20th Annual Student Research Conference
Language & Literature
Aspiration and Elision in Dominican Spanish
Ashley E. Morris
Dr. Eric Jewell, Faculty Mentor
Aspiration and elision are two of the most common linguistic characteristics of Spanish in the Dominican Republic. They refer to pronunciations of the phoneme /s/ and set the Dominican Republic apart from other Hispanic countries because of their frequency and social value. This paper analyzes data collected during the summer of 2006, compares it to professional articles also dealing with the Dominican /s/, and draws conclusions about the changing frequencies of these linguistic variants. Like most other studies, my data found elision to be a more common pronunciation of the /s/ than aspiration. However, my data were different in that they came from highly educated speakers, whose speech is usually more like the standard dialect than less-educated or low-income speakers. I analyze these discrepancies to mean that there is a possible change occurring among educated speakers in the frequency of use of elision, although I present the possibility of other influences.
Keywords: Linguistics, Spanish, Dominican Republic, Aspiration, Elision
Topic(s):Spanish
Presentation Type: Oral Paper
Session: 40-1
Location: OP 2113
Time: 1:15 pm