Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T02:31:39.907Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Investigating the nature of aspirated stops in Western Andalusian Spanish

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2012

Francisco Torreira*
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, The [email protected]

Abstract

In Western Andalusian Spanish (WAS), [h + voiceless stop] clusters are realized as long pre- and postaspirated stops. This study investigates if a new class of stops (realized as geminates with variable degrees of pre- and postaspiration) has emerged in this dialect, or if postaspiration in these clusters results from articulatory overlap. An experiment was carried out in which WAS speakers produced [h + voiceless stop] clusters under changes in speech rate and stress location. The duration of postaspiration, measured as voice onset, did not show systematic effects of any of the experimental variables. Moreover, trade-offs were observed between voice onset and preaspiration plus closure durations. These results indicate that postaspiration in WAS [h + voiceless stop] clusters is the consequence of extensive articulatory overlap. It is further hypothesized that the lengthening of closures in WAS stops preceded by [h] results from a different gestural mechanism affecting all [hC] clusters in this dialect. From a broader perspective, since extensive overlap and consonantal lengthening do not occur in the [hC] clusters of other Spanish varieties, these findings lend support to the idea that intergestural coordination patterns can be dialect-specific.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © International Phonetic Association 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alarcos Llorach, Emilio. 1958. Fonología y fonética: a propósito de las vocales andaluzas. Archivum 8, 191203.Google Scholar
Browman, Catherine P. & Goldstein, Louis. 1989. Articulatory gestures as phonological units. Phonology 6 (2), 201251.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Browman, Catherine P. & Goldstein, Louis. 1990. Tiers in Articulatory Phonology, with some implications for casual speech. In Kingston, John & Beckman, Mary E. (eds.), Papers in Laboratory Phonology 1: Between the grammar and the physics of speech, 341376. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Browman, Catherine P. & Goldstein, Louis. 1992. Articulatory phonology: An overview. Phonetica 49, 155180.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Browman, Catherine P. & Goldstein, Louis. 1995. Gestural syllable position effects in American English. In Bell-Berti, Fredericka & Raphael, Lawrence J. (eds.), Producing speech: Contemporary issues for Katherine Safford Harris, 1933. New York: American Institute of Physics.Google Scholar
Byrd, Dani. 1996. Influences on articulatory timing in consonant sequences. Journal of Phonetics 24 (2), 209244.Google Scholar
Byrd, Dani & Tan, Cheng C.. 1996. Saying consonant clusters quickly. Journal of Phonetics 24 (2), 263282.Google Scholar
Cho, Taehong & Ladefoged, Peter. 1999. Variation and universals in VOT: Evidence from 18 languages. Journal of Phonetics 27 (2), 207229.Google Scholar
Davidson, Lisa. 2006. Schwa elision in fast speech: Segmental deletion or gestural overlap? Phonetica 63, 79112.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fourakis, Marios. 1991. Tempo, stress, and vowel reduction in American English. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 90 (4), 18161827.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gay, Thomas. 1981. Mechanisms in the control of speech rate. Phonetica 38 (1–3), 148158.Google Scholar
Goldstein, Louis, Byrd, Dani & Saltzman, Elliot. 2006. The role of vocal tract gestural action units in understanding the evolution of phonology. In Arbib, Michael A. (ed.), From action to language: The mirror neuron system, 215249. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Helgason, Pétur. 2002. Preaspiration in the Nordic languages: Synchronic and diachronic aspects. Ph.D. dissertation, Stockholm University.Google Scholar
Helgason, Pétur & Ringen, Catherine. 2008. Voicing and aspiration in Swedish stops. Journal of Phonetics 36, 607628.Google Scholar
Hualde, José Ignacio. 2005. The sounds of Spanish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kessinger, Rachel H. & Blumstein, Sheila H.. 1997. Effects of speaking rate on voice-onset time in Thai, French and English. Journal of Phonetics 25, 143168.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lindblom, Björn. 1963. Spectrographic study of vowel reduction. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 35 (11), 17731781.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lipski, John M. 1994. Latin American Spanish. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Lisker, Leigh & Abramson, Arthur S.. 1964. A cross-language study of voicing in initial stops: Acoustical measurements. Word 20, 384422.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mondéjar, José. 1991. Dialectología andaluza. Granada: Editorial Don Quijote.Google Scholar
Moon, Seung-Jae & Lindblom, Björn. 1994. Interaction between duration, context, and speaking style in English stressed vowels. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 96, 4055.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Neill, Paul. 2009. The effect of s-aspiration on occlusives in Andalusian Spanish. Oxford University Working Papers in Linguistics, Philology & Phonetics 12, 7386.Google Scholar
Parrell, Benjamin. 2012. The role of gestural phasing in Western Andalusian Spanish aspiration. Journal of Phonetics 40 (1), 3745.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rodríguez-Castellano, Lorenzo & Palacio, Adela. 1948. Contribución al estudio del dialecto andaluz: el habla de Cabra. Revista de Dialectología y Tradiciones Populares 4, 347428.Google Scholar
Romero, Joaquín. 1995a. Gestural organization in Spanish: An experimental study of spirantization and aspiration. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Connecticut.Google Scholar
Romero, Joaquín. 1995b. An articulatory view of historical s-aspiration in Spanish. In Fowler, Carol A. (ed.), Haskins Laboratories status report on speech research, vol. 119, 255266. New Haven, CT: Haskins Laboratories.Google Scholar
Stevens, Mary & Hajek, John. 2010. Post-aspiration in Standard Italian: Some first cross-regional acoustic evidence. The 11th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2010), 1557–1560. Makuhari, Japan.Google Scholar
Torreira, Francisco. 2007a. Pre- and post-aspirated stops in Andalusian Spanish. In Prieto, Pilar, Mascaró, Joan & Solé, Maria-Josep (eds.), Prosodic and segmental issues in Romance, 6782. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Torreira, Francisco. 2007b. Coarticulation between aspirated-s and voiceless stops in Spanish: An interdialectal comparison. The 9th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, 113120. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Zamora Vicente, Alonso. 1969. Dialectología española, 2nd edn.Madrid: Gredos.Google Scholar
Zsiga, Elizabeth. 2000. Phonetic alignment constraints: Consonant overlap and palatalization in English and Russian. Journal of Phonetics 28, 69102.Google Scholar