Acoustic analysis of syllable-final /k/ in Northern Peninsular Spanish

Acoustic analysis of syllable-final /k/ in Northern Peninsular Spanish
Nagore Barbero, Carolina González
Florida State University
nb08e@fsu.edu, cgonzalez3@fsu.edu
It is well known that voiceless stops in coda are frequently deleted or pronounced as
voiced stops, fricatives or approximants in Peninsular Spanish. For example, actor ‘actor’ may
be pronounced as [ak.tor], but also as [a.tor], [aɡ.tor] and [aT.tor] among others (Martínez-Martín
1983; Quilis 1993). These pronunciations are often stigmatized or considered vulgarisms,
hypercorrections, or features of colloquial or regional speech (see Antón 1998, Martínez-Gil
1991, Hualde 1989, 2005, Lapesa 1981). Perhaps for this reason, acoustic data concerning this
variation is scarce.
The purpose of this investigation is to examine the acoustic realization of syllable-final
/k/ in Northern Peninsular Spanish, a variant where /k/ is frequently pronounced as the
interdental fricative [T] in coda (see Martínez Martín 1983 and Antón 1998). Additionally, the
study tests the hypothesis that syllable-final /k/ tends to be pronounced before a stop (clusters
‘ct’, ‘cn’) but tends to be deleted before a fricative (clusters ‘cs’, ‘cc’) (Martínez Martín 1983;
González 2008). A related hypothesis is that the manner of articulation of the following
consonant has an effect on the manner of /k/; a fricative realization [T] is predicted to be more
likely before stops, while a stop pronunciation [k, ɡ] is predicted to be more common before
fricatives (González 2008).
The corpus included 38 tokens with clusters ‘ct’, ‘cn’, ‘cs’, ‘cc’ (Table 1). These tokens
were embedded in a list of 56 sentences, 28 of which were target sentences and 28 distracters (1).
Four female participants from the province of Bizkaia in Northern Spain were recorded; each
read a list with a differently randomized order of the corpus sentences. The independent
variables of this experiment include (i) place of articulation of the consonant following /k/
(dental, alveolar); (ii) manner of articulation of this consonant (stop, fricative); (iii) vowel
preceding /k/ (/i e a o u/); (iv) stress of the syllable containing /k/ (stressed, unstressed), and (v)
number of syllables of the word (2, 3, 4 or 5). The dependent variables are (i) presence or
absence of /k/, (ii) duration (in ms.), (iii) voicing (voiced/voiceless), (iv) manner of articulation
(plosive, fricative, approximant, deletion), and (v) place of articulation (dental, alveolar, velar).
The acoustic data from the four speakers will be submitted to statistical analysis in SPSS,
individually and pooling speakers together. The preliminary results for two participants reveal
that syllable-final /k/ is pronounced in 88% of the tokens. Regarding manner and place of
articulation for coda /k/, speaker 1 tended to pronounce fricative realizations (67% of the tokens)
that were (inter)dental (63% of the time). Speaker 2 showed a preference for stop realizations
(53% of the tokens) that were velar (73% of the time). These results are consistent with those
reported for Burgos Spanish by Martínez Martín (1983). Complete acoustic results will be
discussed in connection to the hypotheses outlined. In addition, the theoretical implications of
these results for Spanish phonology will be considered; in particular, it will be discussed whether
assimilation in place and dissimilation in manner can target obstruents like coda /k/ in Spanish.
Table 1. Tokens included in the experiment divided by consonant cluster and number of
syllables.
2-syllable words
3-syllable words
cóctel
actas
doctor
/kt/
tractor
rector
sector
proyecto
conducta
contacto
dictado
actores
producto (2)
directo
director
aspecto
factura
octubre
efecto
correcto
carácter
adicto
producto
táctil
sectores
trayecto
victoria
nocturna
respecto
detectar
/kn/
acné
/kθ/
ficción
acción
técnica
reacción
4-syllable words
5-syllable words
/ks/
fucsia
facsímiles
tecnología
(1) Sample target sentences included in the experiment (target tokens are underlined)
a. Ese alumno ha sido expulsado por mala conducta en sus clases.
That student has been expelled for bad behavior in his classes.
b. No tienes buen aspecto y creo que deberías ir al doctor por la mañana.
You don’t look so good and I think you should go to the doctor in the morning.
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