Abstract
Spanish voiced obstruents are traditionally described as having a stop allophone [b, d, g] and a lenited allophone [β, ð, ɣ]. Despite this binary classification, acoustic data has shown that this variation is continuous or gradient depending on the preceding linguistic context. The goal of this paper is to investigate how the following linguistic context affects the degree of Spanish voiced obstruent lenition. Specifically, this paper reports an acoustic investigation of Spanish voiced obstruent lenition in onset cluster contexts. Nine native Spanish speakers were recorded reading Spanish-like nonce words that included a singleton voiced obstruent or an onset cluster consisting of a voiced obstruent plus [ɾ] or [l]. The relative intensity and the duration of these segments were measured and compared with linear mixed-effects regressions. In line with past work, the results show that the voiced obstruents are the most lenited in intervocalic contexts. However, Spanish voiced obstruents are significantly less lenited when followed by [ɾ] in a complex onset; when followed by [l] in a complex onset, the degree of lenition is much more variable. These results provide further support for the gradient lenition of Spanish voiced obstruents, rather than a dichotomous distribution of stops versus lenited variants.
Funding source: NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
Award Identifier / Grant number: 2017240584
Target nonce words phonemic transcriptions:
Singleton onsets
paba
gebo
niba
bobe
xuba
pado
tedo
xida
goda
muda
tago
pega
miga
doge
nuga
C+[ɾ] onsets
nabra
gebro
nibra
dobre
xubra
tadro
kedro
nidra
sodre
xudra
kagre
kegra
sigro
dogre
mugra
C+[l] onsets
kablo
deblo
nibla
moble
nubla
taglo
teglo
xigla
sogle
xulga
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank John Kingston and Kristine Yu for their invaluable feedback and discussion regarding this work.
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Nominal predication with estar
- A distinctness approach to clitic combinations in Romance
- Mirativity as Expressive Meaning: The Case of adiós
- The Internal Structure of Perfective Adjectives: States and Blocking
- L2 Acquisition of Spanish VOT by English-Speaking Immigrants in Spain
- The Use of the Glottal Stop as a Variant of /s/ in Puerto Rican Spanish
- On the Gradient Lenition of Spanish Voiced Obstruents: A Look at Onset Clusters
- On the Contrasts Between sí ‘yes’ and sí que ‘yes that’ in Spanish and the Structure of the Complementizer Phrase Domain
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Nominal predication with estar
- A distinctness approach to clitic combinations in Romance
- Mirativity as Expressive Meaning: The Case of adiós
- The Internal Structure of Perfective Adjectives: States and Blocking
- L2 Acquisition of Spanish VOT by English-Speaking Immigrants in Spain
- The Use of the Glottal Stop as a Variant of /s/ in Puerto Rican Spanish
- On the Gradient Lenition of Spanish Voiced Obstruents: A Look at Onset Clusters
- On the Contrasts Between sí ‘yes’ and sí que ‘yes that’ in Spanish and the Structure of the Complementizer Phrase Domain