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Papers by Erik W Willis

Revista internacional de lingüística iberoamericana, Dec 1, 2023

Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone linguistics, Jun 15, 2023

Within the Dominican Republic there are dialectal variations of the Spanish rhotic. Previous rese... more Within the Dominican Republic there are dialectal variations of the Spanish rhotic. Previous research concerning dialectal variation of Dominican Spanish rhotics has focused primarily on coda

Most dialectal works, however, are based on impressionistic data and/or a limited informant pool.... more Most dialectal works, however, are based on impressionistic data and/or a limited informant pool. Recent empirical studies have focused on the specific acoustic correlates that distinguish one

Spanish has two contrastive rhotic segments: the vibrante simple ‘tap’, and the vibrante múltiple... more Spanish has two contrastive rhotic segments: the vibrante simple ‘tap’, and the vibrante múltiple ‘trill’. These segments are contrastive only in intervocalic position, as in caro [kaRo] ‘expensive’/carro [karo] ‘car ’ or pero [peRo] ‘but’/perro [pero] ‘dog’. The Spanish tap/trill

One of the generally accepted phonological processes in Spanish phonology is that of assimilatory... more One of the generally accepted phonological processes in Spanish phonology is that of assimilatory voicing of /s/ before a voiced consonant. This process is taught in a near categorical fashion in most phonetics text books written for second language learners in the United States (e.g., Quilis and Fernández 1985). However, to our knowledge there has been no systematic examination of this voicing process in Spanish, rather a few anecdotal and impressionist claims. This lack of research on voicing of /s/ in coda position is also somewhat remarkable given the literature on /s/ in aspirating dialects. We chose to first examine one of the putative non-aspirating dialects of Spanish to ensure that our characterization was not misinterpreted by debuccalization or aspiration. Our principal goal is to provide an initial examination in a systematic fashion that could be used both as a dialectal characterization and to understand the process. We specifically used a controlled task of repeated t...

b The main features of Sp_ToBI The 1st Sp_ToBI Workshop held at The Ohio State University in Octo... more b The main features of Sp_ToBI The 1st Sp_ToBI Workshop held at The Ohio State University in October 1999 had the important outcome of proposing a set of transcription conventions that would be useful for the transcription of Spanish intonation within the Tones and Break Indices (ToBI) framework. A preliminary proposal for these transcription conventions for Spanish—or Sp_ToBI—was published in 2002 by Beckman, Díaz‐Campos, McGory and Morgan on behalf of the participants of the Workshop. While this was a very important first step in establishing a consensus‐based transcription system, more recent work on the prosodic phonology of Spanish varieties suggested the need for modifications to this preliminary proposal. Revised versions of the Sp_ToBI system have thus been proposed successively by Hualde (2003), a number of individual presentations focused on the difficulties encountered in actually using the Sp_ToBI system to label transcriptions of different dialects of Spanish. As a cons...

EFE, ISSN 1575-5533, XXI, 2012, pp. 43-74 Phonetic studies of Spanish rhotics report a wide range... more EFE, ISSN 1575-5533, XXI, 2012, pp. 43-74 Phonetic studies of Spanish rhotics report a wide range of allophonic variants of the syllable-initial trill /r/, which raises the question of whether the intervocalic contrast between /r / and the tap /ɾ / has been neutralized in many dialects. This study presents a spectrographic analysis of syllable-initial rhotics as produced by ten speakers of Veracruz Mexican Spanish in a guided, semi-spontaneous speech task. Trills that show a reduction in the degree of lingual trilling usually contain an approximant phase following one or two lingual contacts, which we represent as [ɾɹ] or [rɹ] in narrow transcription. Intervocalic taps show both reduction and elision, but those with a measurable contact are short enough to maintain an acoustic difference with the longer allophones of /r/. Taken with recent studies of rhotics in Dominican Spanish, these findings suggest that the contrast between /r/ and /ɾ / can be maintained in terms of overall segm...

These defining dialectal characteristics, however, are typically more prevalent among the lower s... more These defining dialectal characteristics, however, are typically more prevalent among the lower socioeconomic levels (Jimenez Sabater 1975). The variation in more normative dialectal forms spoken by educated speakers is less dramatic and reflects variable preferences of a particular token form in terms of degree or frequency. For example, Alba (1990, 2000) notes a variable preference motivated by sociolinguistic variables for the segments /s/, and /l/ and /r/ in coda position in Santiago (Cibao dialect) as well the production of coda /s/ in Santo Domingo. Variation in the production of the phonemic trill has long served as a defining feature of dialectal variation in characterizations of Spanish variation (Bradley 1999, Colantoni 2001, Lipski 1994, Moreno 1988, Resnick 1975, Zamora and Guitart 1988). There are a number of distinct dialectal realizations of the Spanish phonemic trill which include: a trill, an assibilated trill, a uvular trill, and a “pre-aspirated” trill. The few re...

Language Learning & Technology, 2018

In response to the need for examples of test validation from which everyday language programs can... more In response to the need for examples of test validation from which everyday language programs can benefit, this paper reports on a study that used Bachman’s (2005) assessment use argument (AUA) framework to examine evidence to support claims made about the intended interpretations and uses of scores based on a new web-based Spanish language placement test. The test, which consisted of 100 items distributed across five item types (sound discrimination, grammar, listening comprehension, reading comprehension, and vocabulary), was tested with 2,201 incoming first-year and transfer students at a large, Midwestern public university. Analyses of internal consistency and validity revealed the test to be reliable and valid with regard to its functionality, the content covered on the exam, and the consistency with which placement decisions could be made. Findings are discussed in light of the AUA model developed for the placement test, and practical suggestions for university-level language ...

This paper presents the results of an acoustic analysis of the voiceless posterior fricative /h/ ... more This paper presents the results of an acoustic analysis of the voiceless posterior fricative /h/ in Puerto Rican Spanish based on data from a naturalistic linguistic task. Caribbean Spanish is known for many innovative features at the segmental level including coda s-aspiration, trill variation, lateralization of /r/, rhoticism of /l/, fortition of the palatal approximant, etc. Previous characterizations of the posterior voiceless fricative report a realization that is best characterized as a [h].1 Lipski characterizes the realization as “in practice a posterior fricative (voiced or voiceless)” (1994:333). Some researchers of Caribbean dialects of Spanish have noted that phoneme /h/ may have a voiced realization (Hualde 2013 Jiménez Sabater 1975, Sosa 1980), but there are no reports of a systematic variation between voiced and voiceless variants. This posterior realization of /h/ has the potential to overlap phonetically, i.e., as an aspiration, with at least two other phonemes in P...

ABSTRACT RESUMEN: El presente estudio es un análisis acústico de los contornos entonacionales en ... more ABSTRACT RESUMEN: El presente estudio es un análisis acústico de los contornos entonacionales en el habla de veinte periodistas (10 hombres y 10 mujeres) originarios de la República Dominicana. Un total de 199 grupos fónicos dentro de oraciones declarativas fueron extraídas y analizadas acústicamente (con PRAAT) usando medidas de F0. Siguiendo el modelo Autosegmental Métrico con etiquetas de Sp_ToBI, se identificaron los tonemas (tono nuclear y tono final) de cada caso para determinar los contornos más comunes. La meta principal que guía el análisis es una caracterización de la prosodia del habla noticiera televisiva en la República Dominicana. El análisis acústico revela rangos tonales extendidos y patrones de hipercorrección, al igual que otros estudios segmentales, en cuanto al movimiento tonal de los grupos fónicos para hombres y mujeres. Los resultados también sugieren el uso incrementado de tonos finales descendentes por parte de los periodistas, lo cual varia de lo descrito previamente para la norma del español dominicano en habla de laboratorio.

Production of the Spanish phonemic trill has been a key characteristic for categorization of the ... more Production of the Spanish phonemic trill has been a key characteristic for categorization of the Spanish dialect continuum (Lipski, 1994; Moreno, 1988; Resnick, 1975; Zamora & Guitart, 1982). Most dialectal works, however, are based on impressionistic data and/or a limited informant pool. Recent empirical studies have focused on the specific acoustic correlates that distinguish one production of the phonemic trill from another (see Blecua Falgueras, 2001 for Peninsular Spanish; Colantoni, 2006a,b for Argentine Spanish; and Willis 2006; 2007 for Dominican Spanish; and Bradley & Willis, 2008 for Veracruz Mexican Spanish). Other studies have analyzed the diversity of phonemic trill production from an articulatory and gestural perspective (Bradley, 1999; 2006). The most common realizations of the Spanish phonemic trill cited to date include an apico-alveolar trill, an assibilated trill, a uvular trill, a pre-aspirated trill, a pre-breathy-voiced trill, and an approximant. Regarding phon...

Phonetic studies of Spanish rhotics report a wide range of allophonic variants of the syllable-in... more Phonetic studies of Spanish rhotics report a wide range of allophonic variants of the syllable-initial trill /r/, which raises the question of whether the intervocalic contrast between /r/ and the tap /ɾ/ has been neutralized in many dialects. This study presents a spectrographic analysis of syllable-initial rhotics as produced by ten speakers of Veracruz Mexican Spanish in a guided, semi-spontaneous speech task. Trills that show a reduction in the degree of lingual trilling usually contain an approximant phase following one or two lingual contacts, which we represent as [ɾɹ] or [rɹ] in narrow transcription. Intervocalic taps show both reduction and elision, but those with a measurable contact are short enough to maintain an acoustic difference with the longer allophones of /r/. Taken with recent studies of rhotics in Dominican Spanish, these findings suggest that the contrast between /r/ and /ɾ/ can be maintained in terms of overall segmental duration even when there is no differen...

ABSTRACT. This article investigates the Spanish vowel system of Southwest Spanish speakers throug... more ABSTRACT. This article investigates the Spanish vowel system of Southwest Spanish speakers through an acoustic examination of F1 and F2. The corpus is based on a semi-spontaneous narrative by four female speakers. Repeated measurements of all five Spanish vowels in a stressed syllable are plotted, as well as a comparison of 30 productions of /a/ in a stressed and unstressed syllable. The findings indicate several shifts in the generally accepted Spanish vowel triangle including a lowering and fronting of /u/, a lowering of /o/, and a fronting of /a/ to the vowel space typically described for English /ae/. There was no reduction of unstressed /a/ tokens to a schwa. * ********** INTRODUCTION. while English dialectal variation of segments has typically focused on differences in vowel production, dialectal and sociolinguistic studies of Spanish segmental variation have tended to concentrate on consonants (Zamora and Guitart 1982, Lipski 1994). This focus on vowels reflects Navarro Tomas...

Spanish prenuclear rising pitch accents have been described as having a Low tone consistently ali... more Spanish prenuclear rising pitch accents have been described as having a Low tone consistently aligned near the onset of the tonic syllable and a High tone, whose alignment may vary depending on focus marking. An examination of Dominican Spanish (DS) reveals a previously unreported alignment pattern for Spanish. The DS data reveals a variable Low tone alignment; an early alignment near the tonic onset, and a late Low alignment, past the tonic midpoint, typically 100-180 ms into the tonic syllable. The High tone does not demonstrate two categories of alignment seen with the Low tone. The variation observed in the DS prenuclear pitch accent alignments provide clear evidence of intonational dialectal variation and contributes to the growing body of research on intonational variation in general.

Topics in Spanish Linguistic Perceptions

Journal of Portuguese Linguistics, 2007

This paper examines the tonal patterns of sentences in Dominican Spanish produced in response to ... more This paper examines the tonal patterns of sentences in Dominican Spanish produced in response to three pragmatic intents: declaratives, absolute interrogatives, and pronominal interrogatives. The results indicate that there are systematic variations between the three utterance types; however, the final tonal rise was not a determining factor. Distinct patterns of tonal levels distinguished each of the three utterance types. The pronominal interrogatives demonstrated a higher initial tonal value and prenuclear High tone, while the absolute interrogatives presented a significantly higher tonal value for the nuclear pitch accent. These findings identify specific intonational behaviors that vary across dialects of Spanish. Finally, the data indicate that pragmatic utterance level intonational marking of Spanish interrogatives is not limited to boundary tones as was previously suggested in the literature.  This paper is a revised version of Chapter 6 of my dissertation The Intonational System of Dominican Spanish: Findings and Analysis, directed by José Ignacio Hualde at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The current version has benefited greatly from comments by Gorka Elordieta, Tim Face, Ken de Jong, and two anonymous reviewers. Any mistakes or shortcomings are my responsibility.

Revista internacional de lingüística iberoamericana, Dec 1, 2023

Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone linguistics, Jun 15, 2023

Within the Dominican Republic there are dialectal variations of the Spanish rhotic. Previous rese... more Within the Dominican Republic there are dialectal variations of the Spanish rhotic. Previous research concerning dialectal variation of Dominican Spanish rhotics has focused primarily on coda

Most dialectal works, however, are based on impressionistic data and/or a limited informant pool.... more Most dialectal works, however, are based on impressionistic data and/or a limited informant pool. Recent empirical studies have focused on the specific acoustic correlates that distinguish one

Spanish has two contrastive rhotic segments: the vibrante simple ‘tap’, and the vibrante múltiple... more Spanish has two contrastive rhotic segments: the vibrante simple ‘tap’, and the vibrante múltiple ‘trill’. These segments are contrastive only in intervocalic position, as in caro [kaRo] ‘expensive’/carro [karo] ‘car ’ or pero [peRo] ‘but’/perro [pero] ‘dog’. The Spanish tap/trill

One of the generally accepted phonological processes in Spanish phonology is that of assimilatory... more One of the generally accepted phonological processes in Spanish phonology is that of assimilatory voicing of /s/ before a voiced consonant. This process is taught in a near categorical fashion in most phonetics text books written for second language learners in the United States (e.g., Quilis and Fernández 1985). However, to our knowledge there has been no systematic examination of this voicing process in Spanish, rather a few anecdotal and impressionist claims. This lack of research on voicing of /s/ in coda position is also somewhat remarkable given the literature on /s/ in aspirating dialects. We chose to first examine one of the putative non-aspirating dialects of Spanish to ensure that our characterization was not misinterpreted by debuccalization or aspiration. Our principal goal is to provide an initial examination in a systematic fashion that could be used both as a dialectal characterization and to understand the process. We specifically used a controlled task of repeated t...

b The main features of Sp_ToBI The 1st Sp_ToBI Workshop held at The Ohio State University in Octo... more b The main features of Sp_ToBI The 1st Sp_ToBI Workshop held at The Ohio State University in October 1999 had the important outcome of proposing a set of transcription conventions that would be useful for the transcription of Spanish intonation within the Tones and Break Indices (ToBI) framework. A preliminary proposal for these transcription conventions for Spanish—or Sp_ToBI—was published in 2002 by Beckman, Díaz‐Campos, McGory and Morgan on behalf of the participants of the Workshop. While this was a very important first step in establishing a consensus‐based transcription system, more recent work on the prosodic phonology of Spanish varieties suggested the need for modifications to this preliminary proposal. Revised versions of the Sp_ToBI system have thus been proposed successively by Hualde (2003), a number of individual presentations focused on the difficulties encountered in actually using the Sp_ToBI system to label transcriptions of different dialects of Spanish. As a cons...

EFE, ISSN 1575-5533, XXI, 2012, pp. 43-74 Phonetic studies of Spanish rhotics report a wide range... more EFE, ISSN 1575-5533, XXI, 2012, pp. 43-74 Phonetic studies of Spanish rhotics report a wide range of allophonic variants of the syllable-initial trill /r/, which raises the question of whether the intervocalic contrast between /r / and the tap /ɾ / has been neutralized in many dialects. This study presents a spectrographic analysis of syllable-initial rhotics as produced by ten speakers of Veracruz Mexican Spanish in a guided, semi-spontaneous speech task. Trills that show a reduction in the degree of lingual trilling usually contain an approximant phase following one or two lingual contacts, which we represent as [ɾɹ] or [rɹ] in narrow transcription. Intervocalic taps show both reduction and elision, but those with a measurable contact are short enough to maintain an acoustic difference with the longer allophones of /r/. Taken with recent studies of rhotics in Dominican Spanish, these findings suggest that the contrast between /r/ and /ɾ / can be maintained in terms of overall segm...

These defining dialectal characteristics, however, are typically more prevalent among the lower s... more These defining dialectal characteristics, however, are typically more prevalent among the lower socioeconomic levels (Jimenez Sabater 1975). The variation in more normative dialectal forms spoken by educated speakers is less dramatic and reflects variable preferences of a particular token form in terms of degree or frequency. For example, Alba (1990, 2000) notes a variable preference motivated by sociolinguistic variables for the segments /s/, and /l/ and /r/ in coda position in Santiago (Cibao dialect) as well the production of coda /s/ in Santo Domingo. Variation in the production of the phonemic trill has long served as a defining feature of dialectal variation in characterizations of Spanish variation (Bradley 1999, Colantoni 2001, Lipski 1994, Moreno 1988, Resnick 1975, Zamora and Guitart 1988). There are a number of distinct dialectal realizations of the Spanish phonemic trill which include: a trill, an assibilated trill, a uvular trill, and a “pre-aspirated” trill. The few re...

Language Learning & Technology, 2018

In response to the need for examples of test validation from which everyday language programs can... more In response to the need for examples of test validation from which everyday language programs can benefit, this paper reports on a study that used Bachman’s (2005) assessment use argument (AUA) framework to examine evidence to support claims made about the intended interpretations and uses of scores based on a new web-based Spanish language placement test. The test, which consisted of 100 items distributed across five item types (sound discrimination, grammar, listening comprehension, reading comprehension, and vocabulary), was tested with 2,201 incoming first-year and transfer students at a large, Midwestern public university. Analyses of internal consistency and validity revealed the test to be reliable and valid with regard to its functionality, the content covered on the exam, and the consistency with which placement decisions could be made. Findings are discussed in light of the AUA model developed for the placement test, and practical suggestions for university-level language ...

This paper presents the results of an acoustic analysis of the voiceless posterior fricative /h/ ... more This paper presents the results of an acoustic analysis of the voiceless posterior fricative /h/ in Puerto Rican Spanish based on data from a naturalistic linguistic task. Caribbean Spanish is known for many innovative features at the segmental level including coda s-aspiration, trill variation, lateralization of /r/, rhoticism of /l/, fortition of the palatal approximant, etc. Previous characterizations of the posterior voiceless fricative report a realization that is best characterized as a [h].1 Lipski characterizes the realization as “in practice a posterior fricative (voiced or voiceless)” (1994:333). Some researchers of Caribbean dialects of Spanish have noted that phoneme /h/ may have a voiced realization (Hualde 2013 Jiménez Sabater 1975, Sosa 1980), but there are no reports of a systematic variation between voiced and voiceless variants. This posterior realization of /h/ has the potential to overlap phonetically, i.e., as an aspiration, with at least two other phonemes in P...

ABSTRACT RESUMEN: El presente estudio es un análisis acústico de los contornos entonacionales en ... more ABSTRACT RESUMEN: El presente estudio es un análisis acústico de los contornos entonacionales en el habla de veinte periodistas (10 hombres y 10 mujeres) originarios de la República Dominicana. Un total de 199 grupos fónicos dentro de oraciones declarativas fueron extraídas y analizadas acústicamente (con PRAAT) usando medidas de F0. Siguiendo el modelo Autosegmental Métrico con etiquetas de Sp_ToBI, se identificaron los tonemas (tono nuclear y tono final) de cada caso para determinar los contornos más comunes. La meta principal que guía el análisis es una caracterización de la prosodia del habla noticiera televisiva en la República Dominicana. El análisis acústico revela rangos tonales extendidos y patrones de hipercorrección, al igual que otros estudios segmentales, en cuanto al movimiento tonal de los grupos fónicos para hombres y mujeres. Los resultados también sugieren el uso incrementado de tonos finales descendentes por parte de los periodistas, lo cual varia de lo descrito previamente para la norma del español dominicano en habla de laboratorio.

Production of the Spanish phonemic trill has been a key characteristic for categorization of the ... more Production of the Spanish phonemic trill has been a key characteristic for categorization of the Spanish dialect continuum (Lipski, 1994; Moreno, 1988; Resnick, 1975; Zamora & Guitart, 1982). Most dialectal works, however, are based on impressionistic data and/or a limited informant pool. Recent empirical studies have focused on the specific acoustic correlates that distinguish one production of the phonemic trill from another (see Blecua Falgueras, 2001 for Peninsular Spanish; Colantoni, 2006a,b for Argentine Spanish; and Willis 2006; 2007 for Dominican Spanish; and Bradley & Willis, 2008 for Veracruz Mexican Spanish). Other studies have analyzed the diversity of phonemic trill production from an articulatory and gestural perspective (Bradley, 1999; 2006). The most common realizations of the Spanish phonemic trill cited to date include an apico-alveolar trill, an assibilated trill, a uvular trill, a pre-aspirated trill, a pre-breathy-voiced trill, and an approximant. Regarding phon...

Phonetic studies of Spanish rhotics report a wide range of allophonic variants of the syllable-in... more Phonetic studies of Spanish rhotics report a wide range of allophonic variants of the syllable-initial trill /r/, which raises the question of whether the intervocalic contrast between /r/ and the tap /ɾ/ has been neutralized in many dialects. This study presents a spectrographic analysis of syllable-initial rhotics as produced by ten speakers of Veracruz Mexican Spanish in a guided, semi-spontaneous speech task. Trills that show a reduction in the degree of lingual trilling usually contain an approximant phase following one or two lingual contacts, which we represent as [ɾɹ] or [rɹ] in narrow transcription. Intervocalic taps show both reduction and elision, but those with a measurable contact are short enough to maintain an acoustic difference with the longer allophones of /r/. Taken with recent studies of rhotics in Dominican Spanish, these findings suggest that the contrast between /r/ and /ɾ/ can be maintained in terms of overall segmental duration even when there is no differen...

ABSTRACT. This article investigates the Spanish vowel system of Southwest Spanish speakers throug... more ABSTRACT. This article investigates the Spanish vowel system of Southwest Spanish speakers through an acoustic examination of F1 and F2. The corpus is based on a semi-spontaneous narrative by four female speakers. Repeated measurements of all five Spanish vowels in a stressed syllable are plotted, as well as a comparison of 30 productions of /a/ in a stressed and unstressed syllable. The findings indicate several shifts in the generally accepted Spanish vowel triangle including a lowering and fronting of /u/, a lowering of /o/, and a fronting of /a/ to the vowel space typically described for English /ae/. There was no reduction of unstressed /a/ tokens to a schwa. * ********** INTRODUCTION. while English dialectal variation of segments has typically focused on differences in vowel production, dialectal and sociolinguistic studies of Spanish segmental variation have tended to concentrate on consonants (Zamora and Guitart 1982, Lipski 1994). This focus on vowels reflects Navarro Tomas...

Spanish prenuclear rising pitch accents have been described as having a Low tone consistently ali... more Spanish prenuclear rising pitch accents have been described as having a Low tone consistently aligned near the onset of the tonic syllable and a High tone, whose alignment may vary depending on focus marking. An examination of Dominican Spanish (DS) reveals a previously unreported alignment pattern for Spanish. The DS data reveals a variable Low tone alignment; an early alignment near the tonic onset, and a late Low alignment, past the tonic midpoint, typically 100-180 ms into the tonic syllable. The High tone does not demonstrate two categories of alignment seen with the Low tone. The variation observed in the DS prenuclear pitch accent alignments provide clear evidence of intonational dialectal variation and contributes to the growing body of research on intonational variation in general.

Topics in Spanish Linguistic Perceptions

Journal of Portuguese Linguistics, 2007

This paper examines the tonal patterns of sentences in Dominican Spanish produced in response to ... more This paper examines the tonal patterns of sentences in Dominican Spanish produced in response to three pragmatic intents: declaratives, absolute interrogatives, and pronominal interrogatives. The results indicate that there are systematic variations between the three utterance types; however, the final tonal rise was not a determining factor. Distinct patterns of tonal levels distinguished each of the three utterance types. The pronominal interrogatives demonstrated a higher initial tonal value and prenuclear High tone, while the absolute interrogatives presented a significantly higher tonal value for the nuclear pitch accent. These findings identify specific intonational behaviors that vary across dialects of Spanish. Finally, the data indicate that pragmatic utterance level intonational marking of Spanish interrogatives is not limited to boundary tones as was previously suggested in the literature.  This paper is a revised version of Chapter 6 of my dissertation The Intonational System of Dominican Spanish: Findings and Analysis, directed by José Ignacio Hualde at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The current version has benefited greatly from comments by Gorka Elordieta, Tim Face, Ken de Jong, and two anonymous reviewers. Any mistakes or shortcomings are my responsibility.

Un pequeño video de cómo abrir, ver y escuchar en Praat.

Baje el programa PRAAT from http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/ Extrae el programa y instale el prog... more Baje el programa PRAAT from http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/ Extrae el programa y instale el programa en el desktop 1. Para abrir un archivo de audio, pulse Read Read from file… 2 Busque el archivo de sonido que quiere abrir

Instrucciones básicas para crear un textgrid en Praat para PC (con imágenes de pantalla)

Instrucciones incluyen cómo guardar un archivo sencillo .wav y cómo guardar varios archivos en un... more Instrucciones incluyen cómo guardar un archivo sencillo .wav
y cómo guardar varios archivos en uno solo comprimido (zip) que se llama Binary file en Praat.

A veces es útil hacer una transcripción dentro del programa Praat porque se puede escuchar al tro... more A veces es útil hacer una transcripción dentro del programa Praat porque se puede escuchar al trozo específico las veces necesarias. El siguiente script extrae el texto de un textgrid y crea un documento .txt con todo el texto del textgrid. Otra ventaja de este script es que si hay fronteras en el textgrid, el texto que corresponde a cada trozo aparece en una línea nueva en el archivo Text que se ha creado.

An annotated explanation (from Joaquim Llisteri) of how to use the log function in Praat to extra... more An annotated explanation (from Joaquim Llisteri) of how to use the log function in Praat to extract simple measures.

This is a script written by Pauline Welby. The script will open a soundfile and textgrid to check... more This is a script written by Pauline Welby. The script will open a soundfile and textgrid to check or modify the textgrid. The textgrid will resave the modified textgrid as you move to the next pair.

Youtube channel Videos de la República Dominicana--entrevistas, amigos, aventuras, y lengua.

International Conference on Experimental Phonetics, 2023

This paper examines the interplay of two phonological processes in Spanish, the debuccalization o... more This paper examines the interplay of two phonological processes in Spanish, the debuccalization of /s/ and spirantization of /bdg/ in a Western Andalusian variety of Spanish. The reduction of /s/ in coda position has been widely reported to occur in many different varieties of Spanish. Specifically, this lenition process has been described to result in an aspirated variant (Bybee, 2000; Hualde, 2005; Lipski, 1994), a glottal occlusion (Luna, 2010; Valentín- Márquez, 2006), or as a total elision (Poplack, 1980). A different well-known aspect of Spanish is the spirantization of /b d g/, by which these phonemes are produced as the continuant consonants in specific contexts. Traditional research of Spanish describes spirantization in terms of two distinct allophones in complementary distribution. The stop allophones [b d g] are found after pause, after a nasal, and, in the case of /d/, also after a lateral, while the approximant allophones [β̞ ð̞ ɣ̞] are found elsewhere (Navarro Tomás, 1918/1977; Martínez Celdrán 1984, 2022).

Andalusian voiced stops are reported to fricativize following /s/ (Romero Gallego 1995, Alvar 1996, Jiménez Fernández 1999). A similar restructuring pattern is observed in the same dialect with /s/ and the voiceless stops with a resulting increase in aspiration or VOT of following stops /pas.ta/ -> [pah.tha] (see Torreira 2006, Ruch and Harrington 2014, Martínez Celdrán and Fernández Planas 2007, del Saz 2015, inter alia). In this paper, we test the perceptual categorization of this compensation process by creating minimal pairs of the type /u.na.bo.ta/ -> [u.na.β̞o.ta] - versus /u.nas.bo.tas/ -> [u.na.'vo.ta]. We hypothesize that if the singleton fricative realizations ([v], [ð] or [ɣ]) are associated with plurality, we have evidence for a novel allophone resulting from /s/ reduction and spirantization as a new compensatory strategy.

Four speakers from Puerto Rico and two speakers from Seville, Spain, produced the stimuli. We created minimal pairs with an approximant and a fricative realization for /b d g/ based on plurality [u.na.'βa.ka] vs. [u.na.'va.ka] described previously, resulting in 24 tokens per speaker. The tasks were presented in a Qualtrics survey. The first task was a continuum judgment task in the form of a Likert scale along singular/plural continuum. The second task was a forced choice perceptual test using photos in which the participants had to listen to the stimuli and the singular or plural photo. The instrument was distributed to Andalusians and Puerto Ricans to serve as control.

Preliminary findings based on 34 Andalusians and 57 Puerto Ricans revealed that, indeed, Andalusians perceived a fricative realization of /b d g/ as plural, implying the perception of an /s/, while Puerto Ricans did not. These fricative allophones were perceived as a phonological manifestation of /s/ plus /b d g/ by Andalusian listeners, showing evidence for a new compensatory strategy in this speech community. This resolution strategy of /s/ now yields three discrete allophonic realizations derived from phonemic /b d g/, an occlusive, an approximant, and a fricative when preceded by an elided /s/.