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New Mexican Spanish: Insight into the

Variable Reduction of "la ehe inihial" (/s-/)Esther L. Brown

University of Colorado

Abstract: For close to a century, a noted feature of the Spanish of New Mexico has been the variable aspiration

and deletion of syllable-initial /s/ (Espinosa 1909), yet no empirical investigations have been undertaken to

study this process within this variety of Spanish in the United States. In fact, syllable-initial /s/ world-wide is

rarely quantified, with few exceptions (e.g., Garcia and Talion 1995). This relative lack of empirical analysis

means that there is much to be learned from quantitative analysis of this variable phonological reductive

process. The present study examines the exact nature of syllable-initial /s/ reduction using quantitative methods

to challenge the notions that syllable-initial /s-/ reduction stems directly from syllable-final /-s/ reduction, and

that intervocalic /s-/ reduction is found only in a limited set of lexemes.

Key Words: alveolar fricative sibilants, aspiration, coronal articulation, deletion, initial sibilant, phonetic

residue, word-final sibilant

1. Introduction

Syllable-final /s/ holds a special place of importance as themost widely studied variable in

Hispanic linguistics. This may not be surprising given the ability of /s/ to successfully

demarcate social and geographic varieties of Spanish, and given the ways in whichdeletion of word-final /s/ has been said to interact with themorphology of the language. Focus on

the Isi in this syllable position is not only copiously represented in the literature of academic

research, but is also part of the consciousness of speakers in Spanish-speaking varieties around

the globe.

In the Spanish of New Mexico,1 this phonological weakening process occurs, unexpectedly,in syllable-initial position. Processes affecting New-Mexican syllable-initial /s/ include aspiration

and deletion (deemed "reduction" in this analysis), which is contrasted in this work with reten

tion of the sibilant. Aspirated tokens, cases inwhich the sibilant loses coronal articulation, are

illustrated in examples la and b below, and deleted tokens, instances where the Isi is removed

from the string of speech leavingno

phonetic residue,are

exemplified in 2a and b.

la) pero cahi todos (pero casi todos [m.214.16])2

"but almost all of them"

lb) el trabajo de hemento (el trabajo de cemento [m. 162.5])

"the cement work"

2a) en eeos a?os (en esos a?os [m. 162.8])

"during those years"

2b) ee me hace que (se me hace que [f.317.4])

"it seems tome that"

As can be seen in the examples above, reduction of this type is found inword-medial (examples1a, 2a) and word-initial positions (examples lb, 2b).

Brown, Esther L.

"New Mexican Spanish: Insight into the Variable Reduction of 'la ehe inihiaV (/s-/)"

Hispania 88.4 (2005): 813-824

Esther L. Brown: "New Mexican Spanish: Insight into the Variable Reduction of "La ehe inihial" (/s-/)

Hispania, Vol. 88, No. 4 (Dec., 2005), pp. 813-824.



814 H?spanla 88 December 2005

Syllable-initial /s/ aspiration ismentioned in passing for parts of Spain, Colombia, northern

New Mexico, and various other points between these geographic extremes (e.g., Cotton and

Sharp; Espinosa; Fl?rez; Lipski "Instability," "Reducci?n"; L?pez Scott; S?nchez 1982). In sharp

contrast to the plethora of theoretical and empirical analyses of syllable-final /s/ reduction, there

isa

striking paucity of empirical studies concerning reduction of/s/ in syllable-initial position. Infact, this discrepancy is highlighted by Mason (7) in his extensive bibliographic survey of

studies dealing with aspiration and deletion of/s/ in dialects of Spanish. This obvious deficiency

of investigations into syllable-initial reduction is an oversight in the field of Hispanic Linguistics.

This present work, a large-scale analysis of syllable-initial /s/ reduction in spoken Spanish,

addresses this neglect, but also is important for our understanding of New-Mexican Spanish in

general. Syllable-initial /s/ aspiration has long been a phonological characteristic noted in the

spoken Spanish of New Mexico and Southern Colorado; for brief mention ofthat fact, see?in

addition to the items cited above?Bills, Bills and Ornstein, Bills and Vigil, Canfield, C?rdenas,

Cobos, Cotton and Sharp, Guti?rrez, and Lipski, Espa?ol. Although a few empirical studies have

been conducted on other varieties ofSpanish (Brown;

Brown and Torres Cacoullos"Qu?,"

"Dif

ferent"; Fl?rez; Garc?a and Talion; Lipski "Reducci?n"; L?pez Scott), revealing as part of their

findings significant linguistic and extra-linguistic factors involved in the variable reduction of

syllable-initial /s/ in certain varieties, no such detailed information was available for the New

Mexican variety.

Specifically the present investigation will examine forNew-Mexican Spanish the following

notions: (1) that a key ingredient for syllable-initial /s/ reduction is that itbe found in varieties of

Spanish where there is acute weakening of /s/ in general (M?ndez Dosuna, "Can"), (2) that

reduction in syllable-initial position is an extension of processes which originate in syllable-final

position (Ferguson; M?ndez Dosuna, "Aspiraci?n," "Can"; Penny; Terrell "Final"), (3) that

initial /s/ aspiration is specific to intervocalic environment (Lipski, "Many"; Vaquero), and (4)

that syllable-initial Isi aspiration is limited to a small set of lexemes (Bills and Ornstein; Garcia and

Talion). Given themany linguistic insights gleaned from the study of syllable-final Is/ processes,

and the general lack of understanding regarding syllable-initial Isi reduction, much stands to be

gained from an analysis of this sort.

2.Data and Methods

To achieve the goals outlined above, an analysis was undertaken of 10,770 tokens of Isi in

the spoken Spanish of New Mexico. All of the consultants are native speakers of New-Mexican

Spanish originating from and/or living in present day New Mexico and southern Colorado. The

speech of 24 speakers (both male and female) is analyzed in this study, and themajority of the

data comes from theNMCOSS project.

Initiated in 1991, theNMCOSS project documents, via interviews with 350 native speakers,

the Spanish language spoken throughout the state of New Mexico and the sixteen counties of

southern Colorado (Bills and Vigil). The data was collected by trained field workers who tape

recorded interviews involving both controlled elicitation and guided conversation. The

interviews averaged three-and-a-half hours in length, beginning with compilation of personal

information regarding the consultant, followed by specific linguistic elicitation and free

conversation (Bills andVigil 46).

All cases of Isi (in four syllable positions: syllable-initial word-initial, syllable-initial word

medial, syllable-final word-medial, syllable-final word-final) were coded by the investigator

according to phonetic realizations. Both the voiced and voiceless alveolar fricative sibilants, [z]

and [s], are considered non-reduced variants. The voiceless glottal fricative realization of Is/

(commonly referred to as aspirated Isi and coded as [h]) and the elided or completely reduced

tokens of Is/ (coded as [0]) are reduced variants. With respect to aspiration, no phonetic

distinction is drawn between syllable-initial and syllable-final Isl realizations, although acoustic

(Mann and Soli) and perceptual (Widdison) studies suggest that Isl has two very distinct sets of



New Mexican Spanish 815

characteristics in syllable-initial, as opposed to syllable-final, position.

These tokens wereanalyzed for their rates and patterns of reduction and were also proc

essed by VARBRUL, a logistical regression analysis. Variable rule analysis is a type of

multivariate program that considers different environmental factors simultaneously and

measures their effects on the choice of variants (Rand and Sankoff), in this case, reduced versusretained realizations. The variable rule analyses conducted with VARBRUL provide a detailed

account of which factor groups contribute significantly to the reduction of syllable-initial Is/; the

analyses also rank the factor groups by the magnitude of effect they have on the variation

(indicated by the range). Additionally, within each factor group, the individual factors are ranked

according to their factor weight, which indicates the degree towhich they favor (> .50) or disfavor

(< .50) reductive processes.

3. Discussion

Findings regardingthe nature of

syllable-initialIsi

aspirationinother dialects do not seem to

apply to the New Mexico data. Specifically, studies of other dialects have concluded that

syllable-initial Isi reduction is a result of extreme Isi reduction generally in the dialect, that it is an

extension of processes occurring syllable-finally, that it is confined to intervocalic context and

that it is also lexically limited. Each of these impressions will be discussed in turn, and itwill be

shown that theNew-Mexican data support none of these assumptions. New-Mexican Spanish, it

appears, does not follow the same /s/-articulation parameters that other well-studied varieties do.

3.1. Overall/s/ reduction

Syllable-initial Isi reduction is often perceived to be a phenomenon found most typically in

dialects of Spanish where Isi reduction is extreme, such as in theDominican Republic (Vaquero).

M?ndez Dosuna ("Can") suggests that syllable-initial Isi reduction, in fact, is found "only in

most casual speech styles inmost radical aspirating dialects (e.g., Andalusian, Extreme?o,

Caribbean Spanish) [...]" (98). IsNew-Mexican Spanish, a variety with noted syllable-initial

reduction, also describable as a dialect which is typified by extreme aspiration overall?

The overall reduction rates for Isi in the Spanish of New Mexico are summarized inTable 1.

In syllable-initial positions, Isi aspirates or deletes in 16% of the occurrences inword-initial

position, and in 30% of the word-internal cases. Syllable-finally, reduction is the lowest inword

medial position (25%) and highest inword-final position (57%).

Table 1

New Mexican /s/ Reduction in Syllable-Initial and Syllable-Final Positions

Word-Initial Word-Medial, Word-Medial, Word-Final

_Syllable-Initial_Syllable-Final_095 1281104

H06 843 202060

__S_2179_2120_980_1663Reduction 16% 30% 25%7%

One may possibly speak therefore of a "moderate" amount of reduction of Isi in this variety of

Spanish. How then do its rates of aspiration and deletion compare to Isi variation in other well

studied dialects?Table 2 summarizes rates of reduction of syllable-final Isi in three varieties of Spanish.

Through a comparison of reduction rates inNew Mexico to those of Cuba, for example, the phon

ological reduction inNew Mexico does not seem elevated, as rates are lower in all positions

except before a pause. It does not seem, therefore, that Isi reduction is "extreme" inNew-Mexican

Spanish.




Table 2

Comparison Syllable-Final /s/ Reduction in New Mexico vs. Chihuahua, Cuba, Argentina*

Phonetic Context New Mexico Chihuahua, Cuba Argentina

_Mexico_

Word-medial,syllable-final

25% (1310) 22% (569) 97% (1714) 88% (4150)Word-final, pre-consonantal 61% (1820) 42% (656) 98% (3265) 89% (5475)Word-final, pre-vocalic 62% (1061) 47% (221) 82% (1500) 12%(2649)Word-final, phrase-final 41% (946) 54% (230)_39% (1776) 22% (2407)

*Cuba, Argentina data taken from Terrell ("Constraints," "Aspirations," Hispania); as summarized in

Bybee (140). Chihuahua data taken from Brown and Torres Cacoullos ("Qu?," "Different").

However, an interesting cross-dialectal pattern emerges in the data. The two varieties included in

Table 2 that have word-final reduction rates pre-vocalically that are superior (or roughly equal) to

reduction inpre-consonantal positions (New Mexico 61% vs. 62%; Chihuahua 42% vs. 47%), are

precisely the dialects with considerable syllable-initial Isl reduction. It is this generalization of

word-final Isl reduction to pre-vocalic contexts, coupled with amatching path of phonetic reduc

tion ([s]>

[h]) inword-initial, post-vocalic position that leads Lipski ("Many") to note that

reduction in these positions are processes which appear to be "intimately related" (198). Does the

co-occurrence of syllable-initial Isl reduction with generalized word-final, pre-vocalic reduction

imply a diachronic process extending from syllable-final to syllable-initial position? This ques

tion is addressed in the following section.

3.2. Final > Initial Continuum

If reductions in these twoword positions are related (word-final, pre-vocalic andword-initial,

post-vocalic), do linguistic factors constrain them in the same way in each context? Separatemultivariate analyses of both word-initial and word-final Isl reduction inNew Mexico, in fact,

reveal a similar ordering of constraints within factor groups. This information is summarized in

Tables 3 and 4.

Table 3

VARBRUL Analyses of Linguistic Factors Having the

Greatest Effect on Word-Initial Isl Reduction

Word-Initial

Input: .10

Total N: 2585

% Reduction Factor Weight % Data

Preceding Phonological Environment

non-high vowel 257050

high vowel 7332

pause .32 24

consonant 4243

Range 46

Following Phonological Environment

non-high vowel 236253

high vowel 6376

Range 25

[Other factor groups selected as significant: frequency, stress

(Log likelihood =-947.244, p=.000, Chi-square per cell=

1.6503)]




characteristics in syllable-initial, as opposed to syllable-final, position.

These tokens wereanalyzed for their rates and patterns of reduction and were also proc

essed by VARBRUL, a logistical regression analysis. Variable rule analysis is a type of

multivariate program that considers different environmental factors simultaneously and

measures their effects on the choice of variants (Rand and Sankoff), in this case, reduced versusretained realizations. The variable rule analyses conducted with VARBRUL provide a detailed

account of which factor groups contribute significantly to the reduction of syllable-initial Is/; the

analyses also rank the factor groups by the magnitude of effect they have on the variation

(indicated by the range). Additionally, within each factor group, the individual factors are ranked

according to their factor weight, which indicates the degree towhich they favor (> .50) or disfavor

(< .50) reductive processes.

3. Discussion

Findings regardingthe nature of

syllable-initialIsi

aspirationinother dialects do not seem to

apply to the New Mexico data. Specifically, studies of other dialects have concluded that

syllable-initial Isi reduction is a result of extreme Isi reduction generally in the dialect, that it is an

extension of processes occurring syllable-finally, that it is confined to intervocalic context and

that it is also lexically limited. Each of these impressions will be discussed in turn, and itwill be

shown that theNew-Mexican data support none of these assumptions. New-Mexican Spanish, it

appears, does not follow the same /s/-articulation parameters that other well-studied varieties do.

3.1. Overall/s/ reduction

Syllable-initial Isi reduction is often perceived to be a phenomenon found most typically in

dialects of Spanish where Isi reduction is extreme, such as in theDominican Republic (Vaquero).

M?ndez Dosuna ("Can") suggests that syllable-initial Isi reduction, in fact, is found "only in

most casual speech styles inmost radical aspirating dialects (e.g., Andalusian, Extreme?o,

Caribbean Spanish) [...]" (98). IsNew-Mexican Spanish, a variety with noted syllable-initial

reduction, also describable as a dialect which is typified by extreme aspiration overall?

The overall reduction rates for Isi in the Spanish of New Mexico are summarized inTable 1.

In syllable-initial positions, Isi aspirates or deletes in 16% of the occurrences inword-initial

position, and in 30% of the word-internal cases. Syllable-finally, reduction is the lowest inword

medial position (25%) and highest inword-final position (57%).

Table 1

New Mexican /s/ Reduction in Syllable-Initial and Syllable-Final Positions

Word-Initial Word-Medial, Word-Medial, Word-Final

_Syllable-Initial_Syllable-Final_095 1281104

H06 843 202060

__S_2179_2120_980_1663Reduction 16% 30% 25%7%

One may possibly speak therefore of a "moderate" amount of reduction of Isi in this variety of

Spanish. How then do its rates of aspiration and deletion compare to Isi variation in other well

studied dialects?Table 2 summarizes rates of reduction of syllable-final Isi in three varieties of Spanish.

Through a comparison of reduction rates inNew Mexico to those of Cuba, for example, the phon

ological reduction inNew Mexico does not seem elevated, as rates are lower in all positions

except before a pause. It does not seem, therefore, that Isi reduction is "extreme" inNew-Mexican

Spanish.




("Qu?," "Different") also make this same claim based on research conducted on the Spanish of

Chihuahua, Mexico. It is therefore the case that results from the analyses of New-Mexican

Spanish Isl, which suggest that syllable-initial and syllable-final Is/ are two separate variables

constrained and realized in different ways, are in line with other researchers' findings.

Theordering

of factor groupsby magnitude

of effect thus does not concur with the notion

of one process of reduction spreading from syllable-final to syllable-initial position, but can we

find supporting evidence elsewhere for the notion of one single process? Ferguson has pro

posed that the Spanish [s]>

[h] change starts in syllable-final positions, first word-medially and

then word-finally before a consonant, and that aspiration extends "last, if at all, toword initial

position" (64). Do reduction rates inNew Mexico reflect this?

Lipski ("Many" 198-99) explicitly sets forth this diffusion pattern for Islweakening in Span

ish. The diachronic pathway of change can be found in Table 5.According toLipski's model, Isl

begins itsweakening process in pre-consonantal position (Stage 1) in either word-medial or

word-final position.3 Generalizing from this position, the reduction may extend its phonetic

context to include absolute final (Stage 2). Stage 3, inwhich word-final Isl extends its phonetic

context to include pre-vocalic position, is found in the "phonologically most advanced dialects"

(Lipski, "Many" 198). Once Stage 3 has been generalized in a dialect, reduction may extend to

word-initial (post-vocalic) position (Stage 4). Lastly, "the ultimate generalization would include

word-internal /VsV/ combinations, and in some marginal varieties of Spanish this extension is in

its incipient phase" (Lipski, "Many" 199).

Table 5

Proposed Diachronic Weakening Pathway For Isl

(Adapted From Lipski, "Many")

Stage Phonological environment_Examples_

1 s>

h /_C (word-medial, word-final) lasmoscas

"flies"2 s > h /_# (phrase-final)

vamos "let's go"

3 s > h /_V(word-final, prevocalic)es aqu? "it is here"

4 s > h /V#_(word-initial, post-vocalic) la semana "week"

(5) s > h /V_V (word-medial, intervocalic)_casa"house/home"

According to this diffusion pattern, New-Mexican data should show rates that are the

highest in the syllable and word position where reduction is themost advanced chronologically,

and the lowest in the position where weakening is the most recent development; intermediate

diachronic stages would be marked by incrementally higher and lower degrees of aspiration and

deletion. In order to test this hypothesis, aspiration and deletion in syllable-final and syllable

initial positions are arrayed in the order inwhich Lipski set forth his data inTable 5. These rates

of reduction can be seen inTable 6.

Table 6

Rates of Isl Reduction in New Mexican Spanish

Stage Phonological environment_Reduction rates_

1 s > h / __C (word-medial) 25% (N=

327/1310)

s > h / __ #C (word-final, preconsonantal) 61% (N=

1144/1875)

2 s > h /_# (phrase-final) 42%(N=

397/945)

3 s > h /__#V(word-final, prevocalic) 62% (N=

624/1007)

4 s > h /V#_ (word-initial, post-vocalic) 22% (N=

324/1471)

(5) s > h / V V (word-medial)_34% (N = 905/2661)_

As Table 6 has shown, the amount of New-Mexican Isl reduction found in each of the

phonetic contexts which Lipski ("Many") proposed does not reflect a diachronic extension pat

tern proceeding from pre-consonantal position (Stage 1) through each of the five stages. The

highest rate of reduction for these contexts, in fact, is found inword-final, prevocalic position




(62%), the purported Stage 3. There are higher rates of reduction for Stages 1-3 than there are for

stages 4 and 5. (This excludes word-medial, syllable-final [partof Stage 1],whose reduction rate

is25%.)

However, rates of reduction inStage 5 significantly exceed rates for Stage 4which would not

beexpected

if reduction werespreading

from word-initial toword-medialposition (p

=

0.0000).Lipski's diachronic pathway, therefore, is not an assured notion for the variety under study here,

nor was it shown to be for another quantitatively analyzed variety of Spanish with syllable-initial

Isi reduction, that of Chihuahua, Mexico (Brown and Torres Cacoullos, "Qu?," "Different").

What is clear, however, is thatNew-Mexican word-final Isi reduction ismore advanced than

word-initial aspiration and deletion, as the rates of reduction inTable 7 illustrate. Rates of Isi re

duction inword-final position significantly exceed that of reduction for Isi inword-initial position

and for both syllable-initial and syllable-final Isi inword-medial position. If one were to propose

a unified diachronic pathway for this phonological reduction inNew Mexico Spanish, itwould

appear to proceed from word-final toword-medial toword-initial position. As is shown on the

first line of Table 7,word-final intervocalic Isi reduces at a rate of 62%, while syllable-initial Isi

reduces at a successively lower rate in intervocalic position word-medially (34%) and word

initially22%).

Table 7

Syllable-Initial (Bold) and Syllable-Final /s/ Reduction Rates

WORD-INITIAL

s>h/V#__ 22% (323/1467)

WORD-MEDIAL

s>h/V+__V 34% (769/2261)

s>h/_+C25% (327/1310)

WORD-FINAL

s>h/_# V 62% (624/1007)

s>h/___#C 61% (1144/1875)

s>h/_#//42% (397/945)

The intervocalic context set forth inTable 7 has therefore been identified as a necessary in

gredient for phonological reduction of syllable-initial Isi (stages 4 and 5 inTable 6). It is clearly a

context inwhich variable aspiration and deletion of Isi is noted in the Spanish ofNew Mexico. But

as the following section will illustrate, syllable-initial Isi variation is not limited to intervocalic

context as the only possible locus for this phenomenon to occur in.

3.3. Phonological Environment

InNew Mexico, reduction of word-initial Isi is found in both utterance-initial and post

consonantal positions as examples 3 and 4 illustrate.

3) Heguro que le dio... (Seguro que le dio... [m. 99.6] )

"Surely he gave him..."

4) aquel herco (aquel cerco [m.232.17])

"that fence"

Word-initial Isioccurring

after a

pause

or

utterance-initiallyreduce at a rate of 5%

(N

=

572)and

after a consonant at a rate of 4% (N=

308).4Word-medially the rate of post-consonantal reduction

increases slightly (8%,N=

386). Reduction of this type is illustrated in example 5.

5) Dos a?os pienho (Dos a?os pienso [f. 189.3])

"Two years I think"




Ingeneral terms, the low reduction rates found in these contexts reveal that previous pause or

consonant does not favor reduction, as is also indicated by theVARBRUL results (Tables 3 and

4).

Although syllable-initial Isl reduction is greater in the intervocalic context, these data from

New Mexico suggest that syllable-initial reduction extends to phonological environments

beyond the narrowly delimited contexts proposed for variation found in other studies. More im

portantly, an examination of the data reveals that this reductive process is not limited to a small

set of lexemes that the literature frequently cites as being found inother locales. The lexically dif

fuse nature of this phonological-reductive process inNew Mexico is the focus of the next

section.

3.4 Lexical Extension

Canonical examples of syllable-initial Isl reduction include words such as nosotros "we" and

casa "house/home" (Bills and Ornstein) orHi, he?or "Yes, sir." Indeed, in other Spanishspeaking regions, such as South Texas, this reductive process appears to be lexically limited

(Garcia and Talion). The reduction of syllable-initial Isl inNew Mexico, however, seems to be

productive in present-day usage.

The 5633 tokens of syllable-initial Isl described here are found in 385 different words. Of

these 385 types containing a syllable-initial Isl, there is variation in 127, thus affecting almost 33%

of the /s/-initial lexemes in the study. However, excluding types with only one token in the data

which due to their lone status logically cannot demonstrate variation within this corpus, themag

nitude of the syllable-initial Isl variation is somewhat greater. Of the remaining 258 types with two

ormore tokens in the corpus, 112 show variation. This corpus of New Mexican Spanish thus re

flects reduction ofsyllable-initial

Isl in 43% of all /s/-initial lexical items. What ismore,

such

reduction clearly extends to an array of lexical items, in contrast towhat has been found in the

Spanish of other regions.

Forthose words showing variation, syllable-initial /s/' s rate of reduction ranges from as little

as 2% reduction to 100%. Plainly, not all types are affected to the same degree, and some lexical

effects are apparent. Table 8 highlights lexemes occurring three or more times in the corpus with

higher than average reduction rates (>16% word-initially and >30% word-medially) for the syl

lable-initial Isl. (This represents a selection of all words of three or more occurrences whose rate

of reduction exceeds the average for that position. Words with just one or two tokens may not be

representative due to the limited number of occurrences.)Table 8

Syllable-Initial Isl Types With Reduction Rates Higher Than Average Per Word Position

Word-Initial % Reduction Total N Word-Medial % Reduction Total N

suponer00 3 dieciseis* 100 5

se?ora7 6 necesitar* 100 15

seguro0 5 nosotros 9010

salir5 85 balazo 89 9

centavo 33 6 cabeza3

semana2 22 brazo 80 5

saber1 322 diecisiete* 78 9

sentado 29 7 asomar54

social9 7 peso 0 10

suerte9 7 parecer 67 27

cerrar5 8 representar 67 3

sanar5 4 veces 66 32

se3 557 casi 58 64

solamente 22 9 cosa31

sacar1 29 asina 52 135

sembrar0 5 ese51 287

subir7 24 gracias 50 4

poner 426

decir 4026

pasar 405




casado 386

entonces 376

atenci?n 33

camposanto 33

casar 335

curioso 33

hacer 3268

diecinueve 313

pasado 313

*The word's first medial /s/ is the one that is reduced.

As can be seen inTable 8, the previously mentioned and frequently cited token nosotros is

among the most highly reducing types word-medially, with a reduction rate of 90%. The other

forms also commonly cited in the literature, however, do not rank among the highest aspirating

types for their respective word positions;these are casa "house," si "yes," and se?or "man/sir"

with reduction rates in this data set of 20%, 4% and 0% respectively (N=

109,483,22).

The token nosotros "we" stands out in Table 8 ashaving

bothhigh

tokenfrequency

and a

high reduction rate. The exceptionally high reduction rate of theword-medial Isi innosotros has

been explained through reference tomorpheme boundaries. Historically the Isi o? nosotros is a

morpheme final Isi (nosotros), and was therefore subject to phonetic variability as a resyllabi

fied, syllable-final /s/, rather than an example of aword-medial, syllable-initial Isi [no-so-tros]

(Walsh; Garcia and Talion). The following will discuss this notion in relation to synchronie varia

tion and will show that for New-Mexican Spanish, itdoes not seem to be the case that the word

medial Isi ofnosotros is behaving asmorpheme final Isi.

As mentioned previously, one of the prevalent hypotheses regarding syllable-initial Is/ re

duction is that it is a result of an extension of processes occurring in syllable-final position. Harris

("Integrity")

states that Isi is

dependentupon

syllable

structure in

Spanish, subject

to

aspirationin the rhyme but not in the onset (182-83). Thus, the results of the process of aspiration that

appear in syllable-initial position (word-final, pre-vocalic) are the consequences of resyllabifica

tion at the level of the phrase and not of processes occurring in syllable-initial position.

Inword-medial position, such outputs are argued to occur only in cases where the Isi forms

part of a prefix, such as deshecho "undone" (des[hecho]) (Harris, "Integrity" 183), or in the case

of nosotros, as Hualde notes, at acompound boundary. Hualde also argues that for such cases

as just mentioned, "we must postulate a stage in the derivation where prefix-final Isi (and stem

final Isi ina compound) is syllabified in the rhyme" (56). For nosotros therefore, aswith anyword

internal morpheme boundary, the Is/ reduces in syllable-final position (rhyme), and is later

resyllabified. Aspiration precedes ^syllabification.

If the higher rates of reduction were a result of synchronie morpheme-boundary processes,

one could postulate comparable rates of reduction for nos and for nos + otros (nosotros), since

the rule could apply equally to the form nos inboth instances. This isnot what we find in theNew

Mexico data. The word-final Isi o? nos reduces at a rate of 79% (N=

108), and the rate of word

medial Isi reduction for nosotros is 90% (N =110). The rates of reduction for the two words are

significantly different, and the reduction in the word nosotros does not seem to stem from a

process occurring in the rhyme of themorpheme nos (p=

0.0215, Chi-square=

5.282608).5 Conse

quently, as in other varieties where nohotros is considered a fossilized form (e.g., Garcia and

Talion), the reduced tokens of the first-person-plural subject pronoun inNew Mexico do not

seem tied tomorpheme-final Isi reduction of nos, but rather reflect processes affecting a separate

lexical item, nosotros.6

4. Conclusion

This study is the first to address with quantitative data the as-yet ill-understood phenomenon of syllable-initial Isi aspiration and deletion in the Spanish of New Mexico. As noted




previously, studies addressing this phenomenon are rare. The dearth of antecedent quantitative

research on the topic has allowed the present study to suggest certain conclusions regarding the

nature of syllable-initial Isl reduction inNew-Mexican Spanish.

It has been shown that the syllable-initial Isl reduction is not a reductive process found

solelyin varieties of

Spanishinwhich the sibilant

aspiratesor deletes at an

exceptionally highrate.New-Mexican Spanish, when compared to other dialects of Spanish, does not have rates of

reduction comparable to those found in Spanish-speaking regions whose frequencies of Isl

aspiration are higher.

Additionally, a comparison of reduction rates across syllable and word positions fails to

point to a diffusion process proceeding from syllable-final position to syllable-initial. Further

more, results of multivariate analyses yield different magnitudes of effect for factor groups

indicating that reduction in the two syllable positions is constrained in different ways. The final

> initial continuum, therefore, with the source of syllable-initial reduction identified as syllable

final reduction, is not an assured notion for the Spanish of New Mexico.

It has been shown that

aspiration

and deletion inNew-Mexican Spanish is not limited to

intervocalic contexts nor is it constrained to a small lexical set. On thewhole, over a third of the

words in this Spanish variety are affected by this phonological reduction. Some tokens reveal

"lexical" effects {nosotros) with unusually high rates of Islweakening, but it does not appear that

this isdue to any sort of synchronie process whereby a resyllabified syllable-final Isl is aspirated.

It is anticipated thatmuch can be learned about this often-ignored variable by subjecting

other syllable-initial /s/-aspirating varieties of Spanish to a rigorous quantitative analysis, as the

present study has done for the Spanish of New Mexico.

NOTES

'"New-Mexican Spanish" refers here to the variety of Spanish spoken in New Mexico and Southern

Colorado by descendants of the first settlers to the region (Bills).

2The majority of the data used in this investigation is taken from The New Mexico-southern Colorado

Spanish Survey (NMCOSS), a project directed by Garland D. Bills and Neddy A. Vigil at the University of New

Mexico and funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Coding between parentheses

represents the sex of the speaker (m=

male, f=

female), the tape number (if from NMCOSS) or name, and the

transcript page number.

3Other researchers propose word-internal, pre-consonantal as the incipient stage for Isl weakening (e.g.,

M?ndez Dosuna, "Weakening"). In the New-Mexican data, that environment's rate of reduction is 25% (N=

1310) and is clearly not the ambient whose rate is the highest.

4This calculation excludes cases of word-initial Isl preceded by a word-final Isl. This phonological context

(/s_s/) is unique within this study. The masking effect of identical segments adjacent across word-boundaries

neutralizes the phonetic context (Silva-Corval?n 73).

5There are no instances of nos followed by loi which would enable a complete comparison. Reduction of the

word-final Isl in prevocalic position (/a/, /e/, HI) does yield higher reduction rates (83%) but still does not equal

the high rates of nosotros.

6Other tokens of derived syllable-initial Isl do not seem to suggest rule ordering (aspiration in syllable

rhyme, followed by ^syllabification) in New Mexican Spanish, either. The Isl of atroces (atroz[es]), buses

(bus[es]) and luces (luz[es]), (N=

8) presents 0% reduction, and the 4 tokens of morpheme boundary (des-) also

yield 0% reduction (desempacar "to unpack," desenga?ar "to fool"), an unexpected result for a syllable-final

realization in a variety with noted I-si reduction. Further, a comparison of reduction rates between word-final

Isl of mes and vez in (mes[es]), (vez[es]) with lexical word-medial Isl in an e_e context (trece, parece, etc.; 43%

reduction), and word-final Isl of diez in (diez\y\) with lexical Isl in the e_i context (decidimos; 40% reduction)

does not consistently reveal more reduction for lexically word-final Isl than lexically word-medial, syllable

initial Isl. A significant difference exists (p=

.0329, Chi-square=

4.553571) between e_e lexical Isl reduction and

veces(66%,

N=

32),but the reduction of Isl in meses

(30%,N

=

10)is not

significantly higherthan other

e_emedial tokens of comparable frequency (p

=.4398, Chi-square

=0.59685) nor is reduction in died- (43%, N

=

37) significantly higher than other e_i medial tokens (p=

0.7267, Chi-square=

0.122174).

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