The English spoken by second generation Puerto Ricans in Harlem is influenced by black English heard in the surrounding community, standard English used in the school, and the Spanish-influenced English used by the first generation Puerto Rican community. The study of these influences is conducted according to recently developed sociolinguistic principles which state that various social dialects in the United States are not differentiated from each other by discrete sets of features but by variations in the frequency with which certain features occur. The author examines two phonological variables in Puerto Rican English and discusses the linguistic processes at work in the variations and the influences of contact with the dialects mentioned above. The author devises rules accounting for various constraints in the variations. The discussion of the variables helps to isolate several sociolinguistic principles concerning such concepts as vestigal interference, convergent processes, and assimilation variants. A case of grammatical variation is also considered in relation to the influencing dialects. A bibliography is included. (VM)