Sociolinguistic Approaches to Sibilant Variation in Spanish

Eva Núñez is Professor of Spanish Linguistics at Portland State University, USA.

Social processes and the nature of language variation have driven sibilant variation across the Spanish-speaking world. This book explores the current state of Spanish sibilants and their dialectal variations.

PART I. Spain 1. An overview of the sibilant merger and its development in Spanish 2. Sibilants in Western Andalusian Spanish: the lack of a Sevillian norm in the Jerezano speech community 3. Intervocalic /s/-voicing in Spanish in contact with Catalan PART II. United States 4. Describing and analyzing variability in Spanish /s/: a case study of Caribbeans in Boston and New York City 5. Variable realization of final /s/ in Miami Cuban Spanish: the reversal of diachronic language change 6. Variable /s/-voicing by heritage Spanish speakers in the United States PART III. Central and South America 7. /s/ weakening in Nicaragua 8. A sociophonetic approach to /s/-realization in the Colombian Spanish of Barranquilla 9. Sibilants in Ecuadoran Spanis 10. Syllable-final /s/-variation in an Uruguayan Spanish-Portuguese contact variety 11. Variable voicing in Argentine Spanish /¿/