Darkness in [l] as a scalar phonetic property: implications for phonology and articulatory control (original) (raw)
Related papers
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.
Spanish Phonetics and Phonology in Contact: Studies from Africa, the Americas, and Spain, 2020
This study investigates sociophonetic variation in the production of the alveolar lateral /l/ in Catalan and Spanish, the velarization of which is considered the hallmark feature of Catalonian Spanish (Arnal, 2011; Casanovas Català, 1995; Hickey, 2012). Using an innovative combination of both gradient and categorical analyses to evaluate lateral production in Spanish and Catalan elicited from Catalan-Spanish bilinguals and Madrid monolinguals (n = 36) stratified by gender and exposure/usage of Catalan, we assess the degree to which lateral velarization pervades this contact setting. In so doing, we demonstrate that lateral velarization and the inventory of lateral categories in these languages are best approached using gradient and relative hierarchies of lateral darkness rather than discrete applications of intrinsically light [l] or dark [ɫ].
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.
Phonetica, 1998
Electropalatographic and F2 frequency data in /VlV/ sequences reveal more prominent C-to-V effects for Catalan dark /l/ than for German clear /l/, more so in the /i/ context than in the /a/ context, which is in agreement with the existence of high lingual requirements on the formation of two constriction places for dark /l/. German clear /l/ exerts a similar amount of F2 displacement on both vowels which may be indicative of the tongue dorsum being directed towards a target position; this is also suggested by dorsopalatal contact and formant frequency data showing less voweldependent variability than clear /l/ in other languages though more so than Catalan dark /l/. Salient anticipatory requirements for the implementation of /l/ in the two languages block V1-dependent carryover effects to a large extent which results in more prominent vocalic anticipation than vocalic carryover. This directionality trend in vocalic coarticulation is more obvious for Catalan dark /l/ than for German clear /l/ (in agreement with the former consonantal variety requiring more anticipation than the latter) and opposes German /l/ to clear /l/ in other languages (i.e., the less constrained /l/ variety of Spanish may favor vocalic carryover over vocalic anticipation in VCV sequences).
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
Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory, 2014
This investigation constitutes a quantitative variationist approach toward Spanish in contact with Catalan in Barcelona, Spain. It seeks to empirically measure concrete usage patterns of two phonetic variants, [ɫ] and [z], in the Spanish of Catalan-Spanish bilinguals, as well as establish the extent to which both variants are conditioned by linguistic factors and Catalan dominance. The careful Spanish speech of 20 Barcelonan females (ages 18-27) was elicited through a word-reading task. Goldvarb binomial logistic regression analyses revealed that sensitivity to linguistic factors varied according to Catalan dominance. Moreover, although both variants were favored most by Catalan-dominant speakers, usage patterns among more Spanish-dominant speakers were divergent, consistent with claims of negative social value linked solely to [ɫ].
Metrical/syllabic factors in English allophony: Dark /l/
Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 2006
This paper presents a four-subject study that examines the relative influence of syllable position and stress, together with vowel context on the colouring of the dark-l characteristic of speakers of General American English. Most investigators report lighter /l/ tokens in syllable onsets and darker tokens in coda positions. The present study demonstrates that when dark-l serves as an onset in iambic intervocalic context with tautosyllabic high front vowels, it is fully dark as a result of domain-initial strengthening. By contrast, when dark-l is abutted across a word boundary to word-final or wordinitial consonants, or when it is contained in a foot-internal context (preboundary intervocalic rime with trochaic stress) its dorsal gesture is constrained, resulting in less dark tokens. In the case of darkl, articulatory undershoot must be understood not only in terms of the alveolar gesture, but also the dorsal gesture.
Blending in heterosyllabic consonant clusters in three Catalan dialects
ZAS Papers in Linguistics, 2008
This study is an electropalatographic investigation of clusters composed of /n/ or /l/ followed by the (alveolo)palatal consonants /, / or by dental /t/ in three Catalan dialects, i.e., Majorcan, Valencian and Eastern. Data show that articulatory blending through superposition occurs in the palatalizing environment except when C1 is highly constrained (e.g., dark /l/) or C2 is purely palatal and therefore, produced at a distant articulatory location from C1. Contrary to previous descriptions in the literature, data for /nt, lt/ reveal that blending through superposition rather than assimilation is at work. The implications of these data for theories of speech production are discussed.
Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics, 1995
ii In this thesis, I address the interrelated issues of phonological underspecification and phonetic specification. Working within the model of Modified Contrastive Specification, I provide evidence for underspecification of height features from the phonological and phonetic patterning of vowels in Iberian Spanish and Italian dialects. I argue that a) the feature [high] is present in inventories only when it is required to appear in order to mark a contrast between high and non-high vowels in the non-low region, and b) that the mid vowels [e] and [o] are underlyingly underspecified for height features.
Selected Proceedings of the 14th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, 2012
The present study examines the modern status of a salient phonetic feature of Barcelonan Spanish, a variety of Iberian Spanish in contact with Catalan in Catalonia, Spain. The contact phenomenon under investigation is the velarization of a voiced alveolar lateral to a voiced velarized lateral in coda position. Formal speech samples from 32 bilingual Spanish-Catalan university students are subjected to spectrographic analysis. By examining specific linguistic contexts that favor lateral velarization in Barcelonan Spanish and correlating the degree of lateral velarization with a series of social factors, we discuss possibilities for a linguistic change in progress wherein the degree of lateral velarization in Barcelonan Spanish is becoming restricted and more salient over time as an effect of a social stigma associated with the use of the velarized lateral. The results of the present study, subjected to statistical analyses, reveal that lateral velarization in Barcelonan Spanish continues to be a prevalent contact feature, resulting from L1-L2 transfer effects of Catalan to Spanish. Moreover, divergent trends in the use and degree of lateral velarization by gender within and outside of Barcelona county, as well as across different age groups, provide evidence for the status of the velarized lateral as a sociolinguistic phonetic variant of this contact variety of Spanish.