A Corpus-Based Sociolinguistic Study of Spanish in the Metro-Boston Area

超过4000万美国人说西班牙语。这一数字超过了除墨西哥和哥伦比亚以外拉丁美洲所有国家的人口总和，大致相当于西班牙目前的人口。据估计，在3400万5岁以上在家说西班牙语的美国人中，2500万人的英语说得“不错”（640万）或“非常好”（1880万）。到2050年，自认为是西班牙裔的美国人可能会超过1.3亿。总的来说，这些事实描绘了一幅清晰的画面：西班牙语是，并将继续是我们国家语言认同的一个决定性因素。为了更好地理解西班牙语目前在美国人生活中的作用，并预测它未来可能如何演变，有必要研究两种力量对今天西班牙语使用的影响。首先，西班牙语和英语在很大程度上同时使用。其次，西班牙语的许多不同变种在全球范围内都存在于美国的一个浓缩环境中。这意味着，在拉丁美洲，很少与自己社区以外的人交流的人，在美国各地，却经常与来自不同国家和地区的人接触。本项目研究了马萨诸塞州波士顿讲西班牙语的居民之间这两种语言接触（分别称为语言接触和方言接触）的结果。分析的重点是自发言语中出现的两个语言特征：(1)主语代词（相当于西班牙语中的“我”、“你”和“我们”）和(2)语音“s”的声学特性。这些特征的变化模式类似于语言指纹，与个人和社区具有独特的相关性。目前对美洲其他地区西班牙语的研究表明，这些特征与指纹不同，容易发生变化。跟踪和理解这种变化的本质直接关系到与美国西班牙语有关的一系列问题，以及语言学家对接触引起的语言变化的一般理解。这些问题包括西班牙语在移民世代之间的维持，英语对西班牙语语法结构的潜在影响，反之亦然，方言差异在接触情况下的持续或侵蚀，以及语言变化的时间尺度。除了语音数据，该项目还收集和分析说话者的个人语言历史。这些包括他们对何时、如何、和谁一起学习和使用西班牙语的描述，以及他们在日常生活中对英语的态度和使用。这些数据将共同创建一个丰富的波士顿西班牙语概况，有望增加对西班牙语在美国使用情况的了解，特别是在大多数美国人居住的大城市地区。

Over 40 million Americans speak Spanish. This figure eclipses the individual populations of every country in Latin America except Mexico and Colombia, and it is roughly equivalent to the current population of Spain. Of the estimated 34 million Americans over five years old who speak Spanish at home, 25 million also report speaking English 'well' (6.4 million) or 'very well' (18.8 million). By 2050, the number of Americans who self-identify as Hispanic is likely to surpass 130 million. In broad strokes, these facts paint a clear picture: Spanish is, and will continue to be, a defining element of our national linguistic identity. In order to better understand the current role of Spanish in American life, and in order to predict how it may evolve in the future, it is essential to study the linguistic effects of two forces shaping its use today. First, Spanish and English are spoken alongside each other on a massive scale. Second, the many different varieties of the Spanish language found across the globe are present in a condensed setting in the United States. This means that individuals who might rarely interact with speakers outside of their own communities in Latin America are, throughout the U.S., in frequent contact with speakers whose national and regional origins are different from their own. This project studies the outcomes of these two kinds of linguistic contact (known as language and dialect contact, respectively) among Spanish speaking residents of Boston, MA. The analysis focuses on two linguistic features as they occur in spontaneous speech: (1) subject pronouns (the Spanish equivalent of words like 'I', 'you', and 'we') and (2) the acoustic properties of the speech sound 's'. Patterns of variation in these features are akin to linguistic fingerprints, uniquely relatable to individuals and communities. Current research on Spanish in other American locales indicates that these features are, unlike fingerprints, susceptible to change. Tracking and understanding the nature of such change bears directly on a host of issues relevant to Spanish in the United States as well as linguists' general understanding of contact-induced language change. These include the maintenance of Spanish across immigrant generations, the potential influence of English on the grammatical structure of Spanish and vice versa, the persistence or erosion of dialect differences in contact situations, and the timescale of language change. In addition to speech data, the project also collects and analyzes speakers' personal linguistic histories. These include their descriptions of when, how, and with whom they acquired and use Spanish as well as their attitudes towards and use of English in their daily lives. Together these data will create a rich profile of Spanish in Boston that promises to increase understanding of how Spanish is used in the United States, particularly in the large urban areas in which most Americans live.