The glottal stop in Guaraní and Paraguayan Spanish

This study documents the use of [?] in Paraguay, analyzing its distribution among four phonetic contexts: word-internal (Guaraní), phrase-initial (Guaraní and Spanish), synalepha (Guaraní and Spanish), and linking (Spanish). In each context, [?]'s distribution is analyzed by following stress and vowel. Stress favors retention of word-internal [?] in Guaraní, phrase-initial [?] in Spanish and epenthetic [?] in Guaraní, while it disfavors use of [?] in Spanish synalepha. The vowels [e] and [i] suppress word-internal and prothetic [?] in Guaraní, and Spanish synalepha with [?], whereas [o] and [u] suppress Spanish prothesis and epenthesis of [?] for synalepha. The results suggest that, in this study of fluent bilinguals, [?] in Spanish is the result of convergence rather than second language transfer.