On the reduction of /s/in philippine creole spanish implications for historical spanish dialectology

Philippine Creole Spanish ('Chabacanof) continues to be spoken in several areas of the Philippines and offers a useful perspective on the development of Spanish during the 17th and 18th centuries. The present study traces the development of syllable-final /s/in Chabacano, using a variational model. A comparative investigation of the principal Chabacano dialects, those of Manila Bay (the original forms) and the dialect of Zamboanga (a later transplantation, partially decreolized) reveals the continued existence of a process of reduction of implosive /s/. By including additional data on the behavior of /s/in comptemp- orary dialects of Spain, Mexico, and Latin America, it is possible to arrive at the conclusion that Philippine Creole Spanish is a legitimate tool in historical Hispanic dialectology, and that the reduction of /s/most probably was well under way at least by the middle of the 17th century, in the Spanish dialects brought to the Philippines via Mexico.