SPANISH DIALECT CLASSIFICATIONS

The aim of this chapter is to show evidence of the formation of an intermediate regional variety between, on the one hand, central and standard Castilian Spanish and, on the other, southern innovative dialects. This new variety, which has gradually been emerging in the urban centres of east Andalusia, is a sort of koine melting innovative non-standard phonological traits with standard features. This paper presents data and results from a research project on the Sociolinguistic Patterns of Castilian Spanish (Pasos), as part of an International Research Project on the American and Castilian Urban Varieties of Spanish (Preseea-Project). Pasos currently deals with dialect convergence and divergence affecting both central conservative and southern innovative varieties.

Linguistic geography came into being as an auxiliary method of historical linguistics; subsequently as it established itself as an autonomous discipline it gradually shed its links to diachronic studies. With the development of sociolinguistics from the nineteen-sixties onwards, the data provided by projects in linguistic geography again became relevant to studies concerning language change. This paper examines the usefulness of language atlases for analysing language change in real time, taking the Atlas Lingüístico de la Península Ibérica (ALPI) as an example. A comparison of some of the ALPI data with atlases of more limited geographic scope produced from the fifties onwards will serve to illustrate the benefits of such analyses. Data in linguistic geography studies can be used to track changes over time as well as to determine the direction of their spread over space. The illustrations given show how language atlases may offer an invaluable data source for the study of language ...

Special Issue, VI, 191-221, 2016

The essential objective of dialectology, and especially geolinguistics, is the study of spatial linguistic variation, special relevance being given to the presentation of results through cartographic representations. The methods of geolinguistic data analysis focused for a long period on the description and evaluation of phenomena conventionally regarded as particularly relevant, either in isolated or in group cases, and the latter only when the discovery of the existence of limits between varieties was straightforward. The application of quantitative methods to geolinguistic studies began at the start of the 1970s and experienced a spectacular impulse over the last two decades. The development of new computer-based tools and the recognition that dialectal variation could not be reduced to simple characterizations encouraged researchers to employ new research methods, with which it was possible to understand in greater detail the patterns which function in geolinguistic variation. This present study seeks to provide an overview of the principal analytical techniques and representation of geolinguistic information developed during in recent years. Moreover, it intends to demonstrate, on the basis of some examples of application, the interest of these new methodologies and their usefulness for a better understanding of the spatial variety of languages.

en Gunther de Vogelaer & Guido Seiler (eds.), The Dialect Laboratory. Dialects as a testing ground for theories of language change, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, John Benjamins, 2012

This paper investigates object clitic paradigms in a number of Ibero-Romance dialects. It claims that dialect areas can be extremely helpful in understanding linguistic change if carefully studied through an adequate structural analysis in conjunction with historical information. The paper, therefore, discusses the extent to which the relationship between social structure and linguistic change is relevant and suggests that the probability that innovations will emerge and diffuse is both structurally and socially conditioned. In the data analysed, the appearance of new grammatical distinctions, which are rare from a typological perspective, seems to be more frequent in stable societies with strong ties and little mobility, regardless of whether bilingualism is present. On the other hand, the loss of previously existing distinctions seems to occur more easily in social situations where speakers of different languages or dialects colonize new territories, bringing their varieties into contact with each other to form a new variety.

Sociolinguistic patterns and processes of convergence and divergence in Spanish. Spanish , 2020

This paper offers a sociolinguistic analysis of the consonants (s) and (d) in the coda position in the city of Madrid, within the framework of the Project for the Sociolinguistic Study of Spanish from Spain and America (PRESEEA). The purpose is to illustrate how varieties of southern Castilian Spanish and those from the central and northern Peninsula converge and diverge, taking into consideration the social, political, and economic parameters that affect said processes. The diversity of patterns that coexist in the Madrid speech community reflects the city’s historic social complexity, the varied geographical origins of its migrant population, the interests that motivate each community of practice, as well as other circumstances that influence the direction of change. The analysis of (s) and (d) in coda illustrates the way in which the dynamics of variation and change in Madrid fluctuate between two poles: standardization and regionalization, the same two axes around which the community's sociolinguistic patterns revolve.

These pages are dedicated to the analysis of some aspects of the Spanish perceptive dialectology and they refer, in a concrete way, to the linguistic situation of Spain. Unfortunately the linguistic attitudes related to Spanish and other languages of Spain have not been an item of priority in the linguistic investigation. This lack of linguistic investigation is striking interest brought about by not only as a result of the coexistence of languages in the Iberian Peninsula outside the environment of the linguistic speciality, but also due to the importance that the Spanish of Spain has in the entire Spanish American continent.3 Of the multiple aspects that have to do with the linguistic attitudes in the Spanish situation, the best known are those that affect the areas in which there is an official language besides Spanish; the aspects less analysed and known are the attitudes, on the part of the speakers that don't dwell in the bilingual territories, toward Spanish, toward the other languages of Spain, toward the coexistence of languages in Spain and toward Spanish dialectal complexity in Spain and in the world.

2013

This article investigates several linguistic changes which are ongoing in north-western Catalan using a contemporary corpus. We take advantage of a range of dialectometric methods that allow us to calculate and analyse the linguistic distance between varieties in apparent time from an aggregate perspective. Specifically, we pay attention to the process of structural dialect loss due to linguistic advergence to standard and eastern Catalan in many north-western Catalan dialects located in Catalonia (Spain) and Andorra. We also provide evidence that the dialect leveling taking place in these two areas strongly contrasts with the relative stability of the Catalan dialects on the other side of the Catalan–Aragonese border in Spain, where Catalan is not an official language. These opposite sociolinguistic situations (Catalonia and Andorra have strong language policies to support Catalan, whereas Aragon does not) have triggered a twofold process of vertical advergence between the Catalan spoken in Catalonia and Andorra towards the prestigious varieties, on the one hand; and of horizontal divergence between these dialects and those located in Aragon, on the other hand. This situation has notably strengthened the border differences between Aragon and Catalonia during the last 80 years. This article is one of the first attempts to study the border effects not only between regions belonging to different countries but also between different administrative regions ‘within’ the same country. In addition, we investigate the different roles of urban versus rural areas, providing support for the view that the spatial and hierarchical diffusion patterns are complementary.

Open Linguistics, 2018

Abstract: This paper studies the degree of cohesion among varieties of Spanish, proposing an analysis of Spanish dialectal variation and the internal cohesion of varieties using the Varilex-R database (2016). A battery of complementary statistical tests (correlation analysis, cluster analysis, association analysis) has been applied to these data in order to establish the distances between the principal modalities of the Spanish language. It also introduces the calculation of indices of generality and particularity, which, by establishing associations between linguistic uses within different countries, illustrate the extent to which each country’s Spanish, by virtue of its linguistic uses, can be considered more general or more particular. Keywords: dialectometry, linguistic cohesion, varieties of Spanish Resumen: Este trabajo estudia el grado de cohesión entre las variedades del español, proponiendo un análisis de la variación dialectal hispánica y de su cohesión interna, a partir de la base de datos Varilex-R (2016). Sobre esos datos se ha procedido a aplicar una batería de pruebas estadísticas complementarias (análisis de correlación, análisis de clúster, análisis de asociación) con el fin de establecer las distancias existentes entre las principales modalidades del español. También se introduce el cálculo de un índice de generalidad y particularidad, que, estableciendo asociaciones entre los usos de unos países y otros, determina hasta qué punto el español de cada país, en virtud de sus usos lingüísticos, puede considerarse más general o más particular.

About the new direction in Spanish dialectology – intervariant dialectology of the Spanish language, 2014

Humanities researches of interdisciplinary character arouse a great interest in the modern linguistics. New linguistic disciplines found on the junction of sciences have appeared. They embrace issues regarding national culture and language interrelations, ethnocultural community, ethnic consciousness, connection between language and social and cultural context of time, as well as reflection of people's cultural values in the language.It is well known, that dialectology is one of the difficult and multidimensional sections of linguistics. There are many works in dialectology written both by the Russian (see works of R. I. Avanesov, G. A. Haburgayev, N. I. Tolstoy, K.F. Zakharova, V.G. Orlova, V.M. Zhirmunsky, N.A. Katagoshchina, A.V. Shirokova and others) and foreign linguists (G.I. Ascoli, P. Meyer, G. Paris, G. Schuchardt, A. Samora-Vicente, M. Alvar etc.). However, some dialectology issues (including those of the Spanish language) demand further research. While much attention to the dialectological researches of the Spanish language is being paid in the foreign studies (see works of P. Henríquez Ureña, A. Rosenblat, L. Canfild, C. Silva-Corvalán, M. Hidalgo etc.), it should be noted that Russian dialectological studies of the Spanish language still remain at its initial stage of development. Certainly, specificity of various Spanish dialects (both within and beyond the framework of national variety) is revealed more clearly by comparison. Since national variety of the Spanish language have dialects inherent to them, it is necessary to raise a question of necessity of development of the new direction in the Spanish dialectology - intervariant dialectology of the Spanish language . For the implementation of this idea it is important to know peculiarities of the language usage means in different Spanish dialects. Wherefore it is required to carry out a large number of concrete researches in the Russian studies of the Spanish language.

Linguistics and Dialectology are two sides of the same coin: the former deals with the rigorous analysis of natural languages and the latter with concrete varieties of language in its cohesive and identifying social roles. Linguistics today is moving towards an integration of its various dimensions: phonology and phonetics are now so intricately tied that the unimodular phonetological approach is gaining ground rapidly; synchrony and diachrony are moving towards a reintegration, thus moving away from their parallel paths; and, finally, the so-called 'non-structural' elements of language are gradually being acknowledged as an integral part of the analysis that was traditionally reserved for the 'structural' ones. As linguistics moves, so does dialectology, since the latter has always been the laboratory of linguists, even if they have not formally accepted it as such. A new approach to dialectal matters must therefore move away from mere description and search for a more comprehensive analysis that confirms the essential inviolability of the binomial language-society. The traditional view of Hispanic linguistics and dialectology has been a victim of the dichotomic approach: conservative versus radical, Iberian versus American, high lands versus low lands, North-Central Castilian versus 'Atlantic' Spanish among others. This paper aims at taking an integrated approach to linguistics and dialectology, with its case study addressing so-called 'Atlantic' Spanish and the phonetological changes it is going through in search of a more satisfying explanation of short-term and long-term variability.