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Recent Developments in Hispanic Linguistics: Studies in structure, variation, and bilingualism
Edited by Michael Gradoville and Sean McKinnon
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 41] 2024
► pp. 96–119

Chapter 4
A sociolinguistic study of the palatal fricative in Venezuelan Spanish

ORCID logo | Indiana University
ORCID logo | Louisiana State University Shreveport
The Spanish palatal fricative /ʝ/, a site of considerable social variation, is examined in Caracas, Venezuela, comparing productions across a 20-year period. Based on spectrographic and acoustic analyses, we identify four allophones of the palatal fricative. While approximant use in Caracas has fallen from 1987–2013, it is still the dominant allophone, and young speakers from the 2010s show increased use. Several linguistic factors, including previous context, tonicity, and segment duration predict allophone production; however, social factors including gender, corpus year, and speech rate suggest that stratification exists. Through a diachronic analysis, this study provides insight into allophonic variation and social meaning in Caracas across two generations during a time of sociopolitical change.
Keywords: yeísmo, Venezuelan Spanish, sociophonetics, palatal fricative, variable use
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Previous literature
    • 2.1Yeísmo
    • 2.2Sociolinguistic factors of yeísmo
    • 2.3Research questions
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Corpus
    • 3.2Token identification, segmentation, and coding
    • 3.3Dependent variables
    • 3.4Independent variables
    • 3.5Data analysis
  • 4.Results
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1RQ1: Allophones of the palatal fricative /ʝ/
    • 5.2RQ2: Linguistic and extra-linguistic factors
    • 5.3RQ3: The approximant variant considering real-
      and apparent-time trends
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
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