Differences in Base of Articulation for Consonants among Catalan Dialects (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.
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...
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.
Phonetic Typology and Positional Allophones for Alveolar Rhotics in Catalan
Phonetica, 2007
The present study reports electropalatographic and acoustic data on the positional and contextual characteristics of alveolar taps and trills in Majorcan, Valencian and Eastern Catalan. The two consonant classes are invariably opposed by degree of tongue dorsum contact and F2, but only differentiated by place of articulation when constriction location for the trill is sufficiently retracted. Trills are produced with less than three contacts and may exhibit a single contact in utterance-initial position and, less often, in /Cr, VrV/ sequences. Word-final and, to a lesser extent, preconsonantal rhotics are implemented as taps in Majorcan and Valencian, and strengthened into trills in Eastern Catalan. Moreover, there appears to be an inverse relationship between initial strengthening, and intervocalic weakening and the absence of syllable-final strengthening, for Valencian rhotics, which could be indicative of a pattern of intersegmental organization. Shortening and articulatory reduction turned out not to be necessarily related for extremely short Valencian taps, which undergo much undershoot intervocalically but are highly constricted in /Cɾ, rC/ sequences. Other research aspects such as devoicing and intergestural timing for Catalan alveolar rhotics are also investigated.
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2009
Lingual movement data for Catalan vowel-consonant-vowel sequences reveal differences in contextual coarticulatory variability in tongue position at the middle of the consonant for /p / Ͼ / n / Ͼ dark /l / Ͼ / s / Ͼ / b / Ͼ / F/ and at vowel midpoint for /u / Ͼ / a / Ͼ / i/. The velar stop /k/ exhibits a high degree of contextual variability in the horizontal dimension but not in the vertical dimension. These differences in coarticulatory sensitivity are attributed to differences in articulatory constraint, e.g., palatality and frication cause a higher degree of resistance in the consonant than laterality. A higher degree of contextual variability for dark /l/ than expected appears to be associated with speaker-dependent differences in darkness degree. Contextual variability is greater at regions not involved in closure or constriction formation, e.g., at the tongue dorsum than at the tongue front for alveolars. Coarticulatory resistance and coarticulatory aggressiveness are positively correlated: Phonetic segments, which are especially resistant to coarticulatory effects from the adjacent segments, exert maximal coarticulation on them. Consequently, highly constrained segments such as alveolopalatal consonants turn out to affect tongue position for less constrained segments such as back vowels rather than vice versa.
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.
Coronal place contrasts in Argentine and Cuban Spanish: An electropalatographic study
Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 2011
Theoretical and descriptive work on Spanish phonetics and phonology has been largely based on Peninsular varieties. This study uses electropalatography (EPG) to investigate articulatory characteristics of coronal consonant contrasts in Argentine and Cuban Spanish. Simultaneous EPG and acoustic data were collected from five speakers from Buenos Aires (Argentina) and three speakers from Havana (Cuba) reading sentences with various syllable-initial coronal consonants corresponding to the orthographic 〈t, ch, n, ñ, s, z, ll, y, l, r〉. As a control, the same data were collected from a single speaker of Peninsular Spanish from Madrid. As expected, the main distinction in both varieties was made between anterior and posterior coronal consonants ((denti-)alveolars vs. (alveolo-)palatals) and reflected the historical merger of the sounds represented by 〈s–z〉 and 〈ll–y〉. At the same time, the results revealed some consistent differences between the two varieties in the location of the constri...
A study of jaw coarticulatory resistance and aggressiveness for Catalan consonants and vowels
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2012
The goal of this study is to investigate coarticulatory resistance and aggressiveness for the jaw in Catalan consonants and vowels and, more specifically, for the alveolopalatal nasal /J/ and for dark /l/ for which there is little or no data on jaw position and coarticulation. Jaw movement data for symmetrical vowel-consonant-vowel sequences with the consonants /p, n, l, s, ,J,k/andthevowels/i,a,u/wererecordedbythreeCatalanspeakerswithamidsagittalmagnetometer.Datarevealthatjawheightisgreaterfor/s,, J, k/ and the vowels /i, a, u/ were recorded by three Catalan speakers with a midsagittal magnetometer. Data reveal that jaw height is greater for /s, ,J,k/andthevowels/i,a,u/wererecordedbythreeCatalanspeakerswithamidsagittalmagnetometer.Datarevealthatjawheightisgreaterfor/s,/ than for /p, J/, which is greater than for /n, l, k/ during the consonant, and for /i, u/ than for /a/ during the vowel. Differences in coarticulatory variability among consonants and vowels are inversely related to differences in jaw height, i.e., fricatives and high vowels are most resistant, and /n, l, k/ and the low vowel are least resistant. Moreover, coarticulation resistant phonetic segments exert more prominent effects and, thus, are more aggressive than segments specified for a lower degree of coarticulatory resistance. Data are discussed in the light of the degree of articulatory constraint model of coarticulation. V