Más apuntes para la historia del español en América: usos ortográficos en el papel periódico de la Havana (1791-1794)

Abstract

As a contribution to the history of the phonology of Spanish in Cuba, this article analyzes non-normative orthographical forms as possible indicators of variation from the norm in pronunciation. Our corpus consists of fourteen articles published in the Papel Periódico de la Havana, the first periodical published on the island, between 1791 and 1794. Our results confirm trends already reported in the research literature on the history of American Spanish and specifically the Antillean variety. At the same time they reveal the incidence of other hitherto unreported phenomena, and also provide the earliest documentary evidence of yeísmo in Cuban Spanish.