Patterns of the linguistic change in Andalusia

Abstract Studies on the Andalusian variety carried out in the last decades have allowed us to know, with some precision, the way in which certain factors condition the operation. The objective of this paper is to determine if some of these changes are subject to common behaviour. In our research, we focus on the changes that have some kind of prestige and we left aside the non-prestigious ones. The results have shown us a big difference between changes that operate from the top down to the bottom and those that, on the contrary, operate from the bottom upwards. This first group of changes, in addition to having a wide range of prestige and being in agreement with the national standard, these changes are relatively new. In fact, they were driven by a generation subjected to extremely marked social pressures. Currently, these prestigious processes are common throughout the entire dialect, although the rate in which they arrive on the social strata differs depending on the geographical zone. By contrast, the changes that operate from the bottom upwards are not new, they have local prestige, and they present different solutions in different geographical areas.