Variety in Language Spring 2011

1. Variety in LanguageSpring 2011 Walt Wolfram and Erin Callahan-Price Latino English in the Mid-Atlantic South

2. MYTH REALITY Hispanic English Assumptions and Dialect Reality Latino varieties of English are simply derived from imperfect learning and/or Spanish language transfer Latino varieties of English have complex sociolinguistic patterning and are independent of Spanish and other English varieties

3. MYTH REALITY Hispanic English Assumptions and Dialect Reality: YOUR TURN! ? ?

4. The Great Language Shift in North Carolina The Demographic Shift • Almost 400% increase in Latino Population in North Carolina since 1990, highest percentage of monolinguals in U.S. • Speakers in process of generational shift from Spanish-language dominance • Latino/a English is in its incipient stage of ethnolinguistic development in the Mid-Atlantic South vis-à-vis other regions (e.g. Southwest)

5. Latino Population Density 1990-2000

6. Latino Population Growth 1990-2000 1995-2004: 38.2% NC Latinos came from another country, 40.2 % another U.S. jurisdiction 21.6 % born in NC (Kasarda and Johnson 2006)

7. Attributes of the Great Language Shift The Local Context • Urban and rural, small-town populations become home to emerging ethnic communities • Local and non-local models of language learning

8. Attributes of the Great Language Shift The Sociopolitical Challenge • Language as a proxy for broader political and cultural concerns—the “Spanish-as-threat” ideology (Wolford and Carter 2008) • The English-Only Movement (1987) wakes up in North Carolina • The symbolic, attitudinal effect of dialect accommodation, transfer, and substrate

9. The Regional Dialect Context

10. Some Research Questions • What are the linguistic and social processes involved in the emergence of new ethnic varieties of language? • Is an emerging variety of Latino/a English developing from persistent substrate influence from Spanish-transfer or fossilized interlanguage features? • Do Latino speakers accommodate the local dialect characteristics of their cohort English-speaking communities, and if so, which cohort community? Why?

11. Research Questions: Emerging Varieties in North Carolina • Who are the primary models of English for the acquisition of English? • How does the emerging variety of Latino/a English compare with established varieties in other regional contexts? • What linguistic and social principles account for the emergence of a new ethnic variety?

12. Types of Linguistic Variables • Transfer variables: • Light [l] lateral • monophthongal vowels [bet]’bait’ [bot] ‘boat’ • More syllable-like timed rhythm), intonation • Dialect Accommodation Variables • Southern diphthong ungliding ([tam] ‘time’ • (Quantified) measure noun unmarking (five mile_) • Habitual be (my ears be itching) • Selected lexical items (e.g. y’all, address hey) • Interlanguage/Interdialectal • tense marking • negation

13. Types of Social Variables • Demographic: • Length of Residency (LOR) • Birthplace • Proportional ethnic density • Social Interactional • Social networks, peer groups • Institutional affiliations • Subcultural affiliation • Ideological • Cultural orientation • Language attitudes • Values, aspirations

14. Contrasting Sites Hickory, NC (Kohn 2007a) • Hickory (Pop. 39,476) A town located 1.5 hours north from Charlotte, NC near the Appalachian mountains (77.2% Anglo, 14.1% African American, 7.7% Latino)

15. Contrasting Sites Durham, NC (Callahan 2007) Durham (Pop. 209,009) located 45 min. (depending on traffic) W. of Raleigh (45.51% Anglo, 43.81% African American, 8.56% Latino)

16. Contrasting Sites Pearsall, TX (Callahan 2007, Wolford & Carter 2007) Pearsall located two hours from the Mexican border, heavily Latino, four generations of Spanish-speaking residents (84.2% Latino, 14.8% Anglo, 0.3% African American, 0.7% other)

18. Pearsall

19. On the Significance of Accommodating Local Dialect Nine-year-old, Born in Hickory, NC • I’m just doin’ it here. It’s “Girls on the Run.” Last time we had a race, but I didn’t want to go. It was too chilly. And--but this time—it’s gonna be this Saturday—I’m gonnago. It’s, like, you do runs for fivemile_, or, one day I did a run for five miles and it’s real hard. (from Kohn 2007)

20. Overall vowel systems and ethnolinguistic alignment 14 year-old male (b. 1992), born in Mexico, 7 yrs LOR; heavy gang involvement Durham, North Carolina (From Kohn 2007b) An’ nen, we came back the same night, I went outside--I was driving, I-uh, I was driving a car on the freeway, like, sssss, I went, like, past three cops, I was at like 80 (uh huh) speeding a whole lot, I think it was 60 or 70 mile, the speed limit and I was goin’ to 85, 90 FW: Wow, did you –did you get caught? I’s about to get caught from a cop, he was like, he was following me

21. Overall vowel systems and ethnolinguistic alignment (From Kohn 2007b) 16-year old male, born in Mexico, LOR 8 yrs. Hickory, NC But..it’s just like, the school man’s try-, uh, trying to keep the black man down, just like that, but it’s like, being stupid; he’s got, like, white friends and stuff. Phonetic notes: the lowered /æ/ creates an “Anglo” effect, while the monophthongized /i/ and /e/ sound “Latino”

22. Overall vowel systems and ethnolinguistic perceptions (From Kohn 2007b) 14-year (b. 1992) old male born in LA. Hickory, NC Not like in the streets, like that, no ‘cause I don’t want to get caught with the police, I don’t wanna get caught like that but I want a car like, like, for other stuff, yeah. Phonetic notes: differentiates prenasal /æ/ from /æ/, fronted realizations of back vowels. /e/ and /o/ are not monophthongal. Weakened /ai/ glides make him sound“Southern”

23. The Relevance of Community Context Speaker’s neighborhood, is above 57% African American While the last two speakers live in the same town as, the neighborhood of the last speaker lives in a section of town that is largely African American, increasing potential accommodation to African American English.

24. The Varied Influence of Southern /ai/ Ungliding Variation in glide trajectory: Siler City (from Wolfram, Carter, and Moriello 2004)

25. The Varied Influence of Southern /ai/ Ungliding Variation of /ai/ in lexical items

26. Nucleus-Glide Distribution(e.g. English time; Spanish bailar)

27. The Subtle Influence of Southern English Mean length of glide (Ms) for different varieties

28. The Subtle Influence of Southern English Percentage of glide to vowel

29. On the accommodating status of ungliding • Accommodation of ungliding and glide-to-nucleus ratio can be continuous and intermediate-it is not a discrete accommodation • The incipient stages of ungliding accommodation can be highly variable and show lexical sensitivity • The social and personal context of speakers, including speaker agency and symbolic affiliation, needs to be considered in understanding the accommodation of Southern ungliding

30. Contrastive Productions of the long i /ai/ Production • 11-year-old girl, lifetime resident of Piedmont (Durham/Siler City), parents from Mexico • one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten • 13-year old brother, lifetime resident of Piedmont (Durham/Siler City) • one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten

31. Southern Lexical Infusion in Emerging Latino English • Early adoption of plural y’all e.g. Can I help y’all • Regional address form hey e.g. we sayheyto each other • quotativebe like e.g. She’s like, “Where we goin’

32. Phonological andGrammatical Accommodation • Social choice and affiliation in /ai/ accommodation • Social significance and habitual be Social significance and habitual be e.g. They be talking • She beasking me that and I be like (clicks), “She talked about what he talked about.”

33. The Quotative Frame(Kohn 2007, Kohn & Askin 2009) The syntactic bracketing of directly reported speech, thought, emotions, mimetic expressions, response calls, etc. e.g. My brother says, “You’re so scare-dy cat you should get out” e.g. Yeah, and I was like, “what are you talking about?” and she’s like “I know the apple laptop cost like nine hundred dollars so don’t tell me this is-” andI was like, “You know how much that purse cost?” andshe’s like, “What? Like thirty?” And I was like, “Read the label” And she’s like… (Hickory female LOR category 3 uses 93 quotatives, 89 of which are be like)

34. Factoids about quotative be like • Rapidly acquired by ESL learners (Ferrara and Bell 1995) • Rapidly diffused in world Englishes (Tagliamonte and Hudson 1999, Tagliamonte and D’Arcy 2004, Buchstaller 2007) • Sociolinguistically meaningful and symbolic in both incipient and relatively stable varieties of English

35. Constraints on quotative be like • LOR: Be like favored by those with longer residencies, while sayis favored by shorter residencies • Be like favored when the subject is in the 1st person, 2nd person or is “it” • Teens favor be like and it is often used to quote thought • Community site makes a difference; for example, Durham shows more diversity and more ‘invariant be like;Latinos with stronger African American affiliation (from Kohn 2007)

36. Quotative Comparison:Hickory vs. Durham (From Kohn & Askin 2009)

37. Comparison of Habitual be and Copula Absence for Quotative (From Kohn & Askin 2009)

38. On the accommodating quotatives • Quotatives show relatively early accommodation, in keeping with early lexical adoption • The incipient stages of quotative accommodation are not unilateral; it shows structural reconfiguration in terms of quotative options • The social and local regional and ethnic context of the contact situation make a difference, as do LOR and speaker affiliation

39. Illustrative Example 1 Nine-year-old girl, born and raised in Siler City Past tense unmarking • The little mermaid when, um, she rescue a boy. And then they, they-she, um, helphim, then she start singing to him. Then um, cause the boat they were on, they-it startedon fire and it go underwater and he couldn’tbreathe underwater so she took him over there, and her daddy saidto them, ‘Rescue humans or nothing.’ And she don—and then a bird came and he said, ‘He’s dead.’ Then, um, his grandpa cameand he wake up the boy and he was, uh, he said a girl was singing. Then she turninto a human.

40. Illustrative Example 2 Nine-year-old girl, LOR two years • Like the other day I went to WaltMar and she was there, and we say hey to each other, and we wantedto spend the night one time at my house but she couldn’t cause she *haded to go with her family. They weregonna go somewhere. But I don’t when she’s (?)gonna spend the night with me. One time I spendthe night at her house. Oh, it was, um, a sleepover. Wehadall kinds of friends we inviteall of her friends, I invitemines so she invite hers and we had a sleepover. Whoever—whoever, um, sleeps, whoever wake up late, they were the ones who gotta, who gotta, um cook for them and clean up the room, and paint their face. So, I know I wake up early. I always wake up at five o’clock. So I *didn’t had to clean the room. I *didn’teven had to go in back.

41. Past tense marking in English /t/ or /d/ following non-alveolar stops: /mIst/ /laind/ English past tense morphology /Id/ following alveolar stops: /gritId/ • Irregular Forms: • Suppletives (gowent) • Internal Vowel Change (runran) • IVC + suffix (keep  kept) • Replacive final C: (have had)

42. Complexity and Accountability in Linguistic Variables: Past Tense Unmarking • Linguistic Constraints on Usage: • Irregular vs. regular • E.g. go/went vs. pass/passed • Long for ([Id]) vs. past tense cluster • E.g. started vs. passed • Aspect (imperfect past vs. simple past) • E.g. I drove to work all the time (imperfect) vs. I drove to workyesterday (particular occasion, simple past) • Social Constraints • Length of residency, community • Language proficiency • Generational status • Social networks, interactional dynamics

43. Unmarked Tense: Durham The Durham Data (Callahan 200 (From Callahan 2007)

44. Unmarked Tense: Pearsall The Pearsall Data (Callahan 2007)

45. A significant aspectual marking The strongest factor (favoring .894’ X2 per cell= .672) favoring the unmarked tense is the imperfectivity of the verb, thus showing an aspectual restructuring effect in the use of past unmarking in Latino English interlanguage. (From Callahan 2007)

46. On the status of tense unmarking • Some dimensions of variation in tense unmarking seem related to general SLA and interlanguage strategies; e.g. irregular verbs, long forms, etc. (Wolfram 1985; Wolfram & Hatfield (1986) • Some dimensions of cluster reduction, including bimorphemic verbs, may become a stabilized part of the emerging ethnic variety of Latino/a English • Reconfiguration of tense unmarking may include the transfer of or innovation of an aspectual marking dimension

47. On Persistent Substrate Influence: Syllable Timing • Measurement of Syllable Rhythm Duration (in ms) of adjacent syllable (σ) nuclei measured and compared using the PVI (Low and Grabe 1995) Pairwise Variability Index (PVI) • (PVI) = |σ1 – σ 2| / mean of σ1 & σ 2 • High PVI score = more stress-timed • Low PVI score = more syllable-timed (From Thomas and Carter 2006)

48. Persistent Substrate?: Syllable Timing PVI Score (lower is more syllabic-timed rhythm) (Adapted from Carter 2007)

49. Converging Timing in Spanish and Latino English: The Case of Pearsall (from Wolford and Carter 2007)

50. 1st speaker: 29 year-old female, middle- class high school teacher. Post-grad. education, from the north of Mexico 2nd speaker: what do you think? Syllable Timing: Social class matters? PVI Score (lower is more syllabic-timed rhythm) (Callahan 2007)