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New Mexican Spanish: Insight into the
Variable Reduction of "la ehe inihial" (/s-/)Esther L. Brown
University of Colorado
Abstract: 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.
Key Words: alveolar fricative sibilants, aspiration, coronal articulation, deletion, initial sibilant, phonetic
residue, word-final sibilant
1. Introduction
Syllable-final /s/ holds a special place of importance as themost widely studied variable in
Hispanic linguistics. This may not be surprising given the ability of /s/ to successfully
demarcate social and geographic varieties of Spanish, and given the ways in whichdeletion of word-final /s/ has been said to interact with themorphology of the language. Focus on
the Isi in this syllable position is not only copiously represented in the literature of academic
research, but is also part of the consciousness of speakers in Spanish-speaking varieties around
the globe.
In the Spanish of New Mexico,1 this phonological weakening process occurs, unexpectedly,in syllable-initial position. Processes affecting New-Mexican syllable-initial /s/ include aspiration
and deletion (deemed "reduction" in this analysis), which is contrasted in this work with reten
tion of the sibilant. Aspirated tokens, cases inwhich the sibilant loses coronal articulation, are
illustrated in examples la and b below, and deleted tokens, instances where the Isi is removed
from the string of speech leavingno
phonetic residue,are
exemplified in 2a and b.
la) pero cahi todos (pero casi todos [m.214.16])2
"but almost all of them"
lb) el trabajo de hemento (el trabajo de cemento [m. 162.5])
"the cement work"
2a) en eeos a?os (en esos a?os [m. 162.8])
"during those years"
2b) ee me hace que (se me hace que [f.317.4])
"it seems tome that"
As can be seen in the examples above, reduction of this type is found inword-medial (examples1a, 2a) and word-initial positions (examples lb, 2b).
Brown, Esther L.
"New Mexican Spanish: Insight into the Variable Reduction of 'la ehe inihiaV (/s-/)"
Hispania 88.4 (2005): 813-824
Esther L. Brown: "New Mexican Spanish: Insight into the Variable Reduction of "La ehe inihial" (/s-/)
Hispania, Vol. 88, No. 4 (Dec., 2005), pp. 813-824.
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814 H?spanla 88 December 2005
Syllable-initial /s/ aspiration ismentioned in passing for parts of Spain, Colombia, northern
New Mexico, and various other points between these geographic extremes (e.g., Cotton and
Sharp; Espinosa; Fl?rez; Lipski "Instability," "Reducci?n"; L?pez Scott; S?nchez 1982). In sharp
contrast to the plethora of theoretical and empirical analyses of syllable-final /s/ reduction, there
isa
striking paucity of empirical studies concerning reduction of/s/ in syllable-initial position. Infact, this discrepancy is highlighted by Mason (7) in his extensive bibliographic survey of
studies dealing with aspiration and deletion of/s/ in dialects of Spanish. This obvious deficiency
of investigations into syllable-initial reduction is an oversight in the field of Hispanic Linguistics.
This present work, a large-scale analysis of syllable-initial /s/ reduction in spoken Spanish,
addresses this neglect, but also is important for our understanding of New-Mexican Spanish in
general. Syllable-initial /s/ aspiration has long been a phonological characteristic noted in the
spoken Spanish of New Mexico and Southern Colorado; for brief mention ofthat fact, see?in
addition to the items cited above?Bills, Bills and Ornstein, Bills and Vigil, Canfield, C?rdenas,
Cobos, Cotton and Sharp, Guti?rrez, and Lipski, Espa?ol. Although a few empirical studies have
been conducted on other varieties ofSpanish (Brown;
Brown and Torres Cacoullos"Qu?,"
"Dif
ferent"; Fl?rez; Garc?a and Talion; Lipski "Reducci?n"; L?pez Scott), revealing as part of their
findings significant linguistic and extra-linguistic factors involved in the variable reduction of
syllable-initial /s/ in certain varieties, no such detailed information was available for the New
Mexican variety.
Specifically the present investigation will examine forNew-Mexican Spanish the following
notions: (1) that a key ingredient for syllable-initial /s/ reduction is that itbe found in varieties of
Spanish where there is acute weakening of /s/ in general (M?ndez Dosuna, "Can"), (2) that
reduction in syllable-initial position is an extension of processes which originate in syllable-final
position (Ferguson; M?ndez Dosuna, "Aspiraci?n," "Can"; Penny; Terrell "Final"), (3) that
initial /s/ aspiration is specific to intervocalic environment (Lipski, "Many"; Vaquero), and (4)
that syllable-initial Isi aspiration is limited to a small set of lexemes (Bills and Ornstein; Garcia and
Talion). Given themany linguistic insights gleaned from the study of syllable-final Is/ processes,
and the general lack of understanding regarding syllable-initial Isi reduction, much stands to be
gained from an analysis of this sort.
2.Data and Methods
To achieve the goals outlined above, an analysis was undertaken of 10,770 tokens of Isi in
the spoken Spanish of New Mexico. All of the consultants are native speakers of New-Mexican
Spanish originating from and/or living in present day New Mexico and southern Colorado. The
speech of 24 speakers (both male and female) is analyzed in this study, and themajority of the
data comes from theNMCOSS project.
Initiated in 1991, theNMCOSS project documents, via interviews with 350 native speakers,
the Spanish language spoken throughout the state of New Mexico and the sixteen counties of
southern Colorado (Bills and Vigil). The data was collected by trained field workers who tape
recorded interviews involving both controlled elicitation and guided conversation. The
interviews averaged three-and-a-half hours in length, beginning with compilation of personal
information regarding the consultant, followed by specific linguistic elicitation and free
conversation (Bills andVigil 46).
All cases of Isi (in four syllable positions: syllable-initial word-initial, syllable-initial word
medial, syllable-final word-medial, syllable-final word-final) were coded by the investigator
according to phonetic realizations. Both the voiced and voiceless alveolar fricative sibilants, [z]
and [s], are considered non-reduced variants. The voiceless glottal fricative realization of Is/
(commonly referred to as aspirated Isi and coded as [h]) and the elided or completely reduced
tokens of Is/ (coded as [0]) are reduced variants. With respect to aspiration, no phonetic
distinction is drawn between syllable-initial and syllable-final Isl realizations, although acoustic
(Mann and Soli) and perceptual (Widdison) studies suggest that Isl has two very distinct sets of
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New Mexican Spanish 815
characteristics in syllable-initial, as opposed to syllable-final, position.
These tokens wereanalyzed for their rates and patterns of reduction and were also proc
essed by VARBRUL, a logistical regression analysis. Variable rule analysis is a type of
multivariate program that considers different environmental factors simultaneously and
measures their effects on the choice of variants (Rand and Sankoff), in this case, reduced versusretained realizations. The variable rule analyses conducted with VARBRUL provide a detailed
account of which factor groups contribute significantly to the reduction of syllable-initial Is/; the
analyses also rank the factor groups by the magnitude of effect they have on the variation
(indicated by the range). Additionally, within each factor group, the individual factors are ranked
according to their factor weight, which indicates the degree towhich they favor (> .50) or disfavor
(< .50) reductive processes.
3. Discussion
Findings regardingthe nature of
syllable-initialIsi
aspirationinother dialects do not seem to
apply to the New Mexico data. Specifically, studies of other dialects have concluded that
syllable-initial Isi reduction is a result of extreme Isi reduction generally in the dialect, that it is an
extension of processes occurring syllable-finally, that it is confined to intervocalic context and
that it is also lexically limited. Each of these impressions will be discussed in turn, and itwill be
shown that theNew-Mexican data support none of these assumptions. New-Mexican Spanish, it
appears, does not follow the same /s/-articulation parameters that other well-studied varieties do.
3.1. Overall/s/ reduction
Syllable-initial Isi reduction is often perceived to be a phenomenon found most typically in
dialects of Spanish where Isi reduction is extreme, such as in theDominican Republic (Vaquero).
M?ndez Dosuna ("Can") suggests that syllable-initial Isi reduction, in fact, is found "only in
most casual speech styles inmost radical aspirating dialects (e.g., Andalusian, Extreme?o,
Caribbean Spanish) [...]" (98). IsNew-Mexican Spanish, a variety with noted syllable-initial
reduction, also describable as a dialect which is typified by extreme aspiration overall?
The overall reduction rates for Isi in the Spanish of New Mexico are summarized inTable 1.
In syllable-initial positions, Isi aspirates or deletes in 16% of the occurrences inword-initial
position, and in 30% of the word-internal cases. Syllable-finally, reduction is the lowest inword
medial position (25%) and highest inword-final position (57%).
Table 1
New Mexican /s/ Reduction in Syllable-Initial and Syllable-Final Positions
Word-Initial Word-Medial, Word-Medial, Word-Final
_Syllable-Initial_Syllable-Final_095 1281104
H06 843 202060
__S_2179_2120_980_1663Reduction 16% 30% 25%7%
One may possibly speak therefore of a "moderate" amount of reduction of Isi in this variety of
Spanish. How then do its rates of aspiration and deletion compare to Isi variation in other well
studied dialects?Table 2 summarizes rates of reduction of syllable-final Isi in three varieties of Spanish.
Through a comparison of reduction rates inNew Mexico to those of Cuba, for example, the phon
ological reduction inNew Mexico does not seem elevated, as rates are lower in all positions
except before a pause. It does not seem, therefore, that Isi reduction is "extreme" inNew-Mexican
Spanish.
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Table 2
Comparison Syllable-Final /s/ Reduction in New Mexico vs. Chihuahua, Cuba, Argentina*
Phonetic Context New Mexico Chihuahua, Cuba Argentina
_Mexico_
Word-medial,syllable-final
25% (1310) 22% (569) 97% (1714) 88% (4150)Word-final, pre-consonantal 61% (1820) 42% (656) 98% (3265) 89% (5475)Word-final, pre-vocalic 62% (1061) 47% (221) 82% (1500) 12%(2649)Word-final, phrase-final 41% (946) 54% (230)_39% (1776) 22% (2407)
*Cuba, Argentina data taken from Terrell ("Constraints," "Aspirations," Hispania); as summarized in
Bybee (140). Chihuahua data taken from Brown and Torres Cacoullos ("Qu?," "Different").
However, an interesting cross-dialectal pattern emerges in the data. The two varieties included in
Table 2 that have word-final reduction rates pre-vocalically that are superior (or roughly equal) to
reduction inpre-consonantal positions (New Mexico 61% vs. 62%; Chihuahua 42% vs. 47%), are
precisely the dialects with considerable syllable-initial Isl reduction. It is this generalization of
word-final Isl reduction to pre-vocalic contexts, coupled with amatching path of phonetic reduc
tion ([s]>
[h]) inword-initial, post-vocalic position that leads Lipski ("Many") to note that
reduction in these positions are processes which appear to be "intimately related" (198). Does the
co-occurrence of syllable-initial Isl reduction with generalized word-final, pre-vocalic reduction
imply a diachronic process extending from syllable-final to syllable-initial position? This ques
tion is addressed in the following section.
3.2. Final > Initial Continuum
If reductions in these twoword positions are related (word-final, pre-vocalic andword-initial,
post-vocalic), do linguistic factors constrain them in the same way in each context? Separatemultivariate analyses of both word-initial and word-final Isl reduction inNew Mexico, in fact,
reveal a similar ordering of constraints within factor groups. This information is summarized in
Tables 3 and 4.
Table 3
VARBRUL Analyses of Linguistic Factors Having the
Greatest Effect on Word-Initial Isl Reduction
Word-Initial
Input: .10
Total N: 2585
% Reduction Factor Weight % Data
Preceding Phonological Environment
non-high vowel 257050
high vowel 7332
pause .32 24
consonant 4243
Range 46
Following Phonological Environment
non-high vowel 236253
high vowel 6376
Range 25
[Other factor groups selected as significant: frequency, stress
(Log likelihood =-947.244, p=.000, Chi-square per cell=
1.6503)]
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New Mexican Spanish 815
characteristics in syllable-initial, as opposed to syllable-final, position.
These tokens wereanalyzed for their rates and patterns of reduction and were also proc
essed by VARBRUL, a logistical regression analysis. Variable rule analysis is a type of
multivariate program that considers different environmental factors simultaneously and
measures their effects on the choice of variants (Rand and Sankoff), in this case, reduced versusretained realizations. The variable rule analyses conducted with VARBRUL provide a detailed
account of which factor groups contribute significantly to the reduction of syllable-initial Is/; the
analyses also rank the factor groups by the magnitude of effect they have on the variation
(indicated by the range). Additionally, within each factor group, the individual factors are ranked
according to their factor weight, which indicates the degree towhich they favor (> .50) or disfavor
(< .50) reductive processes.
3. Discussion
Findings regardingthe nature of
syllable-initialIsi
aspirationinother dialects do not seem to
apply to the New Mexico data. Specifically, studies of other dialects have concluded that
syllable-initial Isi reduction is a result of extreme Isi reduction generally in the dialect, that it is an
extension of processes occurring syllable-finally, that it is confined to intervocalic context and
that it is also lexically limited. Each of these impressions will be discussed in turn, and itwill be
shown that theNew-Mexican data support none of these assumptions. New-Mexican Spanish, it
appears, does not follow the same /s/-articulation parameters that other well-studied varieties do.
3.1. Overall/s/ reduction
Syllable-initial Isi reduction is often perceived to be a phenomenon found most typically in
dialects of Spanish where Isi reduction is extreme, such as in theDominican Republic (Vaquero).
M?ndez Dosuna ("Can") suggests that syllable-initial Isi reduction, in fact, is found "only in
most casual speech styles inmost radical aspirating dialects (e.g., Andalusian, Extreme?o,
Caribbean Spanish) [...]" (98). IsNew-Mexican Spanish, a variety with noted syllable-initial
reduction, also describable as a dialect which is typified by extreme aspiration overall?
The overall reduction rates for Isi in the Spanish of New Mexico are summarized inTable 1.
In syllable-initial positions, Isi aspirates or deletes in 16% of the occurrences inword-initial
position, and in 30% of the word-internal cases. Syllable-finally, reduction is the lowest inword
medial position (25%) and highest inword-final position (57%).
Table 1
New Mexican /s/ Reduction in Syllable-Initial and Syllable-Final Positions
Word-Initial Word-Medial, Word-Medial, Word-Final
_Syllable-Initial_Syllable-Final_095 1281104
H06 843 202060
__S_2179_2120_980_1663Reduction 16% 30% 25%7%
One may possibly speak therefore of a "moderate" amount of reduction of Isi in this variety of
Spanish. How then do its rates of aspiration and deletion compare to Isi variation in other well
studied dialects?Table 2 summarizes rates of reduction of syllable-final Isi in three varieties of Spanish.
Through a comparison of reduction rates inNew Mexico to those of Cuba, for example, the phon
ological reduction inNew Mexico does not seem elevated, as rates are lower in all positions
except before a pause. It does not seem, therefore, that Isi reduction is "extreme" inNew-Mexican
Spanish.
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("Qu?," "Different") also make this same claim based on research conducted on the Spanish of
Chihuahua, Mexico. It is therefore the case that results from the analyses of New-Mexican
Spanish Isl, which suggest that syllable-initial and syllable-final Is/ are two separate variables
constrained and realized in different ways, are in line with other researchers' findings.
Theordering
of factor groupsby magnitude
of effect thus does not concur with the notion
of one process of reduction spreading from syllable-final to syllable-initial position, but can we
find supporting evidence elsewhere for the notion of one single process? Ferguson has pro
posed that the Spanish [s]>
[h] change starts in syllable-final positions, first word-medially and
then word-finally before a consonant, and that aspiration extends "last, if at all, toword initial
position" (64). Do reduction rates inNew Mexico reflect this?
Lipski ("Many" 198-99) explicitly sets forth this diffusion pattern for Islweakening in Span
ish. The diachronic pathway of change can be found in Table 5.According toLipski's model, Isl
begins itsweakening process in pre-consonantal position (Stage 1) in either word-medial or
word-final position.3 Generalizing from this position, the reduction may extend its phonetic
context to include absolute final (Stage 2). Stage 3, inwhich word-final Isl extends its phonetic
context to include pre-vocalic position, is found in the "phonologically most advanced dialects"
(Lipski, "Many" 198). Once Stage 3 has been generalized in a dialect, reduction may extend to
word-initial (post-vocalic) position (Stage 4). Lastly, "the ultimate generalization would include
word-internal /VsV/ combinations, and in some marginal varieties of Spanish this extension is in
its incipient phase" (Lipski, "Many" 199).
Table 5
Proposed Diachronic Weakening Pathway For Isl
(Adapted From Lipski, "Many")
Stage Phonological environment_Examples_
1 s>
h /_C (word-medial, word-final) lasmoscas
"flies"2 s > h /_# (phrase-final)
vamos "let's go"
3 s > h /_V(word-final, prevocalic)es aqu? "it is here"
4 s > h /V#_(word-initial, post-vocalic) la semana "week"
(5) s > h /V_V (word-medial, intervocalic)_casa"house/home"
According to this diffusion pattern, New-Mexican data should show rates that are the
highest in the syllable and word position where reduction is themost advanced chronologically,
and the lowest in the position where weakening is the most recent development; intermediate
diachronic stages would be marked by incrementally higher and lower degrees of aspiration and
deletion. In order to test this hypothesis, aspiration and deletion in syllable-final and syllable
initial positions are arrayed in the order inwhich Lipski set forth his data inTable 5. These rates
of reduction can be seen inTable 6.
Table 6
Rates of Isl Reduction in New Mexican Spanish
Stage Phonological environment_Reduction rates_
1 s > h / __C (word-medial) 25% (N=
327/1310)
s > h / __ #C (word-final, preconsonantal) 61% (N=
1144/1875)
2 s > h /_# (phrase-final) 42%(N=
397/945)
3 s > h /__#V(word-final, prevocalic) 62% (N=
624/1007)
4 s > h /V#_ (word-initial, post-vocalic) 22% (N=
324/1471)
(5) s > h / V V (word-medial)_34% (N = 905/2661)_
As Table 6 has shown, the amount of New-Mexican Isl reduction found in each of the
phonetic contexts which Lipski ("Many") proposed does not reflect a diachronic extension pat
tern proceeding from pre-consonantal position (Stage 1) through each of the five stages. The
highest rate of reduction for these contexts, in fact, is found inword-final, prevocalic position
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New Mexican Spanish 819
(62%), the purported Stage 3. There are higher rates of reduction for Stages 1-3 than there are for
stages 4 and 5. (This excludes word-medial, syllable-final [partof Stage 1],whose reduction rate
is25%.)
However, rates of reduction inStage 5 significantly exceed rates for Stage 4which would not
beexpected
if reduction werespreading
from word-initial toword-medialposition (p
=
0.0000).Lipski's diachronic pathway, therefore, is not an assured notion for the variety under study here,
nor was it shown to be for another quantitatively analyzed variety of Spanish with syllable-initial
Isi reduction, that of Chihuahua, Mexico (Brown and Torres Cacoullos, "Qu?," "Different").
What is clear, however, is thatNew-Mexican word-final Isi reduction ismore advanced than
word-initial aspiration and deletion, as the rates of reduction inTable 7 illustrate. Rates of Isi re
duction inword-final position significantly exceed that of reduction for Isi inword-initial position
and for both syllable-initial and syllable-final Isi inword-medial position. If one were to propose
a unified diachronic pathway for this phonological reduction inNew Mexico Spanish, itwould
appear to proceed from word-final toword-medial toword-initial position. As is shown on the
first line of Table 7,word-final intervocalic Isi reduces at a rate of 62%, while syllable-initial Isi
reduces at a successively lower rate in intervocalic position word-medially (34%) and word
initially22%).
Table 7
Syllable-Initial (Bold) and Syllable-Final /s/ Reduction Rates
WORD-INITIAL
s>h/V#__ 22% (323/1467)
WORD-MEDIAL
s>h/V+__V 34% (769/2261)
s>h/_+C25% (327/1310)
WORD-FINAL
s>h/_# V 62% (624/1007)
s>h/___#C 61% (1144/1875)
s>h/_#//42% (397/945)
The intervocalic context set forth inTable 7 has therefore been identified as a necessary in
gredient for phonological reduction of syllable-initial Isi (stages 4 and 5 inTable 6). It is clearly a
context inwhich variable aspiration and deletion of Isi is noted in the Spanish ofNew Mexico. But
as the following section will illustrate, syllable-initial Isi variation is not limited to intervocalic
context as the only possible locus for this phenomenon to occur in.
3.3. Phonological Environment
InNew Mexico, reduction of word-initial Isi is found in both utterance-initial and post
consonantal positions as examples 3 and 4 illustrate.
3) Heguro que le dio... (Seguro que le dio... [m. 99.6] )
"Surely he gave him..."
4) aquel herco (aquel cerco [m.232.17])
"that fence"
Word-initial Isioccurring
after a
pause
or
utterance-initiallyreduce at a rate of 5%
(N
=
572)and
after a consonant at a rate of 4% (N=
308).4Word-medially the rate of post-consonantal reduction
increases slightly (8%,N=
386). Reduction of this type is illustrated in example 5.
5) Dos a?os pienho (Dos a?os pienso [f. 189.3])
"Two years I think"
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820 H?spanla 88 December 2005
Ingeneral terms, the low reduction rates found in these contexts reveal that previous pause or
consonant does not favor reduction, as is also indicated by theVARBRUL results (Tables 3 and
4).
Although syllable-initial Isl reduction is greater in the intervocalic context, these data from
New Mexico suggest that syllable-initial reduction extends to phonological environments
beyond the narrowly delimited contexts proposed for variation found in other studies. More im
portantly, an examination of the data reveals that this reductive process is not limited to a small
set of lexemes that the literature frequently cites as being found inother locales. The lexically dif
fuse nature of this phonological-reductive process inNew Mexico is the focus of the next
section.
3.4 Lexical Extension
Canonical examples of syllable-initial Isl reduction include words such as nosotros "we" and
casa "house/home" (Bills and Ornstein) orHi, he?or "Yes, sir." Indeed, in other Spanishspeaking regions, such as South Texas, this reductive process appears to be lexically limited
(Garcia and Talion). The reduction of syllable-initial Isl inNew Mexico, however, seems to be
productive in present-day usage.
The 5633 tokens of syllable-initial Isl described here are found in 385 different words. Of
these 385 types containing a syllable-initial Isl, there is variation in 127, thus affecting almost 33%
of the /s/-initial lexemes in the study. However, excluding types with only one token in the data
which due to their lone status logically cannot demonstrate variation within this corpus, themag
nitude of the syllable-initial Isl variation is somewhat greater. Of the remaining 258 types with two
ormore tokens in the corpus, 112 show variation. This corpus of New Mexican Spanish thus re
flects reduction ofsyllable-initial
Isl in 43% of all /s/-initial lexical items. What ismore,
such
reduction clearly extends to an array of lexical items, in contrast towhat has been found in the
Spanish of other regions.
Forthose words showing variation, syllable-initial /s/' s rate of reduction ranges from as little
as 2% reduction to 100%. Plainly, not all types are affected to the same degree, and some lexical
effects are apparent. Table 8 highlights lexemes occurring three or more times in the corpus with
higher than average reduction rates (>16% word-initially and >30% word-medially) for the syl
lable-initial Isl. (This represents a selection of all words of three or more occurrences whose rate
of reduction exceeds the average for that position. Words with just one or two tokens may not be
representative due to the limited number of occurrences.)Table 8
Syllable-Initial Isl Types With Reduction Rates Higher Than Average Per Word Position
Word-Initial % Reduction Total N Word-Medial % Reduction Total N
suponer00 3 dieciseis* 100 5
se?ora7 6 necesitar* 100 15
seguro0 5 nosotros 9010
salir5 85 balazo 89 9
centavo 33 6 cabeza3
semana2 22 brazo 80 5
saber1 322 diecisiete* 78 9
sentado 29 7 asomar54
social9 7 peso 0 10
suerte9 7 parecer 67 27
cerrar5 8 representar 67 3
sanar5 4 veces 66 32
se3 557 casi 58 64
solamente 22 9 cosa31
sacar1 29 asina 52 135
sembrar0 5 ese51 287
subir7 24 gracias 50 4
poner 426
decir 4026
pasar 405
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New Mexican Spanish 821
casado 386
entonces 376
atenci?n 33
camposanto 33
casar 335
curioso 33
hacer 3268
diecinueve 313
pasado 313
*The word's first medial /s/ is the one that is reduced.
As can be seen inTable 8, the previously mentioned and frequently cited token nosotros is
among the most highly reducing types word-medially, with a reduction rate of 90%. The other
forms also commonly cited in the literature, however, do not rank among the highest aspirating
types for their respective word positions;these are casa "house," si "yes," and se?or "man/sir"
with reduction rates in this data set of 20%, 4% and 0% respectively (N=
109,483,22).
The token nosotros "we" stands out in Table 8 ashaving
bothhigh
tokenfrequency
and a
high reduction rate. The exceptionally high reduction rate of theword-medial Isi innosotros has
been explained through reference tomorpheme boundaries. Historically the Isi o? nosotros is a
morpheme final Isi (nosotros), and was therefore subject to phonetic variability as a resyllabi
fied, syllable-final /s/, rather than an example of aword-medial, syllable-initial Isi [no-so-tros]
(Walsh; Garcia and Talion). The following will discuss this notion in relation to synchronie varia
tion and will show that for New-Mexican Spanish, itdoes not seem to be the case that the word
medial Isi ofnosotros is behaving asmorpheme final Isi.
As mentioned previously, one of the prevalent hypotheses regarding syllable-initial Is/ re
duction is that it is a result of an extension of processes occurring in syllable-final position. Harris
("Integrity")
states that Isi is
dependentupon
syllable
structure in
Spanish, subject
to
aspirationin the rhyme but not in the onset (182-83). Thus, the results of the process of aspiration that
appear in syllable-initial position (word-final, pre-vocalic) are the consequences of resyllabifica
tion at the level of the phrase and not of processes occurring in syllable-initial position.
Inword-medial position, such outputs are argued to occur only in cases where the Isi forms
part of a prefix, such as deshecho "undone" (des[hecho]) (Harris, "Integrity" 183), or in the case
of nosotros, as Hualde notes, at acompound boundary. Hualde also argues that for such cases
as just mentioned, "we must postulate a stage in the derivation where prefix-final Isi (and stem
final Isi ina compound) is syllabified in the rhyme" (56). For nosotros therefore, aswith anyword
internal morpheme boundary, the Is/ reduces in syllable-final position (rhyme), and is later
resyllabified. Aspiration precedes ^syllabification.
If the higher rates of reduction were a result of synchronie morpheme-boundary processes,
one could postulate comparable rates of reduction for nos and for nos + otros (nosotros), since
the rule could apply equally to the form nos inboth instances. This isnot what we find in theNew
Mexico data. The word-final Isi o? nos reduces at a rate of 79% (N=
108), and the rate of word
medial Isi reduction for nosotros is 90% (N =110). The rates of reduction for the two words are
significantly different, and the reduction in the word nosotros does not seem to stem from a
process occurring in the rhyme of themorpheme nos (p=
0.0215, Chi-square=
5.282608).5 Conse
quently, as in other varieties where nohotros is considered a fossilized form (e.g., Garcia and
Talion), the reduced tokens of the first-person-plural subject pronoun inNew Mexico do not
seem tied tomorpheme-final Isi reduction of nos, but rather reflect processes affecting a separate
lexical item, nosotros.6
4. Conclusion
This study is the first to address with quantitative data the as-yet ill-understood phenomenon of syllable-initial Isi aspiration and deletion in the Spanish of New Mexico. As noted
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822 H?spanla 88 December 2005
previously, studies addressing this phenomenon are rare. The dearth of antecedent quantitative
research on the topic has allowed the present study to suggest certain conclusions regarding the
nature of syllable-initial Isl reduction inNew-Mexican Spanish.
It has been shown that the syllable-initial Isl reduction is not a reductive process found
solelyin varieties of
Spanishinwhich the sibilant
aspiratesor deletes at an
exceptionally highrate.New-Mexican Spanish, when compared to other dialects of Spanish, does not have rates of
reduction comparable to those found in Spanish-speaking regions whose frequencies of Isl
aspiration are higher.
Additionally, a comparison of reduction rates across syllable and word positions fails to
point to a diffusion process proceeding from syllable-final position to syllable-initial. Further
more, results of multivariate analyses yield different magnitudes of effect for factor groups
indicating that reduction in the two syllable positions is constrained in different ways. The final
> initial continuum, therefore, with the source of syllable-initial reduction identified as syllable
final reduction, is not an assured notion for the Spanish of New Mexico.
It has been shown that
aspiration
and deletion inNew-Mexican Spanish is not limited to
intervocalic contexts nor is it constrained to a small lexical set. On thewhole, over a third of the
words in this Spanish variety are affected by this phonological reduction. Some tokens reveal
"lexical" effects {nosotros) with unusually high rates of Islweakening, but it does not appear that
this isdue to any sort of synchronie process whereby a resyllabified syllable-final Isl is aspirated.
It is anticipated thatmuch can be learned about this often-ignored variable by subjecting
other syllable-initial /s/-aspirating varieties of Spanish to a rigorous quantitative analysis, as the
present study has done for the Spanish of New Mexico.
NOTES
'"New-Mexican Spanish" refers here to the variety of Spanish spoken in New Mexico and Southern
Colorado by descendants of the first settlers to the region (Bills).
2The majority of the data used in this investigation is taken from The New Mexico-southern Colorado
Spanish Survey (NMCOSS), a project directed by Garland D. Bills and Neddy A. Vigil at the University of New
Mexico and funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Coding between parentheses
represents the sex of the speaker (m=
male, f=
female), the tape number (if from NMCOSS) or name, and the
transcript page number.
3Other researchers propose word-internal, pre-consonantal as the incipient stage for Isl weakening (e.g.,
M?ndez Dosuna, "Weakening"). In the New-Mexican data, that environment's rate of reduction is 25% (N=
1310) and is clearly not the ambient whose rate is the highest.
4This calculation excludes cases of word-initial Isl preceded by a word-final Isl. This phonological context
(/s_s/) is unique within this study. The masking effect of identical segments adjacent across word-boundaries
neutralizes the phonetic context (Silva-Corval?n 73).
5There are no instances of nos followed by loi which would enable a complete comparison. Reduction of the
word-final Isl in prevocalic position (/a/, /e/, HI) does yield higher reduction rates (83%) but still does not equal
the high rates of nosotros.
6Other tokens of derived syllable-initial Isl do not seem to suggest rule ordering (aspiration in syllable
rhyme, followed by ^syllabification) in New Mexican Spanish, either. The Isl of atroces (atroz[es]), buses
(bus[es]) and luces (luz[es]), (N=
8) presents 0% reduction, and the 4 tokens of morpheme boundary (des-) also
yield 0% reduction (desempacar "to unpack," desenga?ar "to fool"), an unexpected result for a syllable-final
realization in a variety with noted I-si reduction. Further, a comparison of reduction rates between word-final
Isl of mes and vez in (mes[es]), (vez[es]) with lexical word-medial Isl in an e_e context (trece, parece, etc.; 43%
reduction), and word-final Isl of diez in (diez\y\) with lexical Isl in the e_i context (decidimos; 40% reduction)
does not consistently reveal more reduction for lexically word-final Isl than lexically word-medial, syllable
initial Isl. A significant difference exists (p=
.0329, Chi-square=
4.553571) between e_e lexical Isl reduction and
veces(66%,
N=
32),but the reduction of Isl in meses
(30%,N
=
10)is not
significantly higherthan other
e_emedial tokens of comparable frequency (p
=.4398, Chi-square
=0.59685) nor is reduction in died- (43%, N
=
37) significantly higher than other e_i medial tokens (p=
0.7267, Chi-square=
0.122174).
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