English influences on Mexican Spanish in Detroit [Reprint 2017 ed.] 3111293211, 9783111293219

Table of contents :
PREFACE
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF TABLES AND ILLUSTRATIONS
1. INTRODUCTION
2. THE MEXICAN COLONY IN DETROIT
3. OUTLINE OF MEXICAN SPANISH
4. PHONOLOGICAL INFLUENCES
5. MORPHOLOGICAL INFLUENCES
6. SUMMARY AND GENERAL CONCLUSIONS
APPENDICES
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX

Citation preview

E N G L I S H I N F L U E N C E S ON M E X I C A N S P A N I S H I N D E T R O I T

JANUA LINGUARUM STUDIA MEMORIAE NICOLAI VAN WIJK DEDICATA

edenda curai

C. H. VAN SCHOONEVELD INDIANA UNIVERSITY

SER1ES PRACTICA 107

1970

MOUTON THE HAGUE • PARIS

ENGLISH INFLUENCES ON MEXICAN SPANISH IN DETROIT by

STANLEY

M.

TSUZAKI

1970

MOUTON THE HAGUE • PARIS

© Copyright 1970 in The Netherlands. Mouton & Co. N.V., Publishers, The Hague. No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 78-118283

Printed in The Netherlands by Mouton & Co., Printers, The Hague.

To my Ann Ç.

PREFACE

The present work is a slightly revised version of my doctoral dissertation entitled "English Influences in the Phonology and Morphology of the Spanish Spoken in the Mexican Colony in Detroit, Michigan", which was completed at the University of Michigan in 1963. Among the revisions made, only the following are worth mentioning: (a) a shortened title (b) a revised preface (c) an expanded section of appendices, the original lacking appendices A and B and (d) a new index, which was also lacking in the original. In view of these and other minor changes, my apology for publishing this work, particularly at this late date, is simply that even in its present form, it might be of interest to some. It is my hope that the publication of this work will make my study more accessible to them. This study is the result of both direct and indirect contributions from many sources. Since it would be impossible to acknowledge every instance of assistance, however, I find it necessary to limit my expressions of gratitude to only those who were indispensable to the completion of the study. For a Graduate Student Dissertation Grant, which made it possible for me to gather the data for this study in the late fall and early winter of 1961, I am indebted to the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies of the University of Michigan. For facilitating the task of securing informants for the study, I wish to express my thanks to Father Clement H. Kern of the Holy Trinity Church, Father Richard Jeffery of St. Anne's Church, and Father William J. Carolin of the Holy Cross Church — all of Detroit. I further wish to thank Father Kern for making available to me a master's thesis on the Mexican Colony in Detroit written by Eduardo A. Skendzel (see the Bibliography). For both contributions to the study and hospitality during interviews, I am obligated to my informants, who are referred to by code numbers, rather than names, as a concession to those who preferred to remain anonymous. For assistance as well as encouragement throughout the study, I am deeply indebted to the members of my doctoral committee, composed of Professor Charles W. Kreidler, Professor Lawrence B. Kiddle, Professor Harold Y. King, and Professor

8

PREFACE

Elman R. Service. My special thanks go to Professor Kreidler, chairman of the committee, for his patient and able guidance in the formulation, execution, and completion of the investigation. I also wish to acknowledge the help given me by Professor Ernst Pulgram while he was a member of the committee. For taking care of the tedious and painstaking job of preparing the original manuscript for reproduction as well as for being a constant source of general support and criticism with respect to this study, my wife deserves much more than the token acknowledgment made in the dedication or any other words of gratitude that I could express here. Finally, for assistance in seeing this work through the press, I am grateful to the publisher, Mouton and Company — especially to Professor Cornelis H. van Schooneveld and Mr. Peter de Ridder. Honolulu,

June, 1968

Hawaii

STANLEY M . TSUZAKI

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface List of Tables and Illustrations 1. Introduction 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4

7 11 13

Language Contact Purpose of the Study Methodology Significance of the Study

13 15 15 25

2. The Mexican Colony in Detroit 2.1 The Detroit Metropolitan Area 2.2 History of the Colony 2.3 Organization of the Colony 2.4 The Colonists

26 26 28 31 31

3. Outline of Mexican Spanish 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Phonology 3.3 Morphology

34 34 35 42

4. Phonological Influences 4.1 Preliminary Remarks 4.2 Inventory of Phonological Influences 4.3 Classification of Phonological Influences 4.4 Phonological Conclusions

46 46 46 48 50

5. Morphological Influences 5.1 Preliminary Remarks 5.2 Inventory of Morphological Influences

54 54 54

10

TABLE OF CONTENTS

5.3 Classification of Morphological Influences 5.4 Morphological Conclusions

56 59

6. Summary and General Conclusions 6.1 Summary 6.2 General Conclusions

62 62 63

Appendices A. Biographical Questionnaire B. Linguistic Questionnaire C. Corpus D. Phonological Division of the Corpus E. Morphological Division of the Corpus

65 65 66 68 72 81

Selected Bibliography

88

Index

90

LIST OF TABLES AND ILLUSTRATIONS

TABLES

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Statistical Summary of Informants Statistics on Informants Distribution of Single Phonemes in Mexican Spanish Medial Combinations of Two Consonant Phonemes in Mexican Spanish . Inventory of Obstruent Phonemes in Spanish Distribution of Obstruent Phonemes in Spanish in Utterance-Final Position

17 19 39 41 52 52

ILLUSTRATIONS

1. Provenience of Informants Born in Mexico 2. Provenience of Informants Born in U.S 3. The Detroit Metropolitan Area (Consisting of Wayne, Macomb, and Oakland Counties) and Cities in Michigan with Mexican Colonies . . . 4. The Mexican Colony in Detroit, Michigan 5. Mexico : States, Territories, and the Federal District

21 23 27 29 30

1.

INTRODUCTION

1.1. LANGUAGE CONTACT

When cultures come into contact, cultural changes usually occur in the cultures concerned.1 Similarly, when two or more languages come into contact, linguistic changes generally result in one or more of the languages involved. Surveys. — As a field of study, these linguistic changes have been surveyed in two major publications by Weinreich2 and Haugen. 3 Containing extensive bibliographies, both of these works are essentially research guides, which summarize previous research in the field and present theoretical models based on modern linguistic science for the handling of data pertaining to languages in contact. Problems. — Most of the publications on language contact (also called 'bilingualism', 'borrowing', 'influence', and 'linguistic acculturation', among other sophisticated terms) deal with one or both of two problems. One of them, which seems to be THE major problem, involves the investigation of phenomena labelled INTERFERENCE, which is defined as "those instances of deviation from the norms of either language which occur in the speech of bilinguals ... as a result of language contact" 4 or "the relation between the coexistent language systems of the bilingual and their occasional overlapping". 5 Briefly stated, the problem is to examine cases of interference and to describe them on the basis of the languages and relationships involved. As Haugen states it: "It is the linguist's task to identify the model [i.e., the 1

These changes are often referred to collectively as ACCULTURATION, which is defined as "those phenomena which result when groups of individuals having different cultures come into continuous first-hand contact, with subsequent changes in the original cultural patterns of either or both groups". Robert Redfield, Ralph Linton, and Melville J. Herskovits, "A Memorandum for the Study of Acculturation", American Anthropologist 38.149 (1936). 2 Uriel Weinreich, Languages in Contact (New York, 1953). 3 Einar Haugen, Bilingualism in the Americas (Gainesville, Fla., 1956). 4 Weinreich, Languages, p. 1. 5 Haugen, Bilingualism, p. 40. Note that the term is defined more strictly as "the overlapping of two languages". Ibid., p. 40.

14

INTRODUCTION

source] and the replica [i.e., the loan], and describe each of them in terms of the systems to which they belong and their mutual relationship to one another". 6 The second problem, which is closely related to the first, concerns the results of interference commonly known as INFLUENCES (as well as BORROWINGS or LOANS). Influences may be distinguished from cases of interference by the criterion of acceptance. 7 That is, influences may be defined as cases of interference which have been accepted by the RECIPIENT language or the language which receives the linguistic items (as opposed to the DONOR language or the language to which the items belong). The problem, then, is to describe the influences in terms of the mechanisms or ways in which they are adopted into the receiving language and to point out their consequences on the structure of the receiving language. English influences in Spanish. — The problem of influences in Spanish is not a neglected topic, for there are a number of studies dealing with both foreign influences on Spanish and Spanish influences on other languages. 8 Among the former, studies pertaining to English influences seem to occupy a prominent place in the literature, as a glance at the following representative list will show: R. J. Alfaro, "El anglicismo en el español contemporáneo", Boletín del Instituto Caro y Cuervo 4.102-128 (1948). , Diccionario de anglicismos (Panamá, 1950). A. Barabino, "English Influence on the Common Speech of the River Plate", Hispania 33.163-65 (1950). A. M. Espinosa, "Speech-Mixture in New Mexico: The Influence of the English Language on New Mexican Spanish", in H. M. Stephens and H. E. Bolton (eds.), The Pacific Ocean in History (New York, 1917), pp. 408-428. , "Studies in New Mexican Spanish, Part III: The English Elements", Revue de dialectologie romane 6.241-317 (1914). F. C. Hayes, "Anglo-Spanish Speech in Tampa, Florida", Hispania 32.48-52 (1949). C. W. Kreidler, "A Study of the Influence of English on the Spanish of Puerto Ricans in Jersey City, New Jersey" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1958). S. L. Murphy, Jr., "Notes on anglicismos in American Spanish", Hispania 37.457-59 (1954). C. L. Ortiz, "English Influence on the Spanish of Tampa", Hispania 32.300-304 (1949). A. E. Porges, "The Influence of English on the Spanish of New York" (unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Florida, 1949). G. L. Trager, "Some Spanish Place Names in Colorado", American Speech 10.203-207 (1935). G. L. Trager and G. Valdez, "English Loans in Colorado Spanish", American Speech 12.34-44 (1937). 6

Haugen, Bilingualism, p. 39. The question of acceptance is admittedly a difficult one because it is really the problem of language membership, to which there are no universally valid solutions. Stated in the form of a question, the problem is: Given a stretch of speech, how does the analyst decide to what language it is to be assigned? In practice, this problem is usually resolved on the basis of structural criteria (such as phonological, morphological, and syntactic rules) or nonstructural ones (such as frequency of occurrence and appeal to informants) or both. Cf. Haugen, Bilingualism, pp. 39-40. 8 See, e.g., the studies listed in Pauline Cook Hall, A Bibliography of Spanish Linguistics (Baltimore, 1956), pp. 106-110. 7

INTRODUCTION

15

1.2. PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

Like the studies cited above, this study deals with English influences on Spanish. The aim of the investigation is to describe the nature and extent of English influences on "Mexican Spanish in Detroit", which is the term employed in this study to refer to the Spanish spoken in the Mexican Colony in Detroit, Michigan (see section 2 below for an account of the colony). More specifically, the purpose of the investigation is to identify and classify those influences in Mexican Spanish in Detroit which are 'established'9 English phonological and MORPHOLOGICAL10 influences and to indicate the extent to which these influences have gone in altering the structure of Mexican Spanish. In view of the purpose, the study is limited in scope to a detailed examination of those phonological and morphological aspects which pertain to English influences and is not intended as a complete description of the phonology and morphology of Mexican Spanish in Detroit.

1.3.

METHODOLOGY

The work involved in this study was divided into two major phases: (a) gathering the data and (b) analyzing the data. Gathering the data. — This phase involved (a) the selection of methods and procedures to collect the data (b) the securing of informants to supply the data and (c) the taping of the data. Approach and techniques. — The approach used to gather the data for this study was an extensive one in which the aim was to collect a limited sample of comparable linguistic as well as nonlinguistic data from a relatively large segment of the colony. The principal technique employed was the questionnaire, which provided a quick and efficient way of collecting the data. One of the two questionnaires used was biographical (see Appendix A below). Consisting mostly of the usual items, it was utilized to obtain background information on the informants. 11 The other was the linguistic questionnaire developed and used by Kreidler in his work with Puerto 9 This term is defined in the present section under both "Phonological analysis" and "Morphological analysis". 10 This term is used in a special sense because in this study the following reservations are placed on the term 'morpheme' (including derivatives): (a) It excludes inflectional modifications because the latter do not affect the grammatical functions of words. Einar Haugen, "The Analysis of Linguistic Borrowing", Language 26.215 (1950). (b) It includes items composed of more than one base morpheme that seem to have been borrowed in unanalyzed form — i.e., as single morphemes. Weinreich, Languages, p. 47. (c) By extension of (b) above, it includes items which are usually referred to as 'words' or 'forms' and is replaced by these terms whenever possible. 11 For another example of a biographical questionnaire, see Einar Haugen, The Norwegian Language in America (Philadelphia, 1953), II, p. 645.

16

INTRODUCTION

Ricans in Jersey City, New Jersey (see Appendix B below).12. Consisting of questions pertaining to such areas as the household, employment, social activities, and sports, it was used to elicit responses in which the influence of English was likely to appear. In addition to the questionnaire, free conversation was utilized as a supplementary technique to obtain a record of normal speech — i.e., speech when informants devoted more energy to content than form and when they did not feel that they were being put to the test, as in the case of responding to a questionnaire. Since more than twothirds of the informants were engaged in these conversations, the latter dealt with a wide variety of topics: work, the family, hobbies and leisure-time activities; plans for Thanksgiving and Christmas, for the future, and for vacations; personal anecdotes ; reminiscences of Mexico; and impressions of the United States. Informants. — The task of securing informants for the study presented no serious problem, for members of the colony — particularly its leaders — seemed to be favorably disposed to the study and in general were quite cooperative. In brief preliminary sessions potential informants were screened by means of the biographical questionnaire so that an adequate cross section of the colony could be obtained, and thirty of them were selected as informants who would supply the linguistic data. A summary of these informants' socio-cultural background is presented in Table 1. More detailed information concerning individual informants is tabulated by informant code numbers in Table 2, and data on their provenience are presented, also by code numbers, on Maps 1 and 2. Taping. — Arrangements were then made with these thirty informants for a second, more lengthy session at which time they were given the linguistic questionnaire and when possible, engaged in free conversation. With few exceptions these interviews, like the preliminary ones, were conducted in the homes of the informants and lasted anywhere from one to three hours. The responses to the questionnaire and the free conversation were recorded on tape, rather than transcribed during the interview, in order to take maximum advantage of the limited time available for these interviews. In this way the entire group was interviewed within a period of about two months, and a set of tapes for subsequent analysis was obtained. 13 Analyzing the data. — The principal tasks involved in the analysis of the data were (a) the identification of the corpus (b) the phonological analysis of the corpus and (c) the morphological analysis of the corpus. 12

Charles W. Kreidler, "A Study of the Influence of English on the Spanish of Puerto Ricans in Jersey City, New Jersey" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan), pp. 156-58. 13 The total playback time of the tapes which were actually utilized in this study amounted to approximately 360 minutes or 6 hours. The average (i.e., mean) time for all 30 informants, then, was just under 12 minutes; the range, from 5 minutes for the shortest recordings to 31 minutes for the longest one. The wide range in recording time is to be accounted for partly by differences in the length of the responses and partly by mechanical difficulties encountered with the tape recorder.

INTRODUCTION

17

TABLE 1

Statistical

Summary

of

Informants

Items Sex:

Categories

Number of Informants

Male

15

Female

15

Total

30

Age:

10-19 20 - 29 30 - 39 40 - 49 50- 59 60 and over Total

4 5 12 2 3 4 30

Place of Birth:

Mexico

19

U.S

11 Total

30

Years of Residence in U.S. :

0-10 11-20 21-30 31-40 41 and over Total

10 7 2 7 4 30

Years of Residence in Detroit :

0-10 11-20 21-30 31-40

15 9 2 4 Total

Principal Occupation :

Automotive and steel Housewife Retired Self-employed Services* Student Total

Education:

Primary Secondary College

30 7 7 1 2 7 6 30 13 13 3

18

INTRODUCTION

Items

Categories Not reported Total

Annual Income of Informant or Family:

$ 0 - 1999 2000 - 3999 4 0 0 0 - 5999 6000 - 7999 8000 and over Not reported Total

Citizenship:

Mexican U.S U.S. Naturalized Total

Exposure to and/or Use of English:

Little Moderate Considerable Total

*

Number Oj Informants 1 30 1 4 13 4 2 6 30 15 11 4 30 8 11 11 30

Semi-professional, technical, and commercial.

Identification of the corpus. — As a preliminary step in the analysis, the tape-recorded data were transferred on cards in normal Spanish orthography (or in phonetic transcription in the case of certain forms; see "diffused forms" below) and placed in a card file to obtain a written record of the taped material. Since every linguistic response was written on a separate card or group of cards and labelled by both informant code number and response number, the file could be arranged either by informants or by responses — an arrangement which proved to be quite helpful for making comparisons. In the process of preparing the card file, DIFFUSED forms or cases of 'switching', interference', and 'integration' had to be identified and transcribed phonetically.14 15 SWITCHING means "the alternate use of two languages" or the introduction of a completely unassimilated word from one language into another. INTERFERENCE has already been defined (see "Problems" in section 1.1 above). INTEGRATION refers to established loans which are used as a matter of course and could not be detected as foreign words without a knowledge of the foreign language or "the regular use of 14 15

These terms are from Haugen, Bilingualism, p. 40. Haugen, Bilingualism, p. 40.

19

Years of Schooling

Annual Income***

Citizenship

Exposure to English

INTRODUCTION

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