Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T00:36:42.661Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Phonetic and phonological vowel reduction in Central Catalan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2015

Marianna Nadeu
Marianna Nadeu*
Affiliation:
Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, Penn [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In Central Catalan, phonological vowel reduction causes the stressed seven-vowel system to reduce in number in unstressed position, where only the three reduced vowels [i ə u] can occur. Exceptionally, full vowels (typically expected in a stressed syllable only) can appear in unstressed syllables in certain contexts. This study explores the acoustic characteristics of phonologically unreduced vowels found exceptionally in unstressed position in Central Catalan and compares them to stressed full vowels and corresponding unstressed (phonologically reduced) vowels. Results show that, contrary to traditional descriptions, presumably phonologically unreduced vowels in verb + noun compounds sporadically undergo phonological vowel reduction. When they do not, they are shorter than stressed vowels and more centralized in the F1*F2 vowel space. In addition, stressed full vowels do not differ in accented vs. unaccented contexts in duration or vowel quality, indicating that vowels are hyperarticulated under lexical stress, but not when they receive intonational pitch accent. The findings contribute to a body of cross-linguistic research dealing with the influence of prosody at the segmental level.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the International Phonetic Association , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , April 2016 , pp. 33 - 60
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © International Phonetic Association 2015 

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

Arantes, Pablo. 2010. Integrando produção e percepção de proeminências secundárias numa abordagem dinâmica do ritmo da fala. Ph.D. dissertation, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil.Google Scholar
Astruc, Lluïsa & Prieto, Pilar. 2006. Acoustic cues of stress and accent in Catalan. In Hoffmann, Rüdiger & Mixdorff, Hansjörg (eds.), Speech Prosody 2006, 341–344. Dresden: TUDpress Verlag der Wissenschaften.Google Scholar
Astruc, Lluïsa, Payne, Elinor, Post, Brechtje, Vanrell, Maria del Mar & Prieto, Pilar. 2013. Tonal targets in early child English, Spanish, and Catalan. Language and Speech 56 (2), 229–253.Google Scholar
Astruc-Aguilera, Lluïsa & Nolan, Francis. 2007. Variation in the intonation of extrasentential elements. In Prieto et al. (eds.), 85–107.Google Scholar
Audibert, Nicolas & Fougeron, Cécile. 2012. Distorsions de l’espace vocalique: Quelles mesures? Application à la dysarthrie. In Besacier, Laurent, Lecouteux, Benjamin & Sérasset, Gilles (eds.), Actes de la conférence conjointe JEP-TALN-RECITAL, vol. 1, 217–224. Grenoble: ATALA/AFCP.Google Scholar
Baayen, R. Harald. 2008. Analyzing linguistic data: A practical introduction to statistics using R. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Baayen, R. Harald, Davidson, Doug J. & Bates, Douglas M.. 2008. Mixed-effects modeling with crossed random effects for subjects and items. Journal of Memory and Language 59, 390–412.Google Scholar
Badia i Margarit, Antoni M. 1988. Sons i fonemes de la llengua catalana. Barcelona: Publicacions de la Universitat de Barcelona.Google Scholar
Badia i Margarit, Antoni M. 1988[1969]. Algunes mostres de les igualacions ɛ = e i ɔ = o en el català parlat de Barcelona. In Antoni M. Badia i Margarit, 97–103. [First published in 1969.]CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Badia i Margarit, Antoni M. 1988[1970]. Les vocals tòniques e i o en el català de Barcelona, In Antoni M. Badia i Margarit, 141–190. [First published in 1970.]Google Scholar
Balota, David A., Pilotti, Maura & Cortese, Michael J.. 2001. Subjective frequency estimates for 2,938 monosyllabic words. Memory & Cognition 29 (4), 639–647.Google Scholar
Barr, Dale J., Levy, Roger, Scheepers, Christoph & Tily, Harry J.. 2013. Random effects structure for confirmatory hypothesis testing: Keep it maximal. Journal of Memory and Language 68 (3), 255–278.Google Scholar
Bates, Douglas M., Maechler, Martin, Bolker, Ben & Walker, Steven. 2014. Lme4: Linear mixed-effects models using Eigen and S4. R package version 1.0–6. http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=lme4.Google Scholar
Baumann, Stefan, Becker, Johannes, Grice, Martine & Mücke, Doris. 2007. Tonal and articulatory marking of focus in German. 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS XVI), Saarbrücken, 1029–1032.Google Scholar
Bernal, Elisenda. 2012. Catalan compounds. Probus 24, 5–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boersma, Paul & Weenink, David. 2014. Praat: Doing phonetics by computer (Version 5.3.62). Computer program. http://www.praat.org/.Google Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight. 1958. A theory of pitch accent in English. Word 14, 109–149.Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan L. 2001. Phonology and language use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan L. 2006. From usage to grammar: The mind's response to repetition. Language 82 (4), 711–733.Google Scholar
Byrd, Dani. 1996. Influences on articulatory timing in consonant sequences. Journal of Phonetics 24 (2), 209–244.Google Scholar
Cabré, Teresa. 2002. Altres sistemes de formació de mots. In Solà et al. (eds.), 889–932.Google Scholar
Cabré, Teresa. 2010. El sistema vocàlic del català central i l’adaptació de manlleus. Actes del catorzè Col·loqui Internacional de Llengua i Literatura catalanes, vol. 3, 111–120. Barcelona: Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat.Google Scholar
Calamai, Silvia. 2001. Il vocalismo atono della varietà pisana. Prime evidenze sperimentali. Quaderni del Laboratorio di Linguistica 2, 64–82.Google Scholar
Carrera, Josefina. 2005. Les vocals àtones medials dels compostos en lleidatà, entre la variació i la imperceptibilitat. Estudis de llengua i literatures catalanes 7, 251–272.Google Scholar
Chládková, Kateřina, Boersma, Paul & Podlipský, Václav Jonáš. 2009. On-line formant shifting as a function of f0. InterSpeech 2009, Brighton, UK, 464–467.Google Scholar
Cho, Taehong. 2005. Prosodic strengthening and featural enhancement: Evidence from acoustic and articulatory realizations of /ɑ, i/ in English. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 117 (6), 3867–3878.Google Scholar
Cho, Taehong & Keating, Patricia A.. 2009. Effects of initial position versus prominence in English. Journal of Phonetics 37, 466–485.Google Scholar
Cho, Taehong, Lee, Yoonjeong & Kim, Sahyang. 2011. Communicatively driven versus prosodically driven hyper-articulation in Korean. Journal of Phonetics 39, 344–361.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cole, Jennifer, Hualde, José I., Blasingame, Michael & Mo, Yoonsook. 2010. Shifting Chicago vowels: Prosody and sound change. Speech Prosody 2010, Chicago, IL. http://speechprosody2010.illinois.edu/papers/100519.pdf.Google Scholar
Colomé, Àngels & Miozzo, Michele. 2010. Which words are activated during bilingual word production? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 36 (1), 96–109.Google Scholar
Costa, Albert, Santesteban, Mikel & Caño, Agnès. 2005. On the facilitatory effects of cognate words in bilingual speech production. Brain and Language 94, 94–103.Google Scholar
Crosswhite, Katherine M. 2001. Vowel reduction in Optimality Theory. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
de Jong, Kenneth. 1995. The supraglottal articulation of prominence in English: Linguistic stress as localized hyperarticulation. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 97 (1), 491–504.Google Scholar
de Jong, Kenneth. 2004. Stress, lexical focus, and segmental focus in English: Patterns of variation in vowel duration. Journal of Phonetics 32, 493–516.Google Scholar
de Jong, Kenneth, Beckman, Mary E. & Edwards, Jan. 1993. The interplay between prosodic structure and coarticulation. Language and Speech 36 (2–3), 197–212.Google Scholar
de Jong, Kenneth & Zawaydeh, Bushra Adnan. 1999. Stress, duration, and intonation in Arabic word-level prosody. Journal of Phonetics 27, 3–22.Google Scholar
de Jong, Kenneth & Zawaydeh, Bushra Adnan. 2002. Comparing stress, lexical focus, and segmental focus: Patterns of variation in Arabic vowel duration. Journal of Phonetics 30, 53–75.Google Scholar
Erickson, Donna. 2002. Articulation of extreme formant patterns for emphasized vowels. Phonetica 59, 134–149.Google Scholar
Escudero, Paola, Boersma, Paul, Rauber, Andréia Schurt & Bion, Ricardo A. H.. 2009. A cross-dialect acoustic description of vowels: Brazilian and European Portuguese. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 126, 1379–1393.Google Scholar
Estebas Vilaplana, Eva. 2000. The use and realisation of accentual focus in Central Catalan with a comparison to English. Ph.D. dissertation, University College London.Google Scholar
Estebas Vilaplana, Eva. 2003. Tonal structure of post-focal L in English and Catalan. Atlantis 25 (2), 39–53.Google Scholar
Fails, Willis C. & Clegg, J. Halvor. 1992. A spectrographic analysis of Portuguese stressed and unstressed vowels. In Koike, Dale A. & Macedo, Donaldo P. (eds.), Romance linguistics: The Portuguese context, 31–42. Westport & London: Bergin & Garvey.Google Scholar
Flemming, Edward. 2004. Contrast and perceptual distinctiveness. In Hayes, Bruce, Kirchner, Robert & Steriade, Donca (eds.), Phonetically-based phonology, 232–276. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fougeron, Cécile. 2001. Articulatory properties of initial segments in several prosodic constituents in French. Journal of Phonetics 29, 109–135.Google Scholar
Fougeron, Cécile & Keating, Patricia A.. 1997. Articulatory strengthening at edges of prosodic domain. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 106 (6), 3728–3740.Google Scholar
Fourakis, Marios. 1991. Tempo, stress, and vowel reduction in American English. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 90 (4), 1816–1827.Google Scholar
Fry, D. B. 1958. Experiments in the perception of stress. Language and Speech 1, 126–152.Google Scholar
Gendrot, Cédric & Adda-Decker, Martine. 2007. Impact of duration and vowel inventory size on formant values of oral vowels: An automated formant analysis from eight languages. 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS XVI), Saarbrücken, 1417–1420.Google Scholar
Guevara, Emiliano R. 2012. Spanish compounds. Probus 24, 175–195.Google Scholar
Gulsoy, Joseph. 1993. Estudis de gramàtica històrica. Barcelona: Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat.Google Scholar
Hay, Jennifer. 2003. Causes and consequences of word structure. London & New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hualde, José I. 2009. Unstressed words in Spanish. Language Sciences 31, 199–212.Google Scholar
Jacewicz, Ewa, Fox, Robert Allen & Salmons, Joseph. 2011. Vowel change across three age groups of speakers in three regional varieties of American English. Journal of Phonetics 39, 683–693.Google Scholar
Julià i Muné, Joan. 2002. Els sons del català. In Solà et al. (eds.), 37–87.Google Scholar
Ladd, D. Robert. 2009. Intonational phonology, 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ladefoged, Peter. 2003. Phonetic data analysis: An introduction to fieldwork and instrumental techniques. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Lawrence, Michael A. 2013. Ez: Easy analysis and visualization of factorial experiments. R package version 4.2–2. http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=ez.Google Scholar
Lehiste, Ilse. 1970. Suprasegmentals. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Liljencrants, Johan & Lindblom, Björn. 1972. Numerical simulation of vowel quality systems: The role of perceptual contrast. Language 48 (4), 839–862.Google Scholar
Lindblom, Björn. 1963. Spectrographic study of vowel reduction. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 35 (11), 1773–1781.Google Scholar
Lindblom, Björn. 1986. Phonetic universals in vowel systems. In Ohala, John J. & Jager, Jeri J. (eds.), Experimental phonology, 13–44. Orlando, FL: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Lindblom, Björn, Agwuele, Augustine, Sussman, Harvey M. & Cortes, Elisabet Eir. 2007. The effect of emphatic stress on consonant vowel coarticulation. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 121 (6), 3802–3813.Google Scholar
Lindblom, Björn, Sussman, Harvey M. & Agwuele, Augustine. 2009. A duration-dependent account of coarticulation for hyper- and hypoarticulation. Phonetica 66, 188–195.Google Scholar
Mascaró, Joan. 1983. Apèndix I: Nivell perceptual de l’accent no principal en els compostos. In Mascaró, Joan, La fonologia catalana i el cicle fonològic, 197–202. Bellaterra: Publicacions de la Universitat Autònoma.Google Scholar
Mascaró, Joan. 2002. El sistema vocàlic. Reducció vocàlica. In Solà et al. (eds.), 89–123.Google Scholar
Meunier, Christine & Espesser, Robert. 2011. Vowel reduction in conversational speech in French: The role of lexical factors. Journal of Phonetics 39, 271–278.Google Scholar
Mooshammer, Christine, Fuchs, Susanne & Fischer, Dirk. 1999. Effects of stress and tenseness on the production of CVC syllables in German. In Ohala, John J., Hasegawa, Yoko, Ohala, Manjari, Granville, Daniel & Bailey, Ashlee C. (eds.), 14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS XIV), 409–412. Berkeley, CA: Department of Linguistics, UCLA.Google Scholar
Mooshammer, Christine & Geng, Christian. 2008. Acoustic and articulatory manifestations of vowel reduction in German. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 38 (2), 117–136.Google Scholar
Nadeu, Marianna. 2013. The effects of lexical stress, intonational pitch accent, and speech rate on vowel quality in Catalan and Spanish. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.Google Scholar
Nadeu, Marianna. 2014. Stress- and speech rate-induced vowel quality variation in Catalan and Spanish. Journal of Phonetics 46, 1–22.Google Scholar
Nadeu, Marianna & Hualde, José I.. 2012. Acoustic correlates of emphatic stress in Central Catalan. Language and Speech 55, 517–542.Google Scholar
Ortega-Llebaria, Marta & Prieto, Pilar. 2007. Disentangling stress from accent in Spanish: Production patterns of the stress contrast in deaccented syllables. In Prieto et al. (eds.), 155–175.Google Scholar
Ortega-Llebaria, Marta & Prieto, Pilar. 2009. Perception of word stress in Castilian Spanish: The effects of sentence intonation and vowel type. In Vigário, Marina, Frota, Sónia & Freitas, M. João (eds.), Phonetics and phonology: Interactions and interrelations, 35–50. Amsterdam & Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Ortega-Llebaria, Marta & Prieto, Pilar. 2010. Acoustic correlates of stress in Central Catalan and Castilian Spanish. Language and Speech 54 (1), 73–97.Google Scholar
Ortega-Llebaria, Marta, del Mar Vanrell, Maria & Pilar Prieto, P. 2010. Catalan speakers’ perception of word stress in unaccented contexts. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 127 (1), 462–471.Google Scholar
Peterson, Gordon E. & Barney, Harold L.. 1952. Control methods used in a study of the vowels. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 24 (2), 175–184.Google Scholar
Pierrehumbert, Janet B. 2001. Exemplar dynamics: Word frequency, lenition and contrast. In Bybee, Joan L. & Hopper, Paul J. (eds.), Frequency and the emergence of linguistic structure, 137–157. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prieto, Pilar. 2003. Correlats acústics de l’accent secundari en català. Estudios de fonética experimental 12, 106–142.Google Scholar
Prieto, Pilar. 2014. The intonational phonology of Catalan. In Jun, Sun-Ah (ed.), Prosodic typology 2: The phonology of intonation and phrasing, 43–80. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prieto, Pilar, Mascaró, Joan & Solé, Maria-Josep (eds.). 2007. Segmental and prosodic issues in Romance phonology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Prieto, Pilar, Oliva, Salvador, Palmada, Blanca, Serra, Pep, Blecua, Beatriz, Llach, Sílvia & Oliva, Victòria. 2001. Manifestació acústica de la resolució de xocs accentuals en català. Estudios de fonética experimental 11, 11–38.Google Scholar
R Core Team. 2013. R: A language environment for statistical computing. Computer program. http://www.R-project.org/.Google Scholar
Rainer, Franz & Varela, Soledad. 1992. Compounding in Spanish. Rivista di Linguistica 4 (1), 117–142.Google Scholar
Rao, Rajiv. 2009. Deaccenting in spontaneous speech in Barcelona Spanish. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 2 (1), 31–75.Google Scholar
Recasens, Daniel. 1993. Fonètica i fonologia. Barcelona: Enciclopèdia Catalana.Google Scholar
Recasens, Daniel. 2014. Fonètica i fonologia experimentals del català. Vocals i consonants. Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans.Google Scholar
Recasens, Daniel & Espinosa, Aina. 2006. Dispersion and variability of Catalan vowels. Speech Communication 48, 645–666.Google Scholar
Ronquest, Rebecca E. 2013. An acoustic examination of unstressed vowel reduction in Heritage Spanish. In Howe, Chad, Blackwell, Sarah E. & Quesada, Margaret Lubbers (eds.), 15th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, 157–171. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Savy, Renata & Cutugno, Francesco. 1998. Hypospeech, vowel reduction, centralization: How do they interact in diaphasic variations? 16th International Congress of Linguists (ICPhS XVI), Paper No. 0185. Oxford: Pergamon. [CD–ROM]Google Scholar
Simpson, Adrian P. 2001. Dynamic consequences of differences in male and female vocal tract dimensions. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 109, 2153–2164.Google Scholar
Sluijter, Agaath M. C. & van Heuven, Vincent J.. 1996a. Acoustic correlates of linguistic stress and accent in Dutch and American English. In Bunnell, H. Timothy & Idsardi, William (eds.), The Fourth International Conference on Spoken Language Processing, 630–633. New Castle, DE: Citation Delaware.Google Scholar
Sluijter, Agaath M. C. & van Heuven, Vincent J.. 1996b. Spectral balance as an acoustic correlate of linguistic stress. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 100 (4), 2471–2485.Google Scholar
Solà, Joan, Lloret, Maria-Rosa, Mascaró, Joan & Saldanya, Manuel Pérez (eds.). 2002. Gramàtica del català contemporani. Barcelona: Empúries.Google Scholar
Strycharczuk, Patrycja & Jurgec, Peter. 2008. Prosodic influences of formant frequencies on Polish vowels. Presented at the Third Newcastle Postgraduate Conference in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, Newcastle, UK.Google Scholar
Turk, Alice, Nakai, Satsuki & Sugahara, Mariko. 2006. Acoustic segment durations in prosodic research: A practical guide. In Sudhoff, Stefan, Lenertová, Denisa, Meyer, Roland, Pappert, Sandra, Augurzky, Petra, Mleinek, Ina, Richter, Nicole & Schließer, Johannes (eds.), Methods in empirical prosody research, 1–27. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Vaño-Cerdá, Antonio. 1984. Sobre el tipo de composición romance ‘portaplumas’. Caligrama: Revista insular de filología 1 (2), 179–221.Google Scholar
Vanrell, Maria del Mar, Stella, Antonio, Gili-Fivela, Barbara & Prieto, Pilar. 2013. Prosodic manifestations of the Effort Code in Catalan, Italian and Spanish contrastive focus. Journal of the International Phonetics Association 43 (2), 195–220.Google Scholar
Wheeler, Max. 2005. The phonology of Catalan. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar