Foreign pronunciation in lexical imports: Punctual conventionalization in Buenos Aires Spanish

Abstract

We deal, in this article, with the oral treatment of lexical imports from prestigious international languages in Buenos Aires Spanish. We focus particularly on the extension, verified in that treatment, of graphemic-phonological correspondences which are different from those typical to the recipient linguistic variety, and mimetic regarding the donor languages; because of the referred extension, and specially because of their creative application, these correspondences can be considered conventionalized. We provide evidence of their emancipation of complete oral configurations that can be conventionalized for particular lexical imports, on the basis of data obtained through systematic observation of non-induced uses and experimental corroboration.