Exceptional hiatuses in Spanish
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Teresa Cabré
Abstract
This paper provides a close examination of how Spanish speakers syllabify sequences of vocoids of rising sonority within the lexicon (e.g., piano ‘piano’, persiana ‘blind’ or historia ‘history’). A survey with 246 words administered to 15 Peninsular Spanish speakers has enabled us to examine in a quantitative way the strength of prosodic and morphological conditions on the appearance of the so-called exceptional hiatuses (Navarro Tomás 1948; Hualde 1999, 2005; Colina 1999). The data in our study reveals that the word initiality effect is not as strong as stated in the literature and that there are large differences between speakers: within the same dialect, half of the informants have the word-initiality effect in words such as piano ‘piano’ or diálogo ‘dialogue’, while the rest have practically generalized the presence of a diphthong in this position. Interestingly, morpheme boundary effects are found in conservative speakers and their conditions differ depending on the paradigm: (a) in nominal forms, gliding is blocked when there is an intervening morpheme boundary and when the glide is a high back vowel (virt[u.Áo]so ‘virtuous’ vs. od[Ájo]so ‘hateful’, act[u.Áa]l ‘present’ vs. cord[Ája]l ‘cordial’); (b) in verbal paradigms, gliding is blocked when there is an intervening morpheme boundary and when the high vowel can be stressed in some form of the paradigm (conf[i.Áa]r ‘to trust’, confío ‘I trust’ vs. camb[Ája]r ‘to change’, cambio ‘I change’). In general, the situation indicates that language change is in progress and that, for some speakers, the presence of lexical items that are pronounced with a hiatus is gradually disappearing. The article presents an analysis in terms of a correspondence-based OT analysis which captures the prosodic and analogical forces governing this process together with the interspeaker variation found in the data.
Abstract
This paper provides a close examination of how Spanish speakers syllabify sequences of vocoids of rising sonority within the lexicon (e.g., piano ‘piano’, persiana ‘blind’ or historia ‘history’). A survey with 246 words administered to 15 Peninsular Spanish speakers has enabled us to examine in a quantitative way the strength of prosodic and morphological conditions on the appearance of the so-called exceptional hiatuses (Navarro Tomás 1948; Hualde 1999, 2005; Colina 1999). The data in our study reveals that the word initiality effect is not as strong as stated in the literature and that there are large differences between speakers: within the same dialect, half of the informants have the word-initiality effect in words such as piano ‘piano’ or diálogo ‘dialogue’, while the rest have practically generalized the presence of a diphthong in this position. Interestingly, morpheme boundary effects are found in conservative speakers and their conditions differ depending on the paradigm: (a) in nominal forms, gliding is blocked when there is an intervening morpheme boundary and when the glide is a high back vowel (virt[u.Áo]so ‘virtuous’ vs. od[Ájo]so ‘hateful’, act[u.Áa]l ‘present’ vs. cord[Ája]l ‘cordial’); (b) in verbal paradigms, gliding is blocked when there is an intervening morpheme boundary and when the high vowel can be stressed in some form of the paradigm (conf[i.Áa]r ‘to trust’, confío ‘I trust’ vs. camb[Ája]r ‘to change’, cambio ‘I change’). In general, the situation indicates that language change is in progress and that, for some speakers, the presence of lexical items that are pronounced with a hiatus is gradually disappearing. The article presents an analysis in terms of a correspondence-based OT analysis which captures the prosodic and analogical forces governing this process together with the interspeaker variation found in the data.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents vii
- Introduction 1
- Spanish complex onsets and the phonetics–phonology interface 15
- Phonological phrasing in Spanish 39
- Hiatus resolution and incomplete identity 62
- Depalatalization in Spanish revisited 74
- Upstepping vowel height 99
- The phonology of nasal consonants in five Spanish dialects 146
- Optimality-theoretic advances in our understanding of Spanish syllable structure 172
- Exceptional hiatuses in Spanish 205
- The Spanish stress window 239
- Morphological structure and phonological domains in Spanish denominal derivation 278
- Gender allomorphy and epenthesis in Spanish 312
- A paradigm account of Spanish number 339
- Prefix boundaries in Spanish varieties 358
- Optimality Theory and language change in Spanish 378
- Duration, voice, and dispersion in stop contrasts from Latin to Spanish 399
- The interaction between faithfulness constraints and sociolinguistic variation 424
- Sonority scales and syllable structure 447
- Foot, word and phrase constraints in first language acquisition of Spanish stress 470
- Acquistion of syllable structure in Spanish 497
- Constraint conflict in the acquisition of clusters in Spanish 525
- Subject index 549
- Index of constraints 559
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents vii
- Introduction 1
- Spanish complex onsets and the phonetics–phonology interface 15
- Phonological phrasing in Spanish 39
- Hiatus resolution and incomplete identity 62
- Depalatalization in Spanish revisited 74
- Upstepping vowel height 99
- The phonology of nasal consonants in five Spanish dialects 146
- Optimality-theoretic advances in our understanding of Spanish syllable structure 172
- Exceptional hiatuses in Spanish 205
- The Spanish stress window 239
- Morphological structure and phonological domains in Spanish denominal derivation 278
- Gender allomorphy and epenthesis in Spanish 312
- A paradigm account of Spanish number 339
- Prefix boundaries in Spanish varieties 358
- Optimality Theory and language change in Spanish 378
- Duration, voice, and dispersion in stop contrasts from Latin to Spanish 399
- The interaction between faithfulness constraints and sociolinguistic variation 424
- Sonority scales and syllable structure 447
- Foot, word and phrase constraints in first language acquisition of Spanish stress 470
- Acquistion of syllable structure in Spanish 497
- Constraint conflict in the acquisition of clusters in Spanish 525
- Subject index 549
- Index of constraints 559
