Cognate similarity and intervocalic /d/ production in Riverense Spanish
Rivera, a Uruguayan city with an open border to Brazil in a traditionally Portuguese-speaking area, has suffered some degree of language shift to Spanish, although bilingualism remains widespread (Waltermire, 2006). The present study extends Waltermire and Gradoville's (in press) study of intervocalic /d/ by offering an analysis of the impact of cognate similarity, as measured by four measures of cognate orthographic similarity, on intervocalic /d/ production in Riverense Spanish. Results indicate that, although the four measures of cognate similarity correlated strongly, LCSR (Melamed, 1999) consistently resulted in better model fits in regression models. Additionally, as Portuguese cognate frequency and cognate similarity increased, the probability of stop-like productions of Spanish intervocalic /d/ increased. Neither of these two variables had a significant independent effect, suggesting that, although cognate similarity plays a role in the variation under study, its effect is stronger in high-frequency words, which have stronger representations in memory (Bybee, 1985).
