Cover not available
Part of
Recent Advances in the Study of Spanish Sociophonetic Perception
Edited by Whitney Chappell
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 21] 2019
► pp. 265–285

Chapter 9
Spoken word recognition and shesheo in Northwestern Mexico

A preliminary investigation into the effects of sociophonetic variability on auditory lexical access

| University of Arizona
| University of Arizona
This study investigates the auditory lexical processing of the two main variants of “ch” (as in charco ‘puddle’) used in the Spanish spoken in northwestern Mexico. A feature of this dialect is the variable implementation of “ch” either as an affricate, [tʃ], or a fricative, [ʃ]. We designed an auditory lexical decision task with auditory priming to explore the effects (if any) of this variability on the recognition of words by members of this community. Target words were presented with either variant as their word-initial consonant (e.g., [tʃ]arco ~ [ʃ]arco), and they were preceded by auditory primes with a matching variant ([tʃ]arco-[tʃ]arco, [ʃ]arco-[ʃ]arco), a mismatching variant ([tʃ]arco-[ʃ]arco, [ʃ]arco-[tʃ]arco), or an unrelated prime. The results show that members of this community are equally likely to accept Spanish word forms produced with either variant. Furthermore, both variants primed listeners equally effectively in their recognition of spoken words, suggesting that both activate the same entry in their mental lexicon (as opposed to parallel representations). Finally, recognition was found to be faster when the word-initial phonetic variant was [tʃ]; this suggests a privilege of [tʃ] over [ʃ] at some level of representation. The results support the claim that, in cases of sociophonetic variability, members of the speech community may include more than one phonetic variant in their mental representation of words, but that, even in such cases, one of the variants may take processing precedence over the other. These results, in turn, suggest it is possible that the nature of the mental representations of an individual are particularly affected by the dialect spoken in their speech community.
Article outline
  • Introduction
    • Review of the literature
      • Shesheo and Norteño Mexican Spanish
    • Phonetic variability and spoken word recognition
    • The present study
  • Method
    • Participants
    • Design and materials
    • Stimuli
    • Procedure
    • Analysis
  • Results
    • Recognition rates
    • Response latencies
  • Discussion
    • Summary of findings
    • Interpretation and implications
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 28 November 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.21.10vel
References (50)
References
Adank, P., Evans, B. G., Stuart-Smith, J., & Scott, S. K. (2009). Comprehension of familiar and unfamiliar native accents under adverse listening conditions. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Human Perception and Performance 35, 520–529. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Alessi Molina, M. T., & Torres Díaz, M. L. (1994). Aspectos fonéticos del habla sonorense. In G. López Cruz & J. L. Moctezuma Zamarrón (Eds.), Estudios de lingüística y sociolingüística (pp.285–292). Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico: Universidad de Sonora.Google Scholar
Amastae, J. (1996). Variación y cambio en el español de Ciudad Juárez, México. Ciudad Juárez, Mexico: Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez.Google Scholar
Boersma, P. (2001). Praat, a system for doing phonetics by computer. Glot International 5, 341–345.Google Scholar
Brown, D. (1989). El habla juvenil de Sonora, México: La fonética de 32 jóvenes. Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica 37, 43–82. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carreón Serna, Y. A. (2007). La lenición en el español del norte de México y otras lenguas romances: Una aproximación a la variación sociolingüística y un modelo formal basado en la Teoría de la Optimidad (Unpublished PhD dissertation). University of California, Santa Barbara.Google Scholar
Casillas, J. V. (2012). La fricativización del africado /tʃ/ en el habla de las mujeres del sur de Arizona. Divergencias 10, 56–69.Google Scholar
Cedergren, H. (1973). The interplay of social and linguistic factors in Panama (Unpublished PhD dissertation). Cornell University.Google Scholar
Connine, C. M. (2004). It’s not what you hear but how often you hear it: on the neglected role of phonological variant frequency in auditory word recognition. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 11, 1084–1089. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Connine, C. M., Ranbom, L. J., & Patterson, D. J. (2008). Processing variant forms in spoken word recognition: The role of variant frequency. Perception & Psychophysics 70, 403–411. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Deelman, T., & Connine, C. M. (2001). Missing information in spoken word recognition: Nonreleased stop consonants. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Human Perception and Performance 27, 656–663. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fails, W. C. (1984). An analysis of the consonantal phonemes of the educated norm of Havana (Unpublished PhD dissertation). University of Texas at Austin.Google Scholar
Floccia, C., Goslin, J., Girard, F., & Konopczynski, G. (2006). Does a regional accent perturb speech processing? Journal of Experimental Psychology. Human Perception and Performance 32, 1276–1293. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Foulkes, P., Docherty, G. J., & Watt, D. (2005). Phonological variation in child-directed speech. Language 81, 177–206. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goldinger, S. D. (1998). Echoes of echoes? An episodic theory of lexical access. Psychological Review 105, 251–279. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goldinger, S. D., Luce, P. A., & Pisoni, D. B. (1989). Priming lexical neighbors of spoken words: Effects of competition and inhibition. Journal of Memory and Language 28, 501–518. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Herrera Zendejas, E. (2006). El debilitamiento de /tʃ/ en dos variedades del español americano. Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica 54, 557–569. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Howes, D. (1957). On the relation between the intelligibility and frequency of occurrence of English words. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 29, 296–305. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hualde, J. I. (2005). The sounds of Spanish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hualde, J. I., Simonet, M., & Nadeu, M. (2011). Consonant lenition and phonological recategorization. Laboratory Phonology 2, 301–329. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jaramillo, J. A. (1986). Variation in /ch/ and second person address in the Spanish of Tomé, New Mexico (Unpublished PhD dissertation). University of New Mexico.Google Scholar
Jaramillo, J. A., & Bills, G. D. (1982). The phoneme /ch/ in the Spanish of Tomé, New Mexico. In F. Barkin, E. A. Brandt, & J. Ornstein-Galicia (Eds.), Bilingualism and language contact: Spanish, English, and Native American languages (pp.154–165). New York, NY: Teachers College Press, Columbia University.Google Scholar
Lawrence, M. A. (2016). Easy analysis and visualization of factorial experiments. Retrieved from <[URL]>Google Scholar
Lipski, J. M. (1994). Latin American Spanish. New York, NY: Longman.Google Scholar
Llompart, M., & Simonet, M. (2018). Unstressed vowel reduction across Majorcan Catalan dialects: Production and spoken word recognition. Language and Speech 63, 430–465. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
LoCasto, P. C., & Connine, C. M. (2002). Rule-governed missing information in spoken word recognition: schwa vowel deletion. Perception & Psychophysics 64, 208–219. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lope Blanch, J. M. (1990–2000). Atlas Lingüístico de México, Vol. 1–6. Mexico City, Mexico: El Colegio de México – UNAM – FCE.Google Scholar
Martín Butragueño, P. (2009). Regularidad y excepcionalidad del cambio lingüístico: El caso de (tʃ) en la geografía fónica de México. Mexico City, Mexico: El Colegio de México.Google Scholar
(2011). Dialectología de nuevos mundos: Una lectura variacionista del Atlas Lingüístico de México. In L. A. Ortiz López (Ed.), Selected Proceedings of the 13th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium (pp.17–32). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
(2014). La división dialectal del español mexicano. In P. Martín Butragueño (Ed.), Historia sociolingüística de México (pp.1353–1408). Mexico City, Mexico: El Colegio de México.Google Scholar
McLennan, C. T., Luce, P. A., & Charles-Luce, J. (2003). Representation of lexical form. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, and Cognition 29, 539. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Melguizo Moreno, E. (2007). La fricatización de /č/ en una comunidad de hablantes granadina. Interlingüística 17, 748–757.Google Scholar
Méndez, L. A. (2017). The variant [ʃ] in the Spanish of Ciudad Juárez. Borealis – An International Journal of Hispanic Linguistics 6, 243–260. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Moreno de Alba, J. G. (1994). La pronunciación del español en México. Mexico City, Mexico: El Colegio de México.Google Scholar
Norris, D., & McQueen, J. M. (2008). Shortlist B: A Bayesian model of continuous speech recognition. Psychological Review 115, 357–395. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pitt, M. A. (2009). How are pronunciation variants of spoken words recognized? A test of generalization to newly learned words. Journal of Memory and Language 61(1), 19–36. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Quilis, A., & Vaquero, M. (1973). Realizaciones de /č/ en el área metropolitana de San Juan de Puerto Rico. Revista de Filología Española 56, 1–52. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Quintanilla-Aguilar, J. R. A. (2013). Observaciones sobre el estado del sonido fricativo palatal sordo en el español salvadoreño. Revista de Investigación Lingüística 16, 165–176.Google Scholar
R Development Core Team. (2016). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna, Austria. Retrieved from <[URL]>Google Scholar
Ranbom, L. J., & Connine, C. M. (2007). Lexical representation of phonological variation in spoken word recognition. Journal of Memory and Language 57, 273–298. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Serrano Morales, J. C. (2000). Contacto dialectal (¿y cambio lingüístico?) en español: El caso de la /tʃ/ sonorense. In P. Martín Butragueño (Ed.), Estructuras en contexto: Estudios de variación lingüística (pp.45–59). Mexico City, Mexico: El Colegio de México. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2002). Variación y cambio lingüístico en migrantes sonorenses (Unpublished BA Thesis). Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City, Mexico.Google Scholar
(2009). Existe el noroeste mexicano como zona dialectal. In E. Mendoza, M. López, & I. E. Moreno (Eds.), Lengua, literatura y región (pp.107–130). Culiacán, Sinaloa, Mexico: Universidad Autónoma de Sinaloa.Google Scholar
Sumner, M., & Kataoka, R. (2013). Effects of phonetically-cued talker variation on semantic encoding. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 134, EL485. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sumner, M., Kim, S. K., King, E., & McGowan, K. (2014). The socially weighted encoding of spoken words: a dual-route approach to speech perception. Frontiers in Psychology 4, 1015.Google Scholar
Sumner, M., & Samuel, A. G. (2005). Perception and representation of regular variation: The case of final /t/. Journal of Memory and Language 52, 322–338. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2009). The effect of experience on the perception and representation of dialect variants. Journal of Memory and Language 60, 487–501. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Torchiano, M. (2017). effsize: A collection of functions to compute the standardized effects sizes for experiments (Version 0.7.1). Retrieved from <[URL]>
Vaquero, M. (1972). Algunos fenómenos fonéticos señalados por Navarro Tomás en “El español de Puerto Rico” a la luz de las investigaciones posteriores. Revista de Estudios Hispánicos 2, 243–251.Google Scholar
Widdison, K. A. (1995). An acoustic and perceptual study of the Spanish sound change s > h. Rivista Di Linguistica 7, 175–190.Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Cruz, Abel
2024. Expressing diminutive meaning in heritage Spanish: linking the heritage experience to diminutive use in everyday speech. Frontiers in Language Sciences 3 DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 30 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.