Linguistic factors that condition the velarization of word final /n/ in Puerto Rican Spanish

Abstract

The Caribbean has long been the subject of study for various dialect features. Many of these phenomena have been documented in Puerto Rico, including aspiration or deletion of /s/ velarization of /r/ postposition of the verb and velarization of word-final /n/. Although widely noted to be a feature of Puerto Rican Spanish, no recent quantitative study has been completed on the latter phenomenon. The current study measures the linguistic constraints that favor velarization of word-final /n/ in Puerto Rican Spanish. It empirically studies word-final /n/ velarization in this dialect with a Usage-Based Approach (UBA). A multivariate statistical analysis of linguistic factors is done using Rbrul on 988 tokens. The tokens were taken from a corpus of a recorded Puerto Rican radio program and analyzed in PRAAT. The study measures and weighs factors that favor word-final /n/ velarization, analyzing language-internal factors and no social factors. The results show the context that favors word-final /n/ velarization is the following segment and word stress. This result is situated using the framework of the exemplar model of language representation.