Men finally got it! Rhotic assibilation in mexican spanish in chihuahua

Abstract

Rhotic assibilation is a common sociolinguistic variable observed in different Spanish speaking countries such as Argentina, Ecuador, andMéxico. Previous studies reported that rhotic assibilation alternateswith the flap and/orwith the trill. In this study, we explore three aspects of rhotic assibilation in the Spanish of the state of Chihuahua, Mexico/El Paso, TX, United States: (1) Its diachronic development; (2) the linguistic and social factors that affect this variation and; (3) the possible effect of contact with English in this variable. Fifty-eight participants, including Spanish monolingual and Spanish-English bilingual subjects, performed one formal and two semi-informal speech production tasks. Acoustic and perceptual analysis of the tokens showed that the variation is not binary (standard vs. non-standard variant), but that it includes other rhotic variantswith varying degrees of frication. Variation is restricted to phrase-final position and heavily favored by preceding front vowels (/e/ and /i/). These effects have a clear aerodynamic and articulatory motivation. Rhotic assibilation is not receding, as previously reported. It continues to be a prestigious variable prevalent amongst females, but also present in male speakers. The comparison between bilingual andmonolingual speakers shows that contactwith English does not significantly affect the occurrence of assibilation.