A case for velarization of Spanish word-internal coda stops as hypercorrection

In many dialects of Spanish, a word such as aceptar /aseptáɾ/ ‘to accept’ may be variably produced as [asektáɾ]. Previous research has shown that velarization patterns are the result of speakers’ sensitivity to phonotactic distributions (Brown 2006; Bongiovanni 2022). This study examines a different result of pattern generalization: hypercorrection. The production of bilabial word-internal coda stops was analyzed in a corpus of sociolinguistic interviews from Mérida, Venezuela. Variation between retained, deleted and velarized variants ([aseptáɾ], [asetáɾ] and [asektáɾ]) is constrained primarily by age and education. While velarization was the preferred variant among older speakers regardless of their educational attainment status, for the younger cohort it was speakers in the lower educational attainment group who favored it. These linguistic patterns reflect known societal changes regarding access to education in Venezuela (and therefore, contact with the standard variety) and show that under the pressure of a prescriptive rule, speakers default to a non-normative generalized pattern.