Spanish Phonetics/Phonology

Mexican Spanish is generally recognized as a conservative variety that maintains syllable-final /s/, while Puerto Rican Spanish consistently weakens it. To explore what social properties are indexed by coda /s/ variants and whether these variants alone can alter evaluations of speaker origin, 75 Mexican listeners participated in a matched-guise test. They listened to recordings of five Mexican and Puerto Rican Spanish speakers spliced to include only coda [s] or coda [h], evaluating speakers on a scale of social properties and identifying their perceived place of origin. Mixed effects models fitted to 6,750 evaluations demonstrate that [s] is associated with various measures of status, including intelligence, work ethic, confidence, and snobbishness. However, these evaluations are conditioned by listeners' stereotypes and regional expectations, as Mexicans were evaluated as speaking better Spanish when presented with [s] and Puerto Ricans as speaking better Spanish with [h]. Finally, listeners evaluated Puerto Rican voices as significantly more Mexican given coda [s] and Mexican voices as significantly more Caribbean given coda [h], with the most drastic shift for Mexican speakers. The paper concludes that manipulating a single salient variable (/s/) is sufficient to override other linguistic features, which play a much more limited role in social identification and evaluation.

ENGLISH
This first-grade thesis is about the description of phonetic features in the variety of Castilian spoken in Andalusia (south region of Spain). Especially, it focuses on general phenomena and philological changes involved in the historical development of this spoken-variety since the region was conquered till recent times. Finally, it briefly describes the main sociological questions about the linguistic identity of its speakers.

ESPAÑOL
En ese trabajo se describen las características fonéticas del español de Andalucía. Especialmente se estudian los principales fenómenos y sus evoluciones filológicas desarrolladas desde su conquista hasta tiempos recientes. Además, se exponen brevemente las cuestiones sociológicas sobre la identidad lingüística de sus hablantes.

During the last few years, experimental phonetics has shed light on the majority of the uncharted areas of the universe of the allophones of the Spanish language. However, the middle and prepalatal point of articulation are still far from being clear for the academic world due to the doubts risen over the allophones of the palatal fricative phoneme. In the present work, we carried out an acustic analysis of the various allophones of the Greek voiced palatal fricative produced by monolingual Spanish or bilingual Catalan-Spanish speakers. The limited presence of voiced midpalatal fricatives aparently proves the marginality of midpalatal fricative allophones against the preemince of spirant aproximant and semivocalic sounds.

A senior honors thesis for the Department of Spanish and Portuguese which explores historical linguistics, language change, optimality theory, synchrony, diachrony, and the mutual influence between Arabic and Hispano-Romance in the formative period of well over a milennium and a half (79-1781). This is the original version, which is in Spanish.

La  aparición  de  realizaciones  fónicas  fricativas  (rehiladas)  para  el  yeísmo  se  ha  asociado  tradicionalmente  a  determinadas  áreas  dialectales  meri-dionales; sin embargo, no es extraño detectar su presencia en el habla de locutores que no pertenecen a estas variantes, lo que apuntaría a la extensión del fenómeno y, en consecuencia, al avance del proceso yeísta. En este trabajo se ha llevado a cabo un experimento en fonética acústica con el que se ha analizado la produc-ción de seis informantes centropeninsulares, tres yeístas y tres distinguidores. Los resultados permiten advertir que la presencia de soluciones rehiladas es común en todos ellos. El comportamiento de la variación observada apunta no solo a que se trata de sonidos inherentes al idioma (aparecen en distribución complementaria) sino  que  hace  posible  señalar  una  posible  explicación  al  cambio  de  paradigma  desde el sistema distinguidor al yeísta.

This work supposes a new look at the “yeísmo” phenomenon, which usually has been treated from a regional perspective. In this case, a revision on the whole Spanish domain is been done based on the analysis of linguistic atlas data. Such a method allows us to focus on results from real speakers (real tokens) though it has the problem that there are important areas left with no linguistic atlas published. Nevertheless, it is possible to examine most of the Peninsular (and Insular) Spanish and most parts of American Spanish. The results prove that the phenomenon is not homogeneous in none of the regions considered; in fact, it exhibits a high degree of variation. Our findings make evident that there is an unfinished change process which can conclude in hipoarticulated sounds (relaxed solutions) in some regions or in hiperarticulated (strengthened solutions) in others.

Despite previous studies on Eastern Andalusian Spanish, interest in this geolect boomed only after the theory of vowel doubling was posited for this variety of Spanish. According to this theory, in Eastern Andalusian Spanish, vowels preceding /s/ aspiration or deletion change their quality and, as a result, carry the semantic function of /s/. Since then, many researchers have studied the vowel and consonant systems of this variety of Spanish and the phonetic-phonological debate is still ongoing. This article reviews the main studies on Eastern Andalusian Spanish pronunciation between 1881 and 2016, comparing the different findings in that period and summarising them chronologically. The article finishes with an outline of widely accepted and debated features of Eastern Andalusian Spanish in order to identify future lines of research.

This study uses a prominent phonetic variable in U.S. Spanish (orthographic <v> as bilabial or labiodental) to investigate heritage Spanish speakers' social perceptions. Based on the results of a matched-guise test in which 75 US-born heritage speakers evaluated voices with a labiodental and bilabial guise, heritage speakers perceive [v] positively in the voices of women as a marker of status, confident Hispanic identities, and older age, but negatively in the voices of men. The results show that heritage speakers use phonetic variants to discern social information about others, and their judgments largely align with monolingual Mexican Spanish speakers. I conclude that heritage speakers' sociophonetic perception in their home language attests to a rich inner world often overlooked by prescriptive forces.

"En el estudio de la oralidad en sincronía se ha observado que algunos procesos reseñados en obras de corte historicista parecen reproducirse en el habla espontánea actual. Éste podría ser el caso de la consonante nasal ante diptongo (equiparable al contexto de yod segunda) ya que, perceptivamente, en habla no cuidada, se advierte cierta tendencia a la palatalización. De hecho, existen estudios, si bien de carácter dialectal, que parecerían confirmar dicha tendencia al presentar ejemplos en los que se ha llegado a una solución palatal partiendo del contexto antes mencionado.
En general, la bibliografía coincide en señalar que, en español, la nasal asimila el punto de articulación de la consonante que la sigue, pero no se ve influida, en principio, por semiconsonantes o vocales.
Este trabajo es una aproximación al comportamiento de la nasal ante semiconsonante palatal. El objetivo principal es tratar de determinar, a partir de un análisis acústico, si es posible la palatalización en este contexto, tal como parece indicar la percepción de habla espontánea. Para ello se ha procedido la grabación de dos informantes para poder extraer de ella los casos en los que se dé este contexto y se ha analizado la frecuencia de los formantes de la nasal comparándola con la que presentan las nasales no palatalizadas. Los primeros resultados parecen indicar que sí se produce palatalización."

The goal of this study is to highlight the importance of taking into account variations in monolingual grammars before discussing majority language influence as a possible source of heritage speakers’ divergent grammars. In this study, we examine the production of uptalk in Spanish by heritage speakers of Mexican Spanish in Southern California. Uptalk (i.e., rising intonation contour at the end of a non-question utterance) is frequently associated with California English. Thus, heritage speakers’ use of uptalk is often considered to be influenced from English intonation (i.e., the majority language). Although uptalk in Spanish is not well understood, it has been observed in Mexican Spanish, which calls attention to the importance of investigating uptalk in monolingual Spanish. Using a dyadic interaction task, we obtained spontaneous speech data of 16 heritage speakers and 16 monolingual speakers of Mexican Spanish and compared the phonological and phonetic properties of uptalks produced by the two groups. Our results demonstrated that the heritage speakers and the monolingual speakers produced uptalks with similar frequencies and mainly used L+H* HH% and L* HH% contours. However, the two groups had more differences than similarities. Specifically, heritage speakers’ uptalks presented less dynamic contours and were produced with flatter rises than monolinguals’ uptalks. Heritage speakers’ divergent patterns showed close resemblance with patterns in English, suggesting majority language influence as a valid source of divergence. We discuss possible avenues for future research for a better understanding of the role of majority language influence on heritage Spanish uptalk.

‘Yeísmo’ in Spanish has rarely been studied from a phonetic perspective and, if it has, the usual approach has been that of articulatory phonetics. In this study, by contrast, the main focus is on the perceptual component of the merger. To do so, we have compared the Spanish contrast /ʎ/ - /j/ with the Catalan, a language in which the opposition is still clear in spite of several scholars’ remarks on the existence of an emerging yeísmo.
There are two main goals in this research: on the one hand, we want to determine if Catalan and Spanish speakers recognize properly the palatal lateral and the palatal approximant consonants; on the other, we want to check if the /ʎ/ and /j/ categories in those languages can be considered equivalent. To achieve these objectives, we have conducted two identification and two discrimination tests on Catalan and Spanish judges.
The results prove that Spanish judges make more errors than Catalan judges in discriminating [ʎ] and [j] stimulus. Besides, they suggest that palatal lateral in Catalan is perceived as a different segment from palatal lateral in Spanish, whereas instances of [j] from the two systems have been identified as belonging to the same category. These data imply that the phonological opposition /ʎ/ - /j/ in Catalan presents a larger perceptual distance than the one Spanish one, which entails an easier discrimination. This can explain why the contrast still operates in this language. Conversely, the smaller perceptual distance in Spanish favours the misperception and, consequently, the gradual extension of the neutralization.

La electropalatografía es una herramienta que permite conocer los puntos en que la lengua hace contacto con el paladar durante el habla. El presente estudio exploratorio utiliza esta herramienta, novedosa en Colombia, con el objetivo de plantear posibles investigaciones que permitan un mejor entendimiento de la producción de los sonidos linguopalatales en el español de Bogotá en diferentes estilos de habla. Para tal fin, se realizaron grabaciones a un hablante nativo de dicha ciudad con pronunciaciones en diversos contextos de ocho fonemas linguopalatales del español colombiano /t, d, k, ɡ, s, n, l, ɾ/ en cuatro distintos estilos de habla organizados en una escala de más a menos formal (palabras, oraciones, lectura de un texto e indicaciones de cómo llegar de un sitio a otro a partir de un mapa). Los resultados se discuten principalmente en función de la coarticulación, puesto que se encontró que tanto el estilo de habla como el contexto fonológico afectan la cantidad y el punto de contacto de la lengua con el paladar, aunque con grandes variaciones entre los distintos modos de articulación. Así, se señalan posibles investigaciones relacionadas mayormente con la coarticulación, pero también en contraste con fenómenos observados en estudios electropalatográficos de otras lenguas.

When speaking their heritage language, heritage speakers typically sound much like other "native speakers." However, recent studies have found that heritage speakers (HSs) are highly variable and produce a range of more and less "native-like" phonetic features. In an effort to stimulate productive new research in this area, this article addresses some of the methodological challenges of heritage language phonetics research, namely dealing with high variability and identifying the best predictors of that variability. A study on heritage Spanish rhotics is presented to elucidate those methodological challenges. The study took an exploratory, bottom-up approach to analyzing the rhotics produced by speakers of central Mexican and Salvadoran Spanish with different language profiles: HSs, traditional native speakers, long-term immigrants, and second language learners. The results suggested that overall between-group comparisons of means based on isolated acoustic features could be insufficiently informative. The study also evaluated the contribution of various linguistic (e.g., proficiency and use) and extralinguistic (e.g., cultural and ethnic identity) factors for identifying more homogeneous subgroups of HSs and found that the latter were useful for predicting phonetic variation.

This paper is a first approach to flapping in Spanish. This phenomenon has been traditionally associated with /l/, but recent research has revealed that it is also possible with other coronal consonants, namely /n, d, s/. With this data in mind, we have carried out an acoustic study based on the analysis of a spontaneous speech corpus. Its main goal has been to examine if the flap is a possible allophone for these phonemes and, in case it is, to account for its context of emergence. In addition, it is also interesting to determine whether rhotic sounds can be a widespread realization for coronal segments in weakening contexts. The results show that all of the phonological categories investigated display [ɹ] or [ɹ̝] allophones, especially in unstressed medial intervocalic positions (in spite of some differences between categories), which are contexts generally related to weakening. In any case, it seems that rhotic sounds are common realizations when in lenition situation.

Costa Rican Spanish listeners associate intervocalic [z] with specific social attributes in a matched-guise test (Chappell, 2016) but experience difficulty when explicitly asked to produce or even comment on the variant. Given this perception/production discrepancy, the present study seeks to determine how successfully listeners discriminate between allophonic differences like intervocalic [s] and [z] compared to other allophone pairs, phonemic contrasts, and identical stimuli. 106 Costa Rican listeners completed similarity rating and AX discrimination tasks in which they evaluated word pairs that were identical or differed only in one phoneme or allophone. Statistical analyses fitted to 2,862 tokens in the similarity rating task and 3,604 tokens from the AX discrimination task indicate that listeners perceive phonemic contrasts more successfully than allophonic differences, which, in turn, are perceived as more distinct than identity pairs. Interestingly, the [s] ~ [z] distinction is less successfully perceived than other allophone pairs including [n] ~ [ŋ] and [d] ~ [ð]. I contend that allophonic differences that encode linguistic information, e.g. the variable’s position within the word, or are less expected given their low frequency are heard more successfully than [s] ~ [z]. However, even the least salient phonetic variants like [s] ~ [z] can encode local social meaning and contribute to listeners’ evaluations of speakers’ social qualities.

Keywords: Costa Rican Spanish, voicing, intervocalic /s/, phonetic discrimination, allophony, perception.

La explicación de los contextos de yod primera propone habitualmente una palatalización de las oclusivas /t/ y /k/ en latín hablado y, a partir de estos segmentos palatales, una africada dentoalveolar medieval (Quilis 2005: 114-119; Ariza 2012: 145-146, 155). Esto implica, en primer lugar, un retraso en el punto de articulación consonántico, seguido, en segundo lugar, de un adelantamiento en el mismo. Sin embargo, no se da cuenta de la asibilación del segmento, proceso que parecería más sencillo si se partiera de una oclusiva aspirada. González Gelabert (2019) ha encontrado trazas de esta posibilidad en un estudio experimental sobre variación de /ti̯/ aplicado al ámbito diacrónico.
En cualquier caso, siguiendo a Recasens (2011), la evolución implica un doble proceso: primero, palatalización y, posteriormente, africación. No parece plausible que el paso de una fase a otra obedezca a un cambio discreto, sino que parece más lógico pensar en la sustitución de un segmento por otro debido a la existencia de variación alofónica: el ejemplar canónico en un momento determinado acaba por ser periférico debido a la existencia previa de otras variantes (Pierrehumbert 2001, Recasens 2011: 189).
Para probar esto, se ha optado por analizar acústicamente ejemplos de /ti̯/ y /ki̯/ a partir de grabaciones de habla espontánea, puesto que es precisamente en situaciones reales de comunicación en que se producen fenómenos asociados a la hipoarticulación. Así pues, se han registrado entrevistas libres a 10 informantes (6 hombres y 4 mujeres), de las que se han extraído los casos de /ti̯/ y /ki̯/. En estos ejemplos se ha medido la duración del VOT, un buen indicador de la existencia de aspiración (Ladefoged y Maddieson 1996: 66). Asimismo, junto con este parámetro, se ha tenido en cuenta la frecuencia de inicio de las transiciones al F2 y al F3 del segmento siguiente para determinar el punto de articulación de la oclusiva (Quilis 1999: 210-211, Martínez Celdrán y Fernández Planas 2007: 88-90).
Los objetivos son, por una parte, averiguar si las oclusivas dentales y velares sordas, en las secuencias /ti̯/ y /ki̯/, presentan variación fonética y, en este caso, qué tipo de alófonos son posibles. Por otra parte, interesa saber si se pueden advertir indicios de aspiración, lo que sería el punto de arranque para un reanálisis de la consonante como africada dentoalveolar. La hipótesis de partida es que, efectivamente, se van a detectar diversos alófonos para /t/ y /k/ en contextos análogos a los de yod primera y que, entre las diferentes posibilidades, se darán casos de aspiración y de asibilación que puedan explicar la sustitución gradual del ejemplar canónico oclusivo no aspirado por otras soluciones. Los primeros resultados parecen corroborar estas afirmaciones.

"La coordinación (o retraso) del comienzo de la sonoridad, o VOT por sus siglas en inglés, se define típicamente como la diferencia en tiempo entre la apertura de la oclusión labial, dental o velar de la consonante (distensión, que marca el comienzo del periodo de propagación espectral) y el comienzo de actividad periódica: o la barra de sonoridad de baja frecuencia, o el comienzo del F1, o bandas paralelas, lo que se dé primero. En otras palabras, el VOT puede considerarse como el intervalo de tiempo que existe entre la emisión del aire posterior a la oclusión característica de la consonante, y el comienzo de las vibraciones de la laringe, o vibración supraglotal (Winitz, 1975). El estudio de la coordinación del comienzo de la sonoridad es relevante, ya que su variación tiene consecuencias léxicas y semánticas, y una de las tareas más fundamentales de la fonología es establecer cómo es que se pueden transmitir diferentes mensajes lingüísticos a través del sonido. Ya sea que se trate de diferencias léxicas o en funciones gramaticales, los mensajes que no son idénticos deben tener distintas codificaciones físicas, sean paradigmáticas -diversos códigos de un inventario finito- y/o sintagmáticas -permutaciones diversas de los códigos- (Ohala, 1995). Existen métodos bien establecidos para descubrir las correlaciones físicas de diferentes mensajes lingüísticos en casos en los que son ambiguos o de interpretación discutible. Aunque tales estudios se consideren generalmente como de interés puramente fonético y no fonológico, es claro que es necesario poder encontrar casos en los que la realidad del habla a través de análisis fonéticos concuerde con los conceptos fonológicos para así darles validación y fundamento.

What is known as Voice Onset Timing (VOT) is typically defined as the difference in time between the opening of the labial, dental or velar consonantal closure (air release, which marks the beginning of the spectral activity), and the beginning of periodic patterns: either the low frequency sonority bar, or the beginning of formant activity. In other words, the VOT can be considered as the time interval between the emission of the air after the closure characteristic of the consonant and the onset of vibrations of the larynx, or supraglotal vibration (Winitz, 1975). The study of the timing of the start of the sonority is relevant, since its variation has lexical and semantic consequences, and one of the most fundamental tasks of phonology is to establish how it is that language can convey different messages through sound. Whether it be lexical differences or grammatical functions, non-identical messages must have diverse physical encodings, either paradigmatic -various codes of a finite inventory- and/or syntagmatic -diverse permutations of the encoding-(Ohala, 1995). Well-established methods exist for discovering physical correlations of different linguistic messages in cases that are ambiguous or possess questionable interpretation. Although such studies are generally considered purely phonetic and not phonological, it is clear that it is necessary to find cases in which the reality of speech through phonetic analysis is consistent with phonological concepts."

Recent studies on linguistic change and specifically, on sound change, have shown that the evolution of a language seems to start with the existence of variation (cf. Bybee 1998, 2001; Lindblom 1990a, 1990b; Ohala 1974, 2005). This is somewhat surprising if we consider that there are some forces leading to the minimum effort and to linguistic economy. Therefore, one should expect speakers have no more than one possible solution for a given context. This seems to break that principle. Interestingly, several investigations have set up that change is not possible without this variation. Phonologically, it allows the explanation of the evolution sources. Following Blevins (2004), phonetic changes occur in situations of sound misperception -which can lead to the reanalysis of the segment/s-, problems in the segmentation of the phonetic chain -that can be followed by the reinterpretation of the sequence and, thus, it can give place to phonological recategorization- and, finally, problems of multiple choice in the stimulus one is exposed to when acquiring L1.
When focusing in Spanish yeísmo, recent research shows clearly the nature of change in progress (see Moreno Fernández 2005). From the beginning of the 20th century, /ʎ/ has been gradually substituted by a palatal phoneme, traditionally considered as a fricative consonant in spite of its acoustic formantic structure. Nowadays, the most recent descriptions of Spanish phonetic and phonological system agree with its approximant nature, at least in some regions. As a matter of fact, Navarro Tomás pointed out this phenomenon in early time, and even RAE did it in its Esbozo de una nueva gramática de la lengua española (1973). In the last 50 years it has been a recurring topic (see Alcina y Blecua 1975, Quilis 1993, Hualde 2005, RAE 2011).
What is really interesting in this process is that there is not a real dichotomy between a lateral and an approximant consonant. Instead, there are plenty of allophones that concur as variants of /ʎ/. Hence, the aim of this paper is to focus on the huge variation in the phonetic representation of /ʎ/ and how it progress in a different organization of the Spanish sound system which, obviously, has relevant phonological consequences. The analysis of experimental data reveals that a deep reorganization of the system is in progress: research demonstrates that several acoustic solutions can no longer be set down as /ʎ/ allophones because they have become variants of /l/, at least in certain contexts, or have been assigned to /ʝ/, which has taken the place of the lateral palatal.

Coda-final consonant deletion has been extensively documented in Eastern Andalusian Spanish; however, its effects on neighbouring segments is still unknown. Scholars working on consonant deletion in Eastern Andalusian Spanish have mainly focused on /s/, given the semantic importance of this consonant in Spanish. As a result, other consonants which are often deleted syllable-finally in this geolect have been studied to a much lesser degree. The present paper aims to expand the traditional view on

This chapter examines acoustic data from six speech communities in the northern Andean region of Ecuador to describe allophonic variation in the Spanish rhotics /r, ɾ/ and approximants /ʎ, j/, as well as their relationship to the Quichua fricatives /ʐ, ʒ/. Data were collected from four dialects of Spanish, Imbabura Quichua, and Media Lengua, a mixed language containing Spanish lexicon and Quichua morphosyntax. Results from this preliminary, descriptive survey support claims that speakers of both urban and rural dialects of Spanish make extensive use of [ʐ] (i.e., retroflex fricative) for /r/ and [ʒ] (i.e., postalveolar fricative) for /ʎ/, in addition to a wealth of variation. Similarly, /r/ and /ʎ/ from Spanish borrowings in Media Lengua and Quichua assimilate to [ʐ] and [ʒ], respectively, with little exception.

Coda-final consonant deletion has been extensively documented in Eastern Andalusian Spanish; however, its effects on neighbouring segments is still unknown. Scholars working on consonant deletion in Eastern Andalusian Spanish have mainly focused on /s/, given the semantic importance of this consonant in Spanish. As a result, other consonants which are often deleted syllable-finally in this geolect have been studied to a much lesser degree. The present paper aims to expand the traditional view on vowel doubling by analysing /-s/, /-r/, and /-θ/ deletion before /a/. Firstly, the speech of 24 speakers from El Ejido (Eastern Andalusia) is analysed to ascertain how the deletion of word final /s/, /r/, and /θ/ changes the quality of a preceding /a/. Secondly, a perception test is carried out with native speakers from the local area to confirm whether these speakers can differentiate perceptually between word-final /a/ and /a/ preceding underlying /-s/, /-r/, or /-θ/. This paper presents two main conclusions: 1) /-s/, /-r/, and /-θ/ deletion changes the quality of a preceding /a/ to different degrees; 2) EAS speakers can identify whether /a/ is followed or not by an underlying /-s/, /-r/, or /-θ/, but they cannot identify which consonant has been deleted in each case.