Mexican American English Substrate Influence and the Birth of an Ethnolect Studies in English Language Series

Responding to the need for a comprehensive treatment of Mexican American English and its varied influences across multiple generations, this volume provides true insight into how language contact triggers language change, and illustrates previously under-recognised links to ethnolects of other migrant groups in different parts of the world. It demonstrates how the variety begins with Spanish interference features but evolves into a stable variety over time by filtering out some of the interference features and responding to forces such as exploitation of its speakers, education, and the need to develop solidarity. A large number of linguistic variables from multiple realms of language are analysed that provide a truly balanced picture of the divisions within the community across a range of linguistic levels such as syntax, phonology, prosody, accent, dialect, and sociolinguistics.

1. Language contact, immigration, and Latino Englishes Erik R. Thomas; 2. The context of North Town Belinda Treviño Schouten and Erik R. Thomas; 3. Consonantal variables correlated with ethnicity Erik R. Thomas and Janneke Van Hofwegen; 4. Vowels in North Town Erik R. Thomas; 5. Trends from outside Erik R. Thomas; 6. Social evaluation of variables Erik R. Thomas and Belinda Treviño Schouten; 7. Variable (ING) Tyler S. Kendall and Erik R. Thomas; 8. Coronal stop deletion in a rural South Texas community Robert Bayley and Dan Villarreal; 9. Prosody Erik R. Thomas and Tyler S. Kendall; 10. Morphosyntactic variation Erin Callahan; 11. Latino English in new destinations: processes of regionalisation in emerging contact varieties Mary E. Kohn; 12. Mexican American English and dialect genesis Erik R. Thomas.

Erik R. Thomas is a professor in the Department of English at North Carolina State University. His work focuses on the intersection of sociolinguistics and phonetics, as well as the speech of minorities.