An early steady state in the 'orígenes' of American Spanish: computer simulation and synthetic dialectology

1. An early steady state in the 'orígenes' of American Spanish: computer simulation and synthetic dialectology Harry Howard Tulane University http://www.tulane.edu/~howard/ Hispanic Linguistics Symposium 2007 San Antonio, TX Nov. 3, 2007

2. Koineization • A koine is a stabilized contact variety which results from the mixing and subsequent levelling of features of varieties which are similar enough to be mutually intelligible, such as regional or social dialects. This occurs in the context of increased interaction or integration among speakers of these varieties. (Siegel 2001) Harry Howard

3. Koineization in Spanish dialectology • Scholars of Spanish have recently begun to appreciate the usefulness of the notion of koineization for providing a framework for the understanding of Spanish dialectal genesis and variation. • Peninsular Spanish has the monograph-length summary of Tuten (2003), building on Penny (1987, 2000, 2002). • On the other side of the Atlantic, Guitarte (1980), Fontanella de Weinberg (1992), and Granda (1994) argue for koineization in American Spanish, an idea which is further developed in Rivarola (2000), Hidalgo (2001) and Parodi (2001). Harry Howard

4. Koineization in Peninsular Spanish • Tuten (2003) building on Penny (1987, 2000, 2002) identifies three periods of koineization, corresponding to the first three stages of the Reconquest • Burgos (9th-10th) • Toledo (11th-12th) • Seville (13th) • Penny also suggests a fourth with the establishment of Madrid as the capital of Spain 1561 Harry Howard

5. Approximate political boundaries at each stage 1030 - Burgos(Duero basin) 1210 - Toledo(Tajo basin) 1360 - Seville(Guadalquivir basin) Harry Howard

6. Trudgill’s (1986) four subprocesses • Mixing of varieties • Leveling of differences • Simplification: an increase in regularity or a decrease in markedness, where markedness describes features that are in a minority in the mix, in terms of the number of speakers who use them, or have a restricted regional currency • Reallocation: two or more variants in the dialect mix survive the levelling process but are refunctionalized, evolving new social or linguistic functions in the new dialect Harry Howard

7. Koineization in American Spanish • Much more vexed is the possibility of koineization in American Spanish, mainly due to different understandings of what it means • Many scholars use it just as a cover term for dialect levelling • In the next few minutes, I will try to ascertain the existence of all four subprocesses defined by Trudgill Harry Howard

8. Dialect mixingTrudgill’s first subprocess • From Boyd-Bowman's work • Boyd-Bowman (1956, 1964, 1968a, 1968b, 1972, 1985), but especially Boyd-Bowman (1976) • Almost all regions of Spain were represented in 16th century immigration to the Indies (see next slide) Harry Howard

9. Cumulative percentages of regional provenance of 54,881 16th c. emigrants to the Spanish Indies for whom birthplaces could be found (Boyd-Bowman 1976:Table I) Harry Howard

10. Boyd-Bowman's graph Harry Howard

11. … but some dialects stand out • From Boyd-Bowman's work • Southerners were always a majority of those who emigrated in the 16th century • Andalusians were a plurality, and in some places, they were a majority • The majority of women emigrants were Andalusians • The majority of merchants were Andalusians • The ships that all emigrants sailed on were crewed by Andalusians • In any event, it is safe to say that there was dialect mixing in 16th century American Spanish Harry Howard

12. Levelling of differencesTrudgill’s second subprocess • Yes, in the sense that all American dialects tend towards Andalusian, but • … one aspect of the formation of American Spanish that distinguishes it from the prototypical cases of koineization is that it tracks the changes taking place in the source dialects for at least 200 years (see the next slide) • … another is the huge expanse of territory, which allowed for • different degrees of communication with the source dialects • different rates of colonization Harry Howard

13. Time line of changes in SpanishLipski (2007) Harry Howard

14. Land of the fleet vs. land of the viceroy • Menéndez Pidal (1962) pointed out that the traditional distinction in Spanish dialectology between highland and lowland American Spanish does not speak to the causes of this distinction • He locates the causes in • the annual route of the fleet from the ports of western Andalusia, to the Canary Islands, to Santo Domingo or Cartagena, to Portobelo in Panama, to Veracruz, to Havana, and then back to Europe (plus the Pacific route between El Callao, Guayaquil and Panama, and later Acapulco and the Philippines), forming a vast maritime network that was in constant communication (6 weeks?), and • the isolation of the capitals of the first two viceroyalties, Mexico City and Lima, from the maritime network, and their attraction of a more educated immigrant class which oriented itself towards the linguistic standards ofToledo and Madrid, and the formation of a hinterland around each of them, encompassing the Mexican plateau and the Andean highlands. Harry Howard

15. Harry Howard

16. Approximate dates of initial colonization Harry Howard

17. SimplificationTrudgill’s third subprocess • I will go out on a limb and claim that there are no cases of simplification resulting from dialect levelling which are exclusive to American Spanish in its formative period • Thus the formation of American Spanish does not qualify as koineization in the narrow sense of Trudgill • But wait • The principal source dialect, Andalusian, was already the result of three previous cycles of koineization, which is to say that it was already simplified • Thus if American immigrants adopted Andalusian elements, they were choosing the simplest elements in the dialect mix • Not only that, Andalusian continued to simplify during the formative period of American Spanish, e.g. in the phonological processes that weakened syllable-final consonants, which the lowland dialects accepted Harry Howard

18. Implicit simplification • Thus we can broach the possibility that the presence of Andalusian in the American dialect mix forced a convergence to simplicity without creating any new, simplified forms, a possibility not considered in the standard accounts of koineization • An even more interesting possibility is the koineization in the American ports exerted a retrograde influence on Andalusian, perhaps through merchants and returning immigrants, which spurred it on to further simplification Harry Howard

19. ReallocationTrudgill’s fourth subprocess • I know of no instance of reallocation of functional morphemes, though one could argue about those dialects that have all three second person singular pronouns, tú, vos, and usted. • There may have been reallocation of some content morphemes, i.e. words, but I have not been able to check it • In any event, the presence of reallocation does not threaten the identification of koineization, since reallocation is considered to be optional Harry Howard

20. Interim summary Harry Howard

21. A word about social networks • Tuten’s analysis of koineization in Peninsular Spanish has a strong social network component • For him, koineization occurs when speakers leave established, monodialectal social networks whose members are bound together by strong ties and move into new, polydialectal social networks whose members are bound together only weakly. • In the American context, • we can see the populations of the lowland ports as being joined together into a vast, weakly linked social network, which encouraged cultural change • while the the capitals of the first two viceroyalties quickly developed into communities formed on strong ties which discouraged cultural change and encouraged what has been called the ‘early standardization’ of Mexico and Peru. • IMHO, looking at the development of American Spanish in terms of social networks has a sparkling future Harry Howard

22. Let me quote Lipski on thisLipski (2007), though this appears in several previous works • “When one considers that a typical fleet arriving at Cartagena, Portobelo, or Lima might bring several hundred settlers, the possible linguistic effects of a contingent of new settlers on an evolving dialect could be considerable. A single fleet could, under some circumstances, bring new arrivals who amounted to nearly half the resident population, and even if not all new settlers remained in the port of entry, their linguistic contributions would not be inconsequential.” Harry Howard

23. Disagreement on the time line • While the 'koineization school' of American Spanish agrees on the broad outlines of koineization in the New World, there is disagreement in the amount of time that it took for the koine to become established. • For Guitarte (1980) and Fontanella de Weinberg (1992), the first generation of American creoles had already acquired traits typical of the koine such as 'seseo', irrespective of the dialectal origin of their parents. • In contrast, Granda (1994), inspired on Trudgill's (1986) analysis of koine formation in Norway, only postulates koineization in the third generation, at about 60 years post-conquest. Harry Howard

24. Trudgill’s time lineTrudgill (1998), Trudgill et al. (2000) Harry Howard

25. Our response • The discrepancy in estimates of how long it took the Spanish American koine to develop is little more than a thorn in the side of the overall proposal. • In fact, it could be attributed to noise in the data and so not even be a 'real' phenomenon at all. • However, our results from computer simulation of a generic multidialectal immigrant community indicate that an initial steady state is to be expected, though its duration depends on factors that we do not yet understand. Thus our work supports Granda's analysis. Harry Howard

26. Our approach • Of course, there are no longer any native speakers of 16th century American Spanish to interview • In fact, the lack of real native speakers means that the best we can do is construct artificial ones, via computer programs, and see how they behave as parameters are varied. • This brings us to the realm of multiagent modeling, which has recently seen a burst of enthusiasm in the creation of sociolinguistic microcosms for the simulation of language evolution. • Nettle's (1999a, b) adaptation of Social Impact Theory (Latane 1981, Nowak et al. 1990) to language change provides a convenient starting point. Harry Howard

27. Premises of the model • Nettle's simulation consists of a population with certain characteristics and a formula for change in those characteristics. • The population consists of 400 agents laid out in a 20x20 square. • For the purposes of communication among the agents, each edge connects to the opposite one (top to bottom and side to side) so that functionally it forms an unbounded torus. • Each agent has an age from 1 to 5. Agents aged 1 or 2 can 'learn' a linguistic variant, say p or q. • Once an agent reaches the age of 3, it stops learning and maintains its choice of item until it dies at age 5. • The item chosen to learn depends on the distribution of items among the whole population, which we lack space here to explain. • Nettle models populations which fill their territory, but relaxing this assumption to describe an influx of agents which only fills a territory partially reveals an early steady state. Harry Howard

28. The initial state of the model • 36 agents occupy the center of the territory • The left side shows that they are evenly divided among the two linguistic variants. • The right side shows that they are also evenly divided among the ages of 2 and 4 – neither the very young nor the very old emigrated. Harry Howard

29. After 50 life stages • The population has expanded (births outnumber deaths), but the distribution of variants is still approximately even Harry Howard

30. Domination of one variant • At about life stage 80, random variation in the learning process allows one variant (in this simulation, p) to obtain a decisive foothold in the community using the other variant and subsequently overwhelm it near the 100th life stage, leading to its loss from the repertoire of the population. Harry Howard

31. Community life span • The final state is stable, in that there is no posterior increase in the minority variant. • In the terms of dynamical systems theory, there has been a phase transition from the steady state of 50% p to the final state of ~90% p, which never reverts back to 50% p. Harry Howard

32. Interpretation • If p and q represent opposing values of a trait, such as presence or absence of aspiration of syllable-final /s/, then the simulation demonstrates how they could coexist for a time until one is subscribed to by the majority of the population. • This coexistence or steady state is seen in the first two generations of Trudgill’s time line. • The collapse of the steady state describe the focussing that Trudgill attributes to the third generation. Harry Howard

33. Synthetic dialectology • There is much more to say, but let me address the more general issue of using computer simulations of population behavior in dialectology. • Since change happens by measuring variation across nearby agents, any change in the mix of agents or their traits will have large effects on the outcome • This is reminiscent of the ‘unity in diversity’ of American dialects • The model does not have a realistic linguistic representation, which needs to be addressed • but it gives us a way to do dialectology, and sociolinguistics in general, like the ‘hard sciences’ do, in terms of precisely-specified mathematical models Harry Howard

34. Bibliography • Boyd-Bowman, P. (1976). Patterns of Spanish emigration to the Indies until 1600.The Hispanic American Historical Review, 56(4), 580-604. • Fontanella de Weinberg, M. B. (1992). Nuevas perspectivas en el estudio de la conformación del español americano.Hispanic Linguistics, 4, 275-300. • Granda, G. d. (1994). El proceso de koineización en el periodo inicial de desarrollo del Español de América. In J. Lüdke (Ed.), El español de América en el siglo XVI. Actas del Simposio del Instituto Ibero-Americano de Berlín, 23 y 24 de abril de 1992. (pp. 87-108). Frankfurt: Iberoamericana. • Guitarte, G. (1980). Perspectivas de la investigación diacrónica en Hispanoamérica. In J. M. L. Blanch (Ed.), Perspectivas de la investigación lingüística en Hispanoamérica. (pp. 119-137). México: Centro de Lingüística Hispánica, Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas, UNAM. • Hidalgo, M. G. (2001). Sociolinguistic stratification in New Spain.International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 149, 55-78. • Latane, B. (1981). The psychology of social impact.American Psychologist, 36, 343-365. • Lipski, J. M. (2007). Castile and the hydra: the diversification of Spanish in Latin America. ms. • Menéndez Pidal, R. (1962). Sevilla frente a Madrid. Algunas precisiones sobre el español de América. In D. Catalán (Ed.), Estructuralismo e Historia. Miscelánea Homenaje a André Martinet. Vol. III. (pp. 99-165). Tenerife: Universidad de La Laguna. • Nettle, D. (1999). Is the rate of linguistic change constant? Lingua, 108, 119-136. • Nettle, D. (1999). Linguistic diversity of the Americas can be reconciled with a recent colonization.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 96(6), 3325-3329. Harry Howard

35. Bibliography, cont. • Nowak, A., Szamrej, J., & Latane, B. (1990). From private attitude to public opinion: A dynamical theory of social impact.Psychological Review, 97, 362-376. • Parodi, C. (2001). Contacto de dialectos y lenguas en el Nuevo Mundo: La vernacularización del español en América.International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 149, 33-53. • Penny, R. (1987). Patterns of Language-Change in Spain. London: University of London, Westfield College. • Penny, R. (2000). Variation and Change in Spanish. Cambridge University Press. • Penny, R. (2002). Contacto de variedades y resolución de la variación: aspiración y pérdida de /h/ en el Madrid del s. XVI. In C. G. Turza, F. G. Bachiller, & J. M. Martínez (Eds.), Actas del V Congreso Internacional de Historia de la Lengua Española (Valencia 31 de enero-4 de febrero de 2000). Madrid [Alicante, Spain?]: Editorial Gredos Caja de Ahorros del Mediterráneo. • Rivarola, J. L. (2000). El español de América en su historia. Valladolid: Secretariado de Publicaciones e Intercambio Editorial, Universidad de Valladolid. • Siegel, J. (2001). Koine formation and creole genesis. In N. Smith & T. Veenstra (Eds.), Creolization and Contact. (pp. 175-197). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. • Trudgill, P. J. (1998). The chaos before the order: New Zealand English and the second stage of new-dialect formation. In E. H. Jahr (Ed.), Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics. (pp. 1-11). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Harry Howard

36. Bibliography, cont. • Trudgill, P. J., Gordon, E., Lewis, G., & Maclagan, M. (2000). Determinism in new-dialect formation and the genesis of New Zealand English. Journal of Linguistics, 36, 299-318. • Trudgill, P. J. (1986). Dialects in Contact. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. • Tuten, D. N. (2003). Koineization in Medieval Spanish. Mouton de Gruyter. Harry Howard