A crosslinguistic study of voiceless fricative sibilants in Galician and European Portuguese

Abstract

This study examines the sibilant fricatives produced by seventeen Galician and twenty-two Portuguese speakers. Galician and Portuguese are closely related languages that present important continuities, although it is in their phonological and phonetic systems that they diverge most obviously. By means of the analysis of spectra and spectral moments, chiefly the spectral mean, postalveolar sibilants and front (alveolar or alveolo-dental) sibilants are differentiated in both Galician and Portuguese. Much variation has been found in front sibilant realizations among speakers and even between different realizations by the same speaker. This variation is especially striking among male Galician speakers, where it was possible to distinguish three different articulations, identified here as an apico-aveolar [s̺], a lamino-alveolar [s], and a lamino-dental [s̪] sibilant. The research results point to a loss of phonetic diversity on the Portuguese side of the political border, while in Galicia it is better preserved, although it is losing ground.