Interlanguage and Cross-Generational Assimilation: Past Tense Unmarking in Hispanicized English

Abstract

This study analyzes an emerging variety of North Carolina Hispanicized English in terms of the grammatical variable of past tense marking. It compares variation in Durham, North Carolina, Hispanicized English at increasing lengths of residency to generational varieties of Hispanicized English in a comparison sample, another contact-influenced ethnic variety of English, spoken by a longstanding Chicano community in south Texas. In this way, it tests the hypothesis that interlanguage (socio)linguistic development may in fact recapitulate generational changes in different sociodemographic speech settings. Results indicate that for the speakers in this study, the -t/-d variable indicates not only the constraints of the phonological process of deletion, but two morphosyntactic constraints: (1) the effects of verb class and (2) a grammatical process of past tense unmarking.