Diatopic variation in the alternation of para and pa’

The reduction of para ‘to, for’ to pa’ is considered to occur in all varieties of Spanish to some extent and in all socioeconomic classes; however, there is a dearth of studies that examine the associated variation from a quantitative perspective. This study compares social and linguistic constraints on the reduction of para in two major Latin American capitals, Caracas and Mexico City. Regarding social predictors, the most consistent effect in both varieties is that the lower class has more reduction than the other socioeconomic classes in each city. Regarding linguistic predictors, in Mexico City, phonetic context has a stronger effect, while in Caracas it is grammatical function that has the most robust effect. Notably, Caracas has significantly more reduction than Mexico City both in terms of raw reduction rate and when comparing equivalent socioeconomic classes.