The extension of 'estar' across the Mexico-US border: Evidence against contact induced acceleration

Authors

  • Ryan M. Bessett University of Arizona Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.v9i4.25694

Keywords:

extension of estar, variation, Mexico-US Spanish

Abstract

This variationist study compares the extension of estar in contexts where normatively one would expect the use of the ser, in the Spanish varieties spoken in Sonora, Mexico and Arizona, United States. An analysis of 1,582 tokens in 36 interviews shows an overall innovative use of estar of 16.2% in Sonora and 20.8% in Arizona, percentages comparable to previous studies. Place of origin of the speaker (Sonora/Arizona) is not statistically significant and the distribution of the factors is very similar in the two communities, suggesting bilingualism (Spanish-English) does not result in an accelerated innovative use in this corpus. A discussion of previous research also provides evidence against a general tendency towards an accelerated use of innovative estar as the result of Spanish-English bilingualism in US Spanish. The methodology implemented in this study (comparing Sonoran monolinguals and Arizonan bilinguals from Sonoran families), provides a needed control when discerning between contact-induced change and language-internal dialectal variation.

Author Biography

  • Ryan M. Bessett, University of Arizona
    Ryan Matthew Bessett is a Ph.D. student at the University of Arizona. His major research interests center around language variation and change, Spanish in contact, and Spanish phonology. He is especially interested in the Spanish spoken around the US-Mexican border and through variationist methodology differentiating contact-induced change from language-internal variation by comparing Sonoran Spanish to the Arizonan Spanish of speakers who come from families from Sonora.

Published

2015-11-30

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Bessett, R. M. (2015). The extension of ’estar’ across the Mexico-US border: Evidence against contact induced acceleration. Sociolinguistic Studies, 9(4), 421-444. https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.v9i4.25694