Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T20:12:25.517Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

American myths of linguistic assimilation: A sociolinguistic rebuttal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2020

Daniel Erker  and
Ricardo Otheguy
Daniel Erker*
Affiliation:
Boston University, USA
Ricardo Otheguy
Affiliation:
The Graduate Center, CUNY, USA
*
Address for correspondence: Daniel Erker Boston University Department of Linguistics 621 Commonwealth Avenue Boston, MA02215, USA[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study examines the behavior of 331 Spanish speakers, 269 immigrants to the United States and sixty-two native-born individuals, through questionnaires and sociolinguistic interviews. Results show that increased US life experience correlates with expanded use of English in both private and public domains of life. Additionally, greater use of English co-exists with maintenance of fine-grained patterns of structured linguistic variation in Spanish, such that US-born speakers demonstrate remarkable similarity to the immigrant generation in their usage of three variables: (i) subject pronoun presence vs. absence, (ii) grammatical subject position, and (iii) syllable-final /s/. The co-occurence of increased use of English, on one hand, and intergenerational structural continuity in variable linguistic behavior in Spanish, on the other, challenges two misconceptions about Spanish in the United States: that (a) Spanish-speaking immigrants and their US-born children are unwilling or unable to learn English, and (b) regular use of English entails attrition and/or failed acquisition of Spanish. Neither of these views finds empirical support in our data. (Spanish in the United States, comparative variationist linguistics, subject personal pronouns, grammatical subject position, syllable final /s/, bilingualism)

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 50 , Issue 2 , April 2021 , pp. 197 - 233
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Alba, Orlando (1990). Variación fonética y diversidad social en el español dominicano de Santiago. Santiago: Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra.Google Scholar
Anderson, Benedict (2006). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Bayley, Robert, & Pease-Alvarez, Lucinda (1997). Null pronoun variation in Mexican-descent children's narrative discourse. Language Variation and Change 9(3):349–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benmamoun, Elabbas; Montrul, Silvina; & Polinsky, Maria (2010). Prolegomena to heritage linguistics. Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, ms.Google Scholar
Bialystok, Ellen (1986). Factors in the growth of linguistic awareness. Child Development 57:498–510.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boersma, Paul, & Weenink, David (2019). Praat: Doing phonetics by computer. Online: http://www.praat.org.Google Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight L. (1954). Meaningful word order in Spanish. Boletín de Filología 8:45–56.Google Scholar
Bookhamer, Kevin (2013). The variable grammar of the Spanish subjunctive in second-generation bilinguals in New York City. New York: Graduate Center City University of New York dissertation.Google Scholar
Bourhis, Richard Y. (1983). Language attitudes and self-reports of French-English language usage in Quebec. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 4(2–3):163–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Esther, & Cacoullos, Rena Torres (2002). ¿Qué le vamoh aher? Taking the syllable out of Spanish /s/ reduction. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 8(3):17–31.Google Scholar
Cameron, Richard (1995). The scope and limits of switch reference as a constraint on pronominal subject expression. Hispanic Linguistics 6–7:1–27.Google Scholar
Canfield, D. Lincoln (1981). Spanish pronunciation in the Americas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Carvalho, Ana M.; Orozco, Rafael; & Shin, Naomi Lapidus (2015). Subject pronoun expression in Spanish: A cross-dialectal perspective. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Cepeda, Gladys (1995). Retention and deletion of word-final /s/ in Valdivian Spanish (Chile). Hispanic Linguistics 6–7:329–53.Google Scholar
Chavez, Leo (2008). The Latino threat: Constructing immigrants, citizens, and the nation. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Delbecque, Nicole (1988). On subject position in Spanish: A variable rule analysis of constraints at the level of the subject NP and of the VP. Literary and Linguistic Computing 3(3):185–201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Erker, Daniel (2012). An acoustically based sociolinguistic analysis of variable coda /s/ production in the Spanish of New York City. New York: New York University dissertation.Google Scholar
Erker, Daniel, & Bruso, Joanna (2017). Uh, bueno, em: Filled pauses as a site of contact-induced change in Boston Spanish. Language Variation and Change 29(2):205–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Erker, Daniel; Ho-Fernández, Eduardo; Otheguy, Ricardo; & Shin, Naomi Lapidus (2017). Continuity and change in Spanish among Cubans in New York: A study of placement of subjects of finite verbs. In Cuza, Alejandro (ed.), Cuban Spanish dialectology: Variation, contact and change, 63–82. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
File-Muriel, Richard J. (2009). The role of lexical frequency in the weakening of syllable-final lexical /s/ in the Spanish of Barranquilla, Colombia. Hispania 92:348–60.Google Scholar
Fishman, Joshua A. (1964). Language maintenance and language shift as a field of inquiry: A definition of the field and suggestions for its further development. Linguistics 2(9):32–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fishman, Joshua A. (2003). Who speaks what language to whom and when? In Li, Wei (ed.), The bilingualism reader, 95–111. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Flores-Ferrán, Nydia (2004). Spanish subject personal pronoun use in New York City Puerto Ricans: Can we rest the case of English contact? Language Variation and Change 16(1):49–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fontanella de Weinberg, María Beatriz (1974). Aspectos sociolingüísticos del uso de -s en el español bonaerense. Orbis 23:85–98.Google Scholar
Gynan, Shaw N. (1997). Hispanic immigration and Spanish maintenance as indirect measures of ethnicity: Reality and perceptions. Ethnic Studies Review 20:41–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huntington, Samuel P. (2004). The Hispanic challenge. Foreign Policy March/April:30–45.Google Scholar
Hurtado, Aída, & Vega, Luis A. (2004). Shift happens: Spanish and English transmission between parents and their children. Journal of Social Issues 60(1):137–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Daniel Ezra (2009). Getting off the GoldVarb standard: Introducing Rbrul for mixed-effects variable rule analysis. Language and Linguistics Compass 3(1):359–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krogstad, Jens Manuel; Stepler, Renee; & Lopez, Mark Hugo (2015). English proficiency on the rise among Latinos: U.S. born driving language changes. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center.Google Scholar
Labov, William (1972). Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Lipski, John M. (1994). Latin American Spanish. New York: Longman Linguistics Library.Google Scholar
Ma, Roxana, & Herasimchuk, Eleanor (1971). The linguistic dimensions of a bilingual neighborhood. In Joshua Fishman (ed.), Bilingualism in the barrio, 349–464. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
MacIntyre, Peter D.; Noels, Kimberly A.; & Clément, Richard (1997). Biases in self-ratings of second language proficiency: The role of language anxiety. Language Learning 47(2):265–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marian, Viorica; Blumenfeld, Henrike K.; & Kaushanskaya, Margarita (2007). The language experience and proficiency questionnaire (LEAP-Q): Assessing language profiles in bilinguals and multilinguals. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 50:940–67.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Martin-Jones, Marilyn (1991). Sociolinguistic surveys as a source of evidence in the study of bilingualism: A critical assessment of survey work conducted among linguistic minorities in three British cities. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 90(1):37–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayoral Hernández, Roberto (2014). Subject position in Spanish: A study of factor interactions with prototypical verbs. In Enrique-Arias, Andrés, Gutiérrez, Manuel J., Landa, Alazne, & Ocampo, Francisco (eds.), Perspectives in the study of Spanish language variation: Papers in honor of Carmen Silva-Corvalán, 112–31. Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela.Google Scholar
Menken, Kate, & Kleyn, Tatyana (2010). The long-term impact of subtractive schooling in the educational experiences of secondary English language learners. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 13(4):399–417.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montrul, Silvina (2008). Incomplete acquisition in Spanish heritage speakers: Chronological age or interfaces vulnerability? In Harvey Chan, Heather Jacob, & Enkeleida Kapia (eds.), Proceedings of the 32nd annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, 299–310. Somerville: Cascadilla.Google Scholar
Montrul, Silvina (2009). Knowledge of tense-aspect and mood in Spanish heritage speakers. International Journal of Bilingualism 13(2):239–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montrul, Silvina (2013). Bilingualism and the heritage language speaker. In Bathia, Tej K. & Ritchie, William C. (eds.), The handbook of bilingualism and multilingualism, 168–89. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Ocampo, Francisco A. (2009). El órden de palabras en el español hablado. La construcción sujeto verbo objeto directo. In Montserrat, Veyrat Rigat & Alegre, Enrique Serra (eds.), La lingüística como reto epistemológico y como acción social: Estudios dedicados al profesor Ángel López García, 501–11. Madrid: Arco/Libros.Google Scholar
Otheguy, Ricardo (2016). The linguistic competence of second-generation bilinguals: A critique of incomplete acquisition. In Tortora, Christina, den Dikken, Marcel, Montoya, Ignacio, & O'Neill, Teresa (eds.), Romance linguistics 2013, 301–20. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Otheguy, Ricardo, & Zentella, Ana Celia (2012). Spanish in New York: Language contact, dialectal leveling, and structural continuity. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poplack, Shana (1981). Mortal phonemes as plural morphemes. In Sankoff, David & Cedergren, Henrietta (eds.), Variation omnibus, 59–71. Edmonton: Linguistic Research.Google Scholar
Poplack, Shana, & Levey, Stephen (2010). Contact-induced grammatical change: A cautionary tale. In Auer, Peter & Schmidt, Jürgen Erich (eds.), Language and space: An international handbook of linguistic variation, vol. 1: Theories and methods, 391–419. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Poplack, Shana; Walker, James A.; & Malcolmson, Rebecca (2006). An English like no other: Language contact and change in Quebec. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique 51(2–3):185–213.Google Scholar
Rumbaut, Rubén G.; Massey, Douglas S.; & Bean, Frank D. (2006). Linguistic life expectancies: Immigrant language retention in Southern California. Population and Development Review 32(3):447–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sankoff, Gillian (2002). Linguistic outcomes of language contact. In Chambers, Jack, Trudgill, Peter, & Schilling-Estes, Natalie (eds.), The handbook of language variation and change, 638–68. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Shameem, Nikhat (1998). Validating self-reported language proficiency by testing performance in an immigrant community: The Wellington Indo-Fijians. Language Testing 15(1):86–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silva-Corvalán, Carmen (1982). Subject expression and placement in Mexican-American Spanish. In Amastae, Jon & Olivares, Lucía Elías (eds.), Spanish in the United States: Sociolinguistic aspects, 93–120. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Silva-Corvalán, Carmen (2014). Bilingual language acquisition: Spanish and English in the first six years. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silva-Corvalán, Carmen (2018). Bilingual acquisition: Difference or incompleteness? In Shin, Naomi Lapidus & Erker, Daniel (eds.), Questioning theoretical primitives in linguistic inquiry, 245–68. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Torres Cacoullos, Rena, & Travis, Catherine E. (2011). Testing convergence via code-switching: Priming and the structure of variable subject expression. International Journal of Bilingualism 15(3):241–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Torres Cacoullos, Rena, & Travis, Catherine E. (2018). Bilingualism in the community: Code-switching and grammars in contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Travis, Catherine E. (2007). Genre effects on subject expression in Spanish: Priming in narrative and conversation. Language Variation and Change 19(2):101–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Veltman, Calvin J. (1983). Language shift in the United States. Berlin: Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weinreich, Uriel; Labov, William; & Herzog, Marvin (1968). Empirical foundations for a theory of language change. In Lehmann, Winfred & Malkiel, Yakov (eds.), Directions for historical linguistics, 95–188. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Zapata, Gabriela C; Sánchez, Liliana; & Toribio, Almeida Jacqueline (2005). Contact and contracting Spanish. International Journal of Bilingualism 9(3–4):377–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar