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LISTENER AND SPEAKER EFFECTS ON DOMINANT LANGUAGE PERCEPTION AND LANGUAGE RATINGS AMONG HERITAGE SPEAKERS IN NEW MEXICO By VALERIE J. TRUJILLO A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2013 1 © 2013 Valerie J. Trujillo 2 To Don, Michael, and Lillian 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my dissertation committee chair, Dr. Gillian Lord for her direction and guidance in this study, as well as for serving as my wonderful, thoughtful mentor for the past few years. I would also like to thank the members of my dissertation committee, past and present, for their input and direction: Dr. Jason Rothman, Dr. Jessi Aaron, Dr. Ana de Prada Pérez, Dr. Caroline Wiltshire, and Dr. Diana Boxer. In addition, I would like to express my gratitude to the University of Florida Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies for granting me the 2011 Doctoral Student Summer Scholarship Award and in so doing, ensuring that I recruited a great number of quality participants. I am indebted to my former professors who have influenced me greatly in my graduate work: Dr. María Dolores Gonzales, Dr. Enrique Lamadrid, and Dr. Tey Diana Rebolledo. I wish to acknowledge my grandmother, Adelecia Gallegos, without whom, through a twist of fate, I would have never entered the field of academia and research. I would also like to thank my family for their help and support; especially my parents, Joe and Juliana, for helping me with my data entry for this and many other projects, and my sister Lisa for helping me meet potential participants for this and other studies. I would like to thank my wonderful children, Michael and Lillian, for the sacrifices they have made for me in their few years and for inspiring me each and every day. Finally, but most importantly, I would like to thank my amazing husband Don for his support and encouragement, and for pushing me, pulling me, and carrying me towards the finish line when necessary; and for teaching me, once and for all, how to eat an elephant sandwich. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. 4 LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................ 8 LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................... 9 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ........................................................................................... 10 ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................... 11 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 13 General Overview ................................................................................................... 13 The Research Problem ........................................................................................... 15 Motivation of the Study ..................................................................................... 22 Significance of the Study .................................................................................. 24 Organization ........................................................................................................... 29 2 BACKGROUND INFORMATION AND PRIOR RESEARCH .................................. 32 The Linguistic Situation in New Mexico................................................................... 32 Historical Background ...................................................................................... 32 Language Policies that Shaped NMS ............................................................... 35 Language Attitudes .......................................................................................... 37 Characteristics of NMS ..................................................................................... 42 Research on Native Language Perception ............................................................. 44 Heritage Speakers .................................................................................................. 58 Heritage Language Phonology ......................................................................... 61 Heritage Speakers and Gender Agreement ..................................................... 64 Summary ................................................................................................................ 68 3 METHODS .............................................................................................................. 71 Research Questions and Hypotheses..................................................................... 71 Research Design .................................................................................................... 76 Participants ....................................................................................................... 76 Language background questionnaire ......................................................... 80 Independent measure of proficiency .......................................................... 81 Tasks and Materials ......................................................................................... 83 Audio sample ............................................................................................. 83 Rating sheet ............................................................................................... 93 Language attitudes assessment ................................................................ 96 5 Data Analysis ................................................................................................... 98 Factors in assessing language dominance and accent ratings .................. 98 Correlation between region-of-origin perception and accent ratings ........ 101 Correlation between accent rating and language attitudes ...................... 102 Summary .............................................................................................................. 103 4 RESULTS ............................................................................................................. 104 Quantitative Results .............................................................................................. 104 Factors Involved in Language Dominance Identification ................................ 104 Factors Involved in Assigning Language Ratings ........................................... 115 Language Ratings and Perceived Variety of Spanish .................................... 124 Language Ratings and Language Attitudes Towards NMS ............................ 132 Qualitative Results ................................................................................................ 143 Rating Sheet ................................................................................................... 143 Language Attitudes Assessment .................................................................... 155 Summary .............................................................................................................. 160 5 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS .................................................................... 164 Speaker Effects of Linking and Gender Agreement .............................................. 164 Research Question 1 ...................................................................................... 164 Research Question 2 ...................................................................................... 166 Qualitative Analysis ........................................................................................ 168 Implications .................................................................................................... 169 Listener Effects of Language Attitudes and Perceived Region of Origin ............... 169 Research Question 3 ...................................................................................... 169 Research Question 4 ...................................................................................... 171 Qualitative Analysis ........................................................................................ 172 Implications .................................................................................................... 175 Limitations and Directions for Future Research .................................................... 176 Summary .............................................................................................................. 178 APPENDIX A LANGUAGE BACKGROUND QUESTIONNAIRE ................................................. 182 B ELICITATION TASK ............................................................................................. 185 C RATING SHEET ................................................................................................... 188 D LANGUAGE ATTITUDES ASSESSMENT ............................................................ 189 E PARAMETER ESTIMATES TABLES FROM SPSS FOR MULTINOMIAL LOGISTIC MODEL (RQ1) ..................................................................................... 191 F RATING SHEET ANSWERS ................................................................................ 194 6 G COMMENTS PROVIDED ON LANGUAGE ATTITUDES ASSESSMENT ............ 200 LIST OF REFERENCES ............................................................................................