Revisiting Rivera: Palatalization of dental stops in a border town

Abstract

I present a follow-up study of the social stratification of palatalization of /ti/, /di/ in Uruguayan Portuguese (UP). Carvalho's (1998) provided apparent-time evidence suggesting that palatalization of /ti/, /di/ in Rivera was undergoing linguistic change. I test the apparent-time construct with the objective of substantiating the change in progress hypothesized by Carvalho (1998). The examinations of linguistic factors indicate that following and preceding context and tonicity of the syllable condition the variability. Data results confirmed the hypothesis that younger speakers tend to prefer the innovative variant, however, cross-sectional comparisons point toward a state of relative stability at the speech-community level.