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In several studies on sound change, it has been suggested that change is not possible without allophonic variation; indeed, it appears to be the triggering factor in phonetic evolution. This paper examines the process of yeísmo in Spanish, which is presented in recent research as a change in progress (see Moreno Fernández 2005). Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the lateral palatal /ʎ/ has been gradually merging with the non-lateral palatal approximant /j/, traditionally considered a fricative consonant in spite of its formantic structure. Nevertheless, in this process there is not a real dichotomy between a lateral and an approximant consonant. Instead, there is an array of coexisting allophones of /ʎ/([ʎ], [j], [ʒ]or […] are a few examples). The paper will thus focus on the wide variation in the phonetic representation of /ʎ/ and how it is affecting the Spanish sound system. This will be investigated through experimental means (analyzing speech acoustically) and through the collection of data for different dialects, which will give us information about (i) the existence of intra and inter-speaker variation and (ii) the way this variation functions. The results point to a restructuring of the palatal system of Spanish, at least in some parts of its linguistic territory, which seems to prove that the merger process is still progressing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we present a contrastive analysis about the semantic field of housing in three peninsular áreas: Madrid, Sevilla and Mérida, with the results obtained applying the Cuestionario para el estudio de la norma culta de España e Hispanoamérica. Our objective is to determine the similarities and differences of the active lexicon of the speakers in this cities from a geolinguistic and diachronical perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, results of a study on the geographic variation of the phoneme /r/ in the speech of Chilean professionals of eight different cities (Iquique, La Serena, Valparaíso, Santiago, Concepción, Temuco, Coyhaique y PuntaArenas) perfonning a reading-aloud task are presented. The results show that most of the realizations for the phoneme /r/ correspond to the approximant, apicoalveolar consonant [ɹ], regardless of the participant's geographical origin and the gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on American Spanish pays little attention to word formation and less still to compounding. To bridge this gap, using as corpus the Diccionario de americanismos published in 2010 by Real Academia Española, this paper analyses the formation of nominal compounds in American Spanish from formal, semantic, diatopic, diastratic and diaphasic point of view. In short, this study not only shows the difference between American dialect areas and its comparison with European Spanish but also the richness of compounding from a language variation perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, results of a study on the geographic variation of the phoneme /r/ in the speech of Chilean professionals of eight different cities (Iquique, La Serena, Valparaiso, Santiago, Concepción, Temuco, Coyhaique y Punta Arenas) performing a reading-aloud task are presented. The results show that most of the realizations for the phoneme /r/ correspond to the approximant, apicoalveolar consonant [ɹ], regardless of the participant's geographical origin and the gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to carry out a comparative sociolinguistic analysis of intervocalic obstruent consonant /d/ variation in urban Granada and Malaga (Spain). To do so, two perfectly comparable spoken corpuses gathered in the frame of the PrESEEa-Project were used. Given that /d/ deletion is quite frequent in southern varieties of Castilian Spanish, our analysis zoomed in on consonant deletion vs. maintenance regardless of the differences of intensity or tension perceptible in maintained consonantal variants. Prior to the comparative analysis itself, an exhaustive bivariate analysis was performed considering both linguistic and speaker (stylistic and social) variables, as well as their respective interaction. Therefore, we carried out two multivariate comparative analyses, the first one involving separate parallel analyses of data from both corpuses and the second one being an integrated analysis of the whole data. Results were amazingly similar for both towns and tend to confirm those obtained for other areas both in Spain and America, basically regarding the fundamental weight of internal factors on /d/ variation (i.e. consonant maintenance in word-roots vs. deletion in morphemes). However, they contradict most of previous results with regard to the effect of the speaker variables (i.e. younger speakers' leadership on /d/ deletion). Finally, conflict sites reveal sharper social stratification and age differences in Malaga than in Granada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Approximately over the past ten years, the RAE and its associated Academies have published several works committed explicitly to a pluricentric vision of Hispanic language culture. This paper aims at examining the impact of pluricentrism -- a key concept in terms of current language policy -- on the conceptualization of linguistic variation and, consequently, the treatment of empirical data. In doing so, the focus will be on the Nueva gramática de la lengua española (from here "NGLE"), where this problematic interrelation is reflected in an especially complex way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In our paper we tackle the topic of the knowledge of Mexican Spanish vocabulary through several types of dictionaries registering it. We make an historical overview recalling the impact of Spanish on the autochthonous people, as well as some remarks on the influence of the Castillian norm, as the leading norm, on Mexican Spanish. We also offer points of analysis for the knowledge of the privative and we analyze the theoretical tendencies of actual lexicography in registering Mexican Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

So far the study of the first Latin American lexicography after it's independence from Spain has neglected the close relationship between the first dictionaries, referred as "provincialism dictionaries", and the socio-historical context in which they were elaborated. The process of nation-building, especially in relation to the creation of a state policy and its impact in Latin American societies, is an element that makes clear the nature of the works in question, so that we can talk about a decisive political imprint on them. This paper proposes a renewed study of the foundational works of Spanish American lexicography from this perspective and exemplified with reading and comparison of the two most representative dictionaries, the Zorobabel Rodríguez's Diccionario de chilenismos (1875) and the Juan de Arona's Diccionario de peruanismos. Ensayo filológico (1883-1884), especially in relation to the notion of republicanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In velarising dialects of Spanish, nasal place contrasts neutralise to [ŋ] word-finally. However, whereas velarisation applies transparently in word-final prepausal environments, place neutralisation ‘overapplies’ to stem-final presuffixal nasals and to word-final nasals which resyllabify into onset position across word boundaries. Yet since previous analyses of Velarising Spanish have been based exclusively on theory-led interpretations of impressionistic data, doubts exist as to whether word-final nasals in velarising dialects are consistently realised as [ŋ] (Baković 2000). The first goal of this paper therefore is to submit the claims put forward in these analyses to empirical testing. Experiments using electropalatography confirm that speakers of Velarising Spanish produce robustly dorso-velar nasals in word-final environments; this result refutes the claim that word-final nasals are placeless in velarising varieties. Secondly, because opaque instances of nasal place neutralisation pose challenges for Optimality Theory (OT), I compare two approaches to modelling the nasal alternations in Velarising Spanish, namely Output–Output correspondence in classic OT and a cyclic analysis in Stratal OT. This comparison reveals that classic OT cannot account for the opaque patterns without stipulating fixed OO-constraint rankings. By contrast, the stratal model straightforwardly predicts the occurrence of both opacity effects on the basis of general architectural principles. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper tries to quantify the socioeconomic importance of seven phonetic characteristics (seseo, yeismo, /s/-aspiration, /x/-aspiration, /j/-assibilation, /r/-assibilation, and /n/-velarization) whose presence or absence allows distinguishing among twenty-four Spanish dialects. In order to accomplish this goal, we perform a least-square regression analysis to calculate "hedonic prices" for the abovementioned characteristics. The result is that the three more significant characteristics, which seem to operate as signs of a lower per-capita income, are seseo, /x/-aspiration and /r/-assibilation. The first of those characteristics keeps its statistical significance as a sociolinguistic marker when we restrict our analysis to the case of Spain, while /r/-assibilation keeps its statistical significance when we restrict our database to Colombian observations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]