Contact, Change and Social Networks: A Study of Yakama and Mexican Sociolects in Washington State

Dialectological research into the phonological systems of nonwhite groups in the US has tended to focus on how or whether such groups participate in ‘majority’ dialect features and sound changes. For example, in Oregon, Peterson (2019) found participation in /u/- and /o/-fronting (two key sound changes in the so-called Western Vowel Pattern) in women of color. In Washington, Wassink & Hargus (2020) and Wassink (2016) reported that Yakama and Chicanx speakers do not show Western US-like fronting of /u/. However, these approaches tend to center the majority ethnicity in a broader region, regardless of who the most important local groups in contact really were. Anthropological and historical texts documenting the history of the Yakima Valley in south-central Washington state make clear that earliest, year-round, non-intertribal contact in the region involved the Yakama and Mexican peoples.