Review of Penny, Ralph. 2001. Variation and Change in Spanish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[Carlos Subirats Rüggeberg]

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    Review of Penny, Ralph. 2001. Variation and Change in Spanish.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Hardback, x+284 pp., $59.95,
ISBN: 0-521-78045-4).
    Reviewed by Elizabeth A. Martínez-Gibson, College of Charleston,
    Charleston, SC
          De: Elizabeth Martínez-Gibson <martineze at cofc.edu>
              Información distibuida por Linguist List:
           http://linguistlist.org/issues/12/12-1545.html#1
____________________________________________________________________

    "Variation and Change in Spanish" is quite concise and manageable
for an undergraduate class on the history of the Spanish language, a
diachronic dialectology or phonology of Spanish class. Since the text is
in English, it serves Spanish speakers as well as English speakers
interested in the historical changes and variations of Spanish. The
Portuguese features of Portugal and Brazil, in their relationship to
Spanish and their proximity to Spain and Spanish America, are also of
interest to those studying Portuguese.

    In the Preface, Penny indicates his purpose as being to "apply
certain theoretical insights into linguistic variation and change to the
Spanish-speaking world." Most of the data are that of Castilian Spanish
and the constant theme throughout the book is 'dialect mixing'. 'Dialect
mixing' is defined as an occurrence due to population movement and
therefore mixing different dialects creating new features. Within this
constant theme, Penny's focus is on historical change and variation
related to Spanish and suggests that language variation is 'seamless',
that is, "variation is almost infinitely subtle, and occurs along all
parameters (geographical and social), so that it is usually
inappropriate to seek to establish boundaries between varieties."

    He does "not aim to provide the reader with an exhaustive
description of geographical variation in Spanish," therefore providing a
general review of the historical changes of Peninsula Spanish and these
influences on Spanish American Spanish.

    In this, the book differs from John M. Lipski's (1996) "El español de
América" and Manuel Alvar's (1996) "Manual de dialectología hispánica:
El español de España," each of which provide some historical, as well as
modern variation. In addition to those areas discussed in Penny's book,
these two include lexicon and a more complete view of sociolinguistics.
Penny touches on the important areas of social features, but as he
states the book does not "claim to describe in detail the correlation
between the linguistic and sociological features of the Spanish-speaking
communities." Again, this book focuses on historical changes and
variation, how changes from the Middle Ages brought us to the Spain we
know today.

    The first chapter "Introduction: Language variation" discusses the
dialect continuum of the Northern part of the Peninsula. Penny indicates
that variation is observable across the continuum. Individuals will use
the different variants within the community based on the circumstances,
i.e., formal versus informal, etc., whereas over time, formal variants
tend to be replaced with informal variants.

    Chapter 2 "Dialect, language, and variety: definitions and
relationships" focuses on the relationship between dialect and language.
Penny presents the idea that the only difference between the concepts of
dialect and language is a 'degree of difference' and not a 'difference
of kind' because dialects can eventually become languages and over time
languages fragment into dialects forming different variations. He
discusses how "language is delimitable, therefore there is no one
particular definable moment in time to determine its birth.

    In this chapter, Penny discusses his theory of the misconception of
the division of the Romance language family (Western, Eastern, and
Sardinian) which is based on two features (voiceless intervocalic
consonants in Western Romance, but not in Eastern, and the loss of final
/s/ in Eastern, but not Western Romance. He explains five reasons for
this misconception and documents these with examples to the contrary.

    In the Iberian Peninsula, he offers population movement as the only
explanation for the division of three linguistic blocs in the Southern
two thirds of the Peninsula. This resettlement was the consequence of
Christian reconquest of Islamic Spain.

    Chapter 3 "Mechanisms of change" focuses on the process by which
change spreads through social groups and how the composition of such
groups can affect "who imitates whom." Language change depends upon
language variation.

    In medieval Spain after a period of dialect mixing, language began to
level out and simplify, therefore reducing variation and developing norm
patterns. If there were co-existing competing items in the same
territory, one was chosen and the other abandoned, unless the community
was divided, and then both forms would remain acquiring different
prestige turning it into a social variation. Communities dominated by
strongly tied sub-groups were more resistant to linguistic change, and
individuals with more power, prestige were imitated more often than
non-powerful people.

    Chapter 4 "Variation in Spain" presents the geographical and social
variations in Spain. In the geographical variations, Penny presents two
sets of circumstances: the Northern dialect continuum and the
territorial expansion of northern varieties, which accompanied the
reconquest of Islamic Spain.

    The Northern dialect continuum stretched across the northern third
of the Peninsula and varieties of this move south were subjected to
dialect contact and dialect mixing with other northern dialects and
Mozarabic varieties. With this progression, the processes of focusing
and standardization introduced breaks in the east-west continuum, so
that, in the southern two thirds of the Peninsula there was a
superimposition of isoglosses, which produced sharp boundaries between
the Portuguese set of varieties, a Castilian set, and a Catalan set. In
this chapter discussion focuses on the features of linguistic variation
of the dialects of the Peninsula such as the Mozarabic of Toledo; the
Northern Peninsula dialects of Zamora, Cantabria, Old Castile, and the
Pyrenees; the broken Southern Peninsula of Central and Southern
Portugal, Catalan speech along the Mediterranean coast from Tarragona to
Alicante, and the territory between these two areas of the South;
Galicia and Portugal; Catalan and Valencian; Andalusian and Canaries.
Penny also presents the Eastern and Western innovative features, as well
as the expansion of northern features southward. Some of the variant
features of Spanish America that resemble Andalusian Spanish and differ
from those of Castilian such as seseo, yeísmo, maintenance and loss of
/h/, weakening of final /s/, vowel system, merger of final /r/ and /l/,
third person clitic pronouns, and modes of address were presented in
this chapter.

    The social variations include yeísmo, based on age and higher socio-
economic class groups; maintenance of intervocalic /d/ among women in
Valladolid and in the Mexican variety of Spanish; aspiration of final
/s/ in working class Valladolid; neutralization of atonic vowels in the
less educated social strata.

    Chapter 5 "Variation in Spanish American" focuses on the
continuation of the process of change occurring in the Peninsula and the
Canaries during the Middle Ages. Penny acknowledges some features
related to Native American languages among those that were bilingual
speakers, however his focus is related to Peninsula Spanish. Penny
indicates numerous factors for the Andalusian speech pattern dominance
in Spanish America. The first Spanish settlements were Cuba and La
Española, Veracruz and Mexico City, Cartagena and Lima. With these
settlements, two lines of communication with the Peninsula were created:
a Madrid norm and a Seville norm. Seville was granted a trade monopoly
between the Peninsula and the American Empire, however the Madrid norm
has precedence. Therefore the linguistic development in Spanish America
was a dialect mixing based on the origins of the settlers and the extent
to which the Seville norm was checked by the Madrid norm.

    Some of the features noted in Spanish American Spanish are:
1) weakening of final /s/, with retention in areas that attracted more
prestigious central Castile speakers such as Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador,
Peru, and Bolivia;
2) neutralization of final /r/ and /l/, a transfer from Southern Spain,
in the Lowlands of Spanish America among working class or rural
speakers, strongest in the Caribbean;
3) velarization of final /n/ in the Lowlands and Coastal areas, some
areas of the Highlands show this feature, but the Southern Cone was
unaffected;
4) voseo versus tuteo showed that areas in closest contact with the
central part of the Peninsula abandoned voseo for tuteo;
5) devoiced /tr/ in the Southern Highlands and in Central America; and
6) amplification of preterit versus present perfect tense is linked to
the Northwestern area of the Peninsula via the Canaries.

    The social variations of Spanish America included the following
features and sociolinguistic phenomena:
1) existence of the phoneme /h/ for the grapheme f in rural speech from
New Mexico to Argentina;
2) fronterizo speech from Northern Uruguay to Brazil with features of
both Spanish and Portuguese in phonetic variation as well as
morphological, lexical and sociolinguistic;
3) the Pidgins of the 16th Century slaves to Spanish American colonies
formed Creoles among the slave children, however decreolization quickly
took place in the Spanish colonies leaving only two Spanish Creoles
today, Papiamentu (Curaçao, Aruba, and Bonaire) and Palenquero (interior
of Colombia).

    Chapter 6 "Variation in Judeo-Spanish" presents the Jewish speech
along the Northern Peninsula continuum as well as the linguistic effects
due to their expulsion from the Peninsula and the influences of those
countries of immigration. Penny notes the variation of Spanish features,
which indicates that Jews from different parts of the Peninsula reached
the same destinations of Europe or Northern Africa. The weak social ties
due to emigration led to linguistic change leaving room for innovation.
Although Judeo-Spanish preserves some features of 15th Century Spanish,
Penny suggests that dialect mixing has led to the simplification and
leveling of differences between competing varieties in phonology and
morpho-syntax, however preserving Castilian features.

Chapter 7 "Standardization" a process in the written language, has a
tendency to reduce linguistic variation. In this chapter, Penny
discusses 'status planning', which addresses the social and
extralinguistic aspects versus 'corpus planning,' with the
intralinguistic aspects of standardization.

    Designed for either classroom use or self-study, this book addresses
the historical development of the varieties of Spanish. The main focus
of the book is phonological changes and variations, however Penny does
discuss the major morphological, syntactic, and sociolinguistic variations.

    Areas not touched upon in this book are lexical and semantic topics
and the topic on Spanish America is quite broad and only touches on
those features related to Peninsula Spanish, which Penny states as his
aim in his preface.

    The linguistic changes discussed are historical in nature covering
the progression of Spanish through the Middle Ages. Penny suggests that
the role of the Christian reconquest played an important part in the
linguistic development of the Peninsula, the Canaries, and the American
Empire providing population movement and therefore 'dialect mixing'
which in turn created the changes and variations that we know today.

    This book is a good concise review of the phonological changes and
important sociolinguistic features in Spanish from the Middle Ages to
its present use. Penny provides a sound theory for the variation that
exists in Spanish America, Judeo-Spanish, and those of the different
parts of the Peninsula. It will serve well for an undergraduate text.


                               References:

Alvar, Manuel.  1996.  Manual de dialectología hispánica. El español de
España.  Barcelona: Ariel.

Lipski, John M.  1996.  El español de América.  Madrid: Cátedra.


                             About the reviewer:

     Elizabeth A. Martínez-Gibson is an Associate Professor at the
College of Charleston, Charleston, SC. She is the author of
"Morpho-syntactic Erosion Between Two Generational Groups of Spanish
Speakers in the United States," (Peter Lang, 1993) and several articles.
She has been at the College of Charleston for nine years and is
presently creating a Linguistics Minor. Her areas of interest include:
Language variation and change, dialectology, second language
acquisition, bilingualism, and Spanish in the U.S.

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