



S1: okay let's begin. uh, any questions on the last class or anything on the readings or anything we've been doing? this will probably be one of the last sessions on the Romance languages i may need a bit of time Thursday, but after that we'll sorta look at the parallel case, dealing with English. so, the next thing that you should be reading in the coursepack are the series of articles in the coursepack, that deal with the history of the English language again those form just general background. just some of the things i want to say i mean as i said the lectures themselves, will not be based you know specifically on those readings although i certainly will attempt to answer questions, or anything specific you may have, uh with regard to that okay? all right what i wanted t- yeah?
S2: do you want me to read this little thing?
S1: okay go ahead.
S2: okay. um just part of procedure, I'm supposed to do it. um, <RECORDING ANNOUNCEMENT> are there questions about any of this information...? shoot
S3: are you gonna, um this is gonna be, transcribed like written down? or [S2: mhm ] or it's gonna be played?
S2: right. it's, play- well we hope to have it both available in the the form of a transcription, um, like somebody can read out on a piece of paper and also as a a digital, digitized, computer [S3: so ] program yeah running things so people can listen to it we have programs, that can do that we're just picking them out...
S1: see for someone like me who does language history i wish that they'd done this a thousand years ago so i could have recordings, of what Spanish sounded like a thousand years ago. very nice. 
S2: any questions? okay thanks.
S1: okay. all righty um what i want to do is continue with this discussion that we've been trying to show, between the interaction of history and, language change, and again as i state we're using the Romance languages as sort of our test case, because we have an abundant documentation of the situation both of the historical development of the Romance languages the historical background of real world events which occurred from the start of the Roman Empire right up through the fall of the Roman Empire, and the ultimate uh fate of the various provinces of the Roman Empire, and we also have an abundant corpus of linguistic documentation. so to a large extent the Romance languages present an ideal case, uh for studying, the development of language against the background of history. or conversely how history affects language. one of the issues that i want to particularly concentrate on today is the issue of the linguistic, uh impact of language contact. one of the main historical themes that i've been stressing, throughout the last uh couple of classes has been that in the history of th- in the linguistic history of the Roman Empire, we've had movements of peoples. we first of all have the expansion of the Romans. as the Romans left Rome and over the course of several centuries expanded their territorial domain, to what was to become the Roman Empire which at its height, stretched from Ireland all the way in uh through west bo- well most of uh central western and eastern Europe and through the Mediterranean basin both the north and the south shore the Mediterranean, and beyond into Asia Minor. other pe- movements of peoples that are also relevant will be we'll see a little later when the Roman Empire falls apart. and when various outside groups outside uh ethnic groups, uh invade or enter perhaps that would be the better word there really wasn't an invasion, in the strict organized military sense but when uh outside groups entered the Roman Empire, this also led to the movements of peoples, and who came into contact with the Romans so in both cases with these with the (j-) territorial expansion, of the Romans as they moved i- and expanded their empire and then with the, uh entry into the Roman Empire of other peoples, the result of this is language contact in other words Latin, comes into contact, <WRITING ON BOARD> first with what we conveniently call the pre-Roman languages... in other words the Romance th- the R- the various languages, which were spoken in the territories, which became part of the Roman Empire. as i've mentioned to you in most cases, most of these pre-Roman languages actually ended up, falling into disuse. speakers gave them up in favor of Latin, as they saw that Latin was a language of great ev- uh was a vehicle of a more prestigious culture, and also it was the linguistic vehicle which you had no choice but to use if you wanted to advance in society. now there's very little doubt from the linguistic point of view there's very little doubt um in the minds of most specialists (that when) languages come into contact, that there is a transfer of material between the languages. the degree and intensity of this will often depend on the relationships between the languages, whether they're languages that enjoy an equal degree of prestige, or whether one language enjoys more prestige over the other. the least controversial aspects of this as i've already mentioned to you and i'm not going to load you up with examples. one thing to keep in mind as we go along even when we get into some of the technical things we're gonna talk about today, i really want to get across to you the big picture the more general issues. don't worry about the nitty-gritty, of the actual linguistic details that i'm going to uh, present obviously, you have to be presented with linguistic facts. but i'm more interested in you getting just the broad picture the general principles that uh, that are issued here. okay. so, most scholars will agree that, le- there will be lexical borrowing that when languages come into contact with each other, the languages will uh transmit vocabulary especially to fill gaps, in the existing vocabulary. what is and the ro- the Romance languages are full of examples of words that both sch- that scholars will attribute, uh let's say to the pre-Roman languages if you read any of the standard histories of let's say the French language, there'll usually be a list of words in French that are believed to be of Celtic origin, that they're words that uh in other words words that entered the local varieties of Latin spoken in Gaul, um, uh due to a linguistic contact with the Celts if you read any of the standard histories of Spanish, you'll find lists of examples of words that are allegedly of pre-Roman origin that came into the spoken Latin of the uh Iberian Peninsula, from the uh, from the various uh, languages spoken, in the Iberian Peninsula at the time that the Romans arrived. again th- one of the um more interesting differences between let's say France and Spain, and even between, let's say Spain France and Italy in this regard is i mean the territory that we today call Italy. and the territory that we today call France all the pre-Roman languages that were spoken were eliminated. although one might say hey isn't ther- isn't there a variety of Celtic spoken in France? that's true there is a variety of Celtic spoken in France, the dialect in Brittany (that) language called Breton. but that is not a vestige of the Celts who were there in the Iberian in France rather or in Gaul, at the time the Romans arrived but rather (represents) results of a later historical migration, of people from the British Isles to that part of France known as Brittany. alright? whereas in Spain we do have the interesting case that one of the pre-Roman languages survived and is still spoken today very much so. uh and uh and i'm referring of course to Basque, which uh, indeed has in certain regions of the country actually enjoys, official status in the Basque country, government and activities school activities get_ are conducted, in both the (spe-) both Spanish the official language of Spain, and also in, in Basque. what is much more controversial which i want to discuss today is this is_ and this uh uh is the general issue, of whether, non-lexical features can be transmitted from one language to another through language contact. in other words the issue of structural change. are there linguistic changes that are that we are there linguistic structural changes, uh, that can be attributed to the, to language contact? this is a fairly controversial uh area at least within the area of Romance linguistics... uh and this is all and to a certain extent the answer to this question has also, reflected, uh, almost what you'd call scholarly trends or fads. uh at an early period of in the history of Romance linguistics as a scholarly discipline, this type of approach, uh had a great appeal. um, back around the turn of the century when historical linguistics still was not yet you know very a fully s- full fledged sophisticated uh discipline. special- people who studied the history of the Romance languages, would look at let's say a given particular uh a given change in the history of French or Spanish or Italian. and if this change were sort of unique in other words if it were a process that occurred only in one of the Romance languages and not in any of the others, they might wonder well gee this is kinda strange how would we explain it? and they often would try to attribute it to external sources. uh and external sources would be basically uh a situation of language contact. this is what's known in uh in the literature and uh you'll find reference to this in your reading of the coursepack, to the substratum hypothesis. again this metath- metaphor of substratum, is one of those geological metaphors which pervades historical linguistics. in other words the substratum is the levels of languages obviously a geological metaphor. if y- if ri- let us say the main stratum is Latin, the substratum languages according to this theory are those languages, that were there before, Latin, uh overlaid them okay so they formed a sort of linguistic substratum. and it was argued back then that even if these languages were falling into disuse, some of the speech habits, of these_ of the speakers of these languages, may have affected the way they spoke Latin... and this was a common way of trying to explain changes that were a bit out of the ordinary and now i think in this case, a picture is probably worth a thousand words. so i want to give you three concrete examples rather than talk about this abstractly, i want to_ i'm going to present from the history of the Romance languages three examples of structural changes. uh all of them deal with uh sound change by the way. uh that uh were attributed at one point, uh by major scholars, uh to the result of language contact. uh and in fact uh, one of them is a problem that's very specifically unique to Spanish. another is an issue that is usually associated with French although, a parallel phenomenon does occur in a couple of other Romance uh, varieties. and then there's a mor- a more broad based uh t- uh issue as well. uh wh- uh a phenomenon that is found in various Romance languages. so i want to look at the three of them as separate issues and then try and try to relate it, to this more general issue of how historical linguists discuss the important question as to whether external fa- forces, can play a role, in structural change. because, linguistics like any other intellectual discipline has its fad. at one point, uh this type of explanation was very much in vogue and scholars loved it it was almost de rigueur, in fact, the uh uh most a- attempts at explanations were of this type. of this (sub-) (er) try to explain, uh changes through external uh external forces. whereas later and this is a trend that still dominates, a m- most structural change is looked upon as being due to internal structural factors. that language contact or real world has nothing to do with it, and that these changes can all be explained, internally that there are structural motivations, that you can try to (f-) analyze (in) structure, one can try to find the explanation for the change, within the inherent_ within the structure of language. and today even this interesting intellectual not only (was it_) was sort of (part of this) chronological difference, between the two approaches, but there's even almost a cultural difference. substratum explanations, still enjoy a certain degree of popularity although i will admit today, much less so than, let's say twenty or thirty years ago when i was a graduate student. but, the uh this type of explanation enjoyed a good degree of popularity, especially in European scholarship. whereas, American scholarship is much more skeptical to this sort of approach. me- whereas Europeans were_ had a more cultural approach to, language change, y- a- American scholarship especially that field that approach to linguistics known as structuralism... which by the way has its origins in Europe and not in not in America as such. American structuralism basically looked at language as a mechanism as a structure, and changes were to be explained within the framework of that structure, without taking into consideration, external features. so this is a a point is a is a is deb- is much debated. but anyway let's look at the specific changes now here i'll have to give you some linguistic data first of all, l- v- let's start with a the change that's quite difficult in Spanish. and look at the very technical approaches to it. there is a change in the history of Spanish, whereby, a number of there are a number of lexical items that in Latin, began with a sound that is represented in the Latin alphabet by what we call the letter F. and therefore it is assumed, and probably rightly so but i'm going to make a slight make a slight modification to this as we go along. it's assumed that uh that uh that letter F, in ro- in Latin, on the basis of the Romance languages today, that the F represented, basically, the same sound as it does today in, the Romance languages and even in English that it is what is known if you've had some phonetics, uh as a voiceless labiodental fricative okay so it's a voiceless labiodental fricative again for those of you who haven't had any linguistics uh, don't worry about this if you've had linguistics, you know what i mean. uh labiodental refers to the point of articulation that is the sound is made by the (uh uh) teeth touching the lips in this case the upper teeth touching the lower lips. voiceless means the vocal cords do not vibrate so there's no, audible vibration and fricative de- de- describes th- the how the air actually passes through the point of contact that (it) actually rubs (there's) friction. and so the sound is a /f/ the /f/ sound okay? represented by the letter F. now, there are a number of words not every one of these words i'm not going to go into the issue here of the regularity of sound change, and (a- why) some a- wh- a- items of structure uh show this change and others don't all right that uh, is uh that will although it's an interesting question, and maybe one we could discuss within the framework of this class it probably is not relevant, to the you know the uh the relationship of let's say language and and history. anyway. there are a number of words i'm only going to give you three or four examples but take my word for it there are dozens more i could give but let's just use three or four as the you know representative sample of the entire thing so, you have this Latin word this is the verb to make or to do in Latin, facere if you can't read my writing and want me to spell any of these out for you just uh don't hesitate to ask. let's take this Latin word the Latin word filius this is the word for son, S-O-N, the male child alright the word for son. this, word here F-O-L-I-A folia, is a Latin word for a leaf, like a leaf on a tree. and this, word here fabulari, and i'll write it in its classical form, although this is not the immediate form that would underlie the Romance form that i want to talk about. uh this is the verb that meant to speak or to talk. alright originally you could tell fables to tell tales, etcetera okay? we have these four. now in Spanish, and especially it's when i say in Spanish in only one of the varu- d- th- the varieties of Hispano-Romance, actually the variety that became the standard of what we call Spanish, but strictly speaking if i really want to be strict uh about the dilution say in Spanish then i should really say in Castilian, I-E in that particular variety of Hispano-Romance known as Castilian cuz there did exist other varieties. uh why Castilian became the norm as a national language is actually an issue perhaps worth mentioning within this broader framework but not today. maybe next class. let me write i'm going to write the modern forms instead of the medieval forms. this word the word facere gives you the la- in Spanish and again, many of you will know these words, gives you this verb hacer with an H spelled with an H, which today is not pronounced today the H is simply an orthographic uh a relic, but as you uh but for those who have studied Spanish, the h- the initial H in Spanish is completely silent. it has no phonetic value whatsoever, it's a holdover it's a relic it's now today just there to cause confusion and make your life miserable. alright? the word for son is this word, pronounced /ixo/ /ixo/... the word for leaf is this word H-O-J-A pronounced /oxa/ /oxa/. and the verb to speak or to talk, is um, this verb, spelled H-A-B-L-A-R hablar... now, this H as i said today is not pronounced but we do know here you just have to take my word for it i wouldn't lie to you, uh too often. um the H in medieval Spanish was pronounced i mean there is a historical reason for that H being there. uh in these particular cases alright? so we do know in medieval Spanish we do have evidence to prove it including, one of the first descriptions of the Spanish language that goes back to the Middle Ages. uh that this H was pronounced and so at one point these words, this H was sort of an aspirated /h/ type sound, okay it was an aspirated s- a voiceless aspirate, of like in English H uh in those words where you actually pronounce the H okay? so this would've been pronounced at some point in it's history something like, /hatser/, uh /hidjo/ in Old Spanish /ixo/ in modern Spanish, ho- /hodja/ in Old Spanish the letter J underwent a change in Spanish at least uh its value. it's used to represent a /dj/ type sound and it's now a /x/ type sound. i mention that just for those who are interested in it it's totally irrelevant to what i'm talking about. uh yeah?
S4: is it still, in some parts of the world, a J sound?
S1: no. there is a J sound in some varieties of Spanish like the Argentine [S4: yeah yeah ] Spanish but, what it represen- but that J sound is a modern development, uh relatively modern development which affects the pronunciation of what's written with these two letters the letter Y or that double L. which no longer is by the way a separate letter of the Spanish alphabet. the Spanish Royal Academy has demoted this from being a separate letter of the alphabet, to just an, no longer has its own separate entry in the dictionary but from here on in, words with double L will go in the appropriate place under the letter L instead of being a separate letter but that's alright but no what you are thinking of is a phenomenon, that you would hear very often in Argentinean Spanish especially, but it's spreading by the way (cuz when i) the year i lived in southern Spain a few years ago, i was noticing quite frequently in the local speech of of Seville and of the province of Andalucia, and when i commented on it to a colleague of mine who's a linguist, and interested in cur- dialectological changes said oh yes this is a phenomenon that's spreading quite rapidly. and actually it could be c- could spread throughout the whole Spanish world because from the point of view of natural phonetic processes, it's actually a very natural process. but uh (th-) what you're referring to is pronunciation of this word as llamar in other words someone saying me llamo Juan. okay? me llamo Juan or vivo en la calle, so and so. okay? alright. so (can- th-) the sound's coming back but the, this and this <REFERRING TO BOARD> have absolutely no relationship to each other whatsoever. alright? now if we take a look at this so what it seems we have in Spanish, what appears to be a sound change, by which, uh, to put in simple terms the way the old fashioned books used to present this would just simply be in terms of, they'd use the letters and they just makes me say that there was this change. this little dash after the F and the H indicates that it's in word initial position only. which is true this sound is w- this change is limited, only to the /f/ sound we've found in word initial position. usually before another vowel though (again) you don't have to worry about the fine points of it. uh but basically what you have linguistically is you have the change in terms of features, you have a change, from a, from what was a voiceless labiodental fricative to a voiceless, perhaps pharyngeal... aspirate <P :05> and b- and basically what's even more imp- more striking of with regard to this change from the point of view of phonetics, is that the the labiodental fricative is pronounced in the front of the mouth, whereas the lab- whereas the pharyngeal aspirate, by being pharyngeal just by definition, is pronounced way at the back. in other words the point of articulation has changed_ has moved from the front to the back. and that's fairly that's a fairly large leap in in in physiological terms. alright? now what is interesting what caught the attention of ro- of early pioneer scholars was two things with regard to this change. one was the very nature of the change the change going from /f/ to /x/. and the second was that within the framework of the Romance languages, and at the time most scholars you know around the turn of the century when they studied the Romance languages, they were familiar mainly with uh literary varieties. people were just getting started into studying lesser regional varieties (so-called) we colloquially and popularly and inaccurately call dialects. but basically you ha- uh, wh- what struck everybody's attention was that this change seemed to be limited, to Castilian only. that in other varieties of Romance this change did not occur. and let me just give you two uh quick examples let's take, right next door to Spanish we have Portuguese. these four words also um, survived in Portuguese but the Portuguese forms have been, since the middle ages on the following the verb to do or to make, is F-A-Z-E-R fazer, the word for a son male child, (xx) for those of you sitting over there (xx) <MOVING FURNITURE> <P :05> in Portuguese forms, would be for the verb to do or to make is fazer F-A-Z-E-R fazer. the word for son, is spelled F-I-L-H-O pronounced filho. uh the word for leaf, is folha, F-O-L-H-A. this L-H, is a Portuguese orthography for the /lj/ sound. and uh the verb to speak is falar... in French, the verb to do or to make is the verb faire the word for th- a son, that is a male child is le fils. the word for leaf is feuille. and as far as the verb to speak is concerned we can leave this out because we we don't have a cognate, as it happens in the Latin of Gaul uh a different verb, was used the verb parabolare, uh was the verb that meant to speak or the one that dominated was the one that evolved into the French word parler in other words this Latin fabulari, uh, uh it was typical of the Latin of the Iberian Peninsula because it survives in both Spanish and Portuguese, but it apparently was not the the ch- the lexical choice, in the Latin of the Roman province of Gaul, where the (w-) different verb parabolare dominated and became the verb parler so we'll leave that one out. and let's even just go with the Italian, uh the verb to do or to make is facere or fare depending upon how you want to do things. the word for son is figlio this is F-I-G-L-I-O the word for a leaf is uh foglia, and again this word to speak is a different is parlare, uh so uh we'll leave we don't need that, but the point is that uh just using, these rom- these particular varieties of Romance, is that the, this change /f/ to /x/ appears to occur only in Spanish. it doesn't occur in any of the other Romance languages. it seems to be limited to Spanish. and it's also, in linguistic terms it is a strange change now, that's not a very scientific way to s- (to) describe anything by the way to say that's strange. or to even use a worse description unnatural. uh, linguists have talked about changes that are more natural than others. uh that's a statistical term and has nothing to do with human physiology or natural or unnatural speech acts. if you can if any if a human can do it it's natural. so /f/ to /x/ since it is a- it is possible to open /f/ to /x/ it is an articulatory possibility, it is not an unnatural speech act. it may not be a statistically very common or frequent change, in the totality of changes that are observable in the world's languages, but that is irrelevant uh, uh i- i- uh in our considerations but statistically it's not all that common. and so within the framework of the Romance languages it really stood out. uh why would Spanish go this route? and, the fate here i want to emphasize is not only was it just Spanish but it was that one specific variety, called Castilian which as happens is the, was one of the basic th- th- was basically the variety, i want to avoid the use of the word dialect it was the variety that for non-linguistic reasons, became the model for the standard language. if the political situation in medieval Spain had been different, than what it ended up being, it is conceivable that another variety, of Romance would have become the standar- the national standard, and we might not even be discussing this issue. because what is interesting is within the framework if we limit ourselves just to the varieties, of Romance uh spoken in what is today Spain, the neighboring varieties, they have let's say in the middle you have Castilian... to the west you have Leonese, and to the east you have Aragonese... in Aragonese and Leonese, this change of /f/ to /x/ did not occur either. uh Arago- Leonese and Aragonese behaved exactly as did Portuguese, or as did French or Italian. in other words the change did not occur. the /f/ stayed uh you know remained intact. so one gets the impression that we have here, a very strange change. so scholars went ahead well how do we explain Todd (t-)
S2: what are you saying? /p/ to /k/? or /f/ to /k/?
S1: /f/ to /x/.
S2: and so you're saying that F is changing into... (xx) 
S1: yeah well what i'm trying well yeah (xx) th- what happened is that in Castilian and only in Castilian, what was the /f/ in Latin, or what is believed to have been a /f/ in Latin, cuz i'm gonna have to sort of uh, nuance a little later something i'm saying, but what traditionally is believed to be an F sound in Latin a /f/ sound, in other words a labiodental fricative, as Castilian evolved, that /f/ became a /x/. alright? whereas in all the other varieties of Romance that didn't occur. 
S2: how do you know that that's the case or that maybe they were using, um a letter which we used for something else to represent, the labiodental, fricative?
S1: because we have the living evidence of all the other Romance languages. moreover the fact the other point is cuz here i'm giving you just limited data, uh there are lots of exceptions to this rule. okay there are a numb- there, are a fair number of exceptions. okay? i'm afraid to really answer your question thoroughly i would have to go off on such a tangent, it would lead us much too far afield your question is perfectly legitimate and i don't want to give you the impression i'm just trying to deke it or duck it rather, so if you want to discuss it with me further i'd be more than happy but i don't want to take up class time with that okay? [S2: okay ] so i'll ask you to make an act of faith and believe me, [S2: okay ] alright? (xx) okay. so we have this situation scholars wondered well what could have caused this strange thing to happen? and they came up with an external explanation. because it had been noticed by (uh) some scholars that the Basque language <P :05> in Spanish there's reason to believe that an old stage of Basque (and) here again i won't be able to explain all the details. it was, the Basques th- appar- apparently recon- using the comparative method of reconstructing Basque, remember we (discussed the,) comparative method in the first half of this course we discussed general principles of it, we didn't go into a detailed (d-) introduction as to what it is that's, would be done in a course that was simply an introduction to historical linguistics and not language and history. but, when scholars had attempted to reconstruct the earlier stages of Basque based upon, what we know about the various varieties today that we subsume under that one label Basque, cuz remember Basque as a language is only attested from the sixteenth century onward we know it's got a very long history. but its written history is comparatively short. its, spoken history is very long. there is good reason to believe that Basque did not have originally in its phonemic inventory the /f/ sound. in other words Basque lacked in its phonemic inventory, a voiceless labiodental fricative. let us assume that to be the case. it is a reasonable statement to make not every language in the world, has all the same sounds, and it is very possible to have languages in which you do not have, uh th- uh the voiceless labiodental fricative that we represent in this using the Roman alphabet, with this letter that we call F. so let us assume that Basque did not have this sound. according to the hypothesis that was, uttered at the time, and the proponent the leading proponent of this hypothesis was one of Spain's great scholars, and you also have to remember the history of scholarship there are lots of extraneous things that affect the way people think. and Spain in the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties, this was a country and in the era in which authority ruled. (th-) first of all you did have a very authoritarian central government, and authority was not questioned whether it was the authority of a great teacher or (whether it was) the authority of the central government or whether it was the authority of the church. it was a k- it was a society, with very different attitudes and (xx) than what we're used to today. and, this uh hypothesis, gained a great deal of currency and really held and it was really accepted for quite a long time by Spanish scholars, despite some serious objections raised by non-Spanish scholars, simply because of the authority and the intellectual prestige, of the scholar who came up with this hypothesis. his hypothesis was the following. speakers of Basque did not have an F now let's assume that to be true that indeed, uh the time of the contact between Latin, and Basque. and he does take this uh problem back to the time, of the Roman Empire in other words this would be a very old phenomenon. and Latin came into contact with Basque which is true again that's historically verifiable. that uh ma- that and the Basques uh actually offered a rather serious degree of resistance to Romanization. uh that uh although the areas of the Iberian Peninsula had most successfully resisted the Romans the Basques held out the longest. and one could even argue as i said before that the Basques basically held out, even if when the Romans said finally we have triumphed we now control all the Iberian Peninsula the Basques said well believe that if you want, uh but they really didn't submit to Roman rule it's actually interesting (that) the Basques were Latinized and Romanized not by the force of Roman arms, but as a result of Christianization. when Christianity caught on in Spain and began to spread in Spain in the third and fourth century, it was Christianity that uh played a major role in the linguistic Latinization of the Basques. but be that as it may (you know when) you have a language contact situation you have speakers of Latin, who are in let's say the socially prestigious situation, so we could call Latin let's say the upper language or the high language, and Basque is the lower language. you're going to have the situation of language contact you're going to have the situation of speakers of Basque trying to learn Latin. the hypothesis is the following. since speakers of Basque did not have a /f/. in their system. well what happens in fact let me ask you this cuz you all have this experience you've all tried all of you i'm sure has been in the position, of having to learn at least one foreign language. and in many of the languages that you study as a foreign language, the target language the language you're learning, will contain sounds, that are not part of the language, that you speak natively. for example two of the hardest sounds for students who are native speakers of English, who are trying to learn Spanish, are, evo- the sound represented by the letter J today the so-called jota the /x/ sound, of Spanish, as in the name Juan, and also and perhaps even harder, is the sound represented in the standard varieties of Spanish by the orthographic double R. the d- th- th- the alveolar trill. as in perro /r/, it's not /R/ or anything like that it's /r/ and students of English since you don't have trilled R's, in English, uh find this sound hard to learn. and what often happens? what did alright obviously the situation when many of you have tried to learn a foreign language you've learned it in a sort of the artificial classroom setting which is a sort of a controlled atmosphere. but what happens if uh for example, you are let us say a native speaker of English spirited off, at a young age to a Spanish speaking country, and you are just basically dropped in the middle of the village or whatever and told to learn you've got to learn the language not in the classroom but on your own. when you start out what is the normal reaction? u- normally what do you do, with sounds that are foreign, to your language? what's you know what would be the most logical thing you would try to do? and you try to imitate the sounds of the foreign language, and you come across the sound, that your native system does not have...
S5: you use something else that, your native system does have that's similar.
S1: exactly you usually go until you a- until you actually start to master the language the the usual first reaction, is to use a s- a sound in your language that is somewhat similar in other words shares, some f- not all obviously but shares some of the phonetic features, associated with the sound that you're tr- uh you- associated with this strange sound. okay so of course obviously when, the Basques were learning Latin, in the days of the Roman Empire, the Romans did not have the goodness to organize schools and have Latin one-oh-one. followed by Latin one-oh-two etcetera. if in other words the Basques who were learning Latin who were learning it you know uh in the marketplace or on the streets or in the fields. uh, probably the best way to learn language. but probably not the best way to teach elegant grammar or elegant pronunciation. so according to the theory of Menendez Pidal the Basques didn't have a /f/ sound, but rather that the Basques, did have and this again can be documented on the basis of our reconstructions of Basque, uh that Basque certainly did have an H type sound... now, one might ask what in common is there between the phonetic features of a /f/, and the phonetic features of a /x/? what do they have in common? is this even a reasonable linguistic hypothesis? in other words we see according Menendez Pidal's hypothesis, by the way Menendez Pidal is the name of that great Spanish scholar don't worry who it is, uh, um his hypothesis was that uh a Basque trying to pronounce facere since in that since the Basques didn't a /f/, in his or her linguistic system, they take th- they would try to approximate, to the nearest sound, and according to Menendez Pidal, that sound must have been a /x/. now he made that decision probably on the basis of what we do know. this is almost one of those cases, of perhaps your mind is you know your analysis is prejudiced by the known facts. in other words since we know that it ended up with a aspirated /x/ type sound in the scin- the Spanish, that Menendez Pidal would've argued well the /x/, must have been, the closest sound, that the Basques had in their system to a Spanish /f/. or to a Latin /f/. alright? actually you whether i tr- use the term Latin or Spanish it to a large extent this becomes almost irrelevant. because there's that's just a continuum of just a change of labels but really it's the same linguistic reality, and it's just after a certain chronological period we call it Latin, and after a certain chronological period we arbitrarily, uh from our twentieth century perspective say oh no this is no longer Latin this is now Spanish. but it's an uninterru- language developments like this are uninterrupted continua. sometime the labels change Latin become Spanish Latin becomes French sometime the labels never change. we use the word English to refer to the language of Beowulf, and the language of Chaucer, and the language of today yet clearly linguistically they are not the same. alright, so, according to Menendez Pidal, uh a Basque speaker trying to say facere, w- uh uh wouldn't have said facere but woulda said something like facere or whatever woulda pronounced his /f/ as a /x/. would have said something like filius instead of filius. and uh this affected the way Basques learned Latin, oh and then this ch- trait spread, into other speakers and thus became the local norm of pronunciation up there, and that's how it evolved, that's what the hypothesis says in a nutshell. in other words that's the there he is arguing that this particular strange sound change, the passage from /f/ to a /x/ is due, to a non-linguistic circumstance. the non-linguistic circumstance, the_ being the arrival of the Romans, and their and the attempt by the Basques, to uh atte- to uh, to adapt, to their language, this sound that didn't exist in their language. that_ now i've highly simplified this particular problem, but again i just want to try to get across the general issue that we're interested in is whether external factors can play a role in motivating a structural change of this sort. now let's look at some of the criticisms of this particular change. Menendez Pidal, argued that the /x/ , uh, uh that the /x/ was replaced the /f/ replaced by /x/ because they're structurally similar. however he also was aware of one other factor which he didn't pass over he didn't cheat, and just ignored this because he came to a strange conclusion, Menendez Pidal noticed, that in the Basque language not in Spanish now we're talking about Basque, uh remember this change that we're dealing with here is (is a) attempt to uh understand how the Basques, attempted to speak uh Spanish or to speak Latin, which was to become Spanish okay? it's still remember this change deals with Spanish not with Basque we're not trying to say, that Basque, changed /f/'s to /x/'s cuz Basque didn't have a /f/ alright? it's when the Basques the speakers of Basque were trying to learn Latin, that they made this change and they pronounced their Latin, s- kind of funny that they had said, they ended up saying facere and filius and folia and fabulari, and that's led to the f- the uh Spanish forms at issue. alright? however Menendez Pidal noticed the fa- noted a fact which he didn't d- but he didn't make a connection he noted that in the Basque language, many Latin words entered because again uh nobody denies the presence of Basque words in the history of Spanish, and, conversely, despite the fact that the Basques spiritedly resisted, the Roman force of arms as i said the Basques did adapt Latin as a language especially for religious purposes, starting around the third and fourth centuries, and the Basques by the way have been some in the history of Spain if i may just uh, go off on a tangent the Basques have been, in Spanish history and Spanish religious history some of the most fervent Catholics. i mean one of the world's great religious orders, was founded by a Spanish Basque, in an effort to fight the Protestant hordes in the sixteenth century. and to which religious order am i referring and to which famous Spanish Basque? <P :05> the Jesuits. and the uh saint who cou- the famous Spanish Basque being Ignatius of Loyola. okay all those universities that are named Loyola in this country you ever wonder why they're all Jesuit schools? <LAUGH> they're named after Saint Ignatius of Loyola who was a famous Basque priest, who uh founded the order, called the Society of Jesus, which uh j- more popularly known as the Jesuits, etcetera. anyway. um, w- when speakers w- uh m- lots of Latin words entered the Basque language in other words the ba- the lexicon of Basque is full of words whose historical origins are not, part of the native stock of Basque, but rather, represented words borrowed from Latin. and the one thing that was noticed is that m- the m- overwhelming majority of these Latin words, that had F in them when they were borrowed into Basque, they weren't borrowed into Basque with an initial /x/ type sound, but rather, they were borrowed into Basque either with a /p/ or a /b/. okay? so just to give you one example that comes to mind right off the top of my head, the Latin word festa... became i forget the exact Basque word but it starts with a P it doesn't start with an H. so, although Menendez Pidal is claiming that when the Basques tried to learn s- Latin. or, you know the varieties of Latin that were going to be evolved into Castilian the Basques tried to learn Latin, they took the Latin F and, turned it into a /x/ type sound, when the Basques adopt- adapted Latin words with the /f/, they didn't have the /f/, they adapted it, not with a /x/, but with a /p/ or a /b/. now, linguistically, linguistically, uh which do you think which actually again and if you've had phonetics you should be able to answer this question through a bit of common sense does not require a a highly sophisticated knowledge of ling- of phonetics or phonology. in terms of, phonetic proximity, (in- with) terms of features, which is closer to a /f/? a /p/ /b/ or /x/? we take /p/ /b/ as a unit cuz after all they, except for the voicing and voicelessness /p/ and /b/ are identical. as far as phonetic features go. the only thing that distinguishes them is the voicelessness of the /p/ in other words vocal cords do not vibrate, versus the voiced nature, of the uh versus the voiced nature of the /b/. so leaving that aside, in terms of phonetics, which actually is closer to a /f/ a /x/ or a /p/ /b/? and justify your answer by the way.
S4: /p/ /b/
S1: /p/ /b/, how many agree with that? any disagreements with that? fine it's quite correct now why would you say it's closer? yeah.
S4: labial
S1: right, they all the /p/ the /b/ and the /f/ all share, uh, all share the feat- the feature of labial or l- labiality in other words all of them involve in some way, in their articulation, the lips. alright the lips are, uh the lips come into play. so, therefore it would almost seem more logical, that if you're a speaker of Basque trying to learn, Latin, that if you're going to (ada-) uh you can't pronounce the F cuz you don't have it, and you instead of making the effort to learn it, and of course, that's one of the alternatives is just to learn the new sound after all, for those of you who have learned Spanish, as native speakers of English, you have, learned to with varying degrees of success perhaps to pronounce the sounds of that are the jota and the trilled R today. or if you're learning or if you're a native speaker of English and you're learning to speak Arabic you've gotta learn to do all sorts of uvular, and uh pharyngeal sounds that don't exist in the English language, but you learn to do it. and the fact that you're young enough you learn this without any effort you just pick it up as you go along. so one would expect that if the Basques when learning the Latin were going to substitute the F with something they weren't going to substitute it with an H, they were gonna substitute it with a /p/ or a /b/. so that's one of the main objections or problems, with this structural with this uh with this explanation, is that uh why would they have done it with a /f/ shouldn't they have done it with a /p/ or a /b/? yes Todd
S2: um, refresh my, my knowledge of, phonetics here, is it, is it always or most usually the case that, that, when you're talking about something being close to another one your your, emphasis is on, closeness or, relatedness in terms of proximity or does it ever have to do with both of them, having the same, production feature (or) (xx) 
S1: it's the features no (it- s-) not w- u- wu- you when you mean proximity are you talking about physical proximity?
S2: yes.
S1: no no it it's to do with features. 
S2: yes... versus versus both like the H and the F being, um being fricatives or
S1: well the H and the F actually they're not i mean strictly speaking, the F and the H, uh the H is actually an aspirate it's really not a fricative. whereas the 
S2: (xx) i i mean having more fricative like [S1: (qualities) yeah. ] instead of instead of being, stop.
S1: y- (well) this presents a a general and much ki- and somewhat controversial issue of which are the most dominant features. okay? in other words the /p/ and the /b/, the /p/ shares the with /f/, th- uh the uh features the uh u- the features of voicelessness and of labiality. and also of physical proximity. alright? cuz again the physical proximity is not unimportant because the one thing that again the thing that stands out in this change and makes it sort of, strange in quotation marks, is the fact that you're going from a sound here that's labial I-E involving articulators that are in the front of the articulatory apparatus, to a /h/ which is articulated almost as far back as you can go, in the articulatory apparatus in other words you're you're traversing, the whole gamut. and even leads to the whole problem of, intermediate stages or whether it was just basically a leap, from the front to the back. alright? <P :05> okay so this is again, th- the one of the main objections that were was raised to the substratum hypothesis, is that if uh if that it indeed if it were due to Basque influence and the Basques didn't pronounce (a) /f/, given the fact that Basques when they adapted Latin words into the Basque language, they adapted them fairly c- uh almost consistent with the /p/ and /b/, never with an H- with never with a- but never with an H this is important alright? whereas this change involves the /f/ to the /x/. so uh again that (xx) (to) that had been the main reason that uh, has been challenged. alright? uh in other words uh s- scholars have argued that they're quite unlikely. moreover and this presents another problem of language learning, is that you could argue that uh the first generation if you have a situation let's say a Basque Latin language contact, the first generation of speakers, uh obviously will make mistakes. it's generally been shown that the older you are the harder it is to learn a foreign language, and also, unless you're gifted and have a good ear, the thing that many people don't get down right or never master totally, is the pronunciation of the foreign language in other words one could maybe develop a tremendous vocabulary, have elegant grammar you know know all the even the stylistic tricks, and perhaps write as well if not better, have a wide vocabulary, but yet speak sort of with a foreign accent. like i will admit this in my own case. although (i'm) considered in Spain to be a fluent speaker of Spanish and many Spaniards have commented to me both on the breadth of my vocabulary, and my and my mastery of the syntax of Spanish both spoken and written, nevertheless whenever i open my mouth, i give myself away as a foreigner because i just have a tin ear, and there are certain features of pronunciation that i can- especially intonation patterns, that i just cannot imitate, and i've given up even trying to imitate them. uh and so i would never you know the C-I-A could never infiltrate me into Spain and try to give me a false I-D and pass me off as a native Spaniard because as soon as i open my mouth, the word Yank or foreigner or North American is written all over me. okay it's obvious i'm not a native speaker although i may have native fluency, i am not a native speaker there is a difference. okay? well the same, in language learning however the next generations, see although let us say for example if i had gone off to Spain as a young man an- and i and despite my accent if i had let's say now lived in Spain married a Spanish woman uh and had children whose first and only language may have been Spanish, they would not make the native speaker mistakes that i make in other words these mistakes are not you know transmitted in th- in the genes so to speak. the next generations would learn the language natively, and therefore would n- would adapt the uh would adapt the uh, phonetics, of the language. so that's what some of the objections are made to this hypothesis as i said i'm not really interested in discussing here the merits uh or the intrinsic merits of the hypothesis but more or less to illustrate a type of linguistic problem that arises whether a similar thing like this can be explained in terms of external factors or in terms of internal factors. the external explanation that has been given for the sound change, has been the language contact between Basques and speakers of Latin. why did the linguists want to approach it this way? the main reason at the outset was because this chren- this change, uh seemed to be strange in other words it didn't occur in any other Romance languages, uh people uh seemed to speak uh, a linguist had the idea well this must be_ this is weird. what factor is there in the history of Spanish, that we cannot find in the history of French or Portuguese or Italian? and of course, the Basques are a wonderful answer. there are oh sure you can say there are Basques in France yeah but not up in Paris where standard French was formed, and as it happens cuz i've slightly cheated on giving you the data, the Romance dialect that's spoken on the French side of the Pyrenees, uh where the Basques hang out a great deal but you know in other words a French Basque country there's a Romance variety called Gascon... and Gascon also has this change of F to H in other words it actually occurs on both sides of the linguistic border. alright? so the change seemed to be limited, to varieties of language uh to at least on the Romance side, to varieties that were in contact with Basque it doesn't occur in standard French doesn't occur in standard Portuguese doesn't occur in standard Italian and, but it occurs in Spanish, and also the other historical fact that we know is although today we say oh standard Spanish but that's the speech of Madrid or Toledo in the center that's true, but historically, and this is a point i may actually may come to uh in one of my other classes, uh in uh in dealing with this in dealing with Spanish, historically the dialect Castilian that became the basis for the national language, has its origins way up in the north. and then moved south with_ as a result of a historical f- of a non-linguistic fact movements of peoples involved in this process which i'll talk about maybe next class, called the Spanish Reconquest. but Ba- Castilian historical its historical origins are up in the far northern central part of Spain, in that area which we know where even today Basque is still spoken, and which we know from medieval history, in which Basque was a very live, you know and very much used language in the middle ages at the time that Castilian was evolving okay? so there is that eh the historical facts are there, the question is, does one lead to the other? so the external explanation is that it's due to Basques. uh linguists would've rejected that and tried to come up with various internal structural explanations, uh which i really don't think it's worthwhile going into in the framework of this class let me just mention one, uh that the actually the one that i think i happen to think is maybe right. and this goes back to something actually Todd brought up, uh the letter F actually may have actually represented two different sounds, in uh in Latin there may have been sort of an upper class and a lower class pronunciation. the upper class pronunciation, is the one that would be considered to be the standard F pronunciation today in other words the labiodental fricative the /f/ type sound. um which therefore and so you have the features of labiality. the_ another pronunciation of the F though uh a or another variety that is documented actually in ma- in certain languages of the world including some varieties of Spanish, is that what is written with the letter F in standard orthography, is actually not a /f/ sound but it actually it's a /pf/ /pf/ type sound it's a voi- it's a voiceless bilabial fricative. in other words there's no contact between the teeth and the lips, so it's not a labiodental, but rather it's a um, it's a bilabial, but the lips don't come together, and so the air coming out rubs against the upper and lower lips and you get a uh fricative sound. some people have claimed that that was sort of a lower class pronunciation of Latin, that the upper class people who spoke elegantly, who spoke properly in quotation marks, pronounced the letter F as a /f/ sound. whereas uh, uh speakers who were of the less least less educated ilk, pronounced it as a more of a as a /pf/ /pf/ type sound. and we do know w- one thing historically, and this for which we do have historical evidence, the Romans who actually came to the northern part of the Iberian Peninsula were basically a less educated less cultured, Roman than the Romans who settled in the south of Spain there was this interesting sociological division in the Roman colonization of the Iberian Peninsula. the more educated upper class, types had the intelligence to go to the south where it's nice and warm in the winter, and settle along you know those nice resort areas along the what today is called the Suncoast the Costa del Sol in Spain, whereas uh we do know that the many of the Romans who settled the northern part of Spain, were actually fairly uneducated soldiers and miners, uh one of the reasons the Romans actually wanted northern Spain was for the silver mines, there'd been mining operation going on there ever since the time of the Romans the Romans discovered the silver mines, up in the North and exploited them, uh, heavily for the Roman economy, and so it's been argued that there was a let's say that the spoken Latin of the North, was of a less cultured variety than the spoken Latin of the south. this is hypothesis, because all we obviously with our written texts that we have preserved you can't tell the difference, because spelling is spelling in other words, a Roman would spell the word fac- this word F-A-C-E-R-E regardless of whether if you had it right, regardless of whether he pronounced it facere with a labiodental /f/ or whether he pronounced it something like perhaps facere with a bilabial F all right? an- (and) pardon?
S4: it looks painful
S1: (xx) <LAUGH> is it pain- it looks painful cuz i'm doing it unnatu- you know it's a, but uh, because again why although the language is like English does not have a bilabial fricative. but there are varieties of Spanish for example that have a bilabial fricative there it works just instead of the /f/ sound, where you say something like la fiebre instead of la fiebre for fever, or el fuego for fire el fuego rather than fuego, okay? and so some people have claimed that the starting point is a just an internal structural change, motivated by the uh fact that the F was bilabial, was a bilabial fricative not a labiodental fricative. again we need not go into the intrinsic linguistic arguments, the point i want to make is here there are two different explanations, one external and one internal. alright and that's the point that i actually want to try to get across. alright? any questions on that particular example?
S4: you said the internal was the upper lower class?
S1: ye- well that's uh int- the internal actually would be the /f/ the phonetic nature of the F yes. yeah. not the fact that the sl- ea- the class distinction is actually an external feature. but the fact that is that internally, then you would've the starting point would've been this uh labio- would've been this bilabial fricative. by the way that w- that solution also presents a number of problems as well, i'm not necessarily advocating it, cuz you still have the interesting phenomenon that hasn't been (that) neither uh hypothesis explains, is how you get from a front sound to a back sound. why does it go from a /p/ to a /x/? one thing and here this might even be more of interest for those of you interested in more general phenomena of linguistic change, it's interesting tha- that the history of Spanish there are a number of changes that are unrelated to each other probably, in all likelihood they're unrelated but they do have the one thing in common. they represent uh a switch from sounds that were pronounced in the front of the mouth, toward the back of the mouth. in other words that in the history of the Spanish language there are a number of_ some changes, unrelated to each other, okay this is important, but le- but when look at them separately and then try to put it all together you might get the idea it does (xx) seem to indicate some sort of tendency. and the tendency is from going from let's say, you know put in linguistic terms from plus front, to either you want to state it as minus front or plus back, depending on how you want to handle you know binary features. for example you have today there's a change going on in the history of Spanish, probably the most noticeable change that's going on today, in the history of the Spanish language, uh to which uh probably is is an internal change without any doubt, but it's going on all over the Spanish speaking world and some of you may have even experienced this, especially after you you know cuz one of the first things first of all let me ask you this right how many of you have been to a Spanish speaking country? okay what wa- where were you? 
S4: Spain
S1: what part of Spain?
S4: Madrid
S1: have you been south of Madrid?
S4: no
S1: now that doesn't help cuz this is uh Madrid doesn't do this at all but the South does how many of y- anybody here been to the south of Spain? or been in the Caribbean? or at least familiar even by listening to the radio or television, let's say with Cuban Spanish or Puerto Rican Spanish? w- 
S4: well th- they don't use all the letters.
S1: (xx) that's a very unlinguistic way of putting it you're right but that's a [S4: (they leave things out) ] very unlinguistic way of putting it they don't use le- they delete many sounds that happen to be still there in the standard spelling, but no let's not confuse letters and sounds please that's something i know it's just it's a uh habit that even traditional historical linguists used to make. when historical linguistics, was beginning as a scholarly discipline, uh people used the word they didn't talk about change of sounds they talked about change of letters. and uh most of the writing which was in German, they actually used a German word Buchstabe which doesn't mean sound but which means letter of the alphabet. but though you know but uh goin- but one of the ongoing changes in Spanish is (the tendency) to aspirate, what is written as the letter S. so for example if you asked someone in Havana, or Seville... or in m- or in Puerto Rico, or anywhere among (xx) most of the coastal areas of Latin America, what is written, in any variety of Spanish, for us to say it is two o'clock, alright it is two o'clock, uh whereas in Madrid, you would it would be son las dos with a sort of apical alveolar S where the S is very clearly pronounced with a rather high degree of sibilancy, and on and in Mexico City these S's are pronounced quite strongly and very noticeable son las dos but if you asked this question at two o'clock of course, in Havana or in Seville, or in San Juan Puerto Rico, or even in cities like Santiago de Chile the odds are could be the answer you get will be son las dos son las dos. in other words as if i mean i'll transcribe it rather than spell orthography you have instead of these S's you have these aspirated sounds. that the /s/ is becoming a /h/. in mo- in many varieties of Spanish today. that the /s/ m- n- not all /s/'s by the way, it's conditioned. it's /s/'s at the it's /s/'s at the um, at the end of a syllable, alright syllable final /s/ is becoming a /h/ in many varieties of Spanish. and in some varieties in fact it's the educated culture norm. it's something you'll never be taught in Spanish one-O-one, etcetera and if you did it you'll be corrected. but in certain areas like in Havana or in Santo Domingo, uh for example it's a norm all the educated people do it all the time yes
S4: does that even show in verb endings like (cuanta?) [S1: pardon? ] (cuanta) as opposed to (cuantas?)
S1: yes well it affects verb ending it affects agree- it affects plural marking it affects agreements. (no) it's got very serious consequences in Spanish.
S4: so it changed all the verbs? [S1: yes it does ] (xx) conjugation of the (you form)
S1: it certainly does. although it doesn't change the orthography you see uh but it does it s- it but orthography's secondary, so people speak they don't write, uh but i'll be with you in a minute okay? for example with the verb oh you're perfectly right although, many Spaniards today, obviously any educated Spaniard writes like this, <WRITING ON BOARD> and distinguishes between these two forms <P :05> tu hablas versus usted habla, uh nevertheless for many Spaniards, this_ these two are pronounced almost identically. in some cases you have the H type sound here so there is still a difference actually hablas, i'm gonna have to exaggerate it (alright cuz) i don't do it natively hablas alright versus habla. in other words an aspiration represented by that little superscript H, versus nothing, alright? but you're right no the consequences, both for the marking of pluralization, and the marking of the second person singular in the Spanish verb conjugation, uh this change, had ab- enormous structural consequences. and which again is a very interesting linguistic point from the point of view of language change although it has nothing to do with external history cuz this is probably all internal. but uh, uh this is an example of a phonetic process, a /s/ becoming a /h/, an aspiration process strictly phonetic, which has very important morphosyntactic consequences. because it affects both, marking of numbers singular versus plural, because /s/ is the plural morpheme par excellence in Spanish, and /s/ is also the, morpheme that indicates the second person singular in, the entire verb system of Spanish. okay? so you're right no it's a it's a_ but this change the /s/ to /h/, is typologically parallel i mean the keyword here is typologically. alright it's typologically parallel, to the /f/ to /h/, in other words /s/ is the sound that's pronounced in the front part of the articulatory apparatus, and the /h/ is pronounced in the back part so you've got us going from the back to the front, i mean the other way around please the front to the back. the same as for /f/ to /x/. and the other one in the history of Spanish and this is something you wouldn't know unless you know the history of the Spanish language, is the jota sound. like for example this word i'll just take this common word D-E-J-A-R, which as you all know who studied Spanish, common verb that means to let to permit to allow, dejar with a /x/ sound. in medieval Spanish, and even early modern even up through the seventeenth century, this was spelt like this D-E-X-A-R, and that X we know very well was pronounced as a /sh/, and in fact there were varieties of Sephardic Spanish that are still spoken today, although Sephardic Spanish unfortunately is dying out rather rapidly, but Sephardic Spanish has retained certain features, of the time that the Jew- from the time that the Jews were kicked out of Spain in fourteen ninety-two. and (is- s- f-) in a varieties Sephardic Spanish this is pronounced, dejar with a /sh/ dejar. so again we have a /sh/ front of the mouth, to a /x/ /x/ type sound, back of the mouth. alright? any further questions on that? or on the whole bit or yeah i'm sorry you (can.) 
S6: um well two questions now. the first one is, with the, deletion of the S, is there a increase in the use of subject pronouns?
S1: yes i think so. that's a problem that people have not studied, uh there are in pr- that's one of tho- one of those ongoing issues. i think there is, one notices in Caribbean Spanish where this loss of the S is very very predominant i mean it's almost, typical, in certain areas you know in certain countries the loss of S is considered to be lower class or regional. for example in Spain it's associated with Andalucia, and people in Madrid say well those Andalusians they don't know how to speak Spanish. you know in fact one of my colleagues now retired who i will not name, objected to our having our junior year abroad program in Seville, because, this colleague considered the Spanish of Andalucia where Seville is, to be inferior, to be you know, not worthy of being studied by foreigners, whereas the speech of Madrid was the model of how you should pronounce it. and b- and so in certain countries like Mexico and Spain there is a regional, and social differentiation whereas in the Caribbean, the loss of S is almost the norm. the lower class uneducated do it but so do the highly educated upper class do it. in other words there is no social distinction. between the loss and sometimes by the way, it's gone all the way it's or an it's in many varieties it's an aspiration. in other words a /s/ has become a /h/. in other words there still is the sound there in other words that this form is not homonymous with or homophonous rather, with this form, cuz this has this aspiration, this does not. but in other varieties, this H has even gone to the next step to total elimination, and in which case then, this form, despite the orthographies, are perfectly homonymous and to distinguish them, yes there does seem to be a higher frequency of use, of the subject pronoun, in Caribbean varieties of Spanish. and that again could be a uh change, uh morphologica- uh again the consequences of this phonological change. this happened in the history of French. for those of you who know French as you know modern French, the use of the subject pronoun is obligatory you cannot drop the subject pronoun in sp- in French you must, you must use it. in fact some people argue that in French today the subject pronoun is really, not a subject pronoun, but is actually a prefixed person number marker, that is attached to the verb because the endings have basically disappeared although they're there in spelling, they're not there in actual pronunciation, remember French spelling is just as bad as English spelling it's so far out of date it's per- it's pathetic, but uh doesn't really reflect the realities of the modern language, okay? well the same with uh, the French, but you're right right right what was your other question you said you had two?
S6: oh um the first time you said son las dos... the the S in the las and the dos, was almost like a /sh/ sound like you (xx) 
S1: the first time (xx) yeah when i did the Madrid pronunciation, yeah, but that's because the type of S and this is totally irrelevant to this whole issue but just for your own benefit, uh the S the phonetic nature of the S of Madrid is very different, than the phonetic nature of the S that you would hear in southern Spain and in Latin America.
S6: (uh) well i was just gonna say, that S didn't sound too far away from saying the, dejar? or instead of the <UNINTELLIGIBLE OVERLAP> dejar 
S1: okay i that's uh but that's just an acoustic impression. you're quite right but th- th- but there's no relationship between the two. in common? no but the question your per- question's perfectly legitimate (but there's no) relationship. okay listen uh, i'm going to reward you for your patience if i start the next topic i'll never get it finished and i'd rather not interrupt myself, and uh it's warm anyway, and uh so let's give the tape recorder a break too, and so thank you very much and i'll see you on Thursday.
<MICASE-RELATED SPEECH> 
SU-F: when is it, that you want these uh papers in?
S1: the term papers? last day of class. (even though) earlier will be accepted. but the last day of class which is [SU-F: the last day? ] Tuesday, which is 
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