This paper tries to quantify economically the importance of five phonetic haracteristics (seseo, yeismo, /s/-aspiration, rehilamiento, and /x/-aspiration) whose presence or absence allows to distinguish among ten regional varieties of Spanish. To do that we perform an analysis of the extension...

This paper uses a least-square regression method that relates per-capita income to four phonetic characteristics (r-dropping, and the so-called "father-bother", "cotcaught" and "pin-pen" mergers), to study the socio-economic significance of those characteristics in North American English. As a...