Revisiting Incomplete Neutralization: The Case of Puerto Rican Spanish

Recent advances in phonetic analysis have led researchers to re-examine sounds that were previously assumed to be contextually neutralized, or merged into a single pronunciation. By using fine-grained spectrographic analysis, linguists have discovered that in many cases where neutralization was assumed, sounds are actually incompletely neutralized. That is, there are small differences in the articulation of these sounds such that they are in fact not merged, even though impressionistic descriptions report them as such. However, many researchers argue that the differences in pronunciation found in linguistic experiments are the result of hyperarticulation induced by the formality of the laboratory setting. In order to test whether or not incomplete neutralization exists in spontaneous speech, this study utilizes sociolinguistic interview data to examine coda liquid neutralization in Puerto Rican Spanish. The results from this study provide evidence that incomplete neutralization occurs outside of the laboratory context shows that the degree of neutralization and distinction between coda and in this dialect is conditioned by social and linguistic factors

Rhotic variation in the Spanish spoken by Puerto Ricans in Puerto Rico and Western Massachusetts

The Spanish trill is known to present a wide range of phonetic variation in Puerto Rican Spanish (PRS), attested not only on the island but in the diaspora. Combining auditory and acoustic analysis, this research project studies acoustic data on onset /r/ in Holyoke, MA, the city with the largest per capita population of Puerto Ricans living outside the island. The aim of this dissertation is to analyze whether there is trill variation in the PR community in Holyoke, and, whether it mirrors the variation found in Puerto Rico. Special attention is paid to glottal, velar, or uvular /r/ realizations. Recent work suggests that the phonemes /r/ and /h/ have been contextually neutralized in perception, which would result in the loss of a phonemic contrast. Therefore, this project also investigates whether there is evidence for this production neutralizationusing measurements that had never been acoustically examined for this dialect (center of gravity, skewness, and kurtosis).Three experimental production tasks were designed and employed: a picture description task, a map task and a reading task. Forty-five participants performed the experimental tasks: 21 were recorded on the island and 24 in Holyoke. As a result, a total of 4,393 phonemic /r/ and /h/ were analyzed. Results indicate that there are substantial similarities in rhotic variation as well as some variation between Puerto Rico and Holyoke: (1) the same trill realizations are found and (2) the means of center of gravity, skewness and kurtosis are significantly different between /h/ and /r/ in both locations, suggesting an absence of neutralization. However,different linguistic and sociolinguistic variables affect (1) the use of the backed /r/ and (2) phonemic /h/-/r/ distinction.Findings suggest that the PR community in Holyoke tries to maintain their language, one of the most noticeable signs of immigrants’ origin, to strengthen authenticity in the same way that they keep other PR cultural experiences. The differences found suggest that, although Holyoke maintains a close bond with Puerto Rico due to the back and forth migration waves, diasporas are still changing communities which create sites of super-diversity, with different patterns as a result of these new dialect contact situations

Perceiving Spanish in Miami: The Interaction of Dialect and National Labeling

The current study implements a speech perception experiment that interrogates local perceptions of Spanish varieties in Miami. Participants (N=292) listened to recordings of three Spanish varieties (Peninsular, Highland Colombian, and Post-Castro Cuban) and were given background information about the speakers, including the parents’ country of origin. In certain cases, the parents’ national-origin label matched the country of origin of the speaker, but otherwise the background information and voices were mismatched. The manipulation distinguishes perceptions determined by bottom-up cues (dialect) from top-down ones (social information). Participants then rated each voice for a range of personal characteristics and answered hypothetical questions about the speakers’ employment, family, and income. Results show clear top-down effects of the social information that often drive perceptions up or down depending on the traits themselves. Additionally, the data suggest differences in perceptions between Hispanic/non-Hispanic and Cuban/non-Cuban participants, although the Cuban participants do not drive the Hispanic participants’ perceptions