Labialization of Word-Final Nasals in Yucatecan Spanish and Yucatec Maya: Language Contact, Prosodic Prominence Marking, and Local Identity

Journal of Language Contact

article

Melanie Uth¹ 

[1] Faculty of Arts, University of Potsdam

关键词: language contact;    nasals;    Yucatecan Spanish;    Yucatec Maya;   

DOI  :  10.1163/19552629-14030004

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Brill

【 摘 要 】

This paper provides a comparative analysis of word-final nasals in Yucatecan Spanish and Yucatec Maya based on speech data from Quintana Roo (Mexico). In Yucatecan Spanish, a nasal is often pronounced as [m] if placed at the end of a word (e.g., Yucatá[m] instead of Yucatá[n]). Since this phenomenon is widespread on the Yucatán Peninsula, but largely unknown in other Spanish-speaking regions, it is often linked to the influence of the indigenous language Yucatec Maya. Our Spanish dataset differs from our Yucatec Mayan one in that the labialization rate significantly increases with the length of the subsequent pause in the former, but not in the latter. Thus, even if the feature was originally transferred from Yucatec Maya to Spanish, it seems that it has taken on a life of its own in Yucatecan Spanish, determined by its function as a marker of prosodic prominence.

【 授权许可】

CC BY-NC