Phonetic Typology and Positional Allophones for Alveolar Rhotics in Catalan (original) (raw)
Related papers
Journal of Phonetics, 2006
[h] (lateral) may exhibit two places of articulation, i.e., alveolopalatal and palatal proper, depending not only on vowel context but on position and speaker as well. In this Catalan dialect, [E] and [h] have phonological status while [c] is an allophone of /k/ and is articulated at a fronter location than front /k/ in languages such as English. Several consonant-dependent differences appear to be of universal validity, i.e., a trend for [E] and [h] to exhibit a more anterior closure location than [c] (perhaps due to manner requirements) or else for [c] and [E] to share a similar place of articulation (presumably for the sake of articulatory economy), and more stability for closures formed at the alveolopalatal zone than at the mediopalate. The three palatal consonants exhibit more overall contact, fronting and duration but also more coarticulation utterance initially than utterance finally (and even intervocalically) thus suggesting that they may blend with the adjacent vowel rather than resisting its influence in the former position while failing to undergo substantial articulatory reduction in the latter. r
An electropalatographic and acoustic study of affricates and fricatives in two Catalan dialects
Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 2007
The present study is an electropalatographic and acoustic investigation of the fricatives /s, S/ and the affricates /ts, dz, tS, dZ/ based on data from five speakers of Majorcan Catalan and five speakers of Valencian Catalan. Results show that the articulatory characteristics of fricatives and affricates agree in several respects: the sounds traditionally labeled /S/ and /tS, dZ/ are alveolopalatal, and are articulated at a less anterior location, are less constricted and show more dorsopalatal contact than the alveolars /s/ and /ts, dz/; the two place categories are closer to each other in Valencian than in Majorcan. Compared to voiceless affricates, voiced affricates are more anterior and more constricted, and show less dorsopalatal contact. Data also show that closure location for /tS, dZ/ occurs at the alveolar zone, and that articulatory differences among affricates are better specified at frication than at closure. Strict homorganicity between the stop and frication components of affricates appears to hold provided that constriction location at frication is compared with place of articulation at closure offset. In comparison to voiceless affricates, voiced affricates were shorter, and exhibited a longer closure and a shorter frication period, in Majorcan; in Valencian, on the other hand, closures were shortest for /dZ/, and frication was systematically longer for voiceless vs. voiced affricates. These duration data appear to conform to a universal trend in Valencian but not in Majorcan where voiced affricates are lengthened intentionally. In both Catalan dialects, vowel duration varies inversely with the duration of the affricate and of its closure and frication components. The implications of these articulatory and duration characteristics for the interpretation of sound changes affecting affricates, i.e. place merging, lenition and devoicing, are discussed.
2012. Phonetic and Phonological Variation in Spanish Syllable-initial Rhotics
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 difference in the number of lingual contacts.
Differences in Base of Articulation for Consonants among Catalan Dialects
Phonetica, 2010
Electropalatographic data for several front lingual consonants, i.e., the dental /t/, the alveolars /n, l, s, r/ and the alveolopalatals /tʃ, ʃ, ʎ, ɲ/, show differences in constriction anteriority among Catalan dialects varying in the progression Valencian > Eastern, with the Majorcan dialect occupying an intermediate position. These differences do not conform to speaker-dependent differences in palate morphology and, to the extent that they operate on a varied range of consonants, may be attributed to base of articulation. Deviations from this pattern are associated with manner of articulation and symmetry demands. A specific dialect-dependent relationship between tongue dorsum contact and constriction fronting is interpreted assuming the existence of less laminal, more apical dental and alveolar stops, and less dorsal, more laminal alveolopalatals, in Valencian than in the other two dialects. These data are interpreted in terms of the articulatory characteristics for different tongue front settings which have been proposed in the literature.
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This paper looks for an interpretation of the phonetic factors causing consonant lenition and elision to occur through an analysis of intervocalic [j] in Majorcan, a dialect of Catalan spoken in the Mediterranean island of Majorca. Articulatory and acoustic data for several Majorcan Catalan speakers still producing the palatal glide in all word positions and segmental environments show that the consonant is lower and more variable in intervocalic position than word initially and word finally. Lowering is enhanced by the presence of contextual low and mid low front vowels, mostly so if stressed and placed immediately after the palatal glide. Inspection of [VjV] formant trajectories suggests that, in spite of undergoing articulatory reduction, [j] is produced with an independent articulatory gesture; moreover, coarticulatory effects between the palatal glide and the following vowel may render the former phonetic segment perceptually indistinguishable from the latter and thus prone to undergo elision. Strongly lenited variants of intervocalic [j] appear to be receding, and conservative speakers show specially low realizations of the palatal glide which may have been widely spread among the speaking population at the time that the intervocalic consonant underwent systematic elision in some areas of Majorca in the past. These findings are in support of the notion that the lenition and subsequent elision of intervocalic consonants are assisted by contextual and prosodic factors.
Articulatory reduction and coarticulation in Catalan three-consonant sequences
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2015
, ø/ were collected in order to test the hypothesis that the velar stop is most prone to be reduced and deleted next to consonants involving high articulatory and aerodynamic demands. Analysis results reveal the absence of a velar stop closure in about half of the sequence tokens, mostly so when /k/ occurs after /s/ and before an oral stop presumably due to the high manner of articulation requirements involved. On the other hand, /Ck#C/ sequences where a /k/ closure period is available show a prominent realization of the velar stop mostly next to /s, z/. This scenario points to two different production mechanisms for threeconsonant sequences with contextual obstruents: articulatory reduction and elision, and a slowing down and an increase in articulatory salience, of the velar stop. /Ck#C/ sequences lacking an acoustic closure for /k/ were found to show a residual velar stop articulation which was implemented through an increase in cluster duration and in dorsopalatal contact at the approximate /k/ location in comparison to identical /C#C/ sequences with no /k/. V
Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 2005
Electropalatographic and acoustic data reported in this study show differences in closure location and degree, dorsopalatal contact size, closure duration, relative timing of events and formant frequency between clear /l/ and dark /l/ in two dialects of Catalan (Valencian and Majorcan). The two Catalan dialects under investigation differ also regarding degree of darkness but essentially not regarding coarticulatory resistance at the word edges, i.e. the alveolar lateral is equally dark word-initially and word-finally in Majorcan, and clearer in the former position vs. than the latter in Valencian, and more resistant to vowel effects in the two positions than intervocalically in both dialects. With reference to data from the literature, it appears that languages and dialects may differ as to whether /l/ is dark or clear in all word positions or whether or not initial /l/ is clearer than final /l/, and that articulatory strengthening occurs not only word-and utterance-initially but word-and utterance-finally as well. These and other considerations confirm the hypothesis that degree of darkness in /l/ proceeds gradually rather than categorically from one language to another.
A Contrastive Study of Voiced Alveolo-Palatal Affricates in the Catalan of Lleida and Barcelona
2003
The realization of the voiced alveolo-palatal affricate consonant in Catalan presents a lot of variation as far as the voicing and duration of both plosive and fricative segments are concerned. This variation is related to the different geographical varieties of Catalan and it ranges from voiced to voiceless realizations with their corresponding intermediate stages. A number of studies have attempted to find out whether the segment that devoices first is the plosive or the fricative element. The present study aims to characterize and contrast various realizations of voiced alveolo-palatal affricates in the Catalan of Lleida and Barcelona in a sample of words containing these consonants (voiced and voiceless) in intervocalic position. The results show that the phenomenon of devoicing first begins in the fricative segment in the two varieties of present-day Catalan, although it is more widespread in the Catalan of Barcelona.
An Electropalatographic Study of Alveolar and Palatal Consonants in Catalan and Italian
Language and Speech, 1993
Electropalatographic data for Catalan and Italian reported in this paper reveal the existence of two categories of palatal consonants, namely, alveolopalatals ([n], [λ]) and palatals proper ([j]). All these consonants are produced with a single place of articulation and thus are not good candidates for complex segments involving a tongue front articulator and a tongue dorsum articulator. A higher degree of coupling between the primary articulator and other tongue regions for alveolopalatals and palatals than for alveolar [n] accounts for a reduced sensitivity to coarticulatory effects for the former vs. the latter. Alveolarpalatal correlations reported in this study support the notion of relative independence between different tongue articulators for non-dorsal vs. dorsal consonants. Differences in articulation and coarticulation were found for Italian vs. Catalan. In comparison with their Catalan counterparts, Italian shows the following properties: Consonants are more anterior, [n...