This first attempt at conquest failed, and one year later the Spanish abandoned Yucatan to regroup. Montejo, accompanied by his son (also Francisco de Montejo, known as “El Mozo”), returned around 1530, and again was forced to temporarily suspend military actions due to Maya resistance, the climate, and lack of supplies (Quezada 2001: 34). It was not until a decade later, in 1542, that Montejo the Younger founded the city of Merida on the site of the Mayan city Tiho. The following year, in 1543, yet another Francisco de Montejo (“The Nephew”) founded Valladolid in eastern Yucatan. Still, the conquest would not be considered complete until 1687, 160 years after it began (see Quezada 2001 for a more detailed overview of the conquest).
Figure 1. Map showing the distribution of Maya languages. Font size reflects the number of speakers. Modified under the GNU Free Documentation License from source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mayan_Language_Map.svg
The result of this extended conquest and the difficulties the Spanish faced in colonizing Yucatan was that Spanish speakers were by and large isolated in the main Spanish cities of Campeche, Merida and Valladolid, with the countryside dominated by Maya speakers (Mosely 1980: 86; Lipski 2004: 99). Generally speaking, Yucatan (which in the colonial period referred to the modern states of Campeche, Yucatan and Quintana Roo) received less outside immigration than the rest of Mexico, with lower numbers of colonists from Europe and slaves from Africa than many other areas (Weber 1980: 173), and Spanish speakers comprised a very small percentage of the total population. In 1580, for example, the population of Yucatan was comprised of approximately 2000 Spaniards and 300 Africans, compared with 200,000 Mayans. In 1700, the Spanish population had risen to 20,000 people, while the Mayan population remained much higher, at 182,000. Later in that century, the Spanish population rose dramatically to 103,000, while the Mayan population also rebounded to its highest level since the conquest (254,000 people) (Mosely 1980: 102-104). Even well into the 20th century, Maya speakers made up almost half of the population of Yucatan State, as seen in Figure 2. The isolation that separated Maya speakers in rural areas and Spanish speakers in urban areas during the colonial period has diminished over the past century, and the demographic situation in present day Yucatan is such that Spanish speakers are in constant contact with both Maya and Maya-influenced Spanish (Lipski 2004: 99). This became especially true in the latter half of the 20th century, as increasing numbers of Maya speakers have moved to cities looking for work as manual laborers, vendors, domestic help, and as nannies for Spanish-speaking families (Michnowicz 2009, 2011; Lipski 2004: 99). Thus contact between Maya and Spanish is of two different types: the first-hand contact that occurs among Maya-Spanish bilinguals, and the second-hand contact that brings Spanish monolinguals into contact with a Maya influenced, L2 variety of Spanish.
Figure 2. Maya speakers as percentage of total population in Yucatan State. Source: INEGI.
Importantly, while Maya speakers have slowly abandoned their native language in favor of Spanish over the past centuries (Pfeiler and Zámišová 2006), the Maya language enjoys a level of prestige uncommon among indigenous languages in Latin America. Lope Blanch (1987: 9) observes that the prestige of Maya may be due to several factors, including its status as an adstrate, rather than substrate, language; the relatively large percentage of the population that still speaks Maya, including city dwellers; and the existence of a single indigenous language throughout the territory, in comparison to other areas with many small, mutually unintelligible languages. Additionally, the use of Maya phrases has a certain popularity among some, particularly young, Spanish speakers (see Michnowicz 2008: 298-299; Kolmer 2006). These factors have led numerous researchers to attribute a wide-variety of linguistic features of Yucatan Spanish to Maya language influence, with Lope Blanch (1987: 8-9) stating that while in many contact varieties features are erroneously attributed to the indigenous language, “[t]his is not the case with Yucatan Spanish. In it, the influence of the Maya language is patently clear, and cannot be argued” (my translation). Likewise, Klee (2009) and Lipski (2004) identify Yucatan as one of the three regions most likely to demonstrate indigenous influence, along with Paraguay and the Andean region.
3 Linguistic consequences of Maya-Spanish contact
Before beginning the discussion of possible areas of Maya influence on Yucatan Spanish, it is important to distinguish between L2-interference features on the one hand, that for the most part only occur among the bilingual, Maya-dominant population, and on the other hand, possibly Maya-influenced features that have also permeated the Spanish of monolinguals, likely through processes of large-scale shift of Maya-speaking populations to Spanish over the last century or more (see Thomason and Kaufman 1988; Winford 2003 for an overview of these processes). This distinction is also important in other areas of indigenous language contact, such as the Andes (Escobar 2011: 328). Although there are some exceptions, generally speaking, phonetic/phonological variants are more likely to have been passed to the monolingual Spanish population than morphosyntactic variants, which are primarily restricted to bilingual speech (see Escobar 2011 for a comparison with Quechua influenced Spanish in the Andes, where similar patterns exist).
3.1 Phonetics/Phonology
The phonetics/phonology of Yucatan Spanish, frequently attributed to Maya contact, represent the most studied area of the dialect. Lope Blanch (1987: 34) provides an overview of phenomena that have been attributed, rightly or wrongly, to contact with Maya. These include the substitution of [p] for /f/, as in [ˈpe.ʧas] for fechas (Michnowicz 2012; Suárez 1979); the elision of /x/, as in [tra.ˈba.o] for trabajo (Michnowicz 2012; Barrera Vásquez 1937); and the depalatalization of /ɲ/, as in [ˈni.njo] for niño (Barrera Vásquez 1937; Yager 1982). Most of these features, however, have not been systematically analyzed in the literature. Therefore, the discussion below will focus on the main phonetic variables analyzed in previous work.
3.1.1 Final -m
One of the most studied features of Yucatan Spanish is the possibility of labializing word final nasals in absolute final position (i.e. before a pause), where most other varieties allow only [n] or [ŋ], for example pan [ˈpam] or camión [ka.ˈmjom] (Michnowicz 2006, 2007, 2008; Alvar 1969; Cassano 1977; Yager 1982, 1989; García Fajardo 1984; Lope Blanch 1987, 1990; Pfeiler 1992). Michnowicz (2008: 289) found 25% [m] in absolute final position, although that frequency may be much higher for particular lexical items, such as place names (Michnowicz 2006). Importantly, this same alternation appears in Maya as well, for example hun “one” can be realized as [hum] (Bolles and Bolles 2001). Final -m appears to be a relatively recent innovation, not appearing in early studies of the dialect (such as Barrera Vásquez 1937, Nykl 1938, Mediz Bolio 1951, but see Ramos i Duarte’s (1895: 386) brief comment on pam), and is increasing in use among younger speakers of Yucatan Spanish (Yager 1989, Michnowicz 2007, 2008). Final - m is also more frequent among women than men (Yager 1989, Pfeiler 1992, Michnowicz 2007, 2008), and appears to be a linguistic marker of Yucatan identity. While most studies have attributed -m to Maya contact (e.g. Alvar 1969, Yager 1982, Lope Blanch 1987), the presence of -m in other dialects (i.e. in particular parts of Colombia; Lipski 2004; Canfield 1981) leads Cassano (1977) to outright reject any influence from Maya. More recent quantitative studies disagree with respect to direct Maya influence. Yager (1989) found no significant difference between language groups, while Michnowicz (2007, 2008) showed that Maya speakers produced significantly more -m than did Spanish monolinguals (32% -m vs. 19%, respectively; Michnowicz 2008: 292). The most likely scenario is probably that outlined by Lope Blanch (1987: 62-63), who argued that -m in Yucatan is the result of an internal process in Spanish that has been favored by Maya contact, arising first among bilingual speakers and then passing to monolinguals through contact. This feature has also been attested in varieties in contact with Guaraní in Paraguay, although it is a declining form in that country (Granda 1982; see Klee and Lynch 2009 for a summary).
3.1.2 /bdg/
Another feature of Yucatan Spanish frequently attributed to Maya contact is the occlusive realization of /bdg/ in positions that would normally favor approximants, including intervocalically, for example todo [ˈto.do] or yo vivo [ˈʝo.ˈbi.bo] (Michnowicz 2009, 2011, 2012; Alvar 1969; Cassano 1977; Yager 1982; García Fajardo 1984; Lope Blanch 1987, 1990). Previous reports on /bdg/ are inconsistent, ranging from Alvar (1969: 165) who noted almost categorical occlusives, to later studies such as Yager (1982: 58) who reported high rates of stops, but also a slight preference for approximants. Complicating the issue, some researchers also report occasional relaxed articulations (Suárez 1979, García Fajardo 1984). Most recently, Michnowicz (2011: 198) found 42% [b], 32% [d] and 28% [g] in spontaneous speech. Regarding Maya influence, most studies propose a combination of factors, including Spanish-internal processes and possible indirect influence from Maya (Cassano 1977, Yager 1982). Michnowicz (2009) argued that stop [bdg], common in L2 varieties of Spanish around the world, is a case of a fossilized L2 feature that, like -m, has spread from bilinguals to the monolingual populace, through processes of large-scale shift (Thomason and Kaufman 1988). Michnowicz (2011: 201-202) found that fluent Maya-speakers produced significantly more stops than Spanishmonolinguals, by an average of 15%. Likewise, speakers over age 30, exposed to more Maya and Maya-influenced Spanish than younger speakers, also produced significantly more stops than younger speakers (Michnowicz 2011: 202).
3.1.3 /ptk/
In both bilingual and monolingual Yucatan Spanish, the voiceless stops /ptk/ are often aspirated to levels not ordinarily found in Spanish, for example pan [ˈphan] or tomas [ˈtho.ˈmas] (Michnowicz 2012; Michnowicz and Carpenter 2013; Nykl 1938; Suárez 1979; Alvar 1969; Yager 1982; García Fajardo 1984; Lope Blanch 1987, 1990). Many studies, noting the existence of both aspirated and ejective stops in Maya, argue for direct Maya influence (Nykl 1938, Yager 1982), while others suggest that, like /bdg/, aspirated /ptk/ are likely due to indirect influence (Coupal and Plante 1977; Lope Blanch 1987). Studies also report differences in the degree of aspiration in Yucatan Spanish. Suárez (1945) stated that aspiration is one of the characteristic features of the dialect, while Alvar (1969) reported that while aspiration is greater than that typical of Spanish, it does not reach levels of aspiration in English2. Coupal and Plante (1977: 150), one of very few instrumental studies of Yucatan /ptk/, noted that aspiration (VOT) is not as long as some would suggest, but that it is greater than that found in the Caribbean or Spain. More recently, Michnowicz and Carpenter (2013) found mean VOTs of 17ms, 22ms and 34ms for /ptk/ respectively, somewhat longer than many other varieties of Spanish, but not as aspirated as some early studies would suggest. In agreement with Lope Blanch (1987), who reports a wide range of individual difference for aspiration, Michnowicz and Carpenter (2013) found VOT ranges much larger than other dialects; between 75ms and 122ms for Yucatan, compared with ranges between 21ms and 43ms for Castilian Spanish (Rosner et al. 2000). Thus while the overall mean VOT value is only slightly greater than in other dialects, the wide range of values indicates that at times /ptk/ is aspirated to a great degree, but not consistently across tokens (see also Yager 1982). Younger speakers generally have shorter (more like standard Spanish) VOTs than older speakers (Michnowicz and Carpenter 2013). Regarding direct Maya influence, Michnowicz and Carpenter (2013) found no consistent pattern for VOT measurements by language, and language background by itself was not a significant predictor. Language did interact significantly with age, however. Maya-speakers showed no significant differences across age group, whereas younger Spanish-speakers produced significantly shorter VOTs than older speakers. Based on this and other evidence, the authors do not discard the possibility of Maya influence, and note that such influence may have occurred in the past. If Maya has played a role in aspirated /ptk/, then the process of transfer to monolingual speakers may be further along than for /bdg/, thereby obscuring the effect for bilingualism that may have existed at an earlier period.
3.1.4 Glottalizations and /ʔ/ insertion
The literature on Yucatan Spanish distinguishes between glottalized (or ejective) consonants, and the insertion of a glottal stop /ʔ/ in a variety of contexts, but most frequently between two vowels of different quality, for example me iba [me.ˈʔi. ba] or doce años [ˈdo.se.ˈʔa.ɲos] (Lope Blanch 1987: 115). Stress also plays a role, with stressed vowels favoring /ʔ/ insertion (Yager 1982: 88). Truly ejective consonants, common in Maya, rarely surface in Yucatan Spanish (Lope Blanch 1987: 103), with the exception of names of flora and fauna of Maya origin, and even then only among bilingual speakers. The insertion of /ʔ/, however, is more common, and is the focus of the little research done to date. Most researchers have concluded that his phenomenon is one of the strongest candidates for direct Maya influence on Yucatan Spanish (Barrera Vásquez 1937; Nykl 1938; Suárez 1979; Yager 1982; García Fajardo 1984; Lope Blanch 1987, 1990), based on the fact that a) /ʔ/ insertion is a process lacking in most varieties of Spanish; b) Maya does not permit vowel initial words, and therefore c) vowel-initial borrowings from Spanish are transferred to Maya with an epenthetic /ʔ/;for example amigo is borrowed as [ʔáamiɡóoh] (Frasier 2009:23). Although detailed sociolinguistic analyses of /ʔ/ do not yet exist, some preliminary details are available. Lope Blanch (1987: 106) found /ʔ/ insertion “with notable regularity in the Spanish of a good number of Yucatecans” (my translation), and García Fajardo (1984: 86-86) found that /ʔ/ occurs most frequently among lower class speakers. Finally, Michnowicz (2012), in case studies examining two families, found /ʔ/ in vowel initial words an average of 19% for Maya speakers, compared with 7% for Spanish speakers, a significant difference. Likewise, older speakers produced significantly more /ʔ/ than younger speakers, with the youngest speakers in both the Maya speaking and the Spanish monolingual families producing almost no cases of /ʔ/. Michnowicz (2012) suggests that this variant may disappear as Maya speakers continue to shift to Spanish in ever greater numbers (see section 4 for further discussion). A similar pattern of /ʔ/ insertion has been reported for Guaraní-Spanish bilinguals in Paraguay and parts of Argentina, a feature also attributed to phonological patterns in the indigenous language (Granda 1982).
3.1.5 /ʝ/
Yucatan Spanish, as is common across Spanish varieties, permits a wide variety of realizations of /ʝ/. Using Solomon’s (1999) terms, these realizations range from “weak” articulations, such as deletion or approximant [j], to “strong” allophones, such as [ʒ] or [ʤ]. One of the most frequently commented forms is the elision of /ʝ/ intervocalically, most frequently in contact with /i/, as in anillo [a.ˈni.o] or gallina [ga.ˈi.na] (see Alvar 1969, García Fajardo 1984). Suárez (1979) and García Fajardo (1984) both indicated that deletion of /ʝ/ is most common among older, less educated speakers, and Maya bilinguals. Solomon (1999) compared weak forms (including deletion) to strong forms (primarily [ʤ], among others) for speakers in Valladolid, Yucatan. Her findings, consistent with earlier reports, showed a majority of weak variants (96%), although most of these represent a weak approximate [j] rather than true deletion (1999: 157). Weak variants were significantly favored by male gender, lower social class, and older age (1999: 171). Regarding possible Maya influence, Solomon (1999: 192) notes that in her recordings of Maya, speakers consistently employed a weak /j/ in that language, suggesting that “fluent Maya speakers might therefore be more likely to use [j] in their Spanish”. Likewise, many of her informants attributed this pronunciation in Yucatan Spanish to Maya influence (1999: 192). The author points out, however, that language background and other social factors, such as age and social class, strongly overlap, and thus it is difficult to disentangle the possible effects of Maya influence from that of other factors (1999: 193). Solomon (1999: 194) closed by stating that, given that weakened /ʝ/ is common in other areas of Mexico and Central America, Maya contact may have supported the use of weak variants, but “...there is no convincing evidence that Maya [/ʝ/] has had a central influence” on /ʝ/ in Yucatan Spanish.
3.1.6 Intonation
Intonation is one of the most frequently commented, if least studied, possible contact features in Yucatan Spanish. Speakers of the dialect are conscious of differing intonational patterns that separate Yucatan Spanish from other varieties, and use terms such as pujado “pushed” to describe their accent. Yucatan Spanish intonation is described in the literature as “peculiar” (Barrera Vásquez 1945/1977: 341) and “slow and halting” (Suárez 1979: 77; my translations). Early researchers were also quick to attribute intonational differences to Maya contact (Nykl 1938; Barrera Vásquez 1937, 1945/1977; Mediz Bolio 1951; Suárez 1979). Mediz Bolio (1951: 19) observed that Yucatan Spanish intonation “is nothing else but a consequence of the original Maya accent” (my translation), also noting that this Maya-influenced pattern has permeated the monolingual Spanish-speaking population. Suárez (1979: 77) called Yucatan Spanish intonation “reflections of Maya phonetics” (my translation). Others have been more reserved, such as Lope Blanch (1987: 39), who argued that not enough is known about either Maya or Yucatan Spanish intonation to establish such a connection. Unfortunately, knowledge about Maya phrasal intonation is still limited, as most research has focused on the patterning of lexical tones (see Gussenhoven and Teeuw 2008, among others). An initial attempt at exploring Yucatan Spanish intonation in spontaneous speech is found in Michnowicz and Barnes (2013). They found that spontaneous Yucatan Spanish does display a higher rate of early F0