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Part of
Language Contact and Change in Mesoamerica and Beyond
Edited by Karen Dakin, Claudia Parodi and Natalie Operstein
[Studies in Language Companion Series 185] 2017
► pp. 171–186

Chapter 8
Loanword evidence for dialect mixing in colonial American Spanish

| California State University, Fullerton
This paper provides evidence that the dialect mixture to which speakers of Mesoamerican indigenous languages were exposed at the beginning of their contact with Spanish contained a number of different peninsular dialects. The specific focus of the study is on the phonological shape of early Spanish borrowings in Zaniza Zapotec, an Otomanguean language from the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. The study reveals that relatively few early Spanish loans in Zaniza Zapotec contained the features of seseo and yeísmo; instead, the majority of the early loans maintain the difference between the dental and apico-alveolar sibilants, and between the palatal lateral and the palatal glide. Additionally, the Zaniza Zapotec reflex of the initial consonant in Spanish zapato <çapato> ‘shoe’ is best explained by assuming a conservative, affricated realization in the input dialect.
Article outline
  • 1.Contact with indigenous languages as a source of information about Spanish
  • 2.Sixteenth-century Spanish phonology
  • 3.Zaniza Zapotec phonology
  • 4.Chronological stratification of Spanish loanwords in Zaniza Zapotec
  • 5.Pronunciation of <ç> ~ <c> ~ <z>
  • 6.Pronunciation of <s> ~ <ss>
  • 7.Pronunciation of <ll>
  • 8.Pronunciation of <b> ~ <v> ~ <u>
  • 9.Pronunciation of <j> ~ <g>
  • 10.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 30 June 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.185.08ope
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