Cover not available
Part of
Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 16: Selected papers from the 47th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Newark, Delaware
Edited by Irene Vogel
[Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 16] 2020
► pp. 133–154

Trajectories of change in Spanish and Portuguese in the Americas

| New York University

This paper examines ways in which varieties of Spanish and Portuguese spoken in the Americas have diverged significantly from their peninsular sources, and from each other, in the half-millennium since colonization. Some of this divergence is a consequence of spontaneous innovations in the New World varieties (e.g., ‘zheismo’ and ‘sheismo’ in Platense Spanish; emergence of the new 1pl pronoun a gente in Brazilian Portuguese). Historically, a significant driver of change was language contact, with indigenous languages, and especially with African languages. A suite of linguistic characteristics shared by Caribbean Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese indicate that both varieties were affected by the irregular transmission of these languages to the African population transported to these locations in the time of slavery.

Keywords: language change, language contact, dialects, innovation, African influences
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Processes of language change in the Americas
    • 2.1Dialect mixture
    • 2.2Language contact
    • 2.3Spontaneous changes in Latin American languages
  • 3.Parallel changes in Caribbean Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese
    • 3.1Phonological reductions
    • 3.2Morphosyntactic changes
      • 3.2.1Subject pronoun expression
      • 3.2.2Number agreement
      • 3.2.3Negative repetition
  • 4.Explanation
    • 4.1European sources for popular American varieties
    • 4.2Language contact
    • 4.3African sources
    • 4.4Adult learner strategies
    • 4.5Afro-Bolivian Spanish
  • 5.Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 21 August 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/rllt.16.09guy
References
Alba, Orlando
1990 Variación fonética y diversidad social en el español dominicano de Santiago. Santiago, DR: Universidad Católica Madre y MaestraGoogle Scholar
Barbosa, Pilar, Maria Eugênia Duarte, and Mary Aizawa Kato
2005 “Null Subjects in European and Brazilian Portuguese.” Journal of Portuguese Linguistics 4: 11–52. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baxter, Alan
1997 “Creole-Like Features in the Verb System of an Afro-Brazilian Variety of Portuguese.” In The Structure and Status of Pidgins and Creoles, ed. by Spears, Arthur, and Donald Winford, 265–88. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2009 “A concordância de número.” In Lucchesi et al., 269–294.Google Scholar
Bullock, Barbara E., and Almeida Jacqueline Toribio
2009 “Reconsidering Dominican Spanish: Data from the Rural Cibao.” Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana. 7 (2): 49–73.Google Scholar
Callou, Dinah, João Moraes, and Yonne Leite
1996 “Variação e diferenciação dialetal: a pronúncia do /r/ no português do Brasil.” In Gramática do português falado, Vol. VI. Campinas: Editora da Unicamp.Google Scholar
Cameron, Richard
1993 “Ambiguous Agreement, Functional Compensation, and Nonspecific tú in the Spanish of San Juan, Puerto Rico and Madrid, Spain.” Language Variation and Change 5: 305–334. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cavalcante, Rerisson
2009 “A negação sentencial.” In Lucchesi et al., 251–268.Google Scholar
Cedergren, Henrietta
1973  “The Interplay of Social and Linguistic Factors in Panama”. Doctoral dissertation, Cornell University.
Clements, J. Clancy
2009 The Linguistic Legacy of Spanish and Portuguese: Colonial Expansion and Language Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cyrino, Sonia, and M. Teresa Espinal
in this volume. “Number as an Adjunct in Romance”. DOI logo
De Oliveira, Marco Antônio
1983 “Phonological Variation and Change in Brazilian Portuguese: The Case of the Liquids”. Doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. [URL]
Donni de Mirande, Nélida Esther
1992 “Sobre el ensordecimiento del žeísmo en Rosario (Argentina).” In Homenaje a Humberto López Morales, ed. by María Vaquero, and Amparo Morales, 171–183. Madrid: Arco LibrosGoogle Scholar
Duarte, M. E.
1993 Do pronome nulo ao pronome pleno: A trajetória do sujeito no português do Brasil.” In Português Brasileiro: uma viagem diacrônica. Homenagem a Fernando Tarallo, 107–128. Campinas, Brazil: Editora da UNICAMP.Google Scholar
1995 A perda do princípio “Evite Pronome” no português brasileiro.” PhD Dissertation, Campinas, Brazil: UNICAMP.
2003 A evolução na representação do sujeito pronominal em dois tempos.” In Mudança linguística em tempo real, ed. by Paiva, and Duarte. Rio de Janeiro: Contra Capa.Google Scholar
Fontanella de Weinberg, María B.
1979 “Un cambio lingüístico en marcha: las palatales en el español bonaerense”. Orbis: 27: 215–47Google Scholar
Ferraz, Luis
1979 The Creole of São Tomé. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.Google Scholar
Friedemann, Nina S. de, and Carlos Patiño Roselli
1983 Lengua y sociedad en El Palenque de San Basílio. Bogotá: Instituto Caro y Cuervo.Google Scholar
GESOL-Grupo de Estudos e Pesquisa em Sociolinguística
n.d. Projeto SP2010. Universidade de São Paulo. [URL]
Gilbert, Madeleine, Gregory R. Guy, and Mary Robinson
2017 Subject Pronoun Expression in Brazilian Portuguese. Presentation at NWAV 46 – Annual Conference on New Ways of Analyzing Variation, University of Wisconsin.
de Granda Gutiérrez, Germán
1978 Estudios lingüísticos hispánicos, afrohispánicos y criollos. Madrid: Gredos.Google Scholar
Greenberg, Joseph
1987 Language in the Americas. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Guy, Gregory
1981 “Linguistic Variation in Brazilian Portuguese: Aspects of the Phonology, Syntax, and Language History”. Doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. [URL]
1990 “The Sociolinguistic Types of Language Change.” Diachronica 7: 47–67. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hagemeijer, Tjerk
2008 “Double-Headed Negation in Santome.” Journal of Portuguese Linguistics 7 (2): 63–82. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hoffman, Michol
2010 Salvadorian Spanish in Toronto (Lincom Studies in Romance Linguistics 63). Munich: Lincom Gmbh.Google Scholar
Holm, John
1992 “Popular Brazilian Portuguese: A Semi-Creole.” In Actas do colóquio sobre crioulos de base lexical portuguesa, ed. by Ernesto d’Andrade, and Alain Kihm, 37–66. Lisboa: Colibri.Google Scholar
2000 “Semi-Creolization: Problems in the Development of Theory.” In Degrees of Restructuring in Creole Languages, ed. by I. Neumann-Holzschuh, and E. Schneider, 19–40.Google Scholar
Jacobs, Bart
2012 Origins of a Creole: The History of Papiamentu and its African Ties. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Labov, William
1972 “The Social Stratification of (r) in New York City Department Stores.” In Sociolinguistic Patterns, ed. by W. Labov, 43–54. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Lipski, John
2008 Afro-Bolivian Spanish. Madrid: Iberoamericana, and Frankfurt: Vervuert. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lovejoy, Paul E.
1994 The Volume of the Atlantic Slave Trade. A Synthesis.” In The Atlantic Slave Trade, ed. by David Northrup. D.C. Heath and Company.Google Scholar
2000 Transformations in Slavery. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lucchesi, Dante
2003 “O conceito de transmissão irregular e o processo de formação do português do Brasil.” In Roncarati, and Abraçado, 272–84.Google Scholar
Lucchesi, Dante, Alan Baxter, and Ilza Ribeiro
2009 O Português Afro-brasileiro. Salvador: EDUFBA (Editora da Universidade Federal da Bahia). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McWhorter, John
2000 The Missing Spanish Creoles: Recovering the Birth of Plantation Contact Languages. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Morton, Thomas
2005 “Sociolinguistic Variation and Language Change in El Palenque de San Basílio, Colombia”. Doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. [URL]
Naro, Anthony J.
1981 “The Social and Structural Dimensions of a Syntactic Change.” Language 57 (1): 63–98. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Naro, Anthony J., and Miriam Lemle
1976 “Syntactic Diffusion.” In Papers from the Parasession on Diachronic Syntax, ed. by S. Steever, C. Walker, and S. Mufwene, 221–40. Chicago: CLS.Google Scholar
Naro, Anthony J., and Maria Marta P. Scherre
1993 “Sobre as origens do português popular do Brasil.” Revista DELTA, 9: 437–454.Google Scholar
2000 “Variable Concord in Portuguese.” In Language Change and Language Contact in Pidgins and Creoles, ed. by J. McWhorter. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2003 “O conceito de transmissão irregular e as origens estruturais do português brasileiro: um tema em debate.” In Roncarati, and Abraçado, 285–302.Google Scholar
Orozco, Rafael
2018 Spanish in Colombia and New York City: Language Contact Meets Dialectal Convergence. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Otheguy, Ricardo, and Ana Celia Zentella
2012 Spanish in New York: Language Contact, Dialectal Leveling, and Structural Continuity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Oushiro, Livia, and Ronald Mendes
2013 “A pronúncia do (-R) em coda silábica no português paulistano.” São Paulo: Revista do GEL 8 (2): 66–95.Google Scholar
Poplack, Shana
1979 “Function and Process in a Variable Phonology”. Doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.
1980 “On Deletion and Disambiguation in Puerto Rican Spanish.” Language 56 (2): 371–385. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reimann, Cristiana A., and Lilian Yacovenco
2011 “A dupla negação no português falado em Vitória/ES: traço da identidade linguística capixaba? Anais do congresso nacional de estudos lingüísticos . Vitória: CONEL.
Richardson, Bonham C.
1992 The Caribbean in the Wider World, 1492–1992. A Regional Geography. Cambridge University Press. p. 166. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rohena Madrazo, Marcos
2007 Devoicing of Palatal Fricatives in Buenos Aires Spanish. Qualifying paper, Department of Linguistics, New York University.Google Scholar
Roncarati, Claudia, and Jussara Abraçado
(eds.) Português Brasileiro: contato lingüístico, heterogeneidade e história Rio de Janeiro 7Letras
Scherre, Maria Marta Pereira
1978 “A regra de concordância de número no sintagma nominal em português”. Master’s thesis, Pontifícia Universidade Católica-RJ.
1988 “Reanálise da concordância nominal em português”. Doctoral dissertation, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro.
Schneider, Edgar
1990 “The Cline of Creole-ness in English-Oriented Creoles and Semi-Creoles of the Caribbean.” English World-Wide 11: 79–113. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schwegler, Armin
1991 “Negation in Palenquero: Synchrony.” Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 6: 165–214. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2002 “On the (African) Origins of Palenquero Subject Pronouns.” In Creoles, their Substrates, and Language Typology, 225–249. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
2011 “Palenque(ro): The Search for its African Substrate: Subject Pronouns.” Diachronica 19: 273–332. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Singler, John
1988 “ The Homogeneity of the Substrate as a Factor in Pidgin/Creole Genesis.” Language 64 (1): 27–51. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Terrell, Tracy
1979 “Final /s/ in Cuban Spanish.” Hispania 66 (2): 599–612. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Trudgill, Peter
2004 New Dialect Formation: The Inevitability of Colonial Englishes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
van Coetsem, Frans
1988 Loan Phonology and the Two Transfer Types in Language Contact. Dordrecht and Providence: Foris. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vieira, Sílvia Rodrigues, and Aline Maria Bazenga
to appear. “A Concordância da terceira pessoa do plural: padrões em variedades do português.” In A concordância verbal em variedades do português: A Interface fonética-morfossintaxe ed. by S. R. Vieira Rio de Janeiro FAPERJ/Usina de Letras
Zilles, Ana
2005 “The Development of a New Pronoun: The Linguistic and Social Embedding of a Gente in Brazilian Portuguese.” Language Variation and Change 17: 19–53. DOI logoGoogle Scholar