Velarization of /rr/ in relation to stylistic and social factors

in Puerto Rican Spanish

Antonio Medina-Rivera

Fri. 11-12:40 A

Velarization of the voiced alveolar trill (rr) seems to be one of the characteristics that separates Puerto Rican Spanish from other Spanish varieties. It is so particular that it may be confused with any speech pathological disorder related to the pronunciation of /rr/. There are not many studies that analyze velarization of /rr/ from a sociolinguistic perspective, some exceptions are Lopez-Morales (1983) and Hammond (1987). Other studies are limited to discussing language attitudes towards velarization (Matta de Fiol 1981 and Emmanuelli 1986, 1989). Velarization of /rr/ is a common historical process that also occurred in other European languages such as French, Brazilian Portuguese, German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian (Hammond 1987).

For this study I analyze linguistic, stylistic and social factors that favor velarization of (rr) in Puerto Rican Spanish. I examined the speech of 26 speakers, young adults and adults, from Caguas, Puerto Rico. A total of 2,735 tokens were analyzed for this study using SPSS 6.1 for Windows. An analysis of language attitudes showed that 67% of the people who participated in the survey have a negative attitude towards velarization of (rr). The linguistic factors taken into consideration for this study were phonological environment, stress and type of word. For the social factors I included sex, age, education, parent's education and parent's origin. The stylistic factors were relation of speaker to the interviewer (known vs. not known speakers), type of situation (one-on-one conversation, group situation and non-read conference), discourse genre (dialogue, description, narrative, exposition, argumentation) and topic of conversation (work, studies, family, friends, childhood, personal experiences, controversial topics, etc.)

The results show a 17% of velarization and how each factor affects the process of velarization. Velarization was favor the most in the phonological environments in which /rr/ is preceded by lateral /l/ and after pause, in stressed syllables, by females, by adults, by speakers with a lower education, by speakers whose parents have a lower education, by speakers whose parents have a rural origin, by not known speakers, in individual and group situations, in dialogue and narrative discourse, and by the topics about childhood and a moment of embarrassment. In general, few studies show the use of stylistic factors in order to explain different phonological phenomena and this study intends to show the impact of stylistic factors in sociolinguistic investigation.