Dominika Drobniak

Hispanics as the Speakers of English - the Perceptibility and Evaluation of the

Language Mistakes Made by Hispanics

Praca licencjacka napisana

w Instytucie Filologii Angielskiej

Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza

pod kierunkiem dra Grzegorza Krynickiego

Poznań, 2010

OŚWIADCZENIE

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Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu

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(miejscowość, data) (czytelny podpis)

2

Table of contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS................................................................................................3

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES..............................................................................5

INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................6

CHAPTER 1: LANGUAGE CONTACT AND LINGUISTIC VARIATION...........7

1.1. LANGUAGE CONTACT..............................................................................................7

1.2. BILINGUALISM........................................................................................................7

1.3. CODE-SWITCHING....................................................................................................8

1.4. LINGUISTIC BORROWING.........................................................................................9

1.5. LINGUISTIC VARIATION.........................................................................................10

CHAPTER 2: HISPANICS IN THE UNITED STATES...........................................11

2.1. TERMINOLOGY......................................................................................................11

2.2. AN OUTLINE HISTORY...........................................................................................11

2.3. THE CURRENT STATUS OF HISPANICS...................................................................13

2.4. PLACES OF RESIDENCE..........................................................................................15

2.5. HISPANICS AS THE SPEAKERS OF ENGLISH...........................................................16

2.5.1. Phonetics and phonology..............................................................................17

2.5.2. Syntax............................................................................................................24

2.5.3. Semantics.......................................................................................................26

2.6. SUMMARY.............................................................................................................29

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY...............................................................................30

3.1. SUBJECTS AND HYPOTHESIS..................................................................................30

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3.2. MATERIALS USED IN DATA COLLECTION..............................................................31

3.3. PROCEDURES IN DATA COLLECTION.....................................................................31

3.4. DATA ANALYSIS....................................................................................................32

CHAPTER 4: ANALYSIS............................................................................................34

4.1. RESULTS................................................................................................................34

4.1.1. The recordings...............................................................................................34

4.1.2. The questionnaire..........................................................................................36

4.2. DISCUSSION...........................................................................................................38

4.2.1. The recordings...............................................................................................38

4.2.2. The questionnaire..........................................................................................41

CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................44

References.......................................................................................................................46

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List of tables and figures

Table 1. Hispanics in the United States...........................................................................13

Table 2. Hispanic population in particular states............................................................16

Table 3. The most common language mistakes made by Hispanics...............................35

Table 4. The correlation between CMPW and the scores given by the evaluators.........37

Table 5. The coefficient of mistakes per word in particular fields of analysis...............41

Table 6. The average scores and the CMPW of particular speakers...........................................42

Figure 1. Educational attainment of Hispanics in the USA.............................................14

Figure 2. English proficiency of Hispanics in the USA..................................................17

Figure 3. Vowel chart of American English....................................................................18

Figure 4. Vowel chart of Spanish................................................................................................18

Map 1. The percentage of Hispanics in particular states...........................................16

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Introduction

The aim of this paper is to discuss the English language spoken by Hispanics (mainly

those living in the USA). At the beginning, we will explain the most important terms re-

lated to the issue of bilingualism and language mistakes made by non-native speakers of

English. The scope of the study is narrowed to Hispanic speakers only, so we will

briefly characterize them and focus on the features of Hispanic English with respect to

phonetics and phonology, syntax and semantics. The study aims at investigating lan-

guage mistakes that Hispanics made and measuring the accuracy of evaluation of their

utterances by the native speakers of English. Recordings of Hispanics speaking English

and an online questionnaire will be the instruments of this research. We will measure

also the correlation between Hispanics’ actual language mistakes and the scores (means

of evaluation) given by the native speakers of American English. Furthermore, the re-

sults of this study will help investigate which of the three areas of evaluation, namely

phonetics and phonology, syntax and semantics, will have the strongest influence on the

general score (overall impression of a given recording). The preliminary assumption is

that pronunciation mistakes will be most noticeable to the evaluators. Moreover, we will

check whether it is possible that the evaluator’s or speaker’s characteristics (such as age,

gender, state of residence or education) can be acknowledged as influential on the per-

ception of a given recording. It is of utmost importance to emphasize that the utterances

will be evaluated with respect to language mistakes, not the speaker’s proficiency in

English.

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Chapter 1: Language contact and linguistic variation

1.1. Language contact

According to Thomason (2001: 1), “language contact is the use of more than one lan-

guage in the same place at the same time”, however, the speakers of these languages do

not necessarily have to be fluent bilinguals or multilinguals to interact verbally. This in-

teraction can influence language in several ways, among others: “code-switching, code

alternation, passive familiarity, ‘negotiation’, second-language acquisition strategies,

bilingual first-language acquisition, and change by deliberate decision” (Thomason

2001: 129). Some of these processes will be of crucial importance for this study.

1.2. Bilingualism

There are numerous definitions and approaches towards bilingualism depending on dif-

ferent “categories, scales and dichotomies” (Romaine 2001: 11). According to Bloom-

field (1984: 56), “native-like control of two languages” is the condition of bilingualism.

However, linguists are not unanimous as far as the proficiency of a bilingual speaker is

concerned. Grosjean (1985: 471-472) claims that bilingualism involves the ability of a

speaker of one language to communicate in another in everyday life. The issue of bilin-

gualism can be concluded following Romaine (2001: 11-12):

Mackey (1968: 555) concludes that in order to study bilingualism we are forced to con-sider it as something entirely relative because the point at which the speaker of a second language becomes bilingual is either arbitrary or impossible to determine. He therefore considers bilingualism as simply the alternate use of two or more languages (see also

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Weinreich 1968: 1). Following him, I have also used the term ‘bilingualism’ to include multilingualism.

1.3. Code-switching

According to Franceschini (2002: 51), code-switching means “using several languages

or language varieties in the course of the conversation”. Usage of this mechanism is a

more or less conscious decision of a speaker. Intersentential switching and intrasenten-

tial switching are the two types of code-switching. The former occurs outside the sen-

tence boundary and the latter takes place within one sentence (Thomason 2001: 132). In

many cases, however, it is difficult to distinguish whether an item should be classified

as code-switching or a borrowing. Let us consider the following example:

(1) It was his idea, ¿tú sabes?

‘It was his idea, you know?’

In fact, this is a frequent insertion among Puerto Rican and Dominican bilingual speak-

ers used in informal speech (Lipski 2005: 7). However, tú sabes is problematic, as it can

be treated as either intrasentential code-switching or a borrowing. There are many such

ambiguous examples in different languages and linguists are divided with respect to

their approaches to the distinction between code-switching and a borrowing. This ques-

tion is explained by Poplack:

The classification of lone items is at the heart of a fundamental disagreement among CS researchers over (a) whether the distinction between CS and borrowing should be for-mally recognized in a theory of CS, (b) whether these and other manifestations of lan-guage contact can be unambiguously identified in bilingual discourse, and (c) criteria for determining whether a given item was switched or borrowed (2001: 2063).

Evidently, the ambiguity of insertions like tú sabes depends on the approach of a partic-

ular linguist, as differentiation between a borrowing and a single-word switch is “con-

ceptually easy but methodologically difficult” (Poplack 2001: 2063). Poplack (2004:

594) also mentions the relation between code-switching and the bilingual proficiency –

the higher the proficiency the more frequent use of code-switches. For the purposes of

this study, it has to be emphasized that code-switching and borrowing are not regarded

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as language mistakes. They will be mentioned in the analysis, as they might have an in-

fluence on the respondents’ perception of the speakers’ proficiency, but they will not be

counted as mistakes.

Apart from code-switching, bilingual speakers, especially immigrants, use code

alternation. It also involves the use of at least two languages, however, what distin-

guishes it from code-switching is that code alternation cannot be found within the same

utterance or conversation. Code alternation concerns bilinguals who “use one of their

languages in one set of environments and the other language in a completely different

set of environments” (Thomason 2001: 136), e.g. Spanish at home and English at

school. While code-switching may be applicable in this study, code alternation is not

because recordings present single person in a single situation.

1.4. Linguistic borrowing

According to Haugen (1950: 212), a borrowing is “the attempted reproduction in one

language of patterns previously found in another”. As a factor that contributes to the ex-

istence of borrowings, Field (2002: 5) gives frequency. The more frequent an item in

the source language, the more likely it is to be borrowed. Other reasons include the need

of reference to a new object or concept and prestige of a donor language (McMahon

1994: 201-202). There are several types of borrowings (Haugen 1950) and we will de-

scribe the ones that are most important for this study. The most common is a direct loan

where both form and meaning are borrowed, e.g. Spanish sandwich or fútbol. Another

type of borrowing is calque, which incorporates a loan translation and a semantic

loan. The first involves word-by-word translation of a foreign expression into the native

language, e.g Spanish rascacielos ‘skyscraper’. The latter pertains to the extension of

meaning of a native word so that it accommodates the meaning from a borrowing lan-

guage, e.g. Spanish ratón ‘mouse’ (the original meaning was extended to a ‘computer

mouse’ under the influence of English language).

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1.5. Linguistic variation

The concept of linguistic variation is inseparably related to dialects including the ethnic

ones. Hispanic American English (HAE) has become a dialect which, according to Ellis

(1999: 147), “is variation in grammar and vocabulary in addition to sound variations”.

However, it should be emphasized that there are many sociolinguistic factors that deter-

mine one’s speech, e.g. “the speaker’s purpose in communication, the relationship be-

tween speaker and hearer, the production circumstances and various demographic affili-

ations that a speaker can have” (Reppen et al. 2002: VII). In case of HAE, the most im-

portant factors contributing to the emergence of this dialect was the origin of its speak-

ers. For the purpose of this study, we will focus on three of the variations, namely

phonological, syntactic and semantic.

Phonological variation, also referred to as accent, “can signal important informa-

tion about aspects of speakers’ social identity – about such things as class, age, ethnicity

and gender” (Eckert 1988: 64). In fact, the most prominent and distinctive features of

HAE are the phonological ones (Kövecses 2000: 91). However, syntactic dissimilarities

between HAE and Standard American English (SAE) together with differences in lexi-

con allow to treat them as different dialects. Finally, lexical and morphological varia-

tions are also common among Hispanics and although they may have their roots in con-

tact with African American English (Wolfram and Schilling-Estes 1998: 182), they

have become a distinctive feature of HAE as well.

To conclude, as has been mentioned before, the most important mechanisms for

this study include language contact, code-switching, code-alternation and borrowing.

The notion of linguistic variations, divided into phonological, syntactic and lexical ones,

with respect to HAE will be explained later in this paper.

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Chapter 2: Hispanics in the United States

2.1. Terminology

A dictionary definition for Hispanic reads: “someone who comes from a country where

Spanish or Portuguese are spoken, especially ones in Latin America” (Mayor 2009:

831) whereas, Latino is “a man in the US whose family comes from Latin America”

(Mayor 2009: 983). Even though, as Ryskamp (1997: 2) notes, the definition of His-

panic makes equal all the Hispanic people living in Europe, Latin America and the

United States, as yet, there is no better terminology for such a distinction than calling

these people by their nationalities. Notwithstanding, in this paper, we will follow the

terminology proposed by federal government of the United States described in “The

American Community – Hispanic 2004” report:

“The federal government defines Hispanic or Latino as a person of Mexican, Puerto Ri -can, Cuban, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race. Thus, Hispanics may be any race. The terms Hispanic and Latino are used by the U.S. Census Bureau; hereinafter in this report, the term Hispanic is used to refer to all in-dividuals who reported they were Hispanic or Latino.”

2.2. An outline history

The presence of Hispanics in the territories of present day United States of America can

be divided into three stages, namely, the Spanish era, the Mexican era and the United

States era.

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The first Spanish explorers came to America at the beginning of the sixteenth

century and in 1565 founded the first city on this continent, St. Augustine, Florida. The

desire for exploration of new lands and establishment of New Spain led Spaniards

through the Southwest of the continent triggering the creation of numerous cities, e.g.

Santa Fe, long before the settlement of British pilgrims (Weaver 1994: 43-44). At the

same time Spain focused on expansion in Mexico, Peru and the Philippines. Southern

states, including Arizona, New Mexico and California were colonized by the end of the

eighteenth century (Weaver 1994: 44). Two islands, that are native lands of many Lati-

nos living in United States today, namely Cuba and Puerto Rico, were under the rule of

Spain for almost 400 years. During that time, Spanish culture permeated into many as-

pects of life: “Spanish language, the Catholic religion, a plantation, a monocrop econ-

omy, Spanish social structure and other institutions” (Weaver 1994: 45).

The situation of the empire of Spain begun to worsen when in 1821 Mexico

gained independence. It was synonymous with the end of European rule in California

and the immigration of American settlers to this territory. Additionally, in the 1830s

Mexican government allowed Americans to live in Texas and get citizenship, and they

soon managed to outnumber the Tejanos (Weaver 1994: 45). The so-called Mexican era

was relatively short and ended when the war of 1846 broke out, resulting in the Ameri-

can invasion and Mexico City being taken over in 1847.

As a result of the Mexican-American War, the Treaty of Guadelupe-Hidalgo in

1848 and the Gadsden Treaty in 1853, the vast territories once under the rule of Spain

and Mexico were partially given and partially sold to the United States. The new Ameri-

can lands were “eventually divided into the present states of California, Arizona, New

Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming” (Weaver 1994:

45). The majority of Hispanics chose to stay and become American citizens, as the gov-

ernment of the United Stated promised them full rights to their lands. However, these

promises were never fulfilled and as Weaver (1994: 46) writes in his paper:

“Hispanic population became a maligned minority, objects of discrimination, land confis-cation and a people with second-class citizenship. The migration of Mexicans for the re-mainder of the nineteenth century was modest, but it became increasingly larger during the twentieth century. It has always been tied to the periodic economic needs of Mexican workers in Mexico and opportunities in the United States”.

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The situation of Californios (Spanish-speaking residents of California) got even worse

during the California Gold Rush (1848-1855). At the beginning, Mexican and Sonoran

miners revolutionized mining techniques, which soon brought great benefits to the Cali-

fornian and Arizonian gold fields (Mendoza and Torres 1994: 74). They were trying to

maintain Hispanic traditions and social life, however they soon became overwhelmed

by large numbers of settlers who were moving from one place to another in chase of

gold. Some American miners, unable to communicate with Spanish-speakers, tried to

assimilate them, simultaneously provoking acts of violence (Hill 1999: 1). However, de-

spite discrimination, civil rights’ violation and language barriers Hispanics managed to

maintain their culture and traditions.

2.3. The current status of Hispanics

According to the data of the U.S. Census Bureau “2008 American Community Survey”,

there are almost 46.9 million people in the USA who declared to be Hispanic, which

constitutes over 15.4% of this country’s population. Over 65.5% of these people are

Mexican. Significantly smaller percentage of Hispanics constitute Puerto Ricans,

Cubans, Dominicans and people from South America. Below, there is a simplified table

presenting the demographics of Hispanics from different countries.

Table 1. Hispanics in the United States

Origin Estimate Percentage of the US population

Hispanic 46,891,456 15.4Mexican 30,738,559 10.1Puerto Rican 4,216,533 1.4Cuban 1,617,010 0.5Dominican (Dominican Republic) 1,327,685 0.4Central American 3,869,426 1.3South American 2,732,402 0.9Other Hispanic 2,389,841 0.8

The biggest rise in the population of Hispanics in the United States was noted in the

1990s, however it is still growing. According to the newest predictions, the Hispanic

population will be increasing to reach 102.6 million in 2050 (Bergman 2004).

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According to “Current Population Survey 2006”, median age of Hispanic US in-

habitants was 27.1 among men and 27.7 among women. These numbers are quite low in

comparison with an average age of the total of residents of the United States, which is

almost 9 years older. This is mainly because among Hispanic immigrants there are

many young people who move to the USA with the will to improve their lives and start

their families there. In 2004, about 1 in 3 Hispanics was under 18, when compared with

1 in 5 among non-Hispanic whites. What is also related to the above age statistics is the

household size. Hispanics live in bigger families than people of other origins in the

United States. Over 20% of Hispanic households comprise of four members and as

much as 22.5% of five people and more (“Current Population Survey 2006”).

The statistics concerning educational attainment of Hispanics show that for some

reasons (probably mainly economic) they are less likely to get a BA/MA degree or even

graduate from high school. As it is presented in the graph below, almost half of Hispan-

ics in the USA get a high school degree, however almost 25% have less than 9th grade

(“Current Population Survey 2006”).

Figure 1. Educational attainment of Hispanics in the USA

Hispanics, like many ethnic minorities, have smaller incomes, partly because of

their lower educational attainment. According to “Current Population Survey 2006”,

most of male Hispanics work in construction and maintenance, production and trans-

14

portation or services. Women mostly occupy jobs in sales and services. An average

earnings of a full-time year-round Hispanic worker in 2005 were $25,491, while the to-

tal median income was over $11,000 higher. However, even more alarming are the sta-

tistics concerning the number of Hispanics living below the poverty line, namely about

22%, which is 9% more than a total for the USA. The same study (“Current Population

Survey 2006”) shows that almost 1 in 3 Hispanic children lives below the poverty line.

Very often, their social status in the United States is, therefore, determined by

their economic status. Hispanics live in bigger families, earn less and children are

forced to start working instead of going to college or university. It has its effects in low

level of educational attainment and the fact that only 17.7% of Hispanics work as pro-

fessionals, compared with twice as much of all the inhabitants of the United States.

2.4. Places of residence

The latest immigration of Hispanic population to the United States began in the 1970s.

They started to settle in the Southern States (mainly California and Texas) and in New

York (Weaver 1994: 17). These trends seemed to continue through the next decades up

to now, however, as can been seen in the Map 1 below, Hispanics managed to populate

also Central and Western States. According to the data of the U.S. Census Bureau “Pop-

ulation Estimates 2008” placed in the Table 2 below, in 2008, the biggest Latino popu-

lation could be found in California, namely almost 13.5 million of Hispanics. It means

that every third inhabitant of California has Hispanic origins. The second state densely

populated by Latinos was Texas, the territory which is inhabited by over 8.8 million of

Hispanics. Other huge populations of Hispanics could be found in Florida and New

York.

As the Map 1 presents, there are four states whose percentage of Hispanic popu-

lation constitutes over 30% of their overall population, namely California, Arizona,

New Mexico and Texas. New Mexico is the state of the highest percentage of Hispanics

– 44.9%. Besides, Latinos constitute a significant part of the population of Nevada, Col-

orado, Florida, New York, New Jersey and Illinois.

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Table 2. Hispanic population in particular states

State Estimate Percentage of the state population

United States 46,943,613 15.4California 13,457,397 36.6Texas 8,870,475 36.5Florida 3,845,069 21.0New York 3,250,038 16.7Illinois 1,967,121 15.2Arizona 1,955,630 30.1New Jersey 1,418,545 16.3

2.5. Hispanics as the speakers of English

As the statistics indicate (“2006 American Community Survey”), over 60% of Hispan-

ics living in the United States speak English “very well” and almost 15% “well”. Worse

abilities of speaking English present 15% (“not well”) and over 9% of Hispanics is

claimed not to speak any English.

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Map 1. The percentage of Hispanics in particular states

Due to the fact that Mexicans constitute the biggest percentage of all the US res-

idents with Hispanic background, the most popular and homogeneous Hispanic Ameri-

can English variety is Chicano English (Kövecses 2000: 91). Beside this, for the pur-

poses of this study, we would also touch upon the question of the characteristics of Eng-

lish spoken by non-native speakers with Hispanic roots. The sections below divide these

features on phonetics and phonology, syntax and semantics which are simultaneously

the fields of the research described in the following chapters.

2.5.1. Phonetics and phonology

The most distinctive features of Chicano English (CE) and probably the English of non-

native speakers with Hispanic origins (HNNE) are in the field of phonetics and phonol-

ogy. The deviations occur in the realizations of particular sounds, stress patterns and in-

tonation, however, it must be emphasized that very often the differences are arbitrary

and depend on an individual speaker (Fought 2003: 62). Taking into consideration the

fact that the majority of the characteristics of CE are found also in HNNE which plays a

more important role in this study, we will focus particularly on this variety.

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Figure 2. English proficiency of Hispanics in the USA

Figure 3. Vowel chart of American English

The first type of differences between HNNE and Standard American English

(SAE) are the realizations of vowels. As Kövecses (2000: 92) writes: “SAE has eleven

stressed vowel phonemes: /i/, /ɪ/, /e/, /ɛ/, /æ/, /u/, /ʊ/, /o/, /ɔ/, /ɑ/, /ʌ/ (Figure 3),

whereas Spanish only five /i/, /e/, /u/, /o/, /a/ (Figure 4).

Figure 4. Vowel chart of Spanish

Such differences in vowel charts of these two languages cause the substitution of

a few English sounds by one Spanish sound that seems to be the closest (Kövecses

2000: 92). Besides, the Spanish vowel system does not include some features that are

basic to the American one, such as the distinction between lax and tense or long and

short vowels (Santa Ana and Bayley 2004: 418). What is more, Spanish phonology

lacks “a set of r-colored allophones of long vowels” (2004: 418). As a result of these

differences, the speakers of CE and HNNE may not distinguish between:

/i/ and /ɪ/ - Many of the speakers of CE substitute /ɪ/ for /i/ in –ing morpheme, as in

the example (2), but they use /ɪ/ correctly in other contexts (Fought 2003: 81). As

opposed to them, the users of HNNE who do not have a vowel /ɪ/ in Spanish, en-

counter serious problems with this distinction, “producing a majority of phonologi-

cal /ɪ/ tokens as /i/” (Fought 2003: 81). As it is shown in (3), the lack of differentia-

18

tion between these two phonemes leads to pronouncing distinct words with the same

vowel /i/ (Kövecses 2000: 93).

(2) moving SAE: /muvɪŋ/ CE: /muviŋ/

(3) sit SAE: /sɪt/ HNNE: /sit/

seat SAE: /sit/ HNNE: /sit/

/æ/ and /e/ - This distinction seems not to be problematic for the users of CE, how-

ever, the speakers of HNNE “use /æ/ and /e/ interchangeably for phonemic /æ/“

(Fought 2003: 82), as can be seen in (4).

(4) hand SAE: /hænd/ HNNE: /hend/

habit SAE: /hæbɪt/ HNNE: /hæbɪt/ (Fought 2003: 82)

/ə/ and /ɑ/ - Fought (2003: 82) notices that, once again, the speakers HNNE en-

counter some difficulties with distinguishing between these two vowels,

inserting /ɑ/ in the place of /ə/, whereas, in CE these two are different phonemes

(5). However, this substitution is arbitrary and the same speakers insert /ə/ in the

right places, as in the example (6) (2003: 83). Finally, “the reverse substitution was

also sometimes found; some tokens of /ɑ/ are realized as /ə/” (7) (2003: 83).

(5) alone SAE: /əloʊn/ HNNE: /ɑloʊn/

(6) some HNNE: /səm/

(7) calm SAE: /cɑm/ HNNE: /cəm/

diphthong and /e/ - Occasionally, the speakers of Hispanic-English varieties (in-

cluding CE) and HNNE use /e/ instead of a diphthong, as in the example below

(Wolfram and Schilling-Estes 1998: 114).

(8) lake SAE: /leik/ HNNE: /lek/

The second set of differences between HNNE and SAE that will be described in-

cludes various realizations of consonants. Although the inventories of consonants in

19

English and Spanish are not as distinct as in the case of vowels, the speakers of HNNE

encounter problems with the distinction between the following consonants:

stops /t/ /d/ and interdental fricatives /θ/ /ð/ - Frequently, the speakers of HNNE

insert apico-dental stops ([t �] [d�]) in the place of interdental fricatives (/θ/ /ð/), as in

(9) (Fought 2003: 67). Obviously, Hispanics are not the only non-native speakers of

English who use this substitution, since it is very common among people of other

nationalities (2003: 68). It is also a feature which occurs in CE, but only word-ini-

tially (Kövecses 2000: 92).

(9) something SAE: /səmθɪŋ/ HNNE: /səmt �in/

then SAE: /ðen/ HNNE: /d�en/ (Fought 2003: 68)

/tʃ/ and /ʃ/ - This substitution is reciprocal, meaning that the speakers of HNNE

substitute /tʃ/ for /ʃ/ and the other way round (10). As far as the CE is concerned,

Fought (2003: 82) indicates that “all the native Chicano English speakers in my

sample has a clear contrast between /tʃ/ for /ʃ/”. However, she noticed this feature in

the speech of the older generation of CE speakers. Kövecses (2000: 92) observes

that it can be hypercorrection what causes the process of inserting /ʃ/ in words like

chicken, since Spanish does not have this sound.

(10) shop SAE: /ʃɑp/ HNNE: /tʃɑp/

chief SAE: /tʃif/ HNNE: /ʃif/

/v/ and /b/ - In the speech of CE and HNNE a bilabial stop /b/ may be a substitute

for a labio-dental fricative /v/ sound (11) (Kövecses 2000: 92). This may result from

the fact that in Spanish “v” letter is pronounced as a bilabial plosive /b/, as it is

shown in the example (12).

(11) visit SAE: /vɪzɪt/ HNNE: /bizit/

(12) voy ‘I go’ Spanish: /boi/

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glottal fricative /h/ and velar fricative /x/ - This process occurs exclusively in

HNNE and it consists in the substitution of /x/ (a velar fricative sound that appears

in Spanish) for /h/, as in the example (13) below (Fought 2003: 83).

(13) hand SAE: /hænd/ HNNE: /xænd/

Apart from various substitutions of vowels and consonants, the speakers of CE

and HNNE involve into their pronunciation different kind of processes, including:

consonant cluster reduction – In fact, this process occurs in many American di-

alects, however, it is significantly more frequent among the speakers of CE and

HNNE, especially in case of /t/ or /d/ deletion (14) (Fought 2003: 68) and besides,

Hispanics tend to “reduce clusters to a greater extent than many other dialects”

(Santa Ana and Bayley 2004: 425). Furthermore, there is a process called l-vocaliza-

tion, which involves the deletion of /l/ sound, when it occurs in a consonant cluster

(15) (2004: 425). It may even happen, very rarely however, that a speaker omits an

entire cluster (16) (Fought 2003: 69). Kövecses (2000: 92) noted also that some-

times “an entire suffix may be deleted, as is the case with the past time

morpheme /d/” and “the third person suffix /s/ may also be left out” (17).

(14) rest SAE: /rest/ HNNE: /res/

(15) cold SAE: /koʊld/ HNNE: /koʊd/

(16) hardware SAE: /hɑrdwɚ/ HNNE: /hɑwɚ/ (Fought 2003: 68)

(17) saved SAE: /seɪvd/ HNNE: /seɪv/

loss of final alveolar plosives – This process concerns the production of consonants

which occur word-finally and are not a part of a consonant cluster (Fought 2003:

69). Usually, it involves plosives which are unreleased in SAE in words such as:

(18) stop SAE: [stɑp(] HNNE: [stɑ]

met SAE: [met(] HNNE: [me]

21

no flaps – Even though the Spanish consonant inventory includes the flap sound /ɾ/,

the speakers of HNNE often do not use it in English. That is because in Spanish the

letter pronounced as /ɾ/ is “r”, as in the example (19), whereas in American English

the realization of /t/ and /d/ as an alveolar flap is very common (Giegerich 1992:

226). In effect, as Fought (2003: 83) observes, HNNE speakers “follow this rule

only variably and sometimes do not have a flap”, as in the following example (20).

(19) caro ‘expensive’ Spanish: /kaɾo/

(20) personality SAE: /pɚsənælɪɾi/ HNNE: /pɚsənælɪti/ (Fought

2003: 83)

epenthetic ə - As Fought indicates (2003: 83-84), “this is a stereotypical feature of

non-native English speakers whose first language is Spanish” and it involves “the

insertion of epenthetic /ə/ before a consonant cluster beginning with /s/” (21). The

reason for such a process is that in Spanish consonantal blends starting with /s/ does

not occur word-initially, so in HNNE /ə/ sound precedes the cluster (Helman 2004:

94).

(21) speak HNNE: /əspik/

final devoicing – This feature seems to be related exclusively to HNNE, however

Fought (2003: 84) points out that it is also noticeable among the older generation of

CE speakers. Final devoicing in HNNE can occur with respect to any voiced conso-

nant, yet the devoicing of /d/ and /z/ is most frequent (22).

(22) head SAE: /hæd/ HNNE: /hæt/

please SAE: /pliz/ HNNE: /plis/

fridge SAE: /frɪdʒ/ HNNE: /frɪtʃ/

The last issue concerning phonology that will be touched upon is prosody. Al-

though this question is one of the most distinct features of CE and HNNE, it is not well-

developed yet (Fought 2003: 70). Due to the fact that some speakers use Spanish and

English patterns interchangeably, prosody becomes a very “elusive” feature (Santa Ana

22

and Bayley 2004: 426). For the needs of this study, we will focus on stress patterns, as

they are of primary importance with respect to HNNE.

Word stress shift patterns are very frequent among the speakers of HNNE and a

clear influence of Spanish can be noticed in this aspect. In words given in (23), the

stress is placed on the penultimate syllable, since Spanish is a penultimate-stress lan-

guage (Fought 2003: 85). However, words ending with a ‘d’ letter are stressed on the

last syllable, due to the rule transfer from Spanish (24) (2003: 85).

(23) `technique

`show up

(24) terri`fied

rea`lized

Sentence stress in HNNE is also affected by Spanish and very often it is shifted

to the penultimate word or syllable (Fought 2003: 85). It has to be emphasized that the

examples in (25) are not ___________.

(25) Children are that way.

… but it ain’t alright for me to talk to my homegirls? (Fought 2003: 85)

In this section, the most significant phonological variations of CE and, more im-

portantly, of HNNE have been described. The examples above seem to be noteworthy

effects of language contact and bilingualism, however, some of the aspects still need to

be examined more thoroughly (e.g. the issue of prosody).

2.5.2. Syntax

Syntax is the next, after phonetic and phonology, field of descriptive grammar full of

discrepancies when CE and HNNE are concerned. In this section, we will describe the

main syntactic features of these two varieties of English with a special emphasis put on

these that are crucial for this study.

23

3rd person singular forms – Spanish is a language full of irregularities of forms,

mainly with respect to verbs, and compared to English it seems to have much more

complicated morphological patterns. However, inconsistency in using 3rd person

singular forms and the lack of the distinction between was/were are very frequent

among Hispanics speaking English (Fought 2003: 94). As can be seen in (26), the

speakers of CE and HNNE use plural forms of verbs in place of singular ones.

(26) He don’t want me to end up like my sister.

[If] somebody else just come and take your life, you know.

Everybody knew the Cowboys was gonna win again. (2003: 94)

past tense forms – CE and HNNE speakers face some problems with matching an

adequate form of a verb to the tense they are using. As a result, very frequently, they

create Present/Past Perfect by combining a verb in the past tense form with an auxil -

iary verb, as in (27). They also ignore some irregularities of verbs and attach –ed

ending to infinitives of verbs which are not regular (28) (Fought 2003: 94).

(27) I haven’t wrote in a long time.

(…) I had came out the hospital before I got shot. (2003: 94)

(28) Those were the um- most people that I hanged around with. (2003: 94)

pronoun forms – This is the next grammar issue which concerns regularization and

proves to be problematic for the speakers of HNNE and CE. Fought (2003: 94-95)

observes that Hispanics frequently use “non-standard reflexive forms” consisting of

a possessive determiner and a suffix -self/-selves (29).

(29) [They] have to start supporting theirselves at early ages.

(…) he’s a guy, he could take care of hisself.

double negation – The origin of this feature is unclear, however it may have its

roots in Spanish. Designated by Fought (2003: 97) as “negative concord”, it in-

volves the usage of two negatives within one sentence (Kövecses 2000: 93), there-

24

fore, creating a structure which is grammatically incorrect in English, but fully ac-

ceptable in Spanish (30).

(30) I don’t have no car.

No tengo ningún coche.

embedded questions – The structure of embedded questions in English does not in-

volve the inversion of a subject-auxiliary. However, “in embedded wh- questions in

Spanish, the subject and verb or auxiliary would normally be inverted” (Fought

2003: 98) (31). This difference in sentence structure is supposedly the reason why

the speakers of CE and HNNE use inversion in embedded questions, as can be seen

in the example (32).

(31) He told us what it was.

Les dijo qué era esto.

WHAT WAS IT.

(32) He told us what was it.

modal would – Fought (2003: 99) observes that Hispanics use would differently in

if- clauses than the speakers of SAE. They insert would have in the clause following

if, as in (33), whereas in SAE it is typical to construct this clause using pluperfect

tense. In Spanish, this form of a verb is allowed to follow si (the equivalent of if)

(34). Therefore, it is supposed that the occurrence of this feature among the speakers

of CE and HNNE may have its sources in Spanish.

(33) If Thurman Thomas wouldn’t have dropped those fumbles, then the Bills would

have won.

(34) Si Thurman Thomas no hubiera perdido la pelota, los Bills hubieran Ganado.

WOULDN’T HAVE WOULD HAVE

Fought (2003: 99)

prepositions – The use of prepositions by the speakers of CE and HNNE is deeply

influenced by Spanish and as a result, this feature can be noticed more often among

25

non-native speakers of English. They substitute a proper preposition with the literal

translation of the Spanish one. In this way, they insert on in the place of in, because

of Spanish en, which means both in and on (35) (Fought 2003: 100-101). Similarly,

for is used in the meaning of so that and it is probably derived from Spanish para

que, whose literal translation would be for that (36) (2003: 101). This characteris-

tics, however, may vary among the speakers of HNNE and depend on their profi-

ciency of English.

(35) We’re really supposed to get out of here on June.

(36) For my mum can understand. For she won’t feel guilty. (Fought 2003: 100)

In this section, the most important syntactic variations were presented. For the

purposes of this study, we discussed only those which are probably tied to Spanish, as

well as those most frequent among the speakers of HNNE.

2.5.3. Semantics

In this section, we will describe lexical features of CE and HNNE with a special em-

phasis put on these that can be related to Spanish language.

tell – In the speech of CE and HNNE tell is often used as ask. As Fought (2003:

105) explains, this can come from an ambiguous use of Spanish decir (meaning

say/tell) in embedded questions. The speakers of HNNE when translating them, may

insert tell for ask, as in (37). It results from the fact that in Spanish it is correct to

use decir in embedded questions instead of preguntar (meaning ask) (38). Fought

(2003: 105) supposes that this process could originate in embedded questions in

English and then, extend to other constructions.

(37) If I tell her to jump up, she’ll tell me how high.

She was telling my aunt to tell them, you know, what, I mean, what’s the rea-

son? Fought (2003: 104)

(38) I asked him if he wanted a car.

26

Le dije que si quería el coche.

(I) TOLD

barely – The speakers of CE and HNNE use barely not only in its primary meaning

being that something “happens immediately after a previous action” (Mayor 2009:

118), but also as an equivalent to recently (39). Although, as Fought (2003: 106) ob-

serves, this usage is also frequent among the speakers of other non-standard dialects

of English, some Spanish impact can also be noticed. The Spanish equivalent word

to barely, namely apenas, has two primary meanings. The first overlaps with the

English one given above, whereas the second denotes “that something happened re-

cently” (Fought 2003: 106). In this way, there are two theories of the origins of such

an extension of meaning – either it was adopted from other English dialects or it

stems from the Spanish meaning of apenas.

(39) These [treadmills] were expensive when they barely came out.

(Fought 2003: 106)

brothers – The discrepancy between the standard meaning denoted by the plural of

brother and the meaning in which it is used by Hispanics results from interference

with Spanish. The speakers of CE and HNNE use brothers when they talk about the

siblings regardless of gender (40). According to Fought (2003: 106), this usage is in-

fluenced by a Spanish masculine plural noun hermanos, used for males or for a

group of males and females (to refer to females alone they use a feminine form her-

manas). Taking into consideration the gender, hermanos is an equivalent to English

brothers, however semantically, it has a broader meaning extended to both sexes.

(40) To my brothers I usually talk in English.

(the speaker has four sisters and one brother) Fought (2003: 106)

borrow/lend – The differentiation between these two words causes problems for

many non-native users of English, not only Hispanics, because borrow and lend are

marked by the person the action is directed to. Spanish, like many other languages,

27

lacks this distinction, so that the speakers of CE and HNNE use borrow in the place

of lend (41) (Kövecses 2000: 93).

(41) Can you borrow me you bike?

discourse marker ey – This discourse marker is surely borrowed from Spanish, and

it can be compared to English yeah. Fought (2003: 106-107) claims that ey should

not be perceived as code-switching, since the speakers who use it does not involve

any other switches in their speech.

(42) If a girl’s pretty you know and she feels the same for me, ey, I got it right there.

Fought (2003: 106)

The majority of examples of semantic variation given above originate or are bor-

rowed from Spanish. However, as has been mentioned earlier in this chapter, for the

purposes of this study we focus our attention on HNNE which is deeply influenced by

Spanish. On the other hand, Chicano English also involves the usage of words discussed

above, but it cannot be accused of being a dialect created only on the basis of the mis -

takes made by Hispanics (Fought 2003: 109).

2.6. Summary

In this chapter, we characterized Hispanics living in the United States as an ethnic group

which has its history and culture. We presented their current status in the USA with a

special emphasis on their origins and places of residence. Ultimately, the main focus of

this chapter was to describe the varieties of English used by Chicanos and, more import-

antly for this study, the variety used by all Hispanic non-native speakers of English.

This was done with respect to phonetics and phonology, syntax and semantics. We tried

to find explanations and influences of Spanish on all these processes and deviations. It

has to be emphasised, however, that language change and variation cannot be easily

measured and explained, especially with respect to varieties other than CE (Kövecses

2000: 91). For this reason, the above examples cannot be undeniably interpreted by an

28

impact of Spanish, even if for the majority of them, this explanation seems to be accur-

ate and justified.

29

Chapter 3: Methodology

3.1. Subjects and hypothesis

In this chapter, we will describe the questionnaire and its respondents as well as the

process of data collection.

The primary aim of the study was measuring the accuracy achieved by native

speakers of American English of the evaluation of language mistakes made by Hispan-

ics. This was done with respect to phonetics and phonology, syntax, and semantics, as

these areas cover the most frequent variations in HNNE. The assumption behind such a

division was that the most noticeable feature of speech would be phonetics and phonol-

ogy. For this reason, it was presumed that numerous mistakes in this area will correlate

closely to a lower general score for a given recording. Besides, we investigated the in-

fluence of the characteristics of the Hispanic speakers and the American respondents on

their assessment.

Among the secondary aims of this study was the analysis of chosen recordings

of Hispanics speaking English also with respect to phonetics and phonology, syntax,

and semantics. We also looked for the most common mistakes and investigated in

which of the fields of analysis Hispanics made most mistakes. Ultimately, the speakers’

characteristics (gender, origin, time spent in the USA and the state of residence) were

taken into account in order to measure whether they influence the amount of mistakes.

30

3.2. Materials used in data collection

The data for this study were compiled with the use of a questionnaire. First, ten excerpts

from interviews with famous Hispanics speaking English were collected with the use of

YouTube (http://www.youtube.com). They became the core part of the questionnaire

and the subject of evaluation. Each recording was not longer than one minute in length

and contained from two to four sentences. The identity of the speakers in the recordings

was not revealed until the end of the questionnaire, so that personal likings would not

have any influence on the evaluation. It is, however, possible that some of the voices

were recognized anyway. What is more, the proficiency of English of the speakers was

varied as well as the time they spent in the USA. The questionnaire was available online

for the native speakers of American English who were the target group of this study.

Each recording was to be listened to only once and evaluated with respect to pronuncia-

tion, sentence structure and vocabulary with the use of 1-10 scale (where 1 is extremely

bad and 10 is excellent). The respondents gave also a general score and could leave

some additional comments to each sample. They were told to pay special attention to

language mistakes, not the variety of vocabulary or grammatical structures. At the be-

ginning of the questionnaire, they provided basic personal data, namely gender, age,

state of residence and completed education. It was assumed that some of this informa-

tion might enable some additional divisions among the respondents. The overall number

of respondents was 83.

3.3. Procedures in data collection

The first stage in data collection was the compilation ten recordings of Hispanics speak-

ing English. During the selection process special attention was paid to the variety of

speakers’ proficiency in English and the spontaneity of production. The latter was of ex-

ceptional importance since the point was analyzing and evaluating unprepared, natural

speech as a determinant of a speaker’s proficiency in English.

Then, the recordings were compiled in an online questionnaire addressed to na-

tive speakers of American English. The respondents were not selected, however, the

majority of them were linguists or people interested in linguistics. This was due to the

31

fact that the questionnaire was distributed also via the Linguist List (http://www. lin-

guistlist.org). This group may comprise of about 73% of all the respondents.

3.4. Data analysis

At the outset, all the recordings were transcribed and analyzed with respect to semantic

and syntactic mistakes. Subsequently, with the use of GATE as an annotation tool, all

the phonetic and phonological mistakes were found and marked. Summed up amounts

of language mistakes were compiled in a table and the coefficients of mistakes per word

(CMPW) were calculated (each recording had four coefficients i.e. for phonetics and

phonology, syntax, semantics and the overall one). Such a coefficient was necessary

since the recordings contained various amounts of words. It proved to be essential fur-

ther in this study, namely in the analysis of the questionnaire results. We gathered infor-

mation about the speakers (such as origin, time spent in the USA and the state of resi-

dence) with the ultimate goal of measuring their influence on the amount of language

mistakes in the particular recordings.

The second part of data analysis process was compilation of the questionnaire’s

results and investigating which of the evaluated components correlate most precisely

with the general score. First, all the scores for each field of analysis were averaged with-

out retaining the division on recordings. Then, we calculated the correlation between

each component and the general score. At this stage, we did not check the accuracy of

evaluation, only the influence of particular scores on the overall one. We used Pearson’s

correlation coefficient which is defined by the following scale: from +1 (complete posi-

tive correlation), through 0 (no correlation), to -1 (complete negative correlation). The

next stage was measuring the accuracy of evaluation, meaning the correlation between

the average scores for each component and the CMPW. This was done without averag-

ing the results of all the recordings, since the scores and the amounts of mistakes varied

significantly among the Hispanic speakers. According to the assumption, this correla-

tion value should be close to -1, meaning that the more mistakes in a given utterance,

the lower the score. The third issue we wanted to investigate was the correspondence

between the mean of scores given for phonetics and phonology, syntax and semantics,

and the general note. This was aimed at measuring if the respondents tend to average

32

the three scores when giving the general one. At the end, we calculated the correlation

between the personal characteristics of the respondents and the scores they gave. This

was done with respect to gender, age, level of completed education and state of resi-

dence. In case of the latter, we asked a question if the amount of Hispanics in particular

states has any influence on the notes given by the evaluators.

33

Chapter 4: Analysis

4.1. Results

The description of findings will begin with the analysis of the corpus composed for the

aims of this study. Ten recordings of Hispanics speaking English were examined to find

the most common language mistakes the speakers make in spontaneous speech in Eng-

lish. Moreover, we will answer the question in which of the fields of analysis (phonetics

and phonology, syntax or semantics) the speakers made most mistakes. Then, we will

present how the speakers’ characteristics influence the amount of language mistakes in

their utterances.

In the next part of the resultative section, we will present the results of the ques-

tionnaire concerning the accuracy of evaluation of the 10 recordings by native speakers

of American English. Then, we will answer the questions: which of the field of research

seems to correlate most strongly with the general score and finally, if the characteristics

of the evaluators and the speakers had any influence on the scores.

4.1.1. The recordings

The study shows that it is possible to indicate the most common language mistakes

made by Hispanic (Table 3). All the mistakes were divided into three categories, namely

phonetics and phonology, syntax and semantics.

34

Table 3. The most common language mistakes made by Hispanics

Feature Number of occurrences

Percentage of all the mistakes in a given field of analysis

PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY

substitution of /i/ for /ɪ/ 55 20.1devoicing 44 16.1substitution of /d/ for /ð/ 31 11.3substitution of /a/ for /æ/ or /ə/ 27 9.9substitution of /o/ for /ə/, /ɑ/, /ʌ/ or /ɝ/ 26 9.5no sound (the sound is omitted) 23 8.4insertion of an alveolar /r/ 15 5.5substitution of /n/ for /ŋ/ 9 3.3no diphthong 9 3.3substitution of /e/ for /ə/ or /ɝ/ 7 2.6substitution of /ɪ/for /i/ 6 2.2sound insertion (an unnecessary sound is added) 6 2.2substitution of /ʃ/ for /z/ or /ʒ/ 3 1.1voicing 3 1.1no flap 2 0.7substitution of /f/ for /θ/ 2 0.7substitution of /ʊ/ for /ə/ 1 0.4substitution of /tʃ/ for /ʃ/ 1 0.4substitution of /ŋ/ for /n/ 1 0.4wrong sound (not even close) 1 0.4stress shift 1 0.4substitution of /t/ for /θ/ 1 0.4

SYNTAXwrong tense indicated by a wrong verb form 6 18.2wrong verb form 5 15.2wrong article 3 9.1unnecessary article 3 9.1no verb 3 9.1no article 2 6.1wrong tense 2 6.1unclear structure 2 6.1wrong form of a structure 2 6.1wrong preposition 2 6.1double verb 1 3.0wrong structure of an embedded question 1 3.0no preposition 1 3.0

SEMANTICSwrong word 4 50.0illogical use of a word or structure 2 23.3wrong collocation 1 16.7code switching (not regarded as a mistake) 3 -

In the first section, it occurred that Hispanics had serious problems with the i/ɪ

contrast since the substitution of /i/ for /ɪ/ in words like think, it, this and in the –ing

morpheme comprises 20.2% of all the pronunciation mistakes. The next most common

35

mistakes were devoicing (16.1%) and the substitution of /d/ for /ð/ (11.3%). As far as

syntactic mistakes are concerned, most often Hispanics used wrong tense indicated by a

wrong verb form, e.g. arrive for arrived or speak for spoke. In the field of semantics the

speakers did not make many mistakes of which the most common one was the use of a

wrong word. It constitutes as much as 50% of all the semantic mistakes, among which

there were also the use of a wrong collocation and illogical structure. The occurrences

of code switching were also counted, however as it has been mentioned earlier in this

paper, these were not regarded as language mistakes, but as a separate mechanism.

The next question we asked was in which of the analyzed language areas His-

panics made most mistakes. With the use of the CMPW, it was proved that phonetics

and phonology is the area of linguistics mostly affected by mistakes (the coefficient

0.41). Hispanics made much less syntactic mistakes (0.05) and even less the semantic

ones (0.01).

As it has been mentioned above, we also checked if there is any correlation be-

tween the characteristics of the Hispanic speakers of English and the number of lan-

guage mistakes in their speech. The characteristics that were taken into account are:

gender, the country of origin, time spent in the USA and the state of residence. It was

proved that all these characteristics are insignificant.

4.1.2. The questionnaire

The main aim of this study was measuring how accurately native speakers of American

English evaluate spontaneous speech and language mistakes made by Hispanics

speaking English (Table 4). The results show that the highest correlation between an

average score given for each recording and the CMPW occurred in the area of syntax

(ab. -0.77). This will prove that the syntactic mistakes were the easiest to notice. The

second highest correlation was in the field of phonetics and phonology (ab. -0.52) and

the smallest occurred with reference to semantics (ab. -0.2). The correlation between an

average general score for each recording and the CMPW is quite high (ab. -0.53). All

the coefficients were negative which means that the more mistakes were made, the

lower the score was given.

36

Table 4. The correlation between CMPW and the scores given by the evaluators

Field of analysis The correlation between CMPW and the scores given by the evaluators

Syntax -0.77Phonetics and phonology -0.52

Semantics -0.20General score -0.53

Additionally, we measured which recording was evaluated most/least accurately

and we managed to find slight correspondence to some of the distinctive features of the

recording (e.g. fluency), but rather no correlation with the characteristics of the speakers

(besides the probable personal likings of the evaluators).

Moreover, on the basis of the data compiled with the use of the questionnaire the

relation between the general score and the scores for particular components was mea-

sured. The correlation coefficient between these variables occurs to be very high – in

the area of both syntax and semantics it reaches about 0.91 and a bit smaller in case of

phonetics and phonology (0.88). This proves that syntactic and semantic mistakes had a

little more influence on the general score (and therefore, the impression) than the pro-

nunciation ones. However, it turned out that the mean of all scores for phonetics and

phonology, syntax and semantics (6.936) is nearly perfectly equal to the mean of all the

general scores (6.938). This shows that none of the three language areas has signifi-

cantly stronger influence on the general score.

Additionally, the correlation between the characteristics of the respondents and

the scores they gave was measured. The following set of information about the evalua-

tors was taken into account: gender, age, completed level of education and state of resi-

dence (specifically the number of Hispanics living in a given state). All these character-

istics proved to be insignificant, since the correlation coefficients reached from -0.16 to

0.25.

At the end, we measured which of the recordings (therefore, Hispanic speakers)

was evaluated most leniently. Some explanations were inferred, however, it should be

noted they may be exaggerated since we used relatively little data.

37

4.2. Discussion

In this subchapter all the results will be discussed and confronted with the primary hy-

potheses and other studies.

4.2.1. The recordings

The most common pronunciation mistakes of these Hispanic speakers were substitution

of /i/ for /ɪ/ (20.1% of all pronunciation mistakes), devoicing (16.1%) and substitution

of /d/ for /ð/ (11.3%). As Fought (2003: 81) observed, lack of i/ɪ contrast is one of the

most noticeable features of HNNE. In the vast majority of cases, they insert /i/ instead

of /ɪ/. This study confirmed Fought’s observations since in as much as 47.8% of cases

where /ɪ/ should be used, the speakers inserted /i/. This lack of contrast works also in

the opposite direction, however with less frequency (only 13.5%). Such a mechanism

can be easily justified on the basis of the vowel charts of English and Spanish. The fact

is that there is no /ɪ/ sound in the Spanish inventory of vowels and probably for this rea-

son, the substitution of /i/ for /ɪ/ is the most common pronunciation mistake made by

Hispanics. The production of /i/ as /ɪ/ can be therefore regarded as hypercorrection.

The second most common pronunciation mistake was devoicing, mostly final

(93.1%). Most frequently devoiced sound was /z/ as: a marker of plurality, derivational

–s and in words like is and was. According to Fought (2003: 84), “this process

approaches 100 percent”. This study shows, however, that devoicing of final /z/ happens

in about 74% of cases. It is probably caused by the absence of final voicing in Spanish

and “is often part of a larger process, the devoicing of word-final obstruents”

(MacDonald 1989: 229). Therefore, Hispanics tend to devoice final voiced consonants,

most frequently /z/ and less often /d/.

The study proved that Hispanics have considerable problems with /ð/ which they

substitute with apico-dental stop [d�] or an alveolar stop /d/. Both /ð/ and /θ/ are

problematic for many non-native speakers of English as these sounds occur in few

languages. Interestingly, they can be found in many varieties of Spanish and even

though, Hispanics do not produce them correctly. The possible explanation for this

mispronunciation may be that in Spanish sound /ð/ is the realization of letter “d” in a

38

word like dedo pronounced: /deðo/. Therefore, the problem here is not the inability or

difficulty of pronouncing sound /ð/, but the letter which is realized as /ð/.

In the area of syntax two major problems can be identified, namely wrong tense

indicated by a wrong verb form (18.2%) and wrong form of a verb (15.2%). The first

type of mistakes is probably caused by either simplification or ignorance of the rules,

such as past tense or past participle forms of verbs. Wrong verb form category included

such examples as the use of was with reference to the second person singular and is

probably related to the reasons given above. This problem of HNNE was also men-

tioned by Fought (2003: 94). Among other frequent syntactic mistakes there were prob-

lems with articles (wrong article or unnecessary article). We found it unusual since

Spanish also has a system of articles, which is analogical to the English one. There

seems to be no logic in their mistaken use of articles, so it may simply result from

speakers’ carelessness. Some of the features that has been described in the theoretical

part of this paper appeared also in our recordings. Among them there was a wrong

structure of embedded question supposedly caused by difference between Spanish and

English structures of such questions (in Spanish the form of a question is retained, in

English it adopts the order of an affirmative sentence).

Semantics was the least troublesome field of linguistics for Hispanics and the

most frequent mistake was choosing wrong word (50%). We will discuss them all since

there were only three such cases. The first one, probably most striking (several ques-

tionnaire’s respondents included it in their comments), was using get worm as worm up.

This was probably caused by the fact that a Spanish equivalent for worm up, which is

calentarse, overlaps also with the meaning of English get worm. On the basis of such

information, the speaker might have assumed that these English words are synonyms

and mean to practice, to prepare for something.

(43) get worm instead of worm up in:

“Now, because I haven’t speak in English in a long time, you can tell, it take me

a while to get warm.”

The second word inappropriately chosen was for in:

39

(44) “(…) it was a new set maked very quickly. I mean, for problems and then I

couldn’t rehearse”.

The more appropriate word here seems to be because of. We did not found any logical

sources of this mistake in Spanish, but it can be caused by the English use of for for giv-

ing reasons, as in (45). In the sentence above, however, because of seems to be a more

reasonable choice.

(45) He found it increasingly difficult to read, for his eyesight was beginning to fail.

(Mayor 2009: 680)

The last word that was mistakenly chosen was illusion (46). Supposedly, the speaker

wanted to say that something was unbelievable and incredible. There are, however, no

reasons in Spanish or English for the use of this word here, so it can be treated as a ran-

dom mistake without any underlying cause.

(46) “I started when I was nine years old and it was an illusion. I dream about being a

singer and an actress”.

Taking into consideration the number of subjects examined and the length of

their speeches (altogether 664 words) all reasoning behind the mistakes presented

above, especially in case of syntax and semantics, may be exaggerated. As the syntactic

and semantic mistakes were rare, they may prove to be characteristic of a given speaker,

not generally assigned to all the speakers of HNNE.

As has been mentioned before, there were also several cases of code-switching,

but these were not regarded as mistakes. Code switching was used by two speakers (to-

tal number of switches was 3). These uses, however, resulted from the ignorance of a

particular word or phrase in English rather than high bilingual proficiency.

(47) “I’m the girl of the ochos.” (= eyes)

(48) “We are influencing the music in our country and in our decada.” (= decade)

(49) “I mean this kind of kiss with two people that are, you say, con la cara cubierta”

(= with covered face)

40

The next aim of this study was determining which of the fields of analysis was

mostly affected by mistakes of the speakers of HNNE. The results show that most prob-

lems Hispanics have in the area of phonetics and phonology, then much less in syntax

and semantics (Table 5). Generally, 0.48 mistake falls on one word, so the speakers

made nearly one mistake each two words. Probably it is no surprise that pronunciation

mistakes are most common, but the disparity between them and the semantic and syn-

tactic ones occurred to be high. This may be caused by the fact that it is possible to

make more than one pronunciation mistake in one word. For this reason, some addi-

tional research has been conducted and instead of counting each inappropriate sound,

we counted a mispronounced word as one mistake (regardless of the number of mis-

taken sounds in it). The coefficient of mistakes per word amounted to 0.31.

Table 5. The coefficient of mistakes per word in particular fields of analysis

Field of analysis The coefficient of mistakes per word

Phonetics and phonology 0.41Syntax 0.05

Semantics 0.01Overall 0.48

4.2.2. The questionnaire

The first issue that will be touched upon here is the accuracy of evaluation of language

mistakes made by Hispanics by the native speakers of American English. As has been

mentioned earlier, we used correlation coefficient to measure the accuracy. The exact

numbers were presented in Table 4. It occurred that the area of analysis which correlates

best with the CMPW is syntax, meaning that the syntactic mistakes were easily detected

by the respondents and the scores for syntax lowered due to these mistakes. As far as

phonetics and phonology is concerned, the respondents noted the speakers’ mistakes in

this area, but less accurately than with respect to syntax. Therefore, the hypothesis we

adopted at the beginning has not been confirmed. It is not pronunciation mistake that is

most noticeable, but a syntactic one. The scores given for semantics were proved to cor-

41

relate poorly with the actual mistakes. This can be caused by the fact that probably

many of the respondents evaluated speakers’ proficiency, instead of only language mis-

takes (as they were asked to). For this reason, they gave lower scores for semantics even

if there were no semantic mistakes in a given sample.

The next question we asked at the beginning was: which of the fields of research

seems to have the strongest/weakest influence on the general score? It was proved that

they all have nearly equal impact on the general score (the correlation coefficients for

syntax and semantics - both 0.91, phonetics and phonology - 0.88). Moreover, the mean

of all the scores for particular components is nearly equal to the mean of all the general

scores, 6.936 and 6.938 respectively. This means that the respondents tend to treat all

the three language areas equally and average these three scores while giving the general

one.

At the end, we used the compiled data to check which speaker was evaluated

most leniently and whom the respondents assessed most harshly. Table 6 below con-

tains the names of the speakers, the CMPW and the mean of the scores given by the re-

spondents. The data in this table is organized according to the average score each of the

speakers received (decreasing order).

Table 6. The average scores and the CMPW of particular speakers

Name of the speaker The average score given by the respondents

The coefficient of mistakes per word

Salma Hayek 8.58 0.54Javier Bardem 7.90 0.14

Thalía 7.83 0.31Penélope Cruz 7.82 0.40

Antonio Banderas 7.32 0.51Julio Iglesias 6.78 0.65Gloria Trevi 6.02 1.02

Pedro Almodóvar 5.83 0.62Gloria Trevi 5.71 0.71

Pedro Almodóvar 5.59 0.39

The results show that the respondents gave Salma Hayek the highest scores, while she

made one mistake every four words. According to the CMPW she should be on the

sixth place. Pedro Almodóvar, whose speeches were evaluated very low, achieved the

CMPW very similar to the one of Salma Hayek. However, the difference in the scores

42

they got reached nearly 3 points. The underlying reason for that may be that either her

voice was recognized by the respondents and the personal likings increased the scores

or not all the mistakes were noticed due to her fluent speech. As far as Pedro Almod-

óvar is concerned, it can be inferred that such low scores may have their sources in his

manner of speaking. His utterances were not fluent, he spoke slowly and corrected him-

self (thus, focused a listener’s attention on his mistakes). Interestingly, there were two

speakers who used code-switching and it resulted that these are the ones who get the

lowest scores: Pedro Almodóvar and Gloria Trevi. As has been mentioned earlier, the

switches they used did not result from high proficiency, but rather from the ignorance of

an appropriate word in English. Supposedly, code-switching might have made a bad im-

pression on the respondents what affected the scores.

43

Conclusion

The primary chapters of this paper treated of the status of Hispanics in the USA in the

past and today, as well as discussed the most common features of HNNE and CE. In the

methodological part, we described the research whose main aims was the examination

of language mistakes made by the speakers of HNNE and the measurement of the accu-

racy of evaluation of these mistakes by the native speakers of American English. It ap-

peared that the differences in Spanish and English sound inventories play a significant

role in the realizations of both English vowels and consonants in the speech of Hispan-

ics. Some of the English phonemes are not present in the English sound system and

even if they do, they have different realizations (MacDonald 1989: 216). This study

confirmed one of the most popular language mistakes made by Hispanics speaking Eng-

lish are the pronunciation ones, e.g. the substitution of /i/ for /ɪ/, devoicing (mostly

word-finally) and the substitution of /d/ for /ð/. However, the explanations of these dis-

crepancies presented earlier in this chapter are only probable reasons. It is impossible to

state clearly and surely that all the differences in realizations of particular sounds origi-

nate in Spanish phonology (MacDonald 1989: 216). In the area of syntax, the most fre-

quent mistakes include inserting wrong tense and the wrong form of a verb, whereas se-

mantics caused least and rather minor problems which do not disturb the communica-

tion. The characteristics of the speakers proved to be insignificant with regard to their

mistakes. The second part of the study was devoted to the analysis of the questionnaire

whose respondents included native speakers of American English. One of the worth

mentioning results we achieved is that the evaluators detected most easily the syntactic

mistakes and least accurately they assessed the semantic ones. Simultaneously, the hy-

pothesis we established at the beginning was not confirmed – the pronunciation mis-

44

takes were not the easiest to notice. In fact, the scores for phonetics and phonology cor-

relate with the actual amount of mistakes in this area, however, the correlation is not as

high as in the case of syntax. It should be emphasized, that this result may be affected

by the fact that some of the respondents might have evaluated the proficiency of a given

speaker, instead of focusing exclusively on the mistakes (as they were told to). For this

reason, they gave lower scores, e.g. for semantics, even if there were no semantic mis-

takes. We also found that the respondents tend to average the scores for three language

components while giving the general note, which proves that they all have similar influ-

ence on the overall impression. The characteristics of both the evaluators and the speak-

ers seems not to have any significant influence on the perception of a given utterance.

However, there are some underlying reasons for inaccurate evaluation of the recordings,

e.g. the fluency of speech might have increased the notes and helped the speaker make

better impression. Another vital factor are supposedly personal likings, since the speak-

ers were famous people and their voiced might have been recognized by the respondents

of the questionnaire. In conclusion, it should be emphasized that since correlation does

not imply causation, it was indispensable to look for other factors that could have an in-

fluence on the correlating variables. Practically, it means that both the sociology of lan-

guage and the sociolinguistic factors, such as the characteristics of the speakers and the

evaluators, the status of Hispanics in the USA or personal likings, must have been in-

cluded in the analysis of the data.

45

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