Coronal place contrasts in Argentine and Cuban Spanish: An electropalatographic study

Abstract

Theoretical and descriptive work on Spanish phonetics and phonology has been largely based on Peninsular varieties. This study uses electropalatography (EPG) to investigate articulatory characteristics of coronal consonant contrasts in Argentine and Cuban Spanish. Simultaneous EPG and acoustic data were collected from five speakers from Buenos Aires (Argentina) and three speakers from Havana (Cuba) reading sentences with various syllableinitial coronal consonants corresponding to the orthographic t, ch, n,ñ, s, z, ll, y, l, r . As a control, the same data were collected from a single speaker of Peninsular Spanish from Madrid. As expected, the main distinction in both varieties was made between anterior and posterior coronal consonants ((denti-)alveolars vs. (alveolo-)palatals) and reflected the historical merger of the sounds represented by s-z and ll-y . At the same time, the results revealed some consistent differences between the two varieties in the location of the constriction and the amount of linguopalatal contact for most coronal consonants. First, the coronal consonants produced by the Argentine speakers were overall considerably more fronted and more constricted than the corresponding consonants produced by the Cuban speakers. Second, ll, y were produced as a fronted alveolo-palatal fricative by the Argentine speakers, and as an approximant by the Cuban speakers. Inter-speaker variation was observed within the varieties in the articulation of some consonants, namely in the Argentine alveolo-palatal fricative and nasal ( ll, y and ñ ), and the Cuban alveolo-palatal affricate ch .

Linguopalatal contact contrasts in the production of Japanese consonants: Electropalatographic data from five speakers

“…Argentine Spanish, illustrated in the next plot (based on data from 5 speakers in [10]), has a richer set of liquid consonants corresponding to the Japanese /r/: the lateral /l/, the tap /R/, and the trill /r/. It can be seen, however, these consonants exhibit the same general pattern in degree of constriction, namely a decrease /t/ > /n/ > /l, s/ > /R, r/.…”

“…Various quantitative measures of EPG contact have been shown to successfully capture place and manner distinctions in coronal consonants. For example, [10] showed that the Spanish nasal /n/ and rhotics /R, r/ are articulated further back and with less side contact than the denti-alveolar stop /t/. In addition, rhotic constrictions often showed a central opening similar to the fricative /s/.…”

Argentine Spanish

“…Many variations of this exist, influenced by age, sex and social class (Colantoni 2006). Those variations go from the use of [ʃ] to the use of the voiced postalveolar fricative [ʒ], but they all share the common feature of possessing a strong and strident assibilation (Kochetov & Colantoni 2011). Fontanella (1987: 144-150) described a variety of Buenos Aires Spanish in which /ʒ/ and /ʃ/ were different phonemes, the former being used for most words written with 'y' or 'll' (such as lluvia ['ʒuBja] 'rain' or yuyo ['ʒuʒo] 'weed'), and the latter being used in borrowed foreign words (such as shampoo [ʃam'pu]).…”

A stochastic approach to rhotic variation in Spanish codas

“…Coda variation is one of the defining characteristics of both standard and non-standard dialects in Spanish. Aside from the tap/trill contrast, attested processes include aspiration and deletion of coda /s/ (see Kochetov & Colantoni, 2011;Lipski, 1994;Romero, 1995, for especially informative reviews), the optional velarization of /n/ (Canfield, 1960(Canfield, , 1981Darias Concepción, Ruisánchez Regalado, & Dohotaru, 1997;Lipski, 1987Lipski, , 1994López Morales, 1981;Wireback, 1999), the non-standard lateralization of /r/ (D'Introno, Rojas, & Sosa, 1979;Marrero, 1988;Quilis-Sanz, 1998), the non-standard rhoticization of /l/ (López Morales, 1983;Quilis, 1999;Willis, 2006), devoicing of word-final obstruents (González, 2002) and complete deletion of a number of consonants.…”