Spectral properties of anterior sibilant fricatives in Northern Peninsular Spanish and sibilant-merging and non-merging varieties of Basque

Abstract

This paper focuses on the spectral properties of anterior sibilant fricatives in Northern Peninsular Spanish, and sibilant-merging and non-merging varieties of Basque. Non-merging varieties of Basque have two voiceless anterior sibilant fricatives, characterized as apico-alveolar and lamino-alveolar. In other Basque varieties, however, these two phonemes have merged with varying results. Twenty-four participants divided into four different groups have been studied. One group is a set of monolingual Spanish speakers from north-central Spain, while the remaining three are Basque–Spanish bilingual groups with different sibilant fricative systems in Basque. The goal is to describe the spectral properties of anterior sibilant fricatives and examine the effect of the L1-Basque sibilant system upon L2-Spanish. The Basque varieties chosen are: (i) Azpeitia Basque, where merging in favor of the lamino-alveolar sibilant fricative has occurred; (ii) Lemoa Basque, where the merging in favor of the apico-alveolar sibilant fricative is widespread; and (iii) Goizueta Basque, where no merging has happened. Participants took part in an elicitation task where they produced sentences containing target words with an intervocalic anterior sibilant fricative in Basque and Spanish. Bayesian probability was used for inferential statistics. Speakers of the non-merging Basque variety show the narrowest acoustic dispersion of /s/ in Spanish, as opposed to broader diffusion in the other three groups. Regarding L1 transfer, while the Azpeitia group does not show transfer into Spanish, the Lemoa and Goizueta groups do. Results show that /s/ is more fronted for monolingual Spanish speakers from north-central Spain than the previous literature has reported.

The role of L1-L2 dissimilarity in L2 segment learning – Implications from the acquisition of English post-alveolar fricatives by Mandarin and Mandarin/Wu speakers

“…Studies on fricatives have concentrated on several attributes: amplitude, duration, spectral properties and fricative-vowel transitional characters. Among these parameters, the spectral properties play an important role in identifying the place and manner of fricative articulation ( McMurray and Jongman, 2011 ; Spinu and Lilley, 2016 ; Redmon and Jongman, 2018 ; Chodroff and Wilson, 2020 ; Mellesmoen and Babel, 2020 ; Beristain, 2021 ; Rao and Shaw, 2021 ). Spectral properties include spectral characteristics of fricative noise and the fricative-vowel transitional portion.…”

“…Studies on fricatives have concentrated on several attributes: amplitude, duration, spectral properties and fricative-vowel transitional characters. Among these Mellesmoen and Babel, 2020;Beristain, 2021;Rao and Shaw, 2021). Spectral properties include spectral characteristics of fricative noise and the fricative-vowel transitional portion.…”

Producing a smaller sound system: Acoustics and articulation of the subset scenario in Gaelic–English bilinguals

“…Although there were no significant group level effects, these results suggest different behaviour for bilinguals who are dominant in the language with a larger sub-system. Finally, Beristain (2021) considers the acoustics of Basque and Spanish sibilants in bilingual speakers from three Basque dialects: Azpeitia, Goizueta, and Lemoa. Conservative dialects of Basque such as Goizueta contrast apical /s̺ / and laminal /s̻ /, whereas Northern Peninsular Spanish only has /s/.…”

Sibilant mergers in 18th-century Basque: A quantitative study

“…In Basque historical phonology, the study of consonants has prevailed over that of vowels (Michelena 1990;Lakarra 1995;Lakarra 2013;Trask 1997;Egurtzegi 2013). Among processes affecting consonants, the changes that have altered the phonological opposition between pairs of fricative and affricate sibilants with different places of articulation have aroused considerable interest, with renewed discussion in recent times (Muxika-Loitzate 2017; Egurtzegi & Carignan 2020;Beristain 2021). The interest of the Basque sibilant system lies in its relative complexity: it includes voiceless fricative-affricate pairs with three contrasting places of articulation -lamino-alveolar (/s̻ / and /t ͡ s̻ /), apico-alveolar (/s̺ / and /t ͡ s̺ /) and postalveolar (/ʃ/ and /t ͡ ʃ/) -and voiced counterparts of these in some eastern varieties (cf.…”

“…In addition to the Western merger, we also analyse the "Central merger" (Figure 2), an innovation which developed during the 17th-19th centuries in some central varieties. In this merger, fricative and affricate alveolar sibilants are realised as fricative and affricate laminals (see Beristain 2018;Beristain 2019;Beristain 2021 for analyses of modern data). This paper presents two main novelties.…”