Sociophonetic Variation in the Production and Perception of Obstruent Voicing in Buenos Aires Spanish by Marcos Rohena-Madrazo A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Linguistics New York University September, 2011 Lisa Davidson c Marcos Rohena-Madrazo All Rights Reserved, 2011 Dedication lunes, martes, miercoles:´ tres jueves, viernes, sabado:´ seis ¡y domingo siete! Para ti, Abuela. iii Acknowledgements First of all, I would like thank each and every one of the participants in this investigation, who selflessly donated their time, energy, and speech. Without their generosity, this dissertation would not have been possible. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my advisor, Lisa Davidson. Thank you for being such a patient guide, for always having your door open to discuss new ideas, for encouraging me to step back and question my assumptions, and for instilling in me a passion for experimental research. I am truly grateful for all you have taught me and am honored to have been your student. I would also like to thank the other members of my committee: Gregory Guy, for always bringing it back to the big picture; John Singler, for delivering the harsh (and well-deserved) critiques in a way that always made me smile; Susannah Levi, for her detailed comments that provided a new perspective; and Laura Colantoni, for believing in my work and offering words of encouragement at just the right time. Your input throughout this process has undoubtedly made me a better scholar. The inspiration for this project, I owe to Mercedes Paz. Thank you for your in- valuable support and for all the wonderful moments we shared. Likewise, I would like to express my heartfelt appreciation to the Paz and Fink families for their hospitality iv and boundless generosity. Thank you also to Santiago Kalinowski, Helgal´ıs Ramos, Giselle Roman,´ Lourdes Lavaque,´ Pedro Rodr´ıguez, Daniela Laur´ıa and all my friends in Buenos Aires, native and transplanted, who made me feel right at home. I am grateful to Sean Martin, Jason Shaw, Tuuli Morrill, Kevin Roon, Jocelyn Doxsey, Andrea Cattaneo, Stacy Dickerman, Carina Bauman, Vincent Chanethom, Lu- ciana Muniz, Kyle Major, Libby Coggshall, Sang Im Lee, Jon Brennan, Suzanne Dikker, Luiza Newlin-Lukowicz, Emily Nguyen, Cara Shousterman, Eytan Zweig, Lisa Levin- son, Tom Leu, Jen Nycz, Sonya Fix, Dan Lassiter, Txuss Mart´ın, Philipp Angermeyer, Laziz Nchare, Oana Savescu, Mike Taylor, Silvia Perpin˜an,´ Meghan Armstrong, Hilary Barnes, Eva Suarez,´ Ryan LaBrozzi, Ana de Prada, and the other fellow graduate stu- dents at NYU Lingustics and other departments for the hearty meals, numerous drinks, and fruitful discussions that we have shared throughout these years. Also, many thanks to the professors at NYU Linguistics for promoting such a collegial environment, in par- ticular, to Renee´ Blake and Louise Vasvari´ for helping me uncover academic interests I never knew I had. I am also grateful to Mar´ıa Vaquero, who taught at the University of Puerto Rico, for being the first to usher me into the endlessly fascinating field of Hispanic Linguistics. I owe many thanks to my research assistants, Linden Bairey, Autumn Gerami, Scott Lawrence, Sophia LeFraga, Joe Raite, Matt Sauter, Jess Tauber, and Molly Trisler, who helped me through the less glamorous aspects of phonetics research. Thanks to David Pe and my fellow Grad Halls Staff, Bryan Brazeau, Elaine Tang, Jeff Steen, Lauren Aument, Monica Putt, Olga Sanchez-Eltell,´ Shavanna Calder, Theo Mitchell, and Thomas Fai, for cheering me on and making my last year at NYU so memorable in such an unexpectedly delightful way. v I am especially grateful to Jeff Crumbliss, who was there every week to help me surpass the hurdles and celebrate the successes of the dissertation process (and of life in general!). I cannot imagine what it would have been like without your help. Thank you for making me learn so much about myself. I am very fortunate to have such a fantastically varied group of friends keeping me afloat. Many thanks to Juan Carlos Guzman,´ Omar Acevedo, Joel Maysonet, Marla Tor- rado, Yari Otero, Carmen Otero, Chetzil Penalverty,˜ and to all my friends from Puerto Rico, who have supported me on and off the island. In particular, a tidal wave of grat- itude goes out to Lorna Torrado for being the best pep-talker in the universe, from the first chapter to the defense. And Sara Ortiz, I will be thanking you many more times than just once a month. Many thanks to my NYC friends, Fu Chung, Andrew Solomon, Chris Mark, Emily McNeil, Jill Emmanuele, Dave Bowles, Josh Siegel, Vicky Cattani, and Pablo Ariel for keeping me from falling prey to the grad school vortex. Thanks to Tricia Irwin for showing me the LATEX ropes, without her help this dis- sertation would have never been written, literally. Thanks to Kara Becker for blazing trails and showing me that it can be done. Thanks to Maryam Bakht, whose quinces and company got me through my segmentation and much more. Amanda Dye’s G-chat banter, dependably full of football and Spanishness, made the late night work sessions much more enjoyable. Gracias y ¡hala! Special thanks to Javier Uriarte for being such a faithful friend, from across the block or across globe, through the NYU experience and beyond. We have overcome! If I am the onset, Danny Erker is the coda. Our fricative dork-out sessions have been, without a doubt, the most intellectually stimulating (and fun!) part of the dissertation process. I look forward to many more, my friend. vi I am particularly indebted to Miquel Simonet for teaching me so much about lin- guistics research at every level, from the most abstract theoretical questions to the most concrete scripting code. You seamlessly embody the role of friend, colleague, and men- tor; for this I am deeply grateful. One person has been a constant not just in my academic career but in my life ever since I started this roller coaster called graduate school: Amy Wong. There is no one in the world whose interests/obssessions overlap so perfectly with mine. Truly, a match made in foodie-linguistics heaven. Sharing with you offices, holidays, thoughts, theo- ries, mooncakes, guavacakes, and countless hours of conversation has been an immense pleasure. Thank you so very much for being my best friend throughout. Many thanks to my family: to Abuela Alicia for showering all of us with uncondi- tional love, to Abuelo Santos for always telling me ¡usted es de los buenos!, to Giovanna, Mar´ıa, and Cuqui for showing me that I can do it too, to Mar´ıa del Mar for always check- ing in, to titi Sunchi for her illuminating cheer, to An´ıbal for encouraging me by means of ¡termina!, to Ana Cecilia for always wanting to talk shop, and to Larisa for being the sister I never had. I am very fortunate to have all of you in my life. Finally, I would like to thank my parents Gloria Madrazo and Ricardo Rohena for inspiring and motivating me in the most of diverse ways. No one has been more influ- ential in my life than you. I am eternally grateful for your unwavering love and support. ¡Los quiero infinitamente! vii Abstract This dissertation presents an instrumental study of variation in fricative voicing in Buenos Aires Spanish (BAS), particularly with respect to the devoicing change of the postalve- olar fricative: /Z/>/S/. It proposes a novel way of determining the completion of this change by comparing the percentage voicing of the postalveolar fricative to that of /s/, thus providing a system-internal benchmark for voicelessness in a language without a fricative voicing contrast. The findings from the production study show that there is still much variation in the voicing of /Z/ that is both socially and phonetically conditioned. Although the change has reached completion only in the younger middle class group, all other social groups show evidence that the devoicing change is still progressing. Cross language discrimination experiments using Portuguese stimuli were conducted to explore the effects that socially conditioned variation and positionally defined allo- phonic variation in obstruent voicing may have on the delimitation of perceptual cate- gories used to discriminate non-native obstruent voicing contrasts. The results from the ABX task show that, instead of improving the discrimination of Portuguese /S/-/Z/, hav- ing socially differentiated variation in the native speech community actually hinders the discrimination of this contrast, regardless of the listener’s social background. Listen- ers, regardless of age and social class, do not seem to tap into the socially conditioned viii differential distribution of [S] and [Z] in BAS in order to discriminate the non-native contrast. The goodness rating task results show that listeners who maintain the voicing of /Z/ in their production give Portuguese /S/ significantly lower ratings than Portuguese /Z/. However, the converse is not true: listeners for whom the /Z/>/S/ change has been completed give similarly high ratings to both /Z/ and /S/. Rather than being determined by social differences, the evaluation of the variation (/S∼Z/) seems to be affected by the listener’s own production. The more innovative speakers in the devoicing change seem to have a more expansive postalveolar fricative perceptual category, whereas the conservative speakers’ category has a smaller range of acceptable realizations. ix Contents Dedication iii Acknowledgements iv Abstract viii List of Figures xv List of Tables xx List of Appendices xxiv 1 Introduction 1 1.0 Overview . 1 1.1 Background on ye´ısmo in Buenos Aires . 3 1.1.1 Historical development: J > Z > S ...............