“Para mí, es indígena con traje típico”

This chapter analyzes the social perceptions of the apocope of word-final segments in paroxytone words, e.g., [ꞌsiŋko] → [ꞌsiŋk] ‘five’, a phenomenon of Guatemalan Spanish that has been ascribed to contact with Mayan languages. As negative social stereotypes have often been associated with the indigenous Maya in Guatemala, a matched guise was administered to 116 native Guatemalans in order to determine if this particular linguistic phenomenon indexes negative attitudes as well. The results reveal the indexical fields elicited by apocopated forms, as listeners perceive guises with apocope as having lower-status occupations and wearing less-prestigious clothing than the guises without apocope.