Sociolinguistic Analysis of Spanish r- Variation by New Mexican Child Heritage Speakers: How Speech Analysis Can Improve Speech Impairment Diagnosis and Teaching Techniques

Sociolinguistic Analysis of Spanish r- Variation by New Mexican Child Heritage Speakers: How Speech Analysis Can Improve Speech Impairment Diagnosis and Teaching Techniques

PAIS Building, Colloquium Room

Sociolinguistic Analysis of Spanish r- Variation by New Mexican Child Heritage Speakers: How Speech Analysis Can Improve Speech Impairment Diagnosis and Teaching Techniques Mariana Marchesi, PhD Student, Linguistics, University of New Mexico Abstract In many varieties of Spanish, variation among rhotic segments - r-sounds - is a salient dialectal feature (Lipski, 2008; Hualde, 2014), and this variability is due to a combination of sociolinguistic and phonetic factors (Melero Garcia, 2015). Previous research on adult speakers of Spanish in New Mexico shows that trill (carro) and tap (roca) productions are not as common as assibilated (shower) and approximant (rest) segments (C.E. Ibarra, unpublished manuscript; Lipski, 2008; Vigil, 2018). Work on variation and acquisition of rhotics by Spanish speaking children has focused heavily on the child's mastery of canonical trills [r] and taps [ɾ]. However, from an early age, children mirror phonetic variants used by adults in their speech community that might not represent these prescriptive forms (Díaz-Campos, 2011). A study on the variation in rhotic segments produced by child Spanish speakers in New Mexico (Lease et al., unpublished), ages 3-8 years old, showed that the variants these children were using reflected the input and production from the adults in their community. Based on these findings, it is here proposed that speech impairment diagnosis of children in our community should be based on the sound production of the adults in their surrounding community, instead of on the canonical distinction of tap and trill traditionally used. An assessment based on community production can qualitatively analyze and diagnose other non-canonical forms of production of r- sounds as speech productions showing belonging to the speech community, rather than as speech impairments to be treated. Importantly, the analysis of sound production based on sociolinguistic analysis can be complemented with differentiated instruction in the classroom in order to provide instruction and error correction methods that acknowledge the population that these children represent without treating non-canonical productions as errors to be fixed.