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A Sociolinguistic Analysis Of Final /S/ In Miami Cuban Spanish, Andrew Lynch

Andrew Lynch

This study analyzes the variation of syllable- and word-final /s/ among two generations of Cubans in Miami, Florida (USA): older, early exile immigrants who arrived in Miami as adults in the 1960s and 1970s, and young Miami-born Cubans whose maternal and paternal grandparents immigrated to Miami from Cuba prior to 1980. Since sibilant weakening is generally considered to be an ongoing language change in Caribbean Spanish, it was hypothesized that the young generation of English-dominant bilinguals would present with much higher rates of aspiration and deletion, in keeping with Carmen Silva-Corvalán’s (1994) hypothesis that linguistic changes are accelerated in situations …