스페인어의 비강세 모음 약화 현상 연구: 멕시코시티, 키토, 라파스 방언을 대상으로

Abstract

This study analyzes the weakening of unstressed vowels in the Spanish spoken in Mexico City, Quito, and La Paz from a variationist sociolinguistic perspective, using the PRESEEA corpus. The reduction of unstressed vowels were classified into four types: shortened vowel, relaxed vowel, devoiced vowel, and elided vowel. The results of the analysis, excluding the forms entonces, pues which are known to frequently exhibit weakening in everyday speech, showed that in all three regions the proportion of unstressed vowel weakening was approximately 10%. Moreover, the results of the multiple regression analysis indicated that the weakening of unstressed vowels is influenced by several factors, both internal and external to the language. Among the five Spanish vowels, the high vowels /u/ and /i/ showed the highest likelihood of weakening. In addition, it was observed that the position where unstressed vowels most frequently weaken is before a pause. The influence of adjacent consonants showed certain regional differences; however, the importance of stops and fricatives in the preceding environment, as well as the influence of the fricative /s/ and the voiceless consonants /t/ and /p/ in the following environment, was consistently observed across the three regions. Likewise, in all three regions, educational level was found to be a significant variable affecting this phenomenon, with speakers of lower educational levels showing a higher probability of vowel weakening.