Revisiting stop aspiration

Abstract This study documents variable voiceless stop aspiration in Yucatec Spanish in Mayan bilingual communities. Analysis of nearly 6,000 tokens extracted from sociolinguistic interviews with 25 speakers indicates that aspiration of voiceless stops, measured in Voice Onset Time (VOT), is robust, with an overall rate of 41%. Aspiration is conditioned by following phonetic environment as a statistically significant effect and tends to be favored in stressed syllables and word-initial position. As to social factors, men consistently exhibit longer VOT durations across age groups and communities. A novel finding is the absence of an age group effect. Considering the Mayan plosive system, the analyses suggest that aspirated stops are part of a fortition process, as an outcome of indirect contact-induced change. Speakers may use aspiration and other Yucatec Spanish features as linguistics markers of regional identity, given the linguistic diversity and dialect variation in the area.