Pluricentric Languages in the Americas

Around 2,000 years ago, the Guarani languages, a subgroup of the Tupi-Guarani family (Tupi Stock), migrated from the Amazon to the lowlands of South America forming the modern Guarani languages, which might be classified as pluricentric languages. The present paper aims at presenting an overview of some phonemic and grammatical aspects of these languages, focusing on possible effects of their expansion southwards. First, it is shown that Guarani languages display a founder effect, a reduction in phonemic variability. Second, it is hypothesized that the possible migratory routes explored by Xetá and Aché might have resulted in language contact and depopulation, causing internal grammatical changes. Third, intensive language contact with positive language attitude and practices might have favored Paraguayan Guarani, which has the biggest number of speakers and the largest phonemic inventory among Guarani languages.

This article explores the extent to which a multinational minoritised family of indigenous languages such as Quechua II can be considered pluricentric. A brief introduction to the complexity of the language family is provided along with an overview of current legislation and policies in the three Andean countries with the largest Quechua-speaking populations. Despite the vitality of some of the language varieties and the use of normalised and standardised forms by the three nation-states, it is difficult to determine whether the standardised varieties or the prestigious ones are the centres of diffusion of the languages, especially in academic settings outside the countries of origins, making it very difficult to determine the extent to which the Quechua II family of languages is pluricentric.

This paper offers a brief outline of several important lines of research that concern the complex mutual interdependence of three key topics related to the current state of the pluricentricity of Spanish in the Americas, as well as its possible future developments. These topics include: the dominance hierarchy among the varieties of Spanish in the Americas; the social conditions as well as the political aims relevant for standardization efforts in different Hispanic Latin American countries; and finally, the contradictory impact of the conventional tertiary mass media on these processes, which is presently overridden in a significant manner by the growing presence of digital media in established social communicative practices. While elucidating their interrelatedness, the systematic tensions that are generated in all areas relevant to linguistic normativity as consequences of globalization dynamics also become more visible in terms of their ubiquity.

The aim of this study is to discuss whether or not there is a Central American standard variety of Spanish – or several – based on the analysis of a feature catalogue for Central American phonetics and morphosyntax that was compiled and investigated by Quesada Pacheco (2010 & 2013). The inclusion of the varieties of Central American Spanish is even more important as they have, so far, essentially been represented as a grey area in the discussion on pluricentricity. Perception and linguistic features should be brought into harmony.

This study describes fourteen Anglicisms that are homonyms with a taboo word (a word which is normally not used in certain social contexts) in Spanish or that give a taboo meaning from English to another word present in U.S. Spanish. The Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española (ANLE: North American Academy of the Spanish Language) recommends against the use of those Anglicisms, along with hundreds of others that are characteristic of U.S. Spanish in the three volumes of Hablando bien se entiende la gente (HBSELG 1 2010, 2 2014, 3 2021). The ANLE is one of the 24 corresponding language academies of the Spanish-speaking world affiliated with the Real Academia Española (RAE: Royal Spanish Academy), the norm-setting organization for the Spanish language. This study wishes to shed light on how and why these taboo expressions can enter Spanish, if they truly are unique to the Spanish of the U.S., and how they fit into the debate about differential dictionaries of -isms.

In this research, we want to show various ideologising instances present in Spanish-American lexicography (from the mid-19th century to the early 20s of the 20th century), such as some aspects related to the question of Eurocentrism, its problems, some critical perspectives and its reaffirmation in some speech acts. For instance, from the examples it will be possible to appreciate the Spanish lexicographical ignorance of the Latin American reality. Furthermore, the problems that have been generated from the Spanish-American lexicographic discourse are due to the fact that the information present in the Royal Spanish Academy’s Dictionary is insufficient or non-existent in relation to the Spanish-American lexicon. At the same time, some reflections and disputes related to how long it takes to “consecrate” a neologism of irregular formation from Latin America within the official lexicographic tradition will be shown.

There is no general consensus on where a principal linguistic norm-setting center for Spanish as a pluricentric language lies in the Andean region, though Cusco, Peru, is a possible candidate. Andean Spanish is a well-documented variety spoken in this area, and unstressed vowel de-voicing is a contact feature in Andean Spanish that can be traced back to Quechua origin. This study analyzes vowel devoicing among sixteen Cusqueñan Spanish speakers, assessing the prevalence and patterning of this phenomenon as a characteristic of a non-dominant variety of Spanish. Findings suggest that the presence of devoicing is best explained by sociolinguistic factors, while the degree of devoicing has more to do with phonetic factors. Overall, Cusqueñan speakers exhibit low rates of devoicing, so this feature may not be representative of an Andean stan-dard of Spanish centered in Cusco.

This study explores the status of the Brazilian variety of Portuguese within the pluricentricity of the Portuguese language, and more specifically the hypothesis of a possible situation of reverted asymmetry with respect to the European variety. Three issues will be addressed: First of all, the evolutionary relation between all national varieties of Portuguese will briefly be outlined, especially the standardization of the Brazilian variety, the nativization of African varieties, and the increasing pluricentricity of the Portuguese language. Secondly, the bicentricity of European and Brazilian standards will be highlighted, with particular emphasis on social factors and lectometric indicators that point towards a diachronic divergence between both varieties and a rare state of symmetric pluricentricity. Finally, we will argue that the great influence of Brazilian culture in Portugal and other Portuguese-speaking countries, resulting from the proliferation of Brazilian audiovisual cultural products, is gradually leading to a situation of reverted asymmetry in the domain of language perception and attitudes and of culture, but not in the domain of language use.

This paper compares four different varieties of Pluricentric Portuguese that have been characterised as having a symmetric or an asymmetric relationship with European Portuguese (EP) – considered the standard model by the first Brazilian grammarians in late 19th Century. We show that Brazilian Portuguese (BP), Mozambique Portuguese (MP) and São Tomé Portuguese (STP), in relation to EP, have developed convergent linguistic patterns regarding the expression of 3rd person clitics, preferring null objects, and therefore, diverging from EP; but they differ from BP in relation to the overall rates of overt referential pronominal subjects, since BP is set apart from the other two varieties, although MP and BP converge, to a certain extent, depending on the discourse person of the subject. These results suggest a very complex picture, since the development of their norms follows opposite trends for the two syntactic features approached, which renders it difficult to characterise them as varieties that adopted or rejected the dominant national norm.

We focus on the process of R-deletion in final coda position, regional diversity, and phonological syllable configuration, preceded by an overview on the origins of Brazilian Portuguese. The theoretical framework rests on the principles of language change and phonological syllable theories. Also, the Laboratory Phonology apparatus is used; a sample of 288 SVO sentences containing words ending in ‘ar’ (celular ‘mobile phone’) and ‘or’ (professor ‘teacher’), recorded in reading tasks performed by eight 20 to 40 year old female speakers with higher education from Rio de Janeiro. The analysis revealed that 1) R-deletion in final coda is one example of ongoing changes that present regional diversity and 2) traces of the loss of the segment are detectable in vowel duration, the time unit being re-associated with the syllable nucleus.

In this paper, we compare the results for linguistic and social patterns of the same sound change, with data collected from two samples of contemporary regional varieties of European and Brazilian Portuguese, from Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro respectively. We argue that a full comprehension of the varieties of a pluricentric language demands a dynamic view of language, according to which each variety may develop its own patterns of linguistic and social variation since, depending on their sociohistorical relationship, they may or may not influence each other (Labov, 2007). By evaluating the similarities and dissimilarities of the observed patterns of the competing variants of coda (s), such as in antes (before), that have been developed in each variety, we aim to address whether the outcomes observed in varieties of pluricentric languages are totally independent or still linked by features connected to the variety from which they have originated.

In this paper, we compare the results for linguistic and social patterns of the same sound change, with data collected from two samples of contemporary regional varieties of European and Brazilian Portuguese, from Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro respectively. We argue that a full comprehension of the varieties of a pluricentric language demands a dynamic view of language, according to which each variety may develop its own patterns of linguistic and social variation since, depending on their sociohistorical relationship, they may or may not influence each other (Labov, 2007). By evaluating the similarities and dissimilarities of the observed patterns of the competing variants of coda (s), such as in antes (before), that have been developed in each variety, we aim to address whether the outcomes observed in varieties of pluricentric languages are totally independent or still linked by features connected to the variety from which they have originated.

Seeking evidence of the pluricentric nature of Brazilian Portuguese, this paper explores the hypothesis that a trigger for this process is the effect of the changes in higher education on linguistic patterns. Due to public policies for inclusion, the Brazilian educational system has expanded in the past decade and has changed the profile of students. The migration of students to a new community expanded their contact with different varieties of Portuguese. A study in a sample comprised of sociolinguistic interviews with undergraduates from the Federal University of Sergipe, Brazil, controlled three morphosyntactic variable features. Results suggest the role of the university as an inclusive and integrative field for linguistic variation in Brazilian Portuguese, with effects on the normative orientation of grammatical patterns. The observation of a set of grammatical shows different grammatical patterns, and this can support a pluricentric hypothesis.

This contribution focuses on the reasons why an endogenous norm has not yet emerged in French Acadia. Under review are two dominant vernaculars, firstly a “mixed” variety called Chiac, and secondly, Acadian French. Typical of urban areas, Chiac incorporates lexical items borrowed from English into the local French matrix (mostly nouns, adjectives, and verb radicals, as well as some adverbs), while Acadian French is characterized by archaisms that date back to the first settlements of the 17th century. Unlike Chiac, Acadian French has more positive connotations and remains in use by the elderly and in rural areas, but both varieties are perceived to be antithetical to Standard French practices.

This paper focuses on the characteristics of Dutch in the Caribbean. It introduces the concept that a non-dominant Caribbean variety of Dutch has developed with clear and distinct characteristics, but these characteristics are described mostly as deviations from the standard rather than regional characteristics of a rather homogenic variety of Dutch. Speakers of Dutch in the Caribbean generally accept Nether-landic Dutch as their norm. We hypothesize that that homogeneity originates at the convergence of the Caribbean diaspora in several ur-ban centres in the Netherlands. Extensive research into the process of circular migration and language development is necessary to develop a full comprehension of the origin of the characteristics of Caribbean Dutch. Such research may lead to a more generic understanding of the development of postcolonial development of language varieties of the former colonizer’s language. This paper introduces the Caribbean part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands as a linguistic conundrum and continues, in the second section of the text, with the geographic, political, and linguistic context of the islands. A theoretical discussion on dominance and multilingualism in pluricentric language areas follows next, in the third section, and the fourth section is a reflection on current insights on the Caribbean Dutch variety in the Dutch Caribbean, to finally conclude that a non-dominant Caribbean variety of Dutch has developed, which is strongly influenced by the iterative migration of large groups of Dutch Caribbean citizens to the European Netherlands.