ABSTRACT
Dominican Spanish is commonly divided into three main dialects based on their respective realizations of liquids in coda position, which include: (1) the lateral /l/ as a tap [ɾ] /fal.da/ -> [faɾ.da] ‘skirt’, (2) the tap as a lateral [l]; /mu.xeɾ/ -> [mu.xel] ‘woman’, (3) and both coda liquids being realized as a vocoid [i], as in /fal.da/ -> [fai̯.da], and /puer.ta/ -> [pu̯ei̯.ta]. Willis and Ronquest (in press) document the occurrence of all three liquid patterns with the Cibao dialect in addition to fortition of glides to a full consonant, i.e., /ma.mei̯/ -> [ma.mel].
The present study explores the perception of stimuli containing liquid variants /ɾ/ and /l/ in coda position with regional dialects on a map of the Dominican Republic by students at a Dominican University in Santiago (Cibao region).
Our findings indicate that specific allophonic realizations of coda liquids functioned as markers for the three principal dialectical divisions within the country and largely followed previous linguistic characterizations. We found that the participant’s performance may be influenced by an interaction between shared indexical knowledge and novel and unshared indexical knowledge. Linguistic exposure to features with social value within the speech community facilitates dialect identification.
