The gradience of spirantization

Abstract

Most studies to date on the ability of English speakers to produce the Spanish approximants [β̞ ,ð̞ ,ɣ̞ ] have impressionistically looked at the stop-spirant contrast of English-speaking learners of Spanish (e.g. Zampini 1994, Díaz-Campos 2004, Face & Menke 2009), but no known study has empirically studied the degree to which these learners are able to spirantize when compared to native speakers. The current study looks at two groups of learners: one group composed of learners who had studied four semesters of university Spanish and another group composed of learners who spent 2 years abroad in a Spanish-speaking country. Intervocalic tokens of [β̞ ,ð̞ ,ɣ̞ ] were taken and were measured for degree of oral occlusion using the intensity curve in PRAAT. Additionally, a multiple regression analysis was run to determine the relationship that oral occlusion had with speech task type formality, motivational intensity, level of instruction/time abroad, phoneme type, and phoneme word position.

Individual developmental trajectories in the L2 acquisition of Spanish spirantization

“…Because L2 speakers face little communicative pressure to acquire this type of target sound, acquisition may depend on a broader array of factors, including individual differences in motivation, willingness to communicate, and other personal characteristics. In that regard, Alvord and Christiansen (2012) and Rogers and Alvord (2014) reported that factors such as motivation and language use predicted advanced Spanish learners' spirantization of /b, d, g/.…”

“…Numerous studies have also addressed task type, demonstrating that learners produce more approximants on informal, semi-spontaneous speaking tasks such as an oral interview than on scripted tasks (Díaz-Campos 2006;Rogers & Alvord, 2014;Zampini, 1994). However, research in the area has typically crossed two features: whether tasks focus on form or meaning and whether they include orthography.…”

“…Mixedeffects models including time, stress, and task type were fit to the data to evaluate group-level development, and individual trajectories were also prioritized and analyzed. To capture subtle variation in speakers' production over time and across phonetic envrionments, degree of lenition was computed as a continuous intensity ratio (e.g., Eddington, 2011;Hualde, Simonet, & Nadeu, 2011;Ortega-Llebaria, 2004;Rogers and Alvord, 2014;Shea & Curtin, 2011). The following research questions were addressed:…”

“…To obtain a continuous outcome measure more amenable to tracking subtle shifts in production over time, degree of lenition was operationalized as an intensity ratio (Eddington 2011;Hualde, Simonet, & Nadeu, 2011;Shea & Curtin, 2011;Rogers & Alvord, 2014).…”

Individual differences in the acquisition of language-specific and dialect-specific allophones of intervocalic /d/ by L2 and heritage Spanish speakers studying abroad in Sevilla

“…Based on previous L2 intervocalic /d/ studies (Alvord & Christiansen, 2012; Face & Menke, 2009; González-Bueno, 1995; Rogers & Alvord, 2014; Solon et al, 2018; Zampini, 1994), it was hypothesized that L2-advanced speakers would begin with more approximant-like [ð] and also show more gains over time than L2-intermediate speakers. Based on Amengual (2019), it was hypothesized that Heritage-advanced speakers would produce more approximant-like [ð] at Time 1 compared to L2-advanced speakers, but as there are no previous studies of heritage Spanish speakers for intervocalic /d/ in the SA context, there was no formal hypothesis for Heritage-advanced speakers over time.…”