Nicholas Henriksen’s research while affiliated with Concordia University Ann Arbor and other places

This paper explores how long-term bilingualism affects the production of intervocalic plosive consonants (/p t k b d ɡ/) in the speech of Afrikaans–Spanish bilinguals from Patagonia, Argentina. We performed sociolinguistic interviews with three speaker groups: L1-Afrikaans/L2-Spanish bilinguals (14 speakers, interviewed separately in Spanish and Afrikaans), L1-Spanish comparison speakers from Patagonia (10 speakers), and L1-Afrikaans comparison speakers from South Africa (11 speakers). We analyzed the speech data using three acoustic measures (constriction duration, relative intensity, and percent voicing) to examine the degree of lenition of the target plosives. The results demonstrate a complex interplay of factors that bring about cross-language influence, which varies based on the target phoneme and phonetic measure. Notably, the findings suggest that phenomena that are gradient phonetic processes in both languages of bilingual speakers (such as the lenition of voiceless plosives in Spanish and Afrikaans) pattern differently than phenomena that are phonological in one language but phonetic in the other (such as lenition of voiced plosives in Spanish versus Afrikaans).

Sociodemographic information, such as a speaker’s regional origin, is intimately related to the judgments and social evaluations that listeners assign to that speaker. This association between linguistic form and social information can also lead to linguistic profiling, a harmful form of discrimination. The present study examines the geographic classifications and social attitudes attributed to ten phonetic variants used within regional varieties of Iberian (i.e., European) Spanish. We are specifically interested in understanding listeners’ geographical classifications and language attitudes held toward Andalusian Spanish, which is a less privileged regional variety spoken in Spain’s southern region, as compared to north-central Peninsular Spanish (NCPS). The results of an online survey show that 165 listeners were fairly consistent when geographically classifying Andalusian-sounding stimuli as originating from the south of Spain. Importantly, the respondents also attributed less favorable social meaning to the Andalusian-sounding stimuli in comparison to the NCPS-sounding stimuli. We link the findings to broader themes in sociolinguistics, such as language-based discrimination, linguistic insecurity, and the social motivations of language change.

In this exploratory study, we consider the linguistic, social, and interactional motivations of falsetto in Western Andalusian Spanish. Falsetto voice is a vocal register above modal voice, in which the vibration of stretched vocal-fold edges produces a higher-pitched source, typically with a steeper spectral slope. In speech it has multiple social meanings (e.g., Podesva, 2007; Stross, 2013), although to our knowledge most sociophonetic research on falsetto examines varieties of English. In this paper, we report on pilot research uncovering the use of falsetto in Western Andalusian Spanish, specifically in the city of Jerez de la Frontera. Our analysis reveals that: 1) falsetto voice is prosodically-bound (i.e., it has linguistic constraints); 2) falsetto voice occurs in interactional speech (i.e., it has stylistic constraints); and 3) falsetto voice is typically used as a conversational strategy (i.e., it has interactional constraints). We also outline an agenda for future detailed inquiry into falsetto in Western Andalusian Spanish.

The “hyper-variation” present in rhotic sounds makes them particularly apt for sociophonetic research. This paper investigates the variable realization of the voiced alveolar-trill phoneme /r/ through an acoustic analysis of unscripted speech produced by 80 speakers of Spanish. Although the most common phonetic variant of /r/ contained two lingual constrictions, we find substantial inter-speaker variation in our data, ranging from zero to five lingual contacts. The results demonstrate that the variation in Spanish results from a systematic interaction of factors, deriving from well-documented processes of consonantal lenition (e.g., weakening in unstressed syllables) in addition to processes inherent to the trill’s articulation (e.g., high-vowel antagonism). Importantly, speaker sex displayed the strongest effect among all the predictors, which leads us to consider the role of sociolinguistic factors, in addition to possible biomechanical differences, on /r/ production. We contextualize the findings within a literature that theorizes rhotic consonants as a single class of sounds despite remarkable patterns of cross-language and speaker-specific variation.

This study examines Spanish phonemic stops in the speech of 15 ethnically Bora bilinguals (8 males, 7 females) living in the Peruvian Amazon, within the broader context of examining gender-based phonetic variation in small speech communities. We target pronunciation of intervocalic phonemic /p t k b d g/ extracted from sociolinguistic interviews. The acoustic analysis focuses on consonant duration and relative intensity of each target phoneme. The results reveal clear gender-based variation, with males adopting more lenited variants of certain phonemic stops than females. We discuss these findings in light of gender-based research on phonetic variation in communities undergoing sound change. More generally, our study contributes to the literature on language variation and societal contacts in small speech communities in Amazonia.

The present study examines the relationship between the two grammars of bilingual speakers, the linguistic ecologies in which the L1 and L2 become active, and how these topics can be explored in a bilingual community undergoing L1 attrition. Our experiment focused on the production of intervocalic phonemic voiced stops for L1-Afrikaans/L2-Spanish bilinguals in Patagonia, Argentina. While these phonemes undergo systematic intervocalic lenition in Spanish (e.g., /b d ɡ/ > [β ð ɣ]), they do not in Afrikaans (e.g., /b d/ > [b d]). The bilingual participants in our study produced target Afrikaans and Spanish words in unilingual and code-switched speaking contexts. The results show that: (i) the participants produce separate phonetic categories in Spanish and Afrikaans; (ii) code-switching affects the production of the target sounds asymmetrically, such that L1 Afrikaans influences the production of L2 Spanish sounds but not vice versa; and (iii) this L1-to-L2 influence remains robust despite the instability of the L1 itself. Altogether, our findings speak to the persistence of a bilingual’s L1 phonological grammar despite cross-generational L1 attrition.

Chubut Province, in Patagonia, Argentina, is home to a group of Afrikaans-speaking Boers, descendants of those who–starting in 1902–came to Argentina from the region of present-day South Africa. Although little Afrikaans is spoken among fourth- and fifth-generation community members, many in the third generation (60 years and older) still maintain the language. According to Joshua Fishman’s model of generational language shift, the Boers’ Afrikaans should have been largely diluted by the third generation; older community members today should have little functional knowledge of the language, and their children and grandchildren none. The goal of this paper is to explore the persistence of bilingualism in the Argentine Boer community and explain why the changes normally associated with the third generation of immigrants are only now being seen in the fourth and fifth generations. On the basis of bilingual interviews with living community members, we argue that the community’s attitude toward Afrikaans as a language of group identity, as well as the relative isolation of the community in rural Patagonia in the first half of the 20th century, were both decisive factors in delaying the process of linguistic assimilation. Only in the middle of the 20th century, when the community came into greater contact with Argentine society as a result of modernization and schooling in the region, did the process of linguistic integration begin in a measurable way.

Spanish Phonetics and Phonology in Contact: Studies from Africa, the Americas, and Spain brings together scholars working on a wide range of aspects of the Spanish sound system and how their coexistence with another language in speech communities across the Hispanophone world influences their manifestation. Drawing upon seminal works in the fields of language contact in general, Spanish in contact with indigenous and regional languages, and laboratory approaches tied to the languages in question, the volume’s contents employ acoustic and quantitative approaches, as well as both controlled and spontaneous data elicitation procedures, to shed light on how linguistic, historical, and social variables drive contact phenomena, and in turn, shape specific varieties of Spanish. It will pique the interest of researchers and students of fields such as contact linguistics, language variation and change, segmental and suprasegmental phonetics and phonology, and sociolinguistics.