7/29/2019 Poster Asa09 Final

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Dept .of Linguistics Dept. of Spanish & Portuguese), University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

This study uses electropalatography (EPG) to investigatearticulatory characteristics of coronal consonant contrastsin Argentine Spanish, as part of a larger project examiningphonetic variation across Spanish dialects.

Most previous phonological analyses of Spanishconsonants have been based on a uditory transcriptionsand acoustic analysis.

There have been very few articulatory investigations of Spanish, and most of these focused on continuous speechprocesses ([1, 2]) and/or were limited to Peninsular Spanish ([3, 4]), and thus may not be representative of other varieties of Spanish.

There is a clear need for cross-dialectal phonetic studies tosupport or reject previous phonological analyses.

Participants 4 female speakers (S1-S4) of Argentine Spanish from

Buenos Aires residing in Toronto, Canada; age 30-49. Speech material

Words with coronal consonants / t n s r l / instressed syllables ajo, ata, ada, pesta ar, aga, ale,a ar, ato, and

aca in a carrier phrase Diga __ otra vez . 12 repetitions (6 for S4).

Instrumentation The WinEPG system ([5]) with the EPG data sampled at

100 Hz and simultaneously collected acoustic signalsampled at 22,050 Hz.

Artificial palates with 62 electrodes constructed for each participant.

Data analysis Contact indices taken at the point of maximum contact

for each consonant ([6]) :Alveolar Contact Anteriority (CAa)o CAa = [log((1*(R4 /8)+9*(R3 /8)+81*(R2 /8)+547*(R1 /6))+1))/(log(638+1)];Palatal Contact Posteriority (CPp)o CPp = [log((1*(R5 /8)+9*(R6 /8)+81*(R7 /8)+729*(R8 /8))+1))/(log(820+1)];Quotient of activation, palatal (Qp)o Qp = [(R6 + R7 + R9)/24].

For comparison with Peninsular Spanish, the sameindices were computed based on data in [3].

Main results of an ANOVA with factors Consonant andSubject and variables CAa, CPp, and Qp (& posthoc tests): CAa: More anterior contact in the alveolar region for / t

l s / than for / n r /; more posterior contact for / r /than / n / (Fig. 1);

CPp: More posterior contact in the palatal region for / / than for the other consonants / n r /; more anterior contactfor /l/ than / s t n r / (Fig. 2);

Qp: Greater degree of palatal contact for / / than for the other consonants; lesser degree for / t s n / than / r l /(Figs. 3, 4);

Overall, Argentine Spanish consonants have a more anterior contact than their counterparts in Peninsular Spanish (basedon [3, 4]) (Fig. 5, also Figs. 1-3). /s/: laminal in Argentine vs. apical in Peninsular Spanish. Palatal nasal / / is fronted; depalatalization and possible

merger with sequence nasal + glide for some speakers. Unlike in Peninsular Spanish, y is a fricative [ ] in

Argentine Spanish, similar to Catalan [ ] ([7]). Argentine Spanish shows a tendency towards a more

posterior articulation of the trill compared to the tap (cf.[7], contra [3]).

Inter-speaker variation: Different realization of the post-alveolar nasal / /: as an

alveolo-palatal (S1, S4) or a palatalized alveolar (S2, S3)(Figs. 4, 5), suggesting a sound change in progress inArgentine Spanish.

[1] Honorof, D. (1999). Articulatory gestures and Spanish nasal assimilation. PhDdissertation, Yale University.

[2] Romero, J. (1995). Gestural organization in Spanish. An experimental study of spirantization and aspiration. PhD dissertation, University of Connecticut.

[3] FernndezPlanas, A. M. (2007). Cuestionesmetodolgicas en palatografadinmica y clasificacin electropalatogrficade lasvocales y de algunas

consonantes linguales del espaol peninsular. Estudios de fontica experimental XVI.11-80.[4] MartnezCeldrn, E. & Fernndez Planas, A. M. (2007). Manual de fontica

espaola . Barcelona: Ariel.[5] Wrench, A. A., Gibbon, F. E., McNeill, A. M., & Wood, S. E. (2002). An EPG

therapy protocol for remediation and assessment of articulation disorders. In J.H. L. Hansen & B. Pellom(eds.), Proceedings of ICSLP-2002 . 965 968.Denver, USA.

[6] Fontdevila, J., Pallars, M. D., & Recasens, D. (1994). The contact index method of electropalatographicdata reduction. JPhon 22. 141-154.

[7] Recasens, D. & Pallars, M. D. (2001). De la fonticaa la fonologia . Barcelona:Ariel.

The authors would like to thank Daniel Recasens for helpful comments andsuggestions. Thanks also to Bojana Radovanovic for assistance with labelingEPG data. All errors are the authors responsibility. The work is supportedby a University of Toronto Connaught Grant to the first author.

Fig. 1. Mean alveolar Contact Anteriority (CAa)

Fig. 3. Mean Quotient of activation at thepalatal zone (Qp)

Fig. 2. Mean palatal Contact Posteriority (CPp)

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t l s n 'y' r

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Peninsular

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'y' s t n r l

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Peninsular

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'y' t s n r l

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Peninsular

The palate phoneticzoning (cf. [6])

* * * *

* *

158th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, October 27, 2009, San Antonio, TX

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'y' t s n r l

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Fig. 4. Qp by speaker

Fig. 5. A comparison of linguopalatal contact configurations for two varieties of Spanish

Consonant

Peninsular Spanish ([3]) Argentine Spanish*

PlaceRepresentative

speaker S1 S2 S3 S4 Place

/t/ denti-alveolaranterioralveolar

/s/ alveolar

/n/

/l/

/ /

/r/ posterioralveolar

/ / alveopalatal alveopalatal

/ /

y /j/ or / / palatal

Zones

R1R2R3R4

R5R6R7R8

C 1 C 2 C 3 C 4 C 5 C 6 C 7 C 8

Alveolar

Palatal

* Based on first 6 tokens for each speaker.