An early steady state in the 'orígenes' of American Spanish: computer simulation and synthetic dialectology Harry Howard Tulane University howard

An early steady state in the 'orígenes' of American Spanish: computer simulation and synthetic

dialectology

Harry Howard

Tulane Universityhttp://www.tulane.edu/~howard/

Hispanic Linguistics Symposium 2007

San Antonio, TX

Nov. 3, 2007

HLS 2007 Harry Howard 2

Koineization

A koine is a stabilized contact variety which results from the mixing and subsequent levelling of features of varieties which are similar enough to be mutually intelligible, such as regional or social dialects. This occurs in the context of increased interaction or integration among speakers of these varieties. (Siegel 2001)


Koineization in Spanish dialectology

Scholars of Spanish have recently begun to appreciate the usefulness of the notion of koineization for providing a framework for the understanding of Spanish dialectal genesis and variation.

Peninsular Spanish has the monograph-length summary of Tuten (2003), building on Penny (1987, 2000, 2002).

On the other side of the Atlantic, Guitarte (1980), Fontanella de Weinberg (1992), and Granda (1994) argue for koineization in American Spanish, an idea which is further developed in Rivarola (2000), Hidalgo (2001) and Parodi (2001).


Koineization in Peninsular Spanish

Tuten (2003) building on Penny (1987, 2000, 2002) identifies three periods of koineization, corresponding to the first three stages of the Reconquest Burgos (9th-10th) Toledo (11th-12th) Seville (13th)

Penny also suggests a fourth with the establishment of Madrid as the capital of Spain 1561


Approximate political boundaries at each stage

1030 - Burgos(Duero basin)

1210 - Toledo(Tajo basin)

1360 - Seville(Guadalquivir basin)


Trudgill’s (1986) four subprocesses

1. Mixing of varieties

2. Leveling of differences

3. Simplification: an increase in regularity or a decrease in markedness, where markedness describes features that are in a minority in the mix, in terms of the number of speakers who use them, or have a restricted regional currency

4. Reallocation: two or more variants in the dialect mix survive the levelling process but are refunctionalized, evolving new social or linguistic functions in the new dialect


Koineization in American Spanish

Much more vexed is the possibility of koineization in American Spanish, mainly due to different understandings of what it means

Many scholars use it just as a cover term for dialect levelling In the next few minutes, I will try to ascertain the existence of

all four subprocesses defined by Trudgill


Dialect mixingTrudgill’s first subprocess

From Boyd-Bowman's work Boyd-Bowman (1956, 1964, 1968a, 1968b, 1972, 1985), but

especially Boyd-Bowman (1976) Almost all regions of Spain were represented in 16th century

immigration to the Indies (see next slide)


Cumulative percentages of regional provenance of 54,881 16th c. emigrants to the Spanish Indies for whom birthplaces

could be found (Boyd-Bowman 1976:Table I)

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

1493-1519 (I) 1520-39 (II) 1540-59 (III) 1660-79 (IV) 1580-1600 (V)

Foreigners

Val., Cat.

Aragón

Basque Prov.

Old Castile

León

Asturias

Galicia

New Castile

Murcia

Canarias

Extremadura

Andalusia


Boyd-Bowman's graph

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

1493-1519 (I) 1520-39 (II) 1540-59 (III) 1660-79 (IV) 1580-1600 (V)

AndalusiaExtremaduraCanariasMurciaNew CastileGaliciaAsturiasLeónOld CastileBasque Prov.AragónVal, Cat.Foreigners


… but some dialects stand out

From Boyd-Bowman's work Southerners were always a majority of those who emigrated in the

16th century Andalusians were a plurality, and in some places, they were a

majority The majority of women emigrants were Andalusians The majority of merchants were Andalusians The ships that all emigrants sailed on were crewed by Andalusians

In any event, it is safe to say that there was dialect mixing in 16th century American Spanish


Levelling of differences

Trudgill’s second subprocess Yes, in the sense that all American dialects tend towards

Andalusian, but … one aspect of the formation of American Spanish that

distinguishes it from the prototypical cases of koineization is that it tracks the changes taking place in the source dialects for at least 200 years (see the next slide)

… another is the huge expanse of territory, which allowed for different degrees of communication with the source dialects different rates of colonization


Time line of changes in Spanish

Lipski (2007)


Land of the fleet vs. land of the viceroy

Menéndez Pidal (1962) pointed out that the traditional distinction in Spanish dialectology between highland and lowland American Spanish does not speak to the causes of this distinction

He locates the causes in the annual route of the fleet from the ports of western Andalusia, to the

Canary Islands, to Santo Domingo or Cartagena, to Portobelo in Panama, to Veracruz, to Havana, and then back to Europe (plus the Pacific route between El Callao, Guayaquil and Panama, and later Acapulco and the Philippines), forming a vast maritime network that was in constant communication (6 weeks?), and

the isolation of the capitals of the first two viceroyalties, Mexico City and Lima, from the maritime network, and their attraction of a more educated immigrant class which oriented itself towards the linguistic standards of Toledo and Madrid, and the formation of a hinterland around each of them, encompassing the Mexican plateau and the Andean highlands.



Approximate dates of initial colonization

1493-1519 1519-1549 1549-1650La Española (Rep. Dom.)

Cuba

Puerto Rico

Costa caribeña de Venezuela y Colombia

Yucatán

Darién (Panamá)

Tierras altas de Bolivia

Tierras altas de Perú

Tierras altas de Ecuador

Tierras altas de Colombia

Tierras altas de México

Guatemala

Costa Rica

Noreste de Argentina

EEUU/frontera mexicana

Venezuela andina

Paraguay

Nuevo México/Colorado

Oeste de Argentina

El Salvador

Honduras

Nicaragua

Sur de Chile

Uruguay


SimplificationTrudgill’s third subprocess

I will go out on a limb and claim that there are no cases of simplification resulting from dialect levelling which are exclusive to American Spanish in its formative period

Thus the formation of American Spanish does not qualify as koineization in the narrow sense of Trudgill

But wait The principal source dialect, Andalusian, was already the result of three

previous cycles of koineization, which is to say that it was already simplified Thus if American immigrants adopted Andalusian elements, they were

choosing the simplest elements in the dialect mix Not only that, Andalusian continued to simplify during the formative period

of American Spanish, e.g. in the phonological processes that weakened syllable-final consonants, which the lowland dialects accepted


Implicit simplification

Thus we can broach the possibility that the presence of Andalusian in the American dialect mix forced a convergence to simplicity without creating any new, simplified forms, a possibility not considered in the standard accounts of koineization

An even more interesting possibility is the koineization in the American ports exerted a retrograde influence on Andalusian, perhaps through merchants and returning immigrants, which spurred it on to further simplification


ReallocationTrudgill’s fourth subprocess

I know of no instance of reallocation of functional morphemes, though one could argue about those dialects that have all three second person singular pronouns, tú, vos, and usted.

There may have been reallocation of some content morphemes, i.e. words, but I have not been able to check it

In any event, the presence of reallocation does not threaten the identification of koineization, since reallocation is considered to be optional


Interim summary

Koineization The formative period of American Spanish

Dialect mixing yes

Dialect levelling yes

Simplification implicitly, through convergence to the simplest component of the mix, Andalusian

(Reallocation) maybe


A word about social networks

Tuten’s analysis of koineization in Peninsular Spanish has a strong social network component

For him, koineization occurs when speakers leave established, monodialectal social networks whose members are bound together by strong ties and move into new, polydialectal social networks whose members are bound together only weakly.

In the American context, we can see the populations of the lowland ports as being joined together into a

vast, weakly linked social network, which encouraged cultural change while the the capitals of the first two viceroyalties quickly developed into

communities formed on strong ties which discouraged cultural change and encouraged what has been called the ‘early standardization’ of Mexico and Peru.

IMHO, looking at the development of American Spanish in terms of social networks has a sparkling future


Let me quote Lipski on this

Lipski (2007), though this appears in several previous works

“When one considers that a typical fleet arriving at Cartagena, Portobelo, or Lima might bring several hundred settlers, the possible linguistic effects of a contingent of new settlers on an evolving dialect could be considerable. A single fleet could, under some circumstances, bring new arrivals who amounted to nearly half the resident population, and even if not all new settlers remained in the port of entry, their linguistic contributions would not be inconsequential.”


Disagreement on the time line

While the 'koineization school' of American Spanish agrees on the broad outlines of koineization in the New World, there is disagreement in the amount of time that it took for the koine to become established.

For Guitarte (1980) and Fontanella de Weinberg (1992), the first generation of American creoles had already acquired traits typical of the koine such as 'seseo', irrespective of the dialectal origin of their parents.

In contrast, Granda (1994), inspired on Trudgill's (1986) analysis of koine formation in Norway, only postulates koineization in the third generation, at about 60 years post-conquest.


Trudgill’s time lineTrudgill (1998), Trudgill et al.

(2000)Stage speakers involved linguistic characteristics

I adult migrants rudimentary leveling

II first native-born speakers extreme variability and further leveling

III subsequent generations focusing, leveling and reallocation


Our response

The discrepancy in estimates of how long it took the Spanish American koine to develop is little more than a thorn in the side of the overall proposal.

In fact, it could be attributed to noise in the data and so not even be a 'real' phenomenon at all.

However, our results from computer simulation of a generic multidialectal immigrant community indicate that an initial steady state is to be expected, though its duration depends on factors that we do not yet understand. Thus our work supports Granda's analysis.


Our approach

Of course, there are no longer any native speakers of 16th century American Spanish to interview

In fact, the lack of real native speakers means that the best we can do is construct artificial ones, via computer programs, and see how they behave as parameters are varied.

This brings us to the realm of multiagent modeling, which has recently seen a burst of enthusiasm in the creation of sociolinguistic microcosms for the simulation of language evolution.

Nettle's (1999a, b) adaptation of Social Impact Theory (Latane 1981, Nowak et al. 1990) to language change provides a convenient starting point.


Premises of the model

Nettle's simulation consists of a population with certain characteristics and a formula for change in those characteristics.

The population consists of 400 agents laid out in a 20x20 square. For the purposes of communication among the agents, each edge connects

to the opposite one (top to bottom and side to side) so that functionally it forms an unbounded torus.

Each agent has an age from 1 to 5. Agents aged 1 or 2 can 'learn' a linguistic variant, say p or q.

Once an agent reaches the age of 3, it stops learning and maintains its choice of item until it dies at age 5.

The item chosen to learn depends on the distribution of items among the whole population, which we lack space here to explain.

Nettle models populations which fill their territory, but relaxing this assumption to describe an influx of agents which only fills a territory partially reveals an early steady state.


The initial state of the model

36 agents occupy the center of the territory The left side shows that they are evenly divided among the two linguistic

variants. The right side shows that they are also evenly divided among the ages of

2 and 4 – neither the very young nor the very old emigrated.


After 50 life stages

The population has expanded (births outnumber deaths), but the distribution of variants is still approximately even


Domination of one variant

At about life stage 80, random variation in the learning process allows one variant (in this simulation, p) to obtain a decisive foothold in the community using the other variant and subsequently overwhelm it near the 100th life stage, leading to its loss from the repertoire of the population.


Community life span

The final state is stable, in that there is no posterior increase in the minority variant.

In the terms of dynamical systems theory, there has been a phase transition from the steady state of 50% p to the final state of ~90% p, which never reverts back to 50% p.


Interpretation

If p and q represent opposing values of a trait, such as presence or absence of aspiration of syllable-final /s/, then the simulation demonstrates how they could coexist for a time until one is subscribed to by the majority of the population.

This coexistence or steady state is seen in the first two generations of Trudgill’s time line.

The collapse of the steady state describe the focussing that Trudgill attributes to the third generation.


Synthetic dialectology

There is much more to say, but let me address the more general issue of using computer simulations of population behavior in dialectology.

Since change happens by measuring variation across nearby agents, any change in the mix of agents or their traits will have large effects on the outcome This is reminiscent of the ‘unity in diversity’ of American dialects

The model does not have a realistic linguistic representation, which needs to be addressed

but it gives us a way to do dialectology, and sociolinguistics in general, like the ‘hard sciences’ do, in terms of precisely-specified mathematical models


Bibliography

Boyd-Bowman, P. (1976). Patterns of Spanish emigration to the Indies until 1600 . The Hispanic American Historical Review, 56(4), 580-604.

Fontanella de Weinberg, M. B. (1992). Nuevas perspectivas en el estudio de la conformación del español americano. Hispanic Linguistics, 4, 275-300.

Granda, G. d. (1994). El proceso de koineización en el periodo inicial de desarrollo del Español de América. In J. Lüdke (Ed.), El español de América en el siglo XVI. Actas del Simposio del Instituto Ibero-Americano de Berlín, 23 y 24 de abril de 1992. (pp. 87-108). Frankfurt: Iberoamericana.

Guitarte, G. (1980). Perspectivas de la investigación diacrónica en Hispanoamérica. In J. M. L. Blanch (Ed.), Perspectivas de la investigación lingüística en Hispanoamérica. (pp. 119-137). México: Centro de Lingüística Hispánica, Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas, UNAM.

Hidalgo, M. G. (2001). Sociolinguistic stratification in New Spain. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 149, 55-78.

Latane, B. (1981). The psychology of social impact. American Psychologist, 36, 343-365. Lipski, J. M. (2007). Castile and the hydra: the diversification of Spanish in Latin America. ms. Menéndez Pidal, R. (1962). Sevilla frente a Madrid. Algunas precisiones sobre el español de América. In

D. Catalán (Ed.), Estructuralismo e Historia. Miscelánea Homenaje a André Martinet. Vol. III. (pp. 99-165). Tenerife: Universidad de La Laguna.

Nettle, D. (1999). Is the rate of linguistic change constant? Lingua, 108, 119-136. Nettle, D. (1999). Linguistic diversity of the Americas can be reconciled with a recent colonization .

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 96(6), 3325-3329.


Bibliography, cont.

Nowak, A., Szamrej, J., & Latane, B. (1990). From private attitude to public opinion: A dynamical theory of social impact. Psychological Review, 97, 362-376.

Parodi, C. (2001). Contacto de dialectos y lenguas en el Nuevo Mundo: La vernacularización del español en América. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 149, 33-53.

Penny, R. (1987). Patterns of Language-Change in Spain. London: University of London, Westfield College.

Penny, R. (2000). Variation and Change in Spanish. Cambridge University Press. Penny, R. (2002). Contacto de variedades y resolución de la variación: aspiración y pérdida de /h/ en el

Madrid del s. XVI. In C. G. Turza, F. G. Bachiller, & J. M. Martínez (Eds.), Actas del V Congreso Internacional de Historia de la Lengua Española (Valencia 31 de enero-4 de febrero de 2000). Madrid [Alicante, Spain?]: Editorial Gredos Caja de Ahorros del Mediterráneo.

Rivarola, J. L. (2000). El español de América en su historia. Valladolid: Secretariado de Publicaciones e Intercambio Editorial, Universidad de Valladolid.

Siegel, J. (2001). Koine formation and creole genesis. In N. Smith & T. Veenstra (Eds.), Creolization and Contact. (pp. 175-197). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Trudgill, P. J. (1998). The chaos before the order: New Zealand English and the second stage of new-dialect formation. In E. H. Jahr (Ed.), Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics. (pp. 1-11). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.


Bibliography, cont.

Trudgill, P. J., Gordon, E., Lewis, G., & Maclagan, M. (2000). Determinism in new-dialect formation and the genesis of New Zealand English. Journal of Linguistics, 36, 299-318.

Trudgill, P. J. (1986). Dialects in Contact. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Tuten, D. N. (2003). Koineization in Medieval Spanish. Mouton de Gruyter.

An early steady state in the 'orígenes' of American Spanish: computer simulation and synthetic dialectology Harry Howard Tulane University howard

Documents

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harry howard3 koineization

harry howard7 koineization

harry howard2 koineization

harry howard4 koineization

trudgill slide

harry howard11

spanish indies