Language loyalty and linguistic variation: A study in Spanish Cantabria 9783111728438, 9783111182155

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
List of Tables
List of Figures
Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. Montañés: A Way of Speaking
Chapter 3. Life in "La Montaña"
Chapter 4. Listening to the People
Chapter 5. The 'u' in Ucieda: Variation in groups
Chapter 6. The 'u' in Ucieda: Variation in Individuals
Chapter 7. The 'u' and Other Features
Chapter 8. Linguistic Constraints on Variation
Chapter 9. Conclusion
References
Author Index
Subject Index
Appendix I
Appendix II
Appendix III

Citation preview

Language Loyalty and Linguistic Variation

Topics in Sociolinguistics This series in sociolinguistics aiming at the publication of works w h i c h take as their unifying theme the interplay between linguistic, social and cultural factors in human communication. Items to be published will range widely from, for example, coverage of ways of speaking among diverse groups in a large geographical area, to a detailed study of a single feature of conversational narratives in American English. Contributions will include monographs, collections of papers, and previously unpublished dissertations. Editors:

Nessa Wolfson University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, U.S.A.

Marinel Gerritsen Royal Netherlands Academy of A r t s and Sciences, A m s t e r d a m , Holland

Other books in this

series

1. Nessa Wolfson: CHP The Conversational Narrative 2. A n n e Pauwels: Immigrant

Dialects

Historical

and Language

Present in American

Maintenance

in

English

Australia

Language Loyalty and Linguistic Variation

A Study in Spanish Cantabria

Jonathan Carl Holmquist

1988 FORIS PUBLICATIONS Dordrecht - Holland/Providence R.I. - U.S.A.

Published by: Foris Publications Holland P.O. Box 509 3300 AM Dordrecht, The Netherlands Sole distributor for the U.S.A. and Canada: Foris Publications USA, Inc. P.O. Box 5904 Providence R.I. 02903 U.S.A. CIP-DATA KONINKLIJKE BIBLIOTHEEK, DEN HAAG Holmquist, Jonathan Carl Language loyalty and linguistic variation : a study in Spanish Cantabria / Jonathan Carl Holmquist. - Dordrecht [etc.]: Foris. - (Topics in sociolinguistics ; 3) ISBN 90-6765-354-3 bound ISBN 90-6765-355-1 paper SISO 803.2 UDC 800.8:806.0 (460-17) Subject heading: Spanish language ; Cantabria ; sociolinguistics.

ISBN 90 6765 354 3 (Bound) ISBN 90 6765 355 1 (Paper) © 1988 Foris Publications - Dordrecht No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the copyright owner. Printed in the Netherlands by ICG Printing, Dordrecht.

Contents

Acknowledgments

vii

List of Tables

ix

List of Figures

x

Chapter 1. Introduction

1

Chapter 2. Montañés: A Way of Speaking

9

Chapter 3. Life in "La Montaña"

15

Chapter 4. Listening to the People

31

Chapter 5. The V in Ucieda: Variation in Groups

51

Chapter 6. The V in Ucieda: Variation in Individuals

65

Chapter 7. The V and Other Features

75

Chapter 8. Linguistic Constraints on Variation

97

Chapter 9. Conclusion

127

References

135

Author Index

139

Subject Index

141

Appendix I. Linguistic Questionnaire

143

Appendix II. Written Exercise: Style Choice According to Interlocutor

151

Appendix III. Written Exercise: Use of Montañés in Spheres

153

Acknowledgments

My thanks go to a number of individuals for their support in the preparation of the dissertation which was the original manuscript of this book. I am grateful to Professor William G. Moulton of Princeton University for correspondence during the early period of field research. I am also indebted to Professors James W. Fernandez and Robert Peter Ebert for their suggestions and constructive criticism throughout the periods of writing and analysis. Special thanks go to Javier Cabrera and Kaizo Beltrao, then graduate students in statistics at Princeton, for their advice and assistance. My thanks also to all those who provided practical and moral support during my stay in Spain, above all, to the Castañedo family of Guarnizo, to Professor James W. Fernandez and his family, and to the people of Ucieda. A sincere thank you also to the Joint Committee for SpanishAmerican Studies, in Madrid, for funding the field investigation. A final note of thanks goes to my wife Jane for her patience, encouragement and support throughout.

List of Tables

Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table

3.1 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 8.1 8.2 8.3

Table 8.4 Table 8.5 Table 8.6 Table Table Table Table Table Table Table

8.7 8.8 8.9 8.10 8.11 8.12 8.13

Table 8.14 Table Table Table Table Table

8.15 8.16 8.17 8.18 8.19

Population of Ucieda at Twenty-Five Year Intervals The u in Age Groups The u in Occupational Groups The u and Ownership of Mountain Animals, by Age Groups The u and Sex, by Age Level The u and Sex, by Social Groups The u and Political Orientation (of individuals 35 and above), by Town Percentages of Variants of u in Phonological Environments Percentages of Variants of u by Morphological Categories Percentages of Metaphonized Variants of Tonic Vowels before Variants of u Percentages of Raised and Unraised Variants of e, o, a by Succeeding High Tonic Vowels Percentages of Aspirated and Unaspirated Variants of h in Words Beginning with T [f] and 'h' [0] in Castilian Percentages of Aspirated and Unaspirated Variants of h in Stressed and Unstressed Initial Syllables of Words with 'h' [0] in Castilian Percentages of Variants of g in Phonological Environments Percentages of Variants of s in Phonological Environments Percentages of Variants of J by Morphological Categories Percentages of Variants of n in Phonological Environments Percentages of Variants of r in Phonological Environments Percentages of Variants of r by Morphological Categories Occurrences of Three Variants of the Possessive Pronoun Construction in Phrases Referring to Family Membership and Other Phrases Deletion of Preposition de Following Noun and in Combination with Adverbial Factor 1: Hablar con la V Factor 2: Aspiration of s (1) Factor 3: Aspiration of s (2) Factor 4: Castilian Style Factor 5: Loss of Aspirated h

22 53 54 55 59 60 61 99 100 102 103 105 106 107 108 109 111 112 113 115 116 119 120 121 121 122

List of Figures

Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure

1.1 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 4.1 4.2 6.1

Figure 6.2 Figure 7.1 Figure 7.2 Figure 7.3 Figure 7.4 Figure 7.5 Figure 7.6 Figure 8.1

Map of Spain Map of the Province of Cantabria Population Pyramid - Ucieda 1975 Occupation Groups in the Population of Ucieda by Age Groups Marriages in Ucieda by Age Groups Style Choice According to Interlocutor Spheres of Activity and Use of Montañés Ranking of u Values of Individuals from Lowest to Highest and Stem Leaf Presentation of u Values Scattergram Presentation of the Intersection of Age and u Values in Male and Female Individuals Perncentages of Five Phonological Variants by Age Groups Percentages of D + P + N and D + N + P Possessive Pronoun Constructions, and Deletion of de, by Age Groups Percentages of Preference for -ucu Diminutive, and of Maintenance of Archaic Words, by Age Groups Percentages of Velar n before Consonants, Vowels, and Pause, by Age Groups Percentages of Nonstandard s in Men, Women, and Overall, by Age Groups Percentages of Deletion of r in Men, Women, and Overall, by Age Groups Factor Analysis of Speech Variants

2 16 23 24 25 34 40 66 67 78 80 82 85 90 93 124

Chapter 1

Introduction

The purpose of this study is twofold: to describe linguistic variation in the speech of the residents of Ucieda, a bidialectal village in the province of Cantabria in northern Spain, and by isolating sociolinguistic patterns present in this variation, to achieve an understanding of factors that are presently influencing the sociocultural, as well as linguistic, character of the village. To accomplish these ends, the study employs a unique combination of approaches which draws upon traditional dialectology, quantitative sociolinguistics, and anthropology. Speech data from the village of Ucieda were obtained in a series of recorded interviews conducted by the author with a randomly selected sample of village residents; material of an ethnographic nature was collected over a period of nearly two years' residence in Cantabria. The hypothesis tested here is that loyalty to dialectal rather than to standard Castilian speech may serve as a measure of integration into the traditional way of life in the Cantabrian region. Naming the Province The province of Cantabria lies on the northern coast of Spain (see map, figure 1.1 and detailed provincial map, figure 3.1 on page 16). Its official name throughout much of the present century has been Santander, which is also the name of the port city (population: 170,000) that is the provincial capital and has been the center of political power since the creation of the province in 1801. Other names for the province include Las Asturias de Santillana and Castilla del Norte. The former links Cantabria to the neighboring province of Asturias, to the west, and historically, to the ancient Reino de Asturias 'Kingdom of Asturias' formed behind the protective mountain walls of the northern coastal region when the Moors invaded Spain from the south in A.D. 711. The latter name, Castilla del Norte, looks away from the coast toward the central region of Spain and designates Cantabria as one of the eight provinces which, from the Middle Ages on, have been known as Castilla la Vieja, or 'Old Castile', the Castile of Spain's Golden Age. Cantabria is the oldest in origin of all the names for the province. The earliest known reference to the territory which corresponds to present-day Cantabria is found in a Roman document from the second half

2

Language loyalty and linguistic variation

Echegaray 1977). Long after the rest of the Iberian Peninsula, including the dominions of other warlike tribes of the mountainous north, had fallen to the Roman legions, the cantabri still resisted, and in 27 B.C. Caesar Augustus himself came to lead the campaign which finally, if only temporarily, subdued them. From the Renaisance through the modern age the name Cantabria has been used by scholars to refer to the province. Recently, however, as part of the wave of regionalistic sentiment which has swept Spain, the name has gained popular usage, and it is now employed as the official designation of the province by the new autonomous regional government, which was established under the Spanish constitution of 1977. In this study, we shall follow the lead of contemporary scholars as well as current usage by referring to the province as Cantabria. On occasion, however, we shall use yet another name, one that is preferred by many of the older residents of the province. This name is La Montaña, or simply, 'The Mountain'. Descriptions of Cantabrian Spanish Few systematic studies have been made of Cantabrian Spanish. In Orígenes del español, Ramón Menéndez Pidal (1926) refers to Cantabrian speech in the course of discussing historical developments in Spanish, and Rafael Lapesa (1965) refers to the province in discussing the speech

Introduction

3

of various regions of Spain. Neither, however, develops his comments in detail. Admirable in intent, but unfortunately lacking in linguistic value, is the work entitled El lenguaje popular de la Cantabria montañesa, by G.A. García Lomas (1966). More generally, it is to be regretted that of the many trained linguists who have carried out investigations in the neighboring province of Asturias (e.g., Alarcos Llorach 1958; Rodriguez Castellano 1954; Garcia Alvarez 1955; Díaz Castañón 1966; Cano González et al. 1976) so few have crossed the border into Cantabria. Nevertheless, three important descriptions of Cantabrian speech were available at the time that this study was carried out. El habla pasiega and Estudio estructural del habla de Tudanca, by Ralph J. Penny (1969, 1978), provide detailed and systematic descriptions of the dialects of two mountainous areas of Cantabria. El dialecto cabuérnigo, an unpublished dissertation by Francisco García González (1977), is a description of syntactic structures encountered in the general area of Cantabria upon which the present study will focus. The possibility of variable usage of linguistic forms is mentioned by García González (1977:57-58), most particularly with reference to different age groups. At the time that the field research for this study was taking place (February 1978 - November 1979), a linguistic atlas of the province of Cantabria was being prepared under the direction of Manuel Alvar, but was not yet available. The Theoretical Framework This investigation employs two basic theoretical approaches to the study of language in society. The first is the sociolinguistic approach, pioneered by William Labov; the second approach, referred to by its practitioners either as the ethnography of communication or the sociology of language, is that developed in the work of a number of scholars, most prominent among whom are a group of anthropologists: Charles Ferguson, Joshua Fishman, John Gumperz, and Dell Hymes. The theory of sociolinguistics focuses on the linguistic aspects of the relationship between language and society. It assumes that variability is an integral part of linguistic behavior that can be accurately described using procedures of linguistic and statistical analysis. Linguistic variables, which may be phonological, morphological, syntactic, lexical, or semantic, are sets of competing forms, usually called variants. Studies of variation have found significant correlations between linguistic and social factors on the one hand, and the frequencies of occurrence of variants in the speech of individuals or groups on the other. Social factors, such as age and occupation, when related to linguistic performance, have shown speech stratification to be characteristic of human communities.

4

Language loyalty and linguistic variation

The sociolinguistic approach was first proposed by Weinreich, Labov, and Herzog (1968) in "Empirical foundations for a theory of language change". Important studies implementing the model have included The social stratification of English in New York City (Labov 1966) and Language in the inner city: Studies in the black English vernacular (Labov 1972). It is Labov's early study, "On the social motivation of a sound change" (Labov 1963), carried out in a rural setting on the island of Martha's Vineyard, which was, perhaps, most inspirational to this investigator in his study of a rural Spanish community. Numerous scholars have now employed the sociolinguistic model in studies of many languages in many parts of the world. The work of Henrietta Cedergren and Gilian and David Sankoff, which has been influential in the development and testing of statistical procedures applicable to the kinds of data available on variable performance in language, is of special interest to students of Romance languages, since it is concerned, to a large extent, with Spanish and French. The second major approach to the study of language in society, i.e., the ethnography of communication, concentrates on the social side of the relationship between language and society. Treating languages, dialects, varieties, or styles of speech as recognizable individual entities, this approach describes the circumstances of their use in communities. Ferguson's (1964) article on diglossia suggested that instances of two or more languages serving specialized functions in a given community were more common and often more stable than had previously been thought. It recognized that, in such circumstances, different levels of prestige are often ascribed to the different language forms in use, higher or superior forms habitually coexisting with lower forms that often do not receive official or even non-official recognition. Fishman (1964, 1965) further developed the concept of complementary distribution in the use of language. In doing so he constructed sets of sociological domains, or spheres, such as family, school, church or workplace, each associated with the use of a particular language or language variety. The intersection of language choice and social sphere displayed on a matrix (or table), as Fishman envisioned, allows one to assess the extent to which bilingual usage is characteristic of an individual or community, and to determine the direction of change in the choice of languages. We will use the concept of the matrix later on in this study to describe language choice in the context of different types of individuals. If Fishman sharpened the concept of the spheres in which languages are used, Gumperz (1969, 1970) sharpened that of the linguistic repertoire available to the speaker. He stressed that in diverse communities, speakers choose from a range of linguistic options that may take the form of different languages, or when speakers are monolingual, of different speech styles.

Introduction

5

The range of options used by an individual speaker is his repertoire, from which he selects in specific social situations as the network of his acquaintances demands, using generally accepted rules of appropriateness. Hymes has concerned himself with the overall conceptualization to be brought to the study of language in society. He insists that language should not be considered as an isolated code, but as it functions in the context of the community. In his introductory essay The ethnography of communication he states: Facets of cultural values and beliefs, social institutions and forms, roles and personalities, history and ecology of a community must be examined together in relation to communicative events and patterns ... When this is done, it will be found that much that has impinged upon linguistics as variation and deviation has an organization of its own. (Hymes 1964:3)

For Hymes the true object of the investigation is not language, but rather communication, and the proper discipline is not linguistics, but ethnography.1 In the study that follows, we will use the model which has been referred to here as the ethnography of communication in providing a general background to the dimensions of the social situation we will be confronting and again, later, in evaluating the significance of the results of the study. We will, however, use the sociolinguistic model to give a detailed account of the observable variation in the speech upon which we will be focusing. Participant Observation The investigator's role as a participant observer was one of the most important aspects of this study. Participant observation is an anthropological field technique which in the public mind may be confused with "going native". However, whereas "going native" implies a degree of immersion in the community that would make the investigator's work extremely difficult, participant observation simply means living with the people and taking part, to a certain extent, in community activities. Through participant observation it is hoped that the investigator will attain an inside view of a culture, that he will experience and know a culture much as a native does. 2 Because of his sharing of day-to-day activities in the village of Ucieda, the investigator was present to witness events that a casual visitor to the community would have missed altogether, from funerals to births, from family gatherings to family crises, from jovial merrymaking to barroom fights. Continual presence also meant that the investigator was there to

6

Language loyalty and linguistic variation

record - in his memory if not on tape - those occasional statements by villagers that could be more meaningful than months of data collecting and analysis. Indeed, it is most probable that, were it not for the investigator's role as participant observer, he would never have achieved the level of confidence needed for the villagers to permit the linguistic interviews which this study draws upon to take place. Although the investigator participated in many village activities, a line was drawn. A conscious attempt was made not to become involved in the political life of the village. Since the community was sharply divided between centrists and independent-socialists, along lines which had their origins in the Spanish Civil War, it was feared that close association with either side could be detrimental to the investigation. In particular, a point was made not to develop too close ties with the leaders of either faction. This meant keeping a certain distance from, among others, the mayor and the priest, individuals who under other circumstances might have been extremely useful informants. The Order of Proceeding The main body of this book consists of seven major sections, or chapters. Each of the sections contributes to the overall goal of analyzing linguistic variation encountered in a village that is undergoing a shift from dialectal to standard speech. Some sections of the study are largely linguistic in nature; others are largely ethnographic and are based principally on the field research experience; still others utilize the linguistic and ethnographic points of view in a more balanced fashion. A conscious effort has been made, even in the more strictly linguistic sections, to keep technical material to a minimum and, where necessary, to provide the explanation needed to make the study accessible to readers without linguistic training. Chapters 2 and 3 provide background material on Cantabrian speech and life. Chapter 2 focuses on the speech of the province, describing dialectal features that to a greater or lesser extent are characteristic of most of the non-urban area. In the course of the description, reference is made to features of both Castilian and Asturian speech as well. Readers with less technical linguistic interest may wish to skip chapter 2 and go directly to chapter 3, which observes moments of Cantabrian history, describes the traditional economic system of rural Cantabria, and introduces the community of Ucieda. Also discussed in a final section of chapter 3 are aspects of the Cantabria field experience itself, including the initial contact with Ucieda, the process of getting acquainted with informants, and the conducting of the interviews based on the main linguistic questionnaire (see appendix I).

Introduction

7

In chapter 4, the reader will be made aware of some of the social dynamics accompanying the linguistic variation in a community undergoing a shift from one style of speech to another. Although linguists have often characterized such movements as going on strictly at the subconscious level, it will be shown that a number of persons in Ucieda are acutely aware of at least some of the details of the linguistic alternatives available to them. It will also be shown that the importance of social conditioning of language use is quite generally recognized in the village of Ucieda. In the course of collecting material on attitudes toward the speech situation in Ucieda, two written exercises not part of the main questionnaire or oral interview were used (see appendices II and III). The results of these exercises will be presented at appropriate points in this chapter. Chapters 5 and 6 deal with what is the most salient and, in many respects, the most interesting feature of dialectal speech in Cantabria - the use of word-final u. The variable occurrence of the u is traced first, in chapter 5, in various social groups in the community of Ucieda, and second, in chapter 6, in the speech of numerous individuals. Chapter 5 establishes a range of possible pronunciations of the u, from typically dialectal to typically Castilian, and introduces a statistical procedure for measuring the relative frequency of occurrence of one type of pronunciation or the other. Correlations established between dialectal pronunciation on the one hand, and factors and groups in the community on the other, help to determine the meaning of this particular feature for those speakers who use it. Chapter 6 isolates individuals as extreme cases of dialectal or nondialectal pronunciation of the u. It shows that in not all cases does the performance of the individual correspond to that which is predicted for the group to which he belongs. Exceptional cases exist among the old as well as among the young, among those well integrated into community life as well as among those not so well integrated. Chapter 7 goes on to consider a number of other dialectal features, along with the u, still from the perspective of sociolinguistics. Measures of frequency of occurrence are correlated with informants' ages in an attempt to investigate changes which have taken place in village speech over time. Although a number of features are shown to repeat a trend established for age groups and the u in previous chapters, it is demonstrated that by no means do all of the dialectal features examined behave the same. When viewed in the context of other non- or extralinguistic features, it is shown that the complexity of the linguistic situation may match that present in the community in general. The last major section of this study is directed principally to linguists, although it is hoped that it will be of interest to other readers as well. In this section, or chapter 8, the frequencies of occurrence of a number

8

Language loyalty and linguistic

variation

of the variable features that have already been considered are examined in linguistic, rather than social, environments. The results show that the tremendous variation encountered in the speech of Ucieda residents is subject to a number of linguistic constraints. Where possible, the constraints found to bear on variation in this sample of Cantabrian Spanish are compared with similar constraints in American Spanish. The final and perhaps most important part of this chapter presents the results of a computer analysis of patterns of co-occurrence among the variants of many of the linguistic features considered in the course of this study. The patterns revealed by the computer analysis will be shown to coincide with those encountered in the sociolinguistic investigation of preceding chapters. Concluding the study are a summary, an evaluation of results, which includes a review of comments by residents of Ucieda concerning the validity of this investigation, and, finally, some reflection on the future of dialectal speech in Cantabria.

NOTES 1. In discussing the contributions of Ferguson, Fishman, and Hymes, the author has drawn upon comments made in Ma and Herasimchuk (1975). 2. Reference has been made to Barrett (1974) in providing this description of participant observation.

Chapter 2

Montañés: A Way of Speaking

Divergence of opinion characterizes the names for Cantabrian speech, much as it was shown earlier to characterize names for the Cantabrian geographical region. Some investigators, such as Mario Pei (1976), claim that Castilian Spanish descends from Cantabrian Latin, and the province is commonly thought to be Castilian speaking. Yet such authorities as Ramón Menéndez Pidal (1926) and Rafael Lapesa (1965) consider most of Cantabria to be part of the Asturo-Leonese dialect area. Spanish scholars wishing to refer to the speech of the province without emphasizing any particular historical or geographical connection commonly use the term montañés, which might be translated either as 'the speech of the mountains' or 'the speech of La Montana -- the mountain province'. Local scholars often seem to prefer specificity when they write of the speech of several important valleys - of cabuérnigo, pasiego, trasmerano, and so on. Last but not least, the people themselves have their own special ways of referring to their speech; some of these will be cited in later chapters. In this description, and throughout this book, we will refer to Cantabrian speech as montañés. Since many of the features which are said to identify the speech of any one valley or town of Cantabria are found, to varying degrees, in the speech of most of the province, it will be useful to begin by considering Cantabrian speech as a whole. We will proceed as follows: vocalic features will be considered first and then related to vocalic features of standard Castilian speech and of speech in the province of Asturias; next, consonantal features will be considered and also related to features of Castilian and Asturian speech; and finally, morphological and syntactic features will be considered and once again related to speech encountered in the areas to the south and west of Cantabria. To the east of Cantabria the characteristic speech is the Basque language. Because it is linguistically so far removed from the Romance languages of the rest of the peninsula, and because its influence in Cantabria appears to be limited to very archaic forms, reference will not be made to Basque in the comparisons that will be drawn here.

10

Language loyalty and linguistic variation

Vocalic Features Word-final u, which is typically encountered in masculine nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and past participles - where one finds o in Castilian is perhaps the most outstanding feature of Cantabrian speech. Its use will be described in detail in later chapters. Dialectal speech in Cantabria is, however, also characterized by a number of other vocalic features. Among them is word-final i, which may be heard in the singular imperative and third person singular present indicative forms of verbs in the -er and -ir conjugations ([trai] 'trae', ['abrí] 'abre') and in -ar verbs in the first and third person present subjunctive (['andi] 'ande'). Second person singular preterit forms of all three conjugations may bear the i as well: [ma'tahti] 'mataste', [ku'mihti] 'comiste'. Word-final i also appears in a series of non-verbal forms including: ['ihti] 'este', ['isi] 'ese' and f'leSi] 'leche'. When the u and i occur in the final atonic syllable of a word they influence preceding vowels, especially vowels in tonic position, causing metaphony: ['méti] or ['miti] 'mete' and ['hórnú] or [Tiúrnú] 'horno'. Vowel raising, a similar phenomenon, is brought about in preceding vowels when the high vowels, u and /, occur in tonic position: [pi'yihkos] 'pellizcos' and [pi'ruka] 'perruca'. Also contributing to the typical montañés sound are vowels in contact. Vowels come into contact because of the still active tendency to delete the voiced dental occlusive consonant: [pe'aGú] 'pedazo', [saya'ora] 'sayadora'. Combinations of three vowels are occasionally heard as well: [enrea'era] 'enredadera' (Penny 1978). Visitors to the province might also be surprised to find single vowels where diphthongs are expected: [a'rega] 'riega', [kwal'kera] 'cualquiera'.2 The presence of these vocalic features distinguishes the speech of provincial Cantabria from the standard Castilian language, while at the same time linking it to the speech that is characteristic of the province of Asturias. Word-final u and i, which are in opposition to o and e in Castilian, both occur in the Asturian dialect or 'bable' as it is commonly called. Similarly, while metaphony and vowel raising are atypical in the standard language, their existence in Asturian speech has been confirmed by such studies as those by Rodriguez Castellano (1952) of Alto Aller and Garcia Alvarez (1955) of Bimenes. A tolerance for vowels in hiatus is encountered in both Asturias and Cantabria, and the tendency to preserve undiphthongized middle vowels in tonic position, in opposition to standard usage, is characteristic of the coastal regions of Cantabria and Asturias, and also of Galicia and Portugal, farther to the west (Cano González et al. 1976). Although Asturian and Cantabrian speech share many features, it is

Montañés: A way of speaking

11

nevertheless true that the Cantabrian features are often weaker than the Asturian. For example, word-final i is generally better preserved in Asturian bable than in montañés-, even in the most remote valleys of Cantabria it is often reduced to [a] or [a] (Penny 1969, 1978). Also, the metaphony which occurs in many of the valleys of Cantabria frequently raises tonic o only to [o], while in Asturias the o is more regularly raised to u. Finally, it should also be noted that certain varieties of Asturian, especially those in central and western Asturias, possess vocalic features not present in Cantabria. Among these are the archaic diphthongs ei and ou (caldeiru, roubar) maintained in western Asturias, as in Galicia and Portugal (Cano González et al. 1976). Consonantal

Features

A number of consonantal features also contribute to the characteristic quality of speech in Cantabria. One of these is the use of /y/ in words that in standard Castilian bear / l / , a phenomenon which in linguistic parlance is called 'yeísmo'. More striking, however, are other consonantal features found primarily in the rural areas of Cantabria. A rather harsh aspirated sound originating deep in the throat, often referred to as the 'aspirated h\ is heard in words like ['^hwoyi] 'fuelle', ['hoya] 'hoya' and ['hota] 'jota'. Somewhat softer, but originating from the same area of the throat, is the aspiration that is heard in place of s in words and expressions like: ['bamoh] "vamos', or [lah ih'tiyah] 'las estillas'. Loss of final r is also common, e.g. [agwan'talú]'aguantarlo', [mi'dila] 'medirla'. Most surprising of all, however, may be the realization that in the dialect such common words as abuelo and huevo are being pronounced with e.g., [a'gwélú] and ['gwébú]. The history of one of these consonantal features, the aspiration of h, has provided what is perhaps the primary historical reason for linking Castilian and Cantabrian speech, even though the aspirated h is no longer present in the speech of Castile. 3 It is between Cantabria and Asturias, however, that the aspiration of h is a continuing link. In Asturias the aspirated h is characteristic of a zone beginning at the border with Cantabria and extending as far into central Asturias as the river Sella (Menéndez Pidal 1926, Sánchez Albornoz 1929). All of the other consonantal features mentioned as characteristic of Cantabria are also encountered in Asturias. 'Yeísmo' is found in many speakers of central Asturias and regular aspiration of s has been verified in eastern Asturias (Alvarez Fernández-Cañedo 1963). The dropping of r and the appearance of g before ue are characteristic of bable in general. None of these last mentioned consonantal features is characteristic of modern standard Castilian, although some, such as the weakening and aspiration of s and the dropping

12

Language loyalty and linguistic variation

of r may be found in certain segments of the population of Madrid and in southern Castile, also known as Castilla la Nueva (Garcia González 1972). Though a number of consonantal features are shared by Asturias and Cantabria, certain other consonantal features associated with Asturian speech are not prevalent in Cantabria. Word-initial ñ of central and eastern Asturias is an example, although this feature may be heard in the valley of Pas in the far south-eastern corner of Cantabria (Penny 1969). Unlike Cantabria, central and western Asturias also preserve Latin / i n words like /faQér/ ''hacer' and /farina/ 'harina' and are marked by the presence of the voiceless alveopalatal /S/ in words like /Sáru/ 'jarro' and /Súgu/ 'yugo These last two traits, or variations thereof, are also typical of speech in Galicia and Portugal. Morphological and Syntactic Features Besides the numerous vocalic and consonantal features associated with the speech of Cantabria, there are various features that are morphological and syntactic in nature. One curious feature of provincial speech is maintenance of a three-gender system in nouns, pronouns and adjectives. Masculine and feminine nouns typically bear the endings /-u/ and /-a/, respectively, while the third gender category, neuter of material, typically carries the suffix /-o/ and is used in reference to non-countables. Awareness of the existence of the non-countable neuter category comes not so much because of the nouns themselves, however, since in many cases non-countable nouns do not bear the /-o/ suffix (e.g., maíz, agua, lechi, azúcar), but because of patterns of concordance or apparent lack of concordance of nouns with adjectives and direct object pronouns. Traditionally, adjectives bearing the neuter suffix modify neuter nouns of all endings: el humo blanco, la maíz bueno, el agua frío, la lechi fresco, el azúcar seco (the neuter adjectival suffix /-o/ today frequently alternates with /-u/). The three-category gender system is also maintained in the two different direct object pronoun systems typically encountered in the speech of rural Cantabria. The more archaic of the two uses the singular pronouns lu, la, and lo, the last form for use with non-countable nouns. The more current system uses le, la, and lo, with le replacing lu for countable nouns with the article el (García González 1977). One of the verbal characteristics of the regional dialect is the frequent use of preterit tense to indicate past action the relevance of which is considered to extend up to, but not beyond, the present, e.g., Ya cumi (Ya he comido), ¿Quién yegól (¿Quién ha llegado?).4 Characteristic also of the verbal system is the use of the conditional inflection in verbs of the subordinate clauses of the conditional construction, e.g., ¿Y tú

Montañés: A way of speaking

13

qué harías, si tendrías dineral (¿Y tú qué harías, si tuvieras dinerol). Finally, in this review of non-phonological dialectal features, we will note one that is purely syntactic. In phrases such as el mi carro and la mi chaqueta, the inclusion of a definite article in a possessive pronoun construction marks typical Cantabrian Spanish. As was the case with the vocalic and consonantal features considered to be typically Cantabrian, the above-mentioned morphological and syntactic features have more in common with Asturian than with Castilian speech. Consistent use of the present perfect construction to indicate past action extending up to the present is characteristic of Castilian, while the tendency to 'evitar el perfecto compuesto'' 'avoid the present perfect' is characteristic of the Asturian dialects (Penny 1969:157). For speakers of the standard language, who use past subjunctive forms in subordinate clauses of conditional constructions, the use of conditional in this position is one of the best linguistic criteria for identifying natives of Cantabria. The conditional can, however, substitute for the past subjunctive in some babies, e.g., Cabranes and Cabo Peñas (Cano Gonzalez et al. 1976). As for gender, Castilian has a two-gender system, while a threegender system, essentially undistinguishable from that of our dialect, is found in Asturias, with the exception of the western portion of the province, where only the distinction between masculine and feminine is maintained (Cano González et al. 1976). In central and eastern Asturias the direct object pronoun paradigm that we designated as archaic is found, while in western Asturias a two-pronoun system with the same values as that of Castilian is used. Finally, the typical possessive pronoun construction also coincides with the possessive system of bable and not that of Castilian. Once again we should observe, however, that the usage and the features of Cantabria and Asturias are by no means identical. Simple verb forms, while replacing combined forms under certain circumstances in Cantabrian speech, do so more generally in Asturian (Cano González et al. 1976). One of the most striking features of speech in much of Asturias is the use of e before s to produce feminine plural nouns and adjectives: /bákes/ 'vacas', /káfies/ 'cañas', forms which are completely foreign to Cantabria. Asturian also maintains active use of syntactic constructions that have virtually disappeared in Cantabria when it locates direct and indirect object pronouns and indicators of reflexivization after, rather than before, conjugated verbs: acuérdome (me acuerdo), casóse (se casó). Conclusion The brief review undertaken here of some of the typical features of Cantabrian speech in relation to speech in Castile and Asturias leads to

14

Language loyalty and linguistic variation

the conclusion that the speech that is typical of Cantabria is clearly distinguishable from Castilian. The features which distinguish provincial Cantabrian speech from Castilian do, however, bear a very strong resemblance to dialectal features in Asturias, although in many cases they must be characterized as weaker versions of their Asturian counterparts. It has also been observed, nevertheless, that correspondences between Cantabrian and Asturian speech features do not always exist, that is, that some of the speech features encountered in valleys of Asturias are not present in Cantabria at all. From the point of view of comparative analysis it appears, then, that linguistically Cantabria is a transition zone, lying somewhere between Asturias and Castile. Scholars using the name montañés to provide Cantabrian speech with its own identity may, therefore, be correct. As we continue we will see that they may, indeed, be correct not only in a strictly linguistic sense, but in a sense made possible by their choice of words, for the term montañés may be much more than a convenient label - it may be representative of an actual bond existing between a people, their speech and their mountainous environment.

NOTES 1. Since (:) has been used to indicate centralization in other literature on the province (Penny 1969, 1978) the same convention will be used here. 2. Detailed descriptions of these vocalic phenomena, as encountered in the areas of Pas and Tudanca, may be found in Penny (1969, 1978). 3. The most commonly accepted theory regarding the 'aspirated h' is the substrata theory of Menéndez Pidal, which argues as follows: After the Romans occupied the Iberian Peninsula, their language was adopted in most areas and eventually penetrated the north as well. The cantabri tribesmen, upon learning Latin, lacked the phoneme / f / and substituted for it the sound from their language which they found most similar, which was h. Centuries later, during the Reconquest, residents of Cantabria pushed southward, penetrating the central zone of the peninsula and helping to form Castile. The aspiration of the h went with them and became part of Castilian speech, although always in opposition to the / f / , which persisted, especially in learned words. It survived in Castile until the late Middle Ages at which time it weakened and disappeared (García González 1972). The aspiration of h was, then, a unique, if short-lived, contribution of the Cantabrian region to the central language, a fact to which the orthographic h still bears witness today. 4. A discussion of this phenomenon, including numerous examples, may be found in García González (1977).

Chapter 3

Life in "La Montaña"

The preceding chapter has provided the reader with a description of Cantabrian, or montañés speech. This chapter will provide a look at life in Cantabria, or, as the region may also be called, La Montaña. We will begin by geographically situating Ucieda, the community which is the focus of our study, within the region. This accomplished, we will proceed by considering some moments of provincial history that may help us to understand Ucieda, and then by describing the traditional agricultural system of the region, which is also that of Ucieda. Next, we will turn to the community of Ucieda itself, noting its physical layout and appearance, as well as elements of the demographic and social structure of the community that will be pertinent to the sociolinguistic analysis in later chapters. Aspects of the actual field experience in Cantabria and Ucieda, which are also pertinent to later analysis, are highlighted in the final section of this chapter. Geographical Orientation La Montaña consists of a series of mountain valleys which descend to the northern Atlantic coast from the sierra that separates it from the Castilian central plain. The town of Ucieda is located in the valley of Cabuérniga, which lies slightly to the west of the center of the province (see map, figure 3.1). Though in many places it is less than a kilometer wide, Cabuérniga is clearly delimited by the abrupt, rugged mountains that surround it. Ucieda lies at the lower end of the valley, near its northern entrance. It actually consists of two towns, Ucieda de Arriba and Ucieda de Abajo 'Upper Ucieda' and 'Lower Ucieda', separated from each other by small fields and meadows. Physically, Ucieda's setting is extraordinarily beautiful, lush and green because of the rains that come off the ocean, and set before a backdrop of high snow-capped peaks. History To reach Ucieda and the valley of Cabuérniga, from the north, one passes through a narrow gap between two dark, tree-covered mountains. The

Life in "La Montaña"

17

gap was opened by the river Saja, which also carved out the valley. At the entrance to the gap lie a roadside chapel to Santa Lucia and two bridges over the Saja. Actually, only the ends of the first bridge remain, showing it to have been a heavy stone Romanesque structure. Crossing the new bridge over the clear mountain river one comes to a monument, obviously of recent origin, with a plaque which reads "Aquí empieza España" 'Here begins Spain'. The monument marks the beginning of "la ruta de los foramontanos". The term "foramontanos" was popularized in the 1950s by the journalist, Victor de la Serna, when he described a modern-day journey over the route which he imagined to have been that followed by the montañeses who left their homeland to reconquer Spain.1 The real movement from this valley and others up and down the northern coast of Spain took place from the eighth to the eleventh centuries. Victorious in battle, the leaders of the Cantabrians established lasting ties with Castile and its kings, and the common people of Cantabria benefitted as well. To reward the residents of Cabuérniga and other valleys of La Montaña, the Castilian kings granted them privileges normally enjoyed only by the nobility. They were to owe ultimate allegiance only to the king, and to elect local lords from among their own leaders and change them as often as they wished. These were the special rights and privileges of the feudal condition known as behetría (Escagedo Salmón 1919). That the conditions of behetría were a reality was confirmed by events which took place in the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries when later kings granted new privileges to reward just one montañés family. These privileges made the recipients and their descendants lords in perpetuity with full feudal rights over nine montañés valleys, including Cabuérniga, but, as one historian of these valleys wrote: "Los pueblos de una y otra comarca resistieron recibirlos como señores; la nobleza territorial pobre, pero altiva, no quería reconocer superior fuera del rey y sus ministros..." The towns of the various districts resisted receiving them as lords; the territorial nobility, poor, but proud, didn't want to recognize any superior outside of the king and his ministers...' (Escagedo Salmón 1919:265). The case was taken to the royal court in Castile and came to be known as the Pleito de los Valles 'Dispute of the Valleys'. The skirmishes between the local nobility and their followers, on the one hand, and the armies of the de la Vega family, on the other, lasted for centuries. In 1554, the litigation concluded with a result that was favorable to the imposing family, but never accepted by the nobility of the valleys (Espasa 1927:346). Also important in the history of Cabuérniga and the other valleys of Cantabria are events of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Many of the most notable achievements of the period are still visible today; they are the "casonas" 'big-houses' or "palacios" 'palaces' which are found as

18

Language loyalty and linguistic variation

plentifully in Cabuérniga as in any other valley. Built in the grand but somber style of the neo-classical period, the casonas with their heavy stone walls, massive wooden balconies, graceful arches and coats of arms bespeak a wealth little in consonance with their surroundings. Because of the narrow expanses of arable land, the rugged mountains, summer rains and winter snows, it has always been very difficult to extract wealth from these valleys and most experts believe that the local nobility originally lived at a level little above that of the other villagers. Nevertheless, documents found in many of the old palaces record that during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries these valleys witnessed a tremendous influx of gold and silver. A few of the old casonas still preserve artifacts that originated in such far away places as Peru. Sons, brothers, uncles, and nephews of the local nobility, the records show, while in service to the king in the New World and the Philippines, had not forgotten whence they came. 2 Especially monumental among the achievements of the eighteenth century in Spain was the 1753 census, which is known as El Catastro del Marqués de la Ensenada. Scores of volumes representing the census of Cantabria are still found in the provincial archives in the city of Santander. One curious thing about the records for Ucieda is that they show that even at this late date the special state of behetría had not been forgotten. At the beginning of his declaration virtually every head of family declares that he is "del estado noble" 'of noble status'. It is also interesting to observe that many of the names found in the 1753 census (Gómez, Moya, Ruiz, Martínez, Torre, Campuzano, Valle, etc.) reappear in the most recent municipal register of the village of Ucieda. Traditional Economy For centuries the economy of the valleys of La Montaña was based principally on subsistence agriculture. Wheat and, in the upper valleys, rye were the major crops, but because of the harsh climatic and geographical conditions and rather archaic agricultural practices, they were rarely abundant. Corn did not become generalized until the eighteenth century, when potatoes and beans also became popular, and it was not until the late nineteenth century that these crops began to replace the wheat and rye. Typically, the valley floor was put to three major uses. The largest expanses of the central valley were devoted to the cereals, raised largely for human consumption. Situated at the margins of the cereal lands, meadows provided part of the hay required to winter livestock. Both cereal land and grassland were divided into individually managed plots. Gardens made up a third, invariably present, but much smaller portion of the farmed valley floor. Located in or near the villages themselves, they commonly produced cabbage, a human staple, turnips for the animals, and flax for weaving cloth (García Fernández 1975).

Life in "La

Montaña"

19

Surrounding the village of Ucieda there are still hundreds, actually reaching a total of just under a thousand small plots of land, in appearance the basis of sustenance for a thriving rural people. 3 However, through centuries this has been true only in appearance. Of the many who claimed to be hidalgos 'gentry', all but a handful were so only in name. In many cases, the villagers who tended the plots were mere sharecroppers or day laborers, the land and all or part of the harvest belonging to the owners of the 'big-houses'. Because of the size of the population and the system of land ownership, as one investigator put it, "La miseria era asi el principal protagonista de la 'Montaña Cantábrica'" 'Misery was thus the principal protagonist in the "Cantabrian Mountains" ' (García Fernández 1975:43). Sharecroppers were required to give one half to one third of the yearly harvest to the landlord on whose land they also worked for a small daily wage or handout, and to whom they went into debt, often losing what land they did have, in times of special need. The local nobility, originally little above the townspeople, over time had accrued power which, though not equal to that of the large landholders of southern Spain, was not different in kind and contributed directly to the depression of the majority of the population. Throughout the centuries people looked to the mountains with the hope of improving their lot. The mountains, with their oak and beechwood forests, thickets and open grasslands, were communal property. Each village owned the mountains surrounding it, and the vaster mountainous areas of the upper valleys were owned by the villages of the valleys collectively. Cash income could be obtained by cutting firewood and selling it in the villages closer to the coast or in the backbreaking labor of trimming giant logs to make timbers for ships. It was in the mountains that most of the activities related to livestock raising took place and where the animals themselves roamed freely during all but the coldest months of the year. Cash could be earned through the sale of teams of oxen to villages on the other side of the divide in central Spain. When the crops failed, and at other times as a supplement, an abundant supply of chestnuts could be found on the lower mountain slopes. Numerous herbs and teas of mountain origin cured ills and mended bones of man and animal alike. In the mountains surrounding the village, each family had the right to gather wood for its own fires and for the construction and maintenance of its home. Communally owned, the mountains represented the wealth of all, yet here, too, ownership was a problem. In many cases the villager who walked the mountains to care for the animals was but an aparcero; no matter how great his sacrifice, half of each spring's calves belonged to the owner of the cows, and that was either the master of the 'bighouse' or, in many cases, an absentee lord.

20

Language loyalty and linguistic variation

The Town of Ucieda Today Ucieda, which is the first town beyond the gap, or hoz, that is the entrance to Cabuerniga, probably derives its name from hoz-zeta, an hoz in the form of a 'z\ The brands which distinguish the animals of upper and lower Ucieda are UZ and VZ. In referring to the town, early documents mention the tower of Ucieda and the monastery, Sta. Maria de Ucieda (Escagedo Salmon 1924). The tower was built by the local nobles as a fortress and dwelling during the violent medieval period. Today, one is hard put to find a tower in Ucieda, but on a knoll overlooking the town there is a meadow called "El Prau de la Torre" 'The Meadow of the Tower', and at one edge of the meadow lies the church cemetry whose walls in one corner are extremely thick, dark, ivy-covered slabs of stone. There is also, in the bluffs at the outskirts of the lower town, a place the villagers call "Santa Marina", rather than Santa Maria. It is a cluster of old abandoned buildings almost totally hidden by the thick vegetation that grows in and around them. Both Ucieda de Arriba and Ucieda de Abajo were built around a small chapel and a bolera - an open space on which to play bolos, a bowling game. Old people tell stories of how, in their youth, they gathered near the chapel in the evenings, to tell stories, sing, and dance to the rhythm of the tambourine. A third chapel, dedicated to La Virgen de la Asuncion, or La Virgen del Moral 'The Virgin of the Blackberry Thicket", as she is more often called, is located on the crest of a mountain which divides the lands of Ucieda from those of several other villages and valleys. Each summer there is still a pilgrimage to the mountain top from Ucieda and the surrounding area. The chapel in the upper town is dedicated to the same Virgin, and it is to it that the villagers go for special memorials and masses throughout the year. In the lower town the chapel, which was dedicated to San Ildefonso, has been converted into a barn, and the open space, which was the bolera, has been filled by a new house. There are six commercial establishments in Ucieda. Each village has two combination bar/grocery stores. The older men remember that they used to gather in the bars on Sundays to share a cuartiyu de vinu 'half liter of wine' and fill up on roasted peanuts. Women came to the stores only occasionally to stock up on the few staples that were not grown at home. The men now gather daily to "tomar blancos" 'drink strong white wine', at midday, and again, in the evenings, to linger over coffee and cognac or a glass of red wine. Recently, two new business establishments not really geared to the local people have been opened, one in each town. They are mesones 'restaurants' whose main clientele are the tourists who in recent years have begun to stream up into the mountains each weekend. As has already been mentioned, physically, Ucieda is divided into two

Life in "La

Montaña"

21

villages. One finds casonas guarding the entrances and exits to both the upper and lower towns. The overwhelming majority of the dwellings of Ucieda however, until relatively recently, were "casas bajas" 'lowhouses', notable in large part for the tiny amount of space devoted to living quarters and the proportionally large space reserved for work. Perhaps the most outstanding single feature of the casa baja was its large, open portal, which often extended the full length of the front of the house and was protected by a very low-hanging roof. Here many activities took place - the husking of corn and beans, the preparation of certain mountain plants to be used as feed for the animals, the chopping of wood and the fashioning of wooden implements and utensils, to mention but a few. Viewing the two Uciedas from the outside, one finds them to be literally inward-looking communities. The houses which adjoin one another on the external fringes of the towns are constructed such that when approaching the village, one sees only a long, low, seemingly impenetrable wall formed by the thick, almost windowless, rear stone walls of the houses. Within the communities, the majority of the houses, once again, face toward the centrally located chapel and bolera. This inward orientation, in former times, frequently meant that close relations with neighboring villages, much less communities and peoples from the coast or beyond the mountains, were frowned upon or even prohibited by not altogether pacific means. The People As is the case for most of the towns of Cabuerniga, the people of Ucieda have a nickname; they are the "garuyos". The name garuyu is also that of a miniature pear found in abundance in the mountains around Ucieda. In Castilian the word garullo has a completely different meaning: a garullo is a 'brawl' or 'tumult'. Whether or not the people are aware of the meaning in the standard language, they say they bear their name with pride. In Cantabria, recent decades have seen many people flee the miseria caused by the harshness of mountain life and the injustice of the unequal distribution of resources. Numerous towns of the upper valleys have lost over half of their populations and some, those highest up, have become empty shells, inhabited, if at all, by a few tourists in the summer months. This has not been the case, however, in Ucieda, which is located in the lower valley. Below we see population figures taken at twenty-five year intervals from the Ucieda municipal register.

22

Language loyalty and linguistic variation

TABLE 3. l :

Population of Ucieda at twenty-five year intervalsA Year 1900 1925 1950 1975

Population 611 594 575 534

Although we are presented with a steady decline in population, the result is not so drastic. In fact, we may be tempted to conclude that the population of Ucieda has remained quite stable over the last two centuries if we compare the figure of 534 for 1975 with that of 546 for 1753, as given in the census of the Marqués de la Ensenada.5 The towns of the valley of Cabuérniga and the province of Cantabria that are losing or have lost much of their population are now inhabited mostly by old people. Once again, this is not the case in Ucieda. A glance at a population pyramid constructed with figures from the most recent census shows that Ucieda has an ample base of young people (see figure 3.2). Nevertheless, a closer look at the pyramid does reveal an irregularity: there is a disproportionate number of young, unmarried men. The male population, today, may be broken down into three major occupational groups. The first, the farmer, is composed both of men whose income is derived solely from the land or raising livestock, and of older men who now receive pensions but were dedicated to work on the land. A second group, that of the mixed worker or worker/farmer, consists primarily of men who work as factory hands or as other kinds of wage workers and also spend part of their time working the land and caring for animals. The third group, workers, is made up of men whose incomes are not in any way derived from the land. As for women, the municipal register of 1975 shows that only 11 of 166 who were over 18 worked for wages. The others were classified either as being at "sus labores" 'at their labor' in the house and the fields, or as receiving old age pensions. Figure 3.3 is based on the actual number of individuals in the three groups: farmer, worker/farmer, worker, according to the 1975 register. We see that at that time, over half of the worker/farmers and workers were under the age of 35. In communities like Ucieda, marriage, also, has been an especially significant determiner of social conditions. The institution of marriage has been particularly closely controlled among the families of the casonas (Lôpez Linage 1978). As a means of consolidating and augmenting the family lands and prestige, these families arranged marriages among their equals in the town or in other neighboring towns, frequently giving preference to relatives in influential positions. Marriages were closely con-

23

Life in "La Montaña'

in 2 < 0 LJ O 3 1 O 2 < >0.

i n o í i o ^ o i n o i í i -o i í i o i f o i n o i n o 00 © N - N - ^ O (0 (O if) ^í «J- fO rO ' and 'venir\ In other words, it appears that similar stories are told in Mazquerras about the people of Ucieda. Among the most typical features of mountain speech is the use of an initial voiced velar consonant in words which begin with the orthographic sequence hue in Castilian; that is, words like huevo and hueso become ['guébú] and ['guésii]. Also, words which in standard speech have a bilabial consonant before the ue diphthong may have the bilabial replaced by a velar; for example, abuelo and abuela may become aguelu and agüela', often the initial vowel is dropped as well, yielding guelu and guela, or guelito and guelita. That a psychological dilemma may be brought about by this variable is verified by the following statement made by a 14-year-

34

Language loyalty and linguistic variation

old village girl, 'Aqui en el mismo pueblo dices guelo, vamos, delante de una persona, y te suelta una carcajada . . . pero dices guelo. ¡Ho!' Even here in town you say 'guelo', well, in front of somebody, and he laughs at you . . . but you say 'guelo', ho!' Style Choice and Types of People It should be clear by now that, at least in the minds of some of the residents of Ucieda, consciousness of speech is, indeed, very high. Villagers are able to tell us how they feel about certain important speech features. They may also be able to tell us more. In an attempt to draw upon local understanding of the sociological patterns of language use in Ucieda, a short written exercise was devised, utilizing the binary division established by the people themselves, by asking whether an informant's speech in given situations is hablar bien, or hablar a estilo pueblo, or at times bien and at times estilo pueblo. The investigator had already departed Ucieda at the time that the answers to the written exercise were recorded under the supervision of the teenage daughter of the family with whom he and his wife had stayed. Since the family operates a bar/grocery store, the informants for this exercise were selected primarily by the fact that they were customers of the store. In figure 4.1 below, in which the findings gathered in this exercise FIGURE 4.1

Style choice according to interlocutor A Men Over 40

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

• • • • • • •

• • • • • • •

• • • • • • •

• • • • • • •

• • • • • • •

• • • • • • •

• • • • • • •

• • • • • • •

• • • • • X

•

X X X

8 9 10 11

• • X •

•

X X X

X X X X

X X 0 X

X X 0 X

X 0 0 X

0 0 0 X

X X 0 0

0 0 0 0

X X

•

•

12 • = 68% (81)

X = 22% (26)

0 = 10% (13)

• • X

•

Listening to the people B Women Over 40 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

X

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

X

X

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

X X X

•

•

•

•

X

X

X

X

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

X X X

X X X

X X X

X X 0

•

•

•

0 0 0 X

X X 0 X

0 X X 0

0 0 0 X

X 0 0 X

0 0 0 X

0 0 0 0

X X X X X 0 X 0 0 0 0

12 •

=

58% (70)

x = 27% (32)

0 = 15% (18)

c Men Under 40 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

•

•

•

•

X

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

X

X

X X 0

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

X

•

•

•

•

•

X X X

•

•

X X 0

0 X

X X X

X X X X X X X

•

X X X X

x 0

0

•

•

X X X

0 0 0 X

0 0 0 0

X X X X

X X X X

X X X

x X

X •

• •

X •

X

12 • = 42% (51)

X = 44% (53)

0 = 13% (16)

36

Language loyalty and linguistic

variation

D Women Under 40 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

• • • • • • •

• • • • • • •

• • • • • • X

• • • • • X •

• • X X X X •

• • X X X X X

X X X X • X •

X • X • X X X

X X X X X X X

X 0 X X X X X

8 9 10 11

X X 0 •

X 0 0 •

X X 0 X

0 0 0 X

0 0 0 X

0 0 0 X

0 0 0 X

0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0

12

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

X

• = 38% (46)

X = 38% (45)

0 = 24% (29)

X 2 = .005 Style Choices estilo pueblo (montañés) 0 = hablar bien (Castilian) X = estilo pueblo/ hablar bien (switching) • :=

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Categories of Interlocutors grandparents 8. officials of local parents government youths 9. teachers farmers 10. doctors worker/farmers 11. priests workers 12. prayer (self) storekeepers

are recorded, there are four charts, each with the responses of 10 individuals. Charts A and B represent men and women over 40 years of age, respectively, and charts C and D, men and women under 40, respectively. In each chart, individual informant's responses appear in the columns from left to right in order of highest to lowest number of responses of the estilo pueblo type (the dark circle). No attempt has been made to distinguish within the groups for age, occupation of informant, etc. First of all, we can note that the four charts differ significantly in the number of times each of the three possible responses is chosen. At both the above-40 age level and the below-40 age level, men report more often than women that they use estilo pueblo. Women of the over-40 age group, however, choose the local style more than men of the under-

Listening to the people

37

40 group. Style switching (the X) reaches a peak in men under 40 and then declines in favor of hablar bien (the blank oval) in the speech of women under 40. Women, in general, choose to speak well, without switching, more than men do. The four charts are alike in that, in all, a clear distinction is found between speech appropriate with persons found in the community -categories 1 - 7 -- and speech appropriate with the professionals, in categories 8 - 1 1 , who, because of their training, would most likely be speakers of Castilian and come from outside the town. All groups report that with these outsiders of high status they tend not to use the speech of the town. Most deference is given to the doctor and least to the priest, who, while an outsider, lives in the town and becomes a very familiar figure. Uniformity is not encountered, however, in distinctions made between types of individuals found in the community of Ucieda. Only one of the males over 40 shows more than a limited tendency to differentiate. A number of the women over 40, on the other hand, do begin to make distinctions. They single out the worker, who is typically employed in factories of nearby industrial centers, for special treatment, and a few of the women of this group also give special consideration to youths, worker/ farmers - who divide their time between factory and farm -- and storekeepers. The responses of the men and women under 40 indicate that among them, style switching occurs more commonly, even in Ucieda, and with more types of individuals, although young men still do tend to use estilo pueblo with farmers. Consistent use of hablar bien for speech with individuals of the town is not reported by any group. Responses for number 12 of the written exercise remain to be taken into consideration. The question in this case reads: ¿Cómo reza Ud.? 'How do you pray?' As may be seen in figure 4.1, in this case only one individual (in chart D) has indicated an alternation of styles; she is a young girl who leaves Ucieda daily to attend school in a larger, more progressive community. Everyone else indicates that prayer for them is estilo pueblo. This may be an indication that in personal moments, for communication with oneself, the underlying local style predominates. Although this brief exercise has obtained interesting results, it may, again, be helpful to listen to what people actually say, this time about themselves and others in Ucieda. Speaking of older individuals, one young Ucieda man commented, 'Es muy fácil que hay muchas personas en el pueblo de Ucieda que aprendieron a hablar con la u y resulta que no han aprendido más y incluso no han tenido la oportunidad de estar con otras personas que hablan con la o.'

38

Language loyalty and linguistic variation 'It can easily be that there are many persons in the town of Ucieda who learned to speak with the u and, as it turns out never have learned more and, what's more, haven't had the opportunity to be with people who speak with the o.'

Referring to his own generation, a 34-year-old worker/farmer had the following to say about changing speech habits. 'Te advierto que muchas costumbres de hablar se han perdido, porque la gente de hoy, pues, sale a trabajar afuera y oyes otra forma de hablar . . . Eso es igual que con la costumbre de jurar. ¡Como estés con otro que esté jurando . .. yegas a jurar tú, también!'' 'I warn you that many customs of speaking have been lost because the people of today, well, they leave to work outside and you hear another way of speaking . . . It's just like swearing. When you're with someone who is swearing . . . you end up swearing, too!'

That some people, especially the young, have learned the lessons of the outside world especially well may be gathered from the following statement made by a high school girl who is planning to attend university. She is remembering an experience from her childhood. 'Me acuerdo de una chica . . . se yama Manolita, pues, eya iba a la escuela cuando yo iba . . . Yo me pasmaba, porque, estabas hablando con eya . . . y decía, pues, si porque he desayunado lechi, y palabras, y turtiya y churizu y tucinu y toas esas cosas. Es que era fatal como hablaba y sigue hablando actualmente. ¡Es una chica joven!' 'I remember a young girl . . . her name's Manolita, well, she went to school when I did . . . I was stunned, because, you were talking with her . . . and she said, well, because I had lechi for breakfast, and words, and turtiya and churizu and tucinu and all those things. It was criminal the way she talked and continues to talk now. She's a young girl!'

When it comes to conversation with another village girl, the expectations of this young female are not in the direction of estilo pueblo. Notwithstanding the fact that younger people are usually most highly sensitized to Castilian speech and therefore often apparently less able to command the dialect, as the charts of figure 4.1 show, it is among the younger people that the extremely interesting phenomenon of language or style switching occurs most frequently. Of her own ability to switch back and forth between Castilian and montañés style speech, one woman in her early 30s had this to say. 'Yo soy una persona que me amoldo bien a las dos partes . . . nunca hago el ridículo en ese sentido. Si eyos son brutos, yo me amoldo a eyos

Listening to the people

39

rápidamente . . . Ahora, si estoy por ayí en un banco o un comercio . .. o si ha yegado, por ejemplo alguna persona, más bien encargaos, a que hablan con la o, entonces, no me cuesta tampocu ningún trabajo.'' 'I'm a person that adjusts well to the two sides . . . I never make a fool out of myself in that sense. If they are brutes, I mold myself to them very rapidly . . . Now, if I'm out somewhere in a bank or a store . . . or if somebody, for example, like a manager has arrived, who speaks with the o, then it doesn't cause me any difficulty either.' A l t h o u g h it m a y be t h a t p e r s o n s in t h e high school or teenage g r o u p have m o s t t h o r o u g h l y internalized t h e standard speech m o d e l , at least certain individuals of this very y o u n g g r o u p also possess a very highly developed ability t o switch. S u c h is t h e clear implication of t h e following s t a t e m e n t , w h i c h was m a d e b y a teenaged girl talking a b o u t a village y o u t h in his u p p e r teens. 'Yo lo he notao, en un chico que conozco. ¡Está hablando con nosotros, y habla bien, o sea que habla normal, como nosotras . . . y sin embargo se junta con otra gente del pueblo, o en una feria con un tratante, y te suelta cada burrada, pero es impresionante! O sea, tiene una manera de hablar para con cada persona. Cambia con una facilidad pasmosa. A mi sería imposible estar hablando con una persona 'bu'y 'u' y todo eso y luego venir otra y empezar hablando con la o. Yo no sabría hacerlo. 'I've noticed it in a boy I know. He's speaking with us and he speaks well, or, that is, he speaks normal, like we girls do . . . and nevertheless he gets together with other people of the town, or with a livestock dealer at a fair, and he lets loose all sorts of foolishness, but it's impressive! Or that is, he has a different way of talking for everyone. He changes with a facility that is astonishing. It would be impossible for me to be talking with one person '6M' and '«' and all that and then there comes another person and start talking with the o. I wouldn't know how to do it.' A l t h o u g h t h e girl's description of her f r i e n d ' s ability t o switch is very interesting, it is n o m o r e so t h a n h e r a p p a r e n t confession of h e r o w n linguistic limitations.

Style Choice and Spheres of Activity Since it was f o u n d t o be w o r t h w h i l e t o ask h o w p e o p l e speak w i t h diff e r e n t t y p e s of persons, it was decided t h a t it might also be w o r t h w h i l e t o ask h o w people speak in d i f f e r e n t k i n d s of places. In doing so, 12 Ucieda residents, m o s t l y f r o m t h e middle age g r o u p , were given a list o f 10 places a n d asked t o place t h e m in o r d e r , f r o m first t o last, w i t h respect t o f r e q u e n c y of use of montañés. T h e results are presented in figure 4 . 2 ,

Language loyalty and linguistic variation

40

•w K .3S .2 c I

Os

(T Ni-

ro [mas' 1 a'ya]. The fourth variant, a weak apico dental fricative, may be heard before [d] or [t]. The last of the variants, which at this point in history is the most prevalent in village speech, is the Castilian s. Presented here will be data f r o m conversational speech recorded during the 49 interviews being used for group analysis. From each of the 49 interviews, 40 consecutive manifestations of s in word-final position before consonants, vowels and pauses were transcribed. Although phonological conditioning was found to be a factor influencing the selection of variants, it does not significantly affect the performances of the different groups of informants considered here (the performance of variants in linguistic environments is considered in the following chapter). To simplify matters in this discussion, non-Castilian variants one through four above are considered as a unit in calculating their frequency over and against that of the variant that is characteristic of Castilian - the fully pronounced alveolar fricative. In figure 7.5, we see that by correlating standard and nonstandard pronunciations of s with age groups composed of b o t h sexes, we find that although the frequency of the nonstandard is lowest in the lowest age group, the difference between the lowest and the middle age group is too small to be very significant. If we take the further step of looking at the performances of male and female subgroups within each age category, we find that two different patterns are present. Nonstandard variants decline continuously in the successive age groups in women, though the difference between the middle and younger groups is somewhat smaller than that between the upper and the middle. In men, the middle age group uses the non-standard variants less than the older group, but the youngest age group has a higher frequency of the non-standard pronunciation than the middle group. Among men, the decline in dialectal or non-standard pronunciation may have stopped and possibly even have been reversed. It turns out, of course, that the aspirated s is more closely associated

90

Language loyalty and linguistic

FIGURE 7.5

PERCENTAGES

variation

OF N O N - S T A N D A R D

s IN MEN,

WOMEN, A N D O V E R A L L , B Y A G E GROUPS. 100%

80%

-

60%

40%

-

20%

-

0% 35-54 Feature

Mean by Age Groups

P

x2

13-24 DF

N of Tokens in sample

55-

35-54

13-34

NSs-(m)

31.8

23.5

26.8

.010

7.44 2

NSs-(w)

23.0

13.5

09.1

.005

20.24 2

NSs-(o)

29.1

20.2

18.9

.005

23.07

2

1240 720 1960

with the Andalusian dialect of southern Spain than it is with montañés, or for that matter any of the other regional dialects of northern Spain. It is heard regularly on television and radio in the speech of Andalusian politicians, entertainers and athletes (montañés and Asturian speech are rarely, if ever, heard). Perhaps more important, aspirated or non-standard s is characteristic of non-standard speech in an area that extends far beyond Andalusia to include the Canary Islands and much of Latin America, while also penetrating certain sectors of society in Madrid, in the center of Castile.

The "U" and other features

91

Might it be possible that this apparent upturn in the use of the aspirated s by young men is an indication that the aspirated or nonstandard s is on its way to becoming a rallying point for provincial Cantabrian speech, a feature distinguishing it both from Castilian and from the speech of the Castilianized provincial capital, Santander, while permitting identification with the masses of Andalusia and beyond? It is interesting to note that young people, in particular, when moving from the provincial capital into the area of Cantabria in which Ucieda is located may be picking up the aspirated s, but not the u. In fact, the director of the regional high school in Cabezón de la Sal, located a few kilometers from Ucieda, while saying that he believed secondary education would eventually help eradicate the dialect and the u, in the same breath commented that his own children were picking up the aspiration of s. If it turned out to be the case that the s were gaining new significance, what of the continuing decline in its use among the women interviewed? If the cultural content of the s is different from that of the u, since the aspirated s is used by old men and young men, agricultural workers and non-agricultural workers alike, how can it be that women remain reluctant to engage in its use? The answer may be that, for women, some cultural baggage is still present in the aspirated s. Whether they are montañeses, andaluces, or Latin Americans, men, both young and old, by and large continue to hold to traditional notions of the sexes. Those notions are embodied in the following saying, found on a plate mounted behind the counter of the busiest bar in Ucieda: 'La mujer y la sartén en la cocina están bien' 'The woman and the frying pan in the kitchen are fine'. We might conjecture that to break free of the bonds that traditional expectations place on them, women continue to prefer the standard alternatives in speech more than men, even in the case of the s, because by following the standard, educated model they are more likely to better their situation Through education they meet educated men and may enter the ranks of female professionals - teachers, nurses, technicians - who are to some degree exempted from the traditional roles. Taking into account all of this, we should still observe, however, that the decline in use of nonstandard s may be slowing in women, that is, the decrease in frequency of its appearance from middle-aged women to young women is only half that of the decrease from older to middle-aged women. Women, after all, may be receptive to a feature that is part of general, rather than rural or provincial, nonstandard speech. At least one other feature appears to follow a pattern similar to that of the s in its relation to age groups and sex in the community of Ucieda. It is the dropping of r in word-final position of both mono-morphemic word stems (e.g., peor), and infinitives (e.g., trabajar)* Relative frequencies of deleted and non-deleted r are presented in figure 7.6, first by

92

Language loyalty and linguistic

variation

age groups and then by age groups and sex. Transcriptions of 15 consecutive tokens per informant provide the basis for the analysis. It can be seen that when we consider occurrence in men and women together, the dialectal, or nonstandard, alternative drops off slowly in consecutive age groups. In women the drop-offs are sharper, but in men they are very minimal and, in fact, statistically insignificant. Older women have given the dialectal alternative more than older men, but, as might be expected, in the middle and younger age groups, men give the dialectal alternative more than women. Like aspiration and deletion of s, deletion of wordfinal r is encountered very broadly in southern Spain and America, particularly in colloquial and nonstandard speech. It may also, therefore, be looked upon somewhat differently from those dialectal features that may be considered to be more strictly provincial or regional. Conclusion In this discussion an attempt has been made to show that montañés speech features may not all have responded alike to pressure for change. A large and important group of dialectal features from various linguistic levels have been shown to appear with lower frequencies in the speech of young people than in the speech of older people. Certain other dialectal features, that are phonological in nature, have been shown to continue to occur with high frequency across all age levels, doubtless in large part because of their particularly unobtrusive quality. It has also been suggested that another set of features, morpho-syntactic in nature, may also be being maintained quite uniformly, because of particular linguistic advantages they offer competing Castilian features. Finally, we have discussed two features that appear progressively less frequently in progressively lower age groups of women, but remain quite steady or even appear to reverse their decline in men. The significance of this last group of features may go far beyond its number. In fact, the patterning of the s and r seems to suggest that it should be possible to consider all of the nonstandard features that we have discussed in another way. They may be thought of as composing two complementary sets, one of which may be best represented by aspiration and deletion of s and the other by the u and the aspiration of h. Along with the u and aspiration of h in the latter group would be included other features that are associated directly with the dialect area; these would include the use of g before ue, metaphony, and vowel raising. In the former group, along with the aspirated s and the deleted r, we would include other features that, like s and r, are not Castilian but also are not limited in scope or in association to the dialect area, for example, velar n and the substitution of y for 11.

The "U" and other features FIGURE 7.6

93

PERCENTAGE OF DELETION OF r IN MEN, WOMEN, AND OVERALL, BY AGE GROUPS.

100%

80%

60%

40%

20%

0% Feature and Sex

24 Mean by Age Group P 55-

D. of r (m) 30.9 D. of r(w) 37.3 D. o f r ( o ) 32.9

35-54

13-34

29.3 26.6 28.4

27.3 17.5 22.9

.900 .010 .050

x2

DF

.55 2 10.13 2 6.12 2

N of Tokens in sample

465 270 735

To go along with these two sets of features we might also posit two movements in speech and two stages of awareness to accompany them. The first movement is that with which we have been primarily concerned, toward the use of the Castilian model. It has taken place as people have become more and more aware of the Castilian model and of its social advantages. As horizons have continued to widen and as greater sophistication has been achieved, some, particularly the young, may now be attaining a second stage of awareness, an awareness that there exists a speech model that is neither dialectal nor standard Castilian. We might call this

94

Language loyalty and linguistic variation

the general nonstandard model. In a way, it is already familiar, because it incorporates some of the features of area speech (e.g. s, r, n, and y). Perhaps its greatest advantage is that it enables an individual to discard his old dialectal speech model and move toward another model without capitulating to Castilian. To the Cantabrian, for whom a certain degree of independence from the central sphere has always been important, this advantage may be especially appealing. The development of a new nonstandard, or non-Castilian, prestige model for speech in Ucieda offers a number of intriguing possibilities for further investigation. Nevertheless, although data presented in the following chapter will again suggest that this development is present, it will not be pursued in detail here. Indeed, chances are that the movement in speech inspired by this new model may be present only in its initial form and as a result, would best be studied at a later date. That caution and deliberation in investigation may be appropriate in this case is also suggested by the possibility that, because contact with the new model may be much less direct than with Castilian, the movement toward this model may be slower and more difficult to document. In the final analysis, however, if and when this shift toward a general nonstandard speech model is confirmed, we will be confronted once again with the linguistic reflection of a broader phenomenon, in this case with the movement of traits or features of culture originally thought of as belonging to one locality or region into a more nebulous domain of general popular culture, that includes certain types of music, dance, cuisine and even speech. Finally, we should observe that the concluding statement of the preceding paragraph is just one of several attempts that have been made in this chapter to suggest that language features are not really so very different from extralinguistic social or cultural features in the ways in which they respond to pressures for change. The point here may be that if we consider language features to be wholly abstract, or mental, phenomena, as has often been the case in recent linguistic research, we do so at the risk of obscuring the fact that not unlike other products of the human mind, they are situated in and influenced by a broader flux and patterning of community events.

NOTES 1. These judgments, as well as the results shown for Maintenance of Archaic Words in figure 7.3, are based on responses to questions designed to elicit the follwing ten archaic lexical items selected from a longer list of archaic forms elicited by the questionnaire: 1) escaniyu, 2) cimientu, 3) andoscu, 4) jarmosu, 5) igueda, 6) saca o/os, 7) esquilu, 8) regaltu, 9) mosca de miel, 10) muruga. 2. The -ucu ending occurs in Asturias with a meaning that is different from and complementary to that of the -in. The complementary sense of these two endings appears not to be present in Cantabria, or at least not in Ucieda.

The "U" and other features

95

3. These findings are based on the same sample of tokens used to determine frequencies of intervocalic occurrences of the montañés g in figure 7.1. 4. For a discussion of the frequency of deletion of r in each of these categories and in phonological environments, see the following chapter.

Chapter 8

Linguistic Constraints on Variation

To this point we have attempted to demonstrate that a significant relationship exists between the variation in speech encountered in our study and sociocultural factors present in the community in which the study was carried out. We have yet to consider another class of factors that in previous studies have also been found to bear significantly on language variation and change. These are factors which are themselves purely linguistic in nature. They include such things as the influence of preceding and succeeding phonological segments, the influence of morphological categories in which the variables appear, and also that of the configuration of rhythm or stress in which the variable language feature is encountered. In discussing the role of linguistic constraints in variation, the findings which will be presented should be regarded as preliminary, in large part because the numbers with which we will be dealing are too small to allow the drawing of definite conclusions. It will be shown, nevertheless, that in many cases the linguistic influence on variation appears to be significant and to follow predictable patterns. In cases where it is possible to make comparisons between the findings presented here and findings found for the same features in studies carried out in other geographical areas, specifically Latin America and North America, such comparisons will be made. At the end of this chapter an attempt will be made to show that by using a statistical procedure to correlate purely linguistic variants with each other, we can isolate competing 'styles' of speech which appear to correspond to those which we have claimed are characteristic of different social groups in the community of Ucieda. Ten variables have been selected for examination here; eight are phonological and two, syntactic. Of the phonological variables, three involve vowel production; they are: 1) the height of word-final back vowels, 2) metaphony before final back vowels, and 3) vowel raising before high tonic vowels. Five of the phonological variables considered are consonantal features; they are: 1) the aspiration of h, 2) velar closure before the diphthong -ue, 3) the aspiration of s, 4) the use of a velar n in word-final position, and 5) the dropping of r. Finally, two variables will be considered that are strictly syntactic in nature. The first is the use of definite articles before possessive pronouns, as in el mi criu, and the second is the tenden-

98

Language loyalty and linguistic variation

cy to drop the genitive preposition de. Two criteria have been used in the selection of variables for examination here: ready availability in the data at hand, and significance in distinguishing the regional dialect from Castilian. Providing the data are the same 49 recorded interviews used in the group analyses of preceding chapters. Except where otherwise specified, the data are drawn from the conversation portions of the interviews. Vocalic Variables Word-final u Perhaps the most important phonological variable in rural speech in Cantabria is the height of word-final, non-neuter back vowels. In this position, standard Castilian is typified by the use of o, while montañés preserves an u which, as was stated in chapter 2, originated in Latin. In typical montañés the u is high and somewhat centralized, but in actual village speech there are four major variants: Variable Variant [ú] u [y] [o] [o]

Phonetic Description high, back, centralized vowel lower-high, back, centralized vowel upper-mid, back, centralized vowel mid, back vowel; Castilian

The middle variants, [y] and [o] are adjustments in vowel height which allow the speaker to approach one or the other of the two polar alternatives, Castilian [o] or montañés [ú], without completely committing himself to it. In examining the relative frequencies of occurrence of these four variants, our calculations will be based on the transcriptions of 40 consecutive tokens of the word-final back vowel in non-neuter words in the speech of each informant. The total number of tokens in the sample is 1960. First, we will consider each of the four variants in three different phonological environments: before consonants, before vowels, and before pause. Even though variation in these environments is minimal, the percentage scores for the four variants which are given in table 8.1 do give an idea of the relative proportions of each of the variants in the data.

Linguistic constraints on variation TABLE 8.1:

Percentages of variants of u in phonological environments [ü]

_c V

3

(n)

99

41.0 39.0 41.4 (796)

[y]

[