Manuel Díaz-Campos Research Collection

Permanent link for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/2022/24686

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On the Production and Perception of Spanish Palatal Obstruents: An Acoustic Phonetic Study with Implications for Phonology, Dialectology, and Pedagogy
(Cascadilla Proceedings Project, 2002) Díaz-Campos, Manuel; Morgan, Terrell A.
The present paper is just one part of a larger study, still in progress, which brings to the table an array of phonetic details that add to our understanding of the behavior of on four fronts: (1) a comparison of the production and reception of various palatal variants by native Spanish speakers and English speaking students of the language: (2) the behavior of the palatal obstruent phoneme in other Spanish dialects, especially those in which the consonant is known to weaken or delete intervocalically (Lipski 1094); (3) resyllabification of the wordy 'and' with a following vowel; and (4) resyllabification contexts in which word-final is followed by a vowel.
The phonetic manifestation of secondary stress in Spanish
(Cascadilla Proceedings Project, 2000) Díaz-Campos, Manuel
In this paper, I investigate the acoustic correlates of secondary stress in Spanish. These included duration, pitch, and intensity. According to NavarroTomas (1957), Spanish has rhythmic stress, since native speakers perceive alternations between stressed and unstressed syllables at the level of the phrase. Navarro-Tomas suggests that these alternations are due to intensity changes. This observation has been formalized by Roca (1986) and Harris (1983, 1991). Harris (1991) claims that secondary stress is located in alternate syllables at the right or left of the primary lexically assigned stressed syllable. Secondary stress, according to this phonological account, is a different level of prominence from primary stress and lack of stress. Nonetheless, these phonological descriptions do not give any phonetic definition of the type of acoustic prominence expected.
Declarative intonation patterns in multiple varieties of Spanish
(Cascadilla Proceedings Project, 2002) McGory, Julia; Díaz-Campos, Manuel
Recent efforts have sought oo capture the intonational structure of declaratives in Latin American and Peninsular varieties of Spanish using an autosegmental-metrical (AM) model of intonation (Ladd 1996), like that proposed for English by Pierrehumhcrl ( 1980). These include a description by Sosa (1999) of multiple Latin and Peninsular varieties, and also more specific descriptions of Castilian Spanish by Face (in press), of Mexican Spanish by Prieto and colleagues (Prieto, van Santen & Hirschberg 1995, Prieto, Shih, & Nibert 1996, Prieto 1998), and of northern Peninsular and Venezuelan Spanish by participants at the first Spanish ToBI workshop (Mendoza-Denton, McGory, & Diaz-Campos 1999; Hualde 2000).
A Comparison of Spanish Second Language Acquisition in Two Different Learning Contexts: Study Abroad and the Domestic Classroom
(Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, 2004-08-15) Segalowitz, Norman; Freed, Barbara; Collentine, Joe; Lafford, Barbara; Lazar, Nicole; Díaz-Campos, Manuel
In this paper, we report the results of a study that compared differences in the linguistic gains made by native English-speaking students from the United States who were studying Spanish in one of two different contexts of learning. One was a regular university classroom situation in Colorado; the other was a study abroad program in Alicante, Spain. We examined the gains students made on a number of linguistic dimensions: oral proficiency, oral fluency, grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and communication strategies. In addition, we investigated the relationships between these variables and a variety of background factors, including aspects of language learning readiness. As far as we know, this is the first study to examine such a comprehensive array of variables associated with linguistic performance as a function of context of learning. Each of the individual studies that contributed to the full report of this project can be found in a special issue of the journal Studies in Second Language Acquisition edited by Collentine and Freed (2004). When those studies are looked at as a whole, they lead to general interpretations that were not immediately apparent when considering each of the reports separately. In this paper, we review these results, discuss the larger picture that emerges, and speculate on future questions about the effects of the study abroad experience on second language acquisition (see also Freed, Segalowitz & Dewey, 2004, for a related study).
The Sociolinguistic Profile of Ser and Estar in Cuban Spanish: An Analysis of Oral Speech
(Georgetown University Press, 2017-11) Díaz-Campos, Manuel; Galarza, Iraida; Delgado, Gibran
THE ANALYSIS OF COPULA choice in adjectival constructions has been the center of many investigations in Spanish, and they have focused on theoretical accounts (Clements 1988, 2006), sociolinguistic perspectives (e.g., Alfaraz 2012; Brown and Cortés-Torres 2012), first-language (e.g., Requena, Román-Hernández, and Miller, 2015), and second-language acquisitional contexts (e.g., Geeslin 2003), and language-contact situations in the US (Silva-Corvalán 1986) and Spanish in contact with other languages (Geeslin and Guijarro-Fuentes 2008). This work has contributed to our understanding of the factors involved in predicting copula choice as well as in describing the patterns of variation and change across varieties of Spanish.
Acoustic analysis of voiceless initial stops in the speech of study abroad and regular class students: Context of learning as a variable in Spanish second language acquisition
(Cascadilla Proceedings Project, 2003) Díaz-Campos, Manuel
Studies in the area of second language acquisition have pointed out that context of learning is an important factor for predicting subjects' linguistic gain (Armstrong 1981, Brecht 1993a, 1993b; Brecht, Davidson. and Ginsberg 1995. Freed 1995. submitted, Lafford 1995, submitted, Lapkin, Hart, and Swain 1995, Collentine submitted, Diaz-Campos submitted, Lazar submitted, Segalowtiz submitted; among others). In general terms, these previous investigations found that students traveling abroad to a country where the target language is spoken return home with a better linguistic command. For instance, Armstrong (1981 :85), who analyzes a group of study abroad students of Spanish in a program in Mexico, maintains: "The discussion of achievement in the four skills in chapter 3 pointed out that listening, reading, and writing gains proved to be greater than those which might be normally expected in a full year of traditional language instruction at the high school level." This idea of improvement after a study abroad program is also pointed out by Freed (1995) in her survey of the literature examining linguistic gain in the study abroad context. Nonetheless, she also maintains that what emerges from previous studies is a somewhat a contradictory perspective as far as linguistic benefits are concerned in a study abroad experience. Freed (1995:8} agrees with Ellis (1994) in that formal instruction is an important key aspect for developing proficiency in a second language, especially if the process of learning includes opportunities for natural exposure.
Intervocalic velar nasals in Galician: Phonetic evidence for multiple syllabic affiliation
(Mouton de Gruyter, 2005) Colina, Sonia; Díaz-Campos, Manuel
The syllabic affiliation of intervocalic velar nasals in Galician, e.g. unha [una] 'a, one (fem.)' has been a controversial topic amongst scholars for at least three decades. All solutions proposed to date (onset or coda affiliation) are costly finm a phonological point of view as they run counter to well-attested principles of phonological theory, such as Structure Preservation (Kaisse and Shaw 1985; Kiparksy 1985; Mohanan 1986) and syllabic markedness generalizations (*VC.V). Recently, however, Colina (2004) has proposed an analysis that does not encounter the difficulties of previous accounts. Colina (2004) argues for an underlying velar nasal realized as a surface geminate that results from the assimilation of an epenthetic onset to the point of articulation of the preceding nasal. It was hypothesized that the phonetic level could provide additional support for the gemination proposal if there were duration differences between the surface geminate (underlying velar) and other context similar nasals syllabified in either onset or coda position. Hence the fundamental goal of this paper is to examine intervocalic nasals in forms such as unha, cunha, algunha from a phonetic point of view and determine whether there are differences between these forms and other intervocalic nasals. Ten native speakers of Galician were asked to read carrier phrases containing the target nasals in three different contexts: 1) hypothesized geminale (e.g. unha 'a'), 2) onset position (e.g. c'un amigolo 'with a friend'), and 3) coda position c'un curandeiro 'with a folk healer' (coda). Phonetic analysis of the recordings reveals that there is a phonetic distinction in terms of length between multiply-linked velar nasals (surface geminates) and other intervocalic: velar nasals, thus lending further support to the gemination proposal. The findings have implications for research on the phonology and phonetics of geminates.
Acquisition of sociolinguistic variables in Spanish: Do children acquire individual lexical forms or variable rules?
(Mouton de Gruyter, 2004-06) Díaz-Campos, Manuel
Previous research in the area of phonological variation has focused on describing internal and external constraints in the speech of adult speakers. These previous investigations have contributed to our understanding of the role played by different groups within the speech community in the process of language change. The study of variation in child language was not taken into consideration for a long period of time in sociolinguistic studies. Pioneer work on the acquisition of variation in child phonology (Labov 1964) proposes that development of stylistic variation probably starts when individuals are 14 years old under the influence of wider contacts with peers beyond the neighborhood or high school. More recently this idea has been challenged by some scholars who have conducted research on the acquisition of variable phonology in English, French, and Spanish (Roberts and Labov 1995; Roberts 1994, 1997a, 1997b; Chevrot, Beaud, and Varga 2000; Díaz-Campos 2001). The assumption in the work of Roberts and Labov 1995; Roberts 1994, 1997a, 1997b, and Díaz-Campos 2001 is that the acquisition of variable phonology entails the encoding of a variable rule . According to Labov (1972), variable rules are based on generative phonological rules with the ingredient of incorporating the probability of application of them when linguistic and social constraints are satisfied. Nonetheless, Chevrot, Beaud, and Varga (2000:295) suggest that children tend to copy adult surface forms instead of acquiring a variable rule. This suggestion that children copy lexical forms is consistent with Bybee's (2001) usage-based model of phonology in which linguistic regularities are not expressed as rules, but rather as schemas. This means that speakers discover generalizations about linguistic units and create a series of connections based on similarities among them.
The L2 Development of Subject Form Variation in Spanish: The Individual vs. the Group
(Cascadilla Proceedings Project, 2013) Geeslin, Kimberly; Linford, Bret; Fafulas, Stephen; Long, Avizia; Díaz-Campos, Manuel
This paper reports on a variationist study of individual and group patterns of Spanish subject form selection by English-speaking learners at several levels of proficiency and a native speaker comparison group. The theoretical motivation for this study was to further test the assumption that idiosyncratic patterns of linguistic variation in interlanguage systems reflect group patterns. Participants' responses to a written contextualized elicitation task demonstrated that the impact of the individual decreased as proficiency increased for all learner groups except the most advanced (graduate level) group. Findings are discussed in light of previous research and areas for further investigation are outlined.
"Por ahí agarrábanos los autobuses": A Sociolinguistic Analysis of the Alternation between -mos/-nos in Spanish
(Cascadilla Proceedings Project, 2012) Arthur, Erin; Díaz-Campos, Manuel
The present investigation examines, by means of a variationist analysis in oral data, the alternation between -mos/-nos in the Spanish of Mérida, Venezuela. An examination of lexical frequency, as well as sociolinguistic factors, is presented to offer a preliminary account of this phenomenon. The Mérida corpus comprises a sample of speakers that consisted of 40 males and 40 females. The findings support the argument that analogy is related to the general notion of first person plural. The frequency of the use of -nos indicates that -nos is the form used most to convey the first person plural. This is why -nos is the best candidate to be in variation with -mos, which by contrast is less frequent and has a more peripheral location in the exemplar representation. Social factors revealed that older speakers and females favor the use of -nos. The use of -nos can be categorized as a stereotype since this variant is exclusively found in the lower socioeconomic background speakers.
Variable Degrees of Constituency: Frequency Effects in the Alternation of pa vs. para in Spoken Discourse
(Cascadilla Proceedings Project, 2012) Díaz-Campos, Manuel; Fafulas, Stephen; Gradoville, Michael
This study examines how repetition in discourse determines variable degrees of constituency between the preposition para 'to, for' and surrounding words, thus predicting greater reduction of para in cases where the degree of constituency is tightest. Our study contributes to the overall understanding of the role of usage in explaining reductive phonetic processes in contemporary Spanish. The findings of this corpus-based study of Caracas Spanish reveal that the frequency of the collocation is a key factor in predicting reduction of the form para. Further, frequency of use is a better explanation for the reduction of para than more traditional variables such as phonetic context. This result provides evidence to support the hypothesis that frequent combinations are accessed as autonomous units, due to their tighter degree of constituency, as in the case of I don't know in American English (Bybee and Scheibman 1999).
Going Retro: An Analysis of the Interplay between Socioeconomic Class and Age in Caracas Spanish
(Cascadilla Proceedings Project, 2011) Díaz-Campos, Manuel; Fafulas, Stephen; Gradoville, Michael
Socioeconomic class, whose definition in sociolinguistic studies often incorporates a range of variables such as education level, income, occupation, and residential area, amongst others, has been shown to be of profound importance in the patterning of sociolinguistic variation (Ash 2004, Labov 1972, Trudgill 1974). However, although education has often been argued to play a large role in the social stratification of sociolinguistic variables in the sociolinguistic literature, the influence of generational change in access to education has never been fully explored. The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of socioeconomic class and age in the patterning of linguistic behavior in the Spanish spoken in Caracas, Venezuela. To this end we examine syllable-final /ɾ/ deletion, intervocalic /ɾ/ deletion in para 'for', and intervocalic /d/ deletion. The findings of this investigation reveal that upper and middle class speakers are less likely to use vernacular variants of all three variables than the lower socioeconomic speakers in the speech community. This behavior of the upper and middle class in contrast with the working class in Caracas Spanish can in part be explained as a consequence of changes in access to education and occupation. Furthermore, as access to education increases in younger generations, a sharp rise in the use of the normative variants is reflected in the lowest socioeconomic class.
An Analysis of Frequency as a Factor Contributing to the Diffusion of Variable Phenomena
(Cascadilla Proceedings Project, 2011) Díaz-Campos, Manuel; Gradoville, Michael
This investigation examines the behavior of intervocalic dental fricative deletion in past-participle contexts versus all other instances, as well as palato-alveolar fricative devoicing to determine the effect of frequency. The evidence found reveals that lexical frequency and type frequency are relevant to explain rates of deletion in the case of intervocalic dental fricative. High frequency tokens show more deletion than less frequent ones. Past participles ending in -ado reflect the influence of high type frequency. Regarding devoicing of the palato-alveolar fricative, words that occur more frequently in contexts favoring the devoicing also devoice at a higher rate in disfavoring contexts as the phenomenon is spreading from favoring contexts to disfavoring ones. Furthermore, in the disfavoring context, low frequency words devoice at a higher rate than high frequency words. The evidence presented contributes to the growing body of studies regarding frequency effects on Spanish phonological processes.
Perceptual Categorization of Dialect Variation in Spanish
(Cascadilla Proceedings Project, 2009) Díaz-Campos, Manuel; Navarro-Galisteo, Inmaculada
The present paper explores perceptual categorization of dialect variation in two groups of Spanish speakers from Latin America and Spain. We expand our knowledge of how listeners perceptually categorize different Hispanic dialects, as well as explore the role that linguistic experience and familiarity with a certain dialect play in this process. Twelve talkers, 6 males and 6 females, from six different Hispanic countries (Spain, Chile, Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Mexico) were selected from the oral corpus Catalogue of Spanish Sounds. The results revealed that contact (e.g., family and friends) has a positive effect on dialect recognition, while experience (e.g., travel) does not show a clear pattern for all groups. Regular contact with other dialects contributes to the encoding and retention in memory of information, which helps listeners to relate different speakers to where they are from.
The Value of Frequency as a Linguistic Factor: The Case of Two Dialectal Regions in the Spanish Speaking World
(Cascadilla Proceedings Project, 2008) Díaz-Campos, Manuel; Ruiz-Sánchez, Carmen
The goal of this paper is to demonstrate the value of frequency as an independent variable in explaining sociophonological variation across language varieties. Specifically, the authors study Andalusian and Venezuelan Spanish with the purpose of comparing syllable-final /r/ deletion in two dialects that are historically related, but that given a great geographical distance show a certain independence in the development of such a phenomenon. The most relevant difference between these two dialects was found in the social manifestation of this phenomenon, specifically in the rate of deletion across the different age and gender groups. In both Andalusian and Caracas Spanish, syllable-final /r/ fits the pattern of physiological sound change where spreading goes from more frequent items to less frequent ones, or, in Bybee's words (2002), a phonological process that is both lexical and phonologically gradual. The sociolinguistic evidence shows that deletion of /r/ shows more vitality in Andalusian Spanish because it is more common among the youngest generation and female speakers, while the results for the Caracas corpus show that the situation may have become stabilized in Caracas Spanish because older speakers and males favored /r/ deletion.
Variable Production of the Trill in Spontaneous Speech: Sociolinguistic Implications
(Cascadilla Proceedings Project, 2008) Diaz-Campos, Manuel
The present investigation provides both an acoustic and multivariate analysis that contributes to our understanding of the status of trill variation in Venezuelan Spanish. Specifically, an acoustic analysis of the data is performed in order to determine the variants of /r/ in this variety of Spanish. Furthermore, the role of age, gender, and socioeconomic background in the production of the trill is examined. The present paper demonstrates that the most common variants in this dialect are the approximant and the trill with two closures. A multivariate analysis based on 2,369 tokens shows that the factors of position within the word, number of syllables, grammatical category, age, gender and socioeconomic class all have an effect on the production of trill-like variants. Innovative variants are more likely to be found in younger speakers than in older ones; this may be considered evidence that trill variation is a change in progress.
The Effect of Style in Second Language Phonology: An Analysis of Segmental Acquisition in Study Abroad and Regular-Classroom Students
(Cascadilla Proceedings Project, 2006) Díaz-Campos, Manuel
The present investigation further examines the role of style in the acquisition of segmental phonology in two groups: study abroad vs. regular-classroom students. Specifically, an analysis of speech style (reading vs. conversation) and linguistic gain across time (pre-test and post-test) is presented. Forty-six students were interviewed for this study. Twenty-six students were studying Spanish abroad in Alicante, Spain, while twenty were taking a regular class in the United States. The findings of this investigation reveal that students are more likely to show target-like pronunciation in the conversational style for all segmental phenomena analyzed. A general pattern reveals that study abroad students tend to do better in the conversational style in the case of word-initial voiceless stops and syllable-final laterals. Intervocalic voiced fricatives were an exception to this general pattern. No gain was found in the case of the palatal nasals since high levels of accuracy were the norm in the pre-test.
Mainland Spanish Colonies and Creole Genesis: The Afro-Venezuelan Area Revisited
(Cascadilla Proceedings Project, 2005) Díaz-Campos, Manuel; Clements, J. Clancy
McWhorter (2000:38) challenges the validity of the limited access model for Creole genesis, noting that "the mainland Spanish colonies put in question a model which is crucial to current Creole genesis." His thesis is that in the Spanish mainland colonies the disproportion between the black and white populations was enough for the emergence of a Creole language in these areas. In this paper, we focus specifically on one colony, Venezuela. We present sociohistorical and linguistic evidence that indicate that blacks had as much or more access to Spanish in Venezuela as they did on islands such as Cuba. The Spanish Crown's monopolization of the Spanish slave trade kept the black-white ratio relatively low in all Spanish colonies until the end of the 18th century. This is a part of the puzzle that has been absent in the discussion of the missing Spanish Creoles.
The Emergence of Adult-like Command of Sociolinguistic Variables: A Study of Consonant Weakening in Spanish-Speaking Children
(Cascadilla Proceedings Project, 2005) Díaz-Campos, Manuel
This paper examines the acquisition of variable phonology in different speech styles with the purpose of establishing when the emergence of an adult-like command of sociolinguistic variables takes place in children's speech. Previous research has focused on describing general patterns of phonological acquisition, but little is known regarding the acquisition of variable phonology in Spanish. The findings of this research reveal that 54-71 month-old children are more likely to retain intervocalic /d/ in the controlled section of the interview. These results indicate that sociolinguistic variation in the sense of variation within the individual is emerging in this group of young speakers.
Book Review: Style in syntax: Investigating variation in Spanish pronoun subjects by Miguel A. Aijón Oliva & María José Serrano
(Folia Lingüística, 2015-11-10) Díaz-Campos, Manuel
Style in Syntax: Investigating variation in Spanish pronoun subjects is a book that examines the cognitive and discursive implications of syntactic variation in Spanish subject pronouns. Spanish subject pronouns have been studied in several varieties of Latin American Spanish (e.g., Argentina, México, Puerto Rico and Venezuela) as well as in Peninsular Spanish (see Erker and Guy 2012), with a focus on linguistic and/or extralinguistic constraints, on contact issues in the US, on Spanish Second Language Acquisition, and on frequencydriven cognitive effects. Readers of this volume, which is targeted to specialists in discourse analysis, language variation and change, and, most specifically, morphosyntactic variation, as well as graduate students in Hispanic linguistics, will find here an excellent source for the study of discourse analysis and its application to syntactic variation in Spanish.

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