The role of discourse context frequency in phonological variation: A usage-based approach to bilingual speech production

Abstract

Missing from the body of literature on contact-induced phonological influence are studies that examine language variation as it occurs in speech production among members of a speech community. This study uses a corpus of naturally occurring Spanish/English code-switched discourse to determine whether cross-language phonological effects are evident in the data. Specifically, 2629 tokens of word-initial /d/ were analyzed in spontaneous interactions to identify the linguistic factors that condition the variable reduction (unreduced [d], reduced [ð]/Ø) of /d-/ in Spanish words. Cognate words (doctor) were found to reduce significantly less often than noncognate words (después 'after'). In addition, a significant effect is found for a novel, contextually informed measure that estimates words' proportion of use in online contexts promoting reduction (Frequency in a Favorable Context). The greater a word's prior exposure to online contexts promoting reduction, the greater the likelihood of reduced articulations. Indeed, this work argues that the distinction between cognates and non-cognates in fact emerges through this cumulative effect of significantly different patterns of use in discourse. Cognate /d/ words are used overall (considering speakers' use of both English and Spanish) less often in contexts that promote reduction than non-cognate words. As a result of the diminished net exposure to reducing environments, per usage-based grammar, the lexical representations of cognate words have strengthened non-reduced exemplars ([d]). The distinct rates of variation for the word categories thus emerge from distinct usage patterns. This paper proposes such a focus on usage patterns within naturally occurring speech for phonological analyses within contact linguistics.

A multimodel inference approach to categorical variant choice: construction, priming and frequency effects on the choice between full and contracted forms of am, are and is

“…Similarly, a word that tends to occur in formal contexts, which disfavor reduction (e.g., the passive BE), might accumulate nonreduced pronunciations and thus be less subject to reduction even in contexts that are reductionfavoring (Torres Cacoullos 1999). Thus in creasing frequency may not favor reduction if the frequency increases come from reductiondisfavoring contexts (see also Brown 2014;Raymond and Brown 2012).…”

The role of contextual frequency in the articulation of initial /f/ in Modern Spanish: The same effect as in the reduction of Latin /f/?

“…We refer to it here as FRC 1 (cf. Brown, 2009:93–100; Brown, 2004:89–114, 2005, 2006, 2015; Brown & Raymond, 2012; Bybee, 2000, 2002; Raymond & Brown, 2012). Brown (2004) reported that word-initial /s/ in the colonial Spanish of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado is reduced four times more often in words that occur most often in a phonological context that favors reduction, even when the immediate phonological context is controlled for.…”

“…Brown (2009) found a similar effect with word-final /s/ in Cali, Colombia, but only when measured in favorable phonological contexts. Brown (2015) reported that word-initial /d/ in bilingual Spanish-English speech is reduced most in high-FRC words and that differences in /d/ articulation between cognates and noncognates can be attributed to differences in rates of FRC.…”

Cognate similarity and intervocalic /d/ production in Riverense Spanish

“…The reducing effect of frequency is known to affect Spanish intervocalic /d/ (Bybee, 2001;Díaz-Campos & Gradoville, 2011;Eddington, 2011), the variable under study, although some researchers find frequency to have limited (Solon et al, 2018) to no (Bedinghaus & Sedo, 2014) effect on their data. Brown (2015), studying spirantization in word-initial /d/, found no significant frequency effect, but rather found that the frequency a word had /d/ occurring in contexts favorable to spirantization influenced whether spirantization occurred when /d/ appeared in unfavorable contexts. Looking at Peninsular Spanish processes affecting word-final /d/, Hualde and Eager (2016) found no significant effect for lexical frequency in their sample.…”