UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Sociophonetically-based phonology: An Optimality Theoretic account of /s/ lenition in Salvadoran Spanish Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4277m7v9 Author Brogan, Franny Diane Publication Date 2018 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Sociophonetically-based phonology: An Optimality Theoretic account of /s/ lenition in Salvadoran Spanish A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Hispanic Languages and Literatures by Franny Diane Brogan 2018 © Copyright by Franny Diane Brogan 2018 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Sociophonetically-based phonology: An Optimality Theoretic account of /s/ lenition in Salvadoran Spanish by Franny Diane Brogan Doctor of Philosophy in Hispanic Languages and Literatures University of California, Los Angeles, 2018 Professor Antonio C. Quícoli, Co-Chair Professor Norma Mendoza-Denton, Co-Chair This dissertation examines onset and coda /s/ lenition in the Spanish of El Salvador, a dialect in which this phenomenon is particularly advanced. That is, Salvadoran /s/ weakening is not only pervasive in both syllabic positions but manifests as allophones beyond the traditional tripartite conception. In addition to providing the first sociophonetic account of /s/ in El Salvador, this dissertation aims to address another gap in the literature: while /s/ weakening is the most- studied phonological variable in the history of the field, many accounts fail to make connections between observed patterns and important aspects of phonological theory. In my analysis I show that these connections, which are highly reliant on phonetic principles, are crucial to a more complete understanding of the phenomenon at hand. ii Speakers for this study are 72 Salvadorans who participated in sociolinguistic interviews in El Salvador in 2015. I segmented and acoustically analyzed 200 occurrences of phonological /s/ per participant (n = 14,400 tokens) in Praat (Boersma & Weenink, 2016), and each token was subsequently coded for linguistic and extralinguistic variables including allophone, which was categorized as follows: [s]: a voiceless strident fricative; [z]: a voiced strident fricative; [sθ]: a voiceless approximant resulting from gestural undershoot; [h]: a voiceless glottal fricative; [ɦ] a voiced glottal fricative; and [∅]: deletion of the segment in its entirety. Using these 14,400 tokens, this dissertation develops a phonetically-based phonological analysis of /s/ lenition within Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky, 1993/2004) in which the need to reduce articulatory effort cost (Markedness) while preserving important perceptual distinctions (Faithfulness) drives variation. I model the Salvadoran data via a maximum entropy algorithm, which assigns weights to OT-style constraints instead of strictly ranking them. Maximum entropy not only allows for variation but maximizes it, assigning probabilities to all possible output candidates according to shares of total harmony. Markedness constraints in the grammar are styled following Kirchner (1998, 2004) and incentivize the weakening of difficult articulatory gestures in phonological environments that exacerbate their biomechanical effort cost. I find, for example, that /s/ is most likely to lenite when its flanking segments are more open (such as two vowels that are [-high]) or disagree with it in coronality, voicing, or both. I find that all five non-deleted variants can be modeled according to the interaction between their composite articulatory gestures and the phonological contexts in which they occur. Faithfulness constraints in the grammar, on the other hand, drive the preservation of perceptual cues in more salient prosodic positions. I find that the impetus to preserve both features [+strident] and [-voice] is highest in the strongest prosodic positions iii (phrase-initially > word-initially > syllable-initially) and decreases gradually in turn with position strength. Furthermore, I find that these differences are modulated by syllable stress, with tonic syllables blocking lenition at higher rates than atonic syllables. With respect to demographic factors, this dissertation shows that while language-internal factors establish basic constraints in the grammar, the relative importance of preserving perceptual cues varies for different social groups; this is implemented in the grammar by scaling Faithfulness constraint weights up or down. I find that speakers from San Miguel, rural speakers, older Salvadorans, women, and those with lower levels of education prioritize Faithfulness (i.e., the preservation of important perceptual cues) less than their respective counterparts, resulting in higher rates of effort-based lenition. Furthermore, I find that speakers from these groups not only lenite /s/ at higher rates but are also more likely to both produce particularly nonstandard variants such as [sθ] and lenite /s/ more often and more extremely in more salient prosodic positions. In sum, this dissertation contributes valuable data about a pervasive phenomenon in an understudied dialect of Spanish, including an in-depth exploration of the social factors that condition it. More broadly, this study presents a nuanced approach to Spanish /s/ lenition that is able to account for onset and coda /s/ weakening within a single analysis by situating the phenomenon within well-established theories of phonetically-based phonology. iv The dissertation of Franny Diane Brogan is approved. Kie Ross Zuraw Ji Young Kim Antonio C. Quícoli, Committee Co-Chair Norma Mendoza-Denton, Committee Co-Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2018 v Dedication I would like to dedicate this dissertation to the Salvadorans who generously shared their time, experiences, and /s/s with me. I was welcomed into churches, community centers, schools, and even homes with a warmth and curiosity I never could have anticipated. This ambitious dissertation would not have been possible without the kindness my 72 participants, not to mention countless others who helped bring my fieldwork dreams to fruition. I would like to especially thank Payton Phillips Quintanilla, Alvaro Eduardo Quintanilla, Alfaro Alfredo Quintanilla, Aída Guadalupe Gómez de Quintanilla, Aída Gabriela Quintanilla, Christina Quintanilla, and Eduardo Chavez for giving me the best home away from home and making sure I was safe and happy during my time in El Salvador. I would also like to thank the various professors at UCLA who provided me with exemplary training and unwavering support over the past six years: the late Dr. Claudia Parodi, my original adviser, whose contagious fascination with Salvadoran Spanish planted the seed that blossomed into this dissertation; my committee co-chairs, Drs. Carlos Quícoli and Norma Mendoza-Denton, who continually challenged me to think outside the box; to Dr. Ji Young Kim, who joined my committee once the project was well underway and still provided me with invaluable support and feedback; and Dr. Kie Zuraw, who spent countless hours with me in her office helping to iron out the details of an analysis that was ambitious to say the least. I’m also eternally grateful to the UCLA Linguistics Department faculty, who welcomed me into their classes with open arms and so generously shared their expertise with me. Thank you also to Statistical Consulting Group (special shout-out to Andy, who is an expert in all things R) for providing the kind of specialized support I would expect from a world-class university like UCLA. I (literally) couldn’t have done it without you! vi Finally, I am so incredibly thankful to my family and friends for being the best cheerleaders and support systems I every could have asked for. To Mariška Bolyanatz: thank you for helping me fall in love with /s/, and for being my favorite work buddy/gal pal/co-author/superwoman. To my dear friends from Piedmont, Davis, Los Angeles, and beyond: thank you for making me feel so capable each and every day. To my parents, Jeff and Paula Brogan: thank you for raising me to be intellectually curious, for instilling in me a work ethic that has never let me down, and for being my best friends. I’ve made it this far because of you! And finally, to Charlie: thank you for being my partner, my biggest cheerleader, and for never letting me forget how proud of me you are, even when I’m being totally insufferable. If we can survive this dissertation, we can survive anything! vii Table of Contents Chapter 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................ 1 Chapter 2. Spanish /s/ lenition ................................................................................................ 11 2.1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 11 2.2 A brief history of Spanish /s/............................................................................................ 12 2.3 Variation in Spanish /s/ lenition ....................................................................................... 17 2.3.1 Dialectal variation ..................................................................................................... 18 2.3.1.1 /s/ lenition in Spain ............................................................................................ 18 2.3.1.2 /s/ lenition in