Daniel Erker
Biographic Data
| ID | 749950 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Daniel Erker |
| GIVEN NAMES | Daniel |
| FAMILY NAME | Erker |
| SIGNATURE | ERKER D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Boston University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 8 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 50 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 8 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Variation, contact, and change in Boston Spanish
This paper examines variation in six features of Spanish, testing the hypothesis that outcomes of language and dialect contact are shaped by the differing social meaning of linguistic variables. Two of the study’s variables are strongly associated with aspects of identity and style. Four others are poorer signals of social meaning, despite constituting sites of crosslinguistic and/or dialectal difference. In the speech of life-long residents of t…
American myths of linguistic assimilation
This study examines the behavior of 331 Spanish speakers, 269 immigrants to the United States and sixty-two native-born individuals, through questionnaires and sociolinguistic interviews. Results show that increased US life experience correlates with expanded use of English in both private and public domains of life. Additionally, greater use of English co-exists with maintenance of fine-grained patterns of structured linguistic variation in Span…
Uh, bueno, em
There is mounting evidence that the filled pauses that pervade spontaneous speech constitute a rich site of linguistic inquiry. The present study uses a comparative variationist method to explore possible effects of language contact on pause behavior, examining 3810 filled pauses produced by 24 Spanish-speaking residents of Boston, Massachusetts. Interspeaker differences in pause behavior correlate with intensity of contact. Participants who have…
The limits of named language varieties and the role of social salience in dialectal contact
Studying dialectal contact offers linguists an opportunity to critically examine some of our most basic assumptions about language. In particular, careful consideration of geographically constrained patterns of linguistic variation highlights the limitations of named language varieties as tools for linguistic inquiry. Ultimately, the locus of contact is not to be found in the interaction of such abstractions, but rather in the individual minds of…
Contact and coherence
Hiatus resolution in American English
It has generally been assumed that after nonlow vowels in English, hiatus is resolved by inserting a homorganic glide (e.g. seeing [sijɪŋ], Itô & Mester 2009). However, despite suspicions that inserted glides may be fundamentally different from lexical glides (e.g. Cruttenden 2008), a systematic phonetic investigation of the purported glide is lacking. We examine the nature of hiatus resolution by comparing three environments: (i) vowel-vowel seq…
The role of lexical frequency in syntactic variability
Much recent work argues that lexical frequency plays a central explanatory role in linguistic theory, but the status, predicted effects, and methodological treatment of frequency are controversial, especially so in the less-investigated area of syntactic variation. This article addresses these issues in a case study of lexical frequency effects on variable subject personal pronoun (SPP) expression in Spanish. Prior studies of Spanish SPP use reve…
A subsegmental approach to coda /s/ weakening in Dominican Spanish
Analyses of the variable weakening of coda /s/ in Spanish have largely relied on a categorical conception of variability. While categorical descriptions have proven to be useful heuristics, they have nevertheless tended to obscure important facts about phonological variation and the factors that probabilistically condition it. A growing body of research on sociophonetic variation offers evidence that correlations between linguistic forms and soci…
Hiatus resolution in American English
It has generally been assumed that after nonlow vowels in English, hiatus is resolved by inserting a homorganic glide (e.g. seeing [sijɪŋ], Itô & Mester 2009). However, despite suspicions that inserted glides may be fundamentally different from lexical glides (e.g. Cruttenden 2008), a systematic phonetic investigation of the purported glide is lacking. We examine the nature of hiatus resolution by comparing three environments: (i) vowel-vowel seq…
The role of lexical frequency in syntactic variability
Much recent work argues that lexical frequency plays a central explanatory role in linguistic theory, but the status, predicted effects, and methodological treatment of frequency are controversial, especially so in the less-investigated area of syntactic variation. This article addresses these issues in a case study of lexical frequency effects on variable subject personal pronoun (SPP) expression in Spanish. Prior studies of Spanish SPP use reve…
The limits of named language varieties and the role of social salience in dialectal contact
Studying dialectal contact offers linguists an opportunity to critically examine some of our most basic assumptions about language. In particular, careful consideration of geographically constrained patterns of linguistic variation highlights the limitations of named language varieties as tools for linguistic inquiry. Ultimately, the locus of contact is not to be found in the interaction of such abstractions, but rather in the individual minds of…
Contact and coherence
Uh, bueno, em
There is mounting evidence that the filled pauses that pervade spontaneous speech constitute a rich site of linguistic inquiry. The present study uses a comparative variationist method to explore possible effects of language contact on pause behavior, examining 3810 filled pauses produced by 24 Spanish-speaking residents of Boston, Massachusetts. Interspeaker differences in pause behavior correlate with intensity of contact. Participants who have…
American myths of linguistic assimilation
This study examines the behavior of 331 Spanish speakers, 269 immigrants to the United States and sixty-two native-born individuals, through questionnaires and sociolinguistic interviews. Results show that increased US life experience correlates with expanded use of English in both private and public domains of life. Additionally, greater use of English co-exists with maintenance of fine-grained patterns of structured linguistic variation in Span…
A subsegmental approach to coda /s/ weakening in Dominican Spanish
Analyses of the variable weakening of coda /s/ in Spanish have largely relied on a categorical conception of variability. While categorical descriptions have proven to be useful heuristics, they have nevertheless tended to obscure important facts about phonological variation and the factors that probabilistically condition it. A growing body of research on sociophonetic variation offers evidence that correlations between linguistic forms and soci…
A subsegmental approach to coda /s/ weakening in Dominican Spanish
Analyses of the variable weakening of coda /s/ in Spanish have largely relied on a categorical conception of variability. While categorical descriptions have proven to be useful heuristics, they have nevertheless tended to obscure important facts about phonological variation and the factors that probabilistically condition it. A growing body of research on sociophonetic variation offers evidence that correlations between linguistic forms and soci…
The role of lexical frequency in syntactic variability
Much recent work argues that lexical frequency plays a central explanatory role in linguistic theory, but the status, predicted effects, and methodological treatment of frequency are controversial, especially so in the less-investigated area of syntactic variation. This article addresses these issues in a case study of lexical frequency effects on variable subject personal pronoun (SPP) expression in Spanish. Prior studies of Spanish SPP use reve…
Hiatus resolution in American English
It has generally been assumed that after nonlow vowels in English, hiatus is resolved by inserting a homorganic glide (e.g. seeing [sijɪŋ], Itô & Mester 2009). However, despite suspicions that inserted glides may be fundamentally different from lexical glides (e.g. Cruttenden 2008), a systematic phonetic investigation of the purported glide is lacking. We examine the nature of hiatus resolution by comparing three environments: (i) vowel-vowel seq…
Contact and coherence
Uh, bueno, em
There is mounting evidence that the filled pauses that pervade spontaneous speech constitute a rich site of linguistic inquiry. The present study uses a comparative variationist method to explore possible effects of language contact on pause behavior, examining 3810 filled pauses produced by 24 Spanish-speaking residents of Boston, Massachusetts. Interspeaker differences in pause behavior correlate with intensity of contact. Participants who have…
The limits of named language varieties and the role of social salience in dialectal contact
Studying dialectal contact offers linguists an opportunity to critically examine some of our most basic assumptions about language. In particular, careful consideration of geographically constrained patterns of linguistic variation highlights the limitations of named language varieties as tools for linguistic inquiry. Ultimately, the locus of contact is not to be found in the interaction of such abstractions, but rather in the individual minds of…
American myths of linguistic assimilation
This study examines the behavior of 331 Spanish speakers, 269 immigrants to the United States and sixty-two native-born individuals, through questionnaires and sociolinguistic interviews. Results show that increased US life experience correlates with expanded use of English in both private and public domains of life. Additionally, greater use of English co-exists with maintenance of fine-grained patterns of structured linguistic variation in Span…
Variation, contact, and change in Boston Spanish
This paper examines variation in six features of Spanish, testing the hypothesis that outcomes of language and dialect contact are shaped by the differing social meaning of linguistic variables. Two of the study’s variables are strongly associated with aspects of identity and style. Four others are poorer signals of social meaning, despite constituting sites of crosslinguistic and/or dialectal difference. In the speech of life-long residents of t…
Linguistic Variation and Morphology (8 works) · Linguistics (7 works) · History (5 works) · Phonetics and Phonology Research (5 works) · Psychology (5 works) · Computer Science (4 works) · Mathematics (4 works) · Philosophy (4 works) · Spanish Linguistics and Language Studies (4 works) · Language contact (3 works)