Lenition in contemporary speech from Gran Canaria: two corpus case studies

Abstract

This paper discusses the corpus of Gran Canarian Spanish gathered in 2016 in order to provide an in-depth sociolinguistic account of the lenition processes identified in the dialect. After a detailed description of the methodology and database preparation, I present two case studies showcasing the utility of such corpora. First, I show the phonetic and social factors governing the distribution of different surface variants of the underlying coda /s/, pointing to generalised variation and hence incompleteness of any of the weakening options. Second, I provide a comparison of the spontaneous speech produced by the 6 informants of the corpus with their productions from a laboratory study, which leads to the conclusion that variation is subject to yet another important factor: social setting and that the options chosen on each occasion are reflections of competing stages on the same lenition trajectory systematically applied by language users.

Keywords

• Weakening
• Corpus phonology
• Lenition
• Spanish
• Canary Islands