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Hispanic Contact Linguistics: Theoretical, methodological and empirical perspectives
Edited by Luis A. Ortiz López, Rosa E. Guzzardo Tamargo and Melvin González-Rivera
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 22] 2020
► pp. 85–114

Chapter 4
Social change and /s/ variation in Concepción, Chile and Lima, Peru

The role of dialect and sociolectal contact

| Ball State University
| University of Minnesota
This study compares /s/ variation in the Spanish of Concepción, Chile, and Lima, Peru in the context of sociolectal and dialect contact. Results for the Chilean data stand in stark contrast to previous studies in Chile, revealing an overwhelming tendency for elision in all social groups and providing support for the hypothesis that in Chile sociolectal leveling is occurring. In contrast, in Lima, where Andean migrants encounter overt discrimination and where virtually exclusive use of [s] indexes Andean speech, there is an increase in /s/ weakening across the second and third generations of migrants, whose production approximates coastal norms. Thus, in contrast to Chile, /s/ reduction in Lima continues to serve as a marker of dialectally and sociolectally salient differences.
Keywords: Chilean Spanish, Lima Spanish, sibilant variation, sociolectal leveling, dialect contact
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Review of the literature
    • 2.1/s/ variation in Chile
    • 2.2/s/ variation in Peru
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Participant selection
    • 3.2Data measurement and instruments
    • 3.3Statistical analysis
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Concepción, Chile
    • 4.2Chilean social model with three variants: [s], [h], Ø
    • 4.3Lima, Peru
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 14 February 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.22.04rog
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