The Development of a Regional Phonological Feature During a Semester Abroad in Argentina

Abstract

Although recent research suggests that gains are made in the acquisition of dialectal features during study abroad, the few studies that have been conducted on this topic in Spanish-speaking contexts have focused primarily on features characteristic of Spain. This article examines the L2 acquisition of phonological features characteristic of Buenos Aires Spanish, [ʃ] and [ʒ], known as sheísmo/zheísmo, for example the pronunciation of llave [ʝaβe] “key” as [ʃaβe] or [ʒaβe]. Participants include 23 learners of Spanish studying in Buenos Aires, Argentina. More than 4,800 tokens were gathered before, during, and at the end of the semester using sociolinguistic interviews, a reading passage, and a word list. These data were analyzed for the influence of linguistic and social factors using mixed-effects logistic regression (Rbrul; Johnson, 2009). Results suggest that participants approximate nativelike norms of use of these features and that time in country is a statistically significant predictor of patterns of phonological variation.

Role of developing language attitudes in a study abroad context on adoption of dialectal pronunciations

“…Interestingly, the students in the current study displayed a much higher adoption of this particular local dialectal form than what has been generally reported in many previous studies of other dialectal pronunciations in the study abroad context (e.g., Fox & McGory, 2007; George, 2014; Knouse, 2010; Ringer‐Hilfinger, 2012; Trimble, 2013). The results for high [ʃ ʒ] usage are, rather, more in line with the unique findings observed by Raish (2015) of high L2 adoption of Egyptian Arabic [g] and are consistent with the previous findings reported in Pozzi (2017) and Hoffman‐González (2015) for the adoption of the Argentine assibilated pre‐palatal [ʃ ʒ] features. The quick adoption of these particular regional features is noteworthy: High use of Argentine [ʃ ʒ] was observed after just 5 weeks in the current study, and as early as within 2–5 weeks in Hoffman‐González’ (2015) study.…”

“…Hoffman‐González (2015) also found that two of the learners in fact decreased in their use of the dialectal sounds in free speech by the time of the exit interview (although they continued to categorically produce them in a reading task). Similarly, Pozzi (2017) found high adoption of the local [ʃ ʒ] phones by 23 American students during a semester‐long study abroad program in Buenos Aires across different production tasks (sociolinguistic interviews, word lists, reading task). The Buenos Aires variants came to be favored over non‐Buenos Aires variants, as the group increased from using the local phones only 5% of the time before or at the beginning the program to 86% by the mid‐point (2.5 months abroad) and 91% by the end (5 months abroad).…”

“…Indeed, there has been a small but growing number of recent studies that have examined the acquisition of dialectal pronunciations in the study abroad context. These include investigation of Spanish Peninsular [θ] (Geeslin & Gudmestad, 2011; George, 2014; Knouse, 2010; Ringer‐Hilfinger, 2012) and Peninsular [χ] (George, 2014), Spanish /s/‐lenition (Geeslin & Gudmestad, 2011), Buenos Aires Spanish [ʃ ʒ] (Hoffman‐González, 2015; Pozzi, 2017)—one of the targeted variables in the current study— Andean Spanish interrogative intonational patterns (Trimble, 2013), southern American English vowels (Fox & McGory, 2007), and the Egyptian Arabic [g] variant (Raish, 2015). Overwhelmingly, these studies have found that though there was some evidence of the adoption of dialectal sounds or suprasegmental patterns by L2 learners as a result of the study abroad experience, adoption of the dialectal forms was typically limited to only a few individuals within the L2 group and/or to low or infrequent levels of use, with a few exceptions (discussed below).…”

“…There are two exceptions reported to date to the recurrent results of low adoption of regional pronunciations by L2 learners in the study abroad context (Hoffman‐González, 2015; Pozzi, 2017; Raish, 2015). The first is the adoption of Egyptian Arabic [g]: In a study of 21 students from U.S. universities studying either a semester or a year in Cairo, Raish (2015) found that the majority of the learners adopted the regional [g] variant under investigation; although not all—heritage speakers in the study with backgrounds of other varieties of Arabic avoided the local phone.…”

The Development of a Regional Phonological Feature During a Semester Abroad in Argentina – Corrigendum

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In the original publication of this article (Pozzi & Bayley, 2021), the phrase "word type" appears several times where the phrase "lexical item" should appear instead. These instances are in the following locations within the article: p. 117, paragraph 1, line 4 p. 119, four instances, including one in Table 3 p. 121, three instances, including one in Table 4 p. 124, paragraph 3, line 4 p. 124, paragraph 4, line 2 p. 125, paragraph 3, lines 2-3 p. 125, paragraph 4, lines 2-3 p. 127, paragraph 3, line 9 p. 127, paragraph 3, line 10Any other instances of "word type" in the article not listed above are correct as published.

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