Chapter published in:
Amazonian Spanish: Language Contact and Evolution
Edited by Stephen Fafulas
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 23] 2020
► pp. 224–258

Phonological processes in flux

Variation in palatal lateral production in the Ecuadorian Amazon

| University of Alabama
In this study, we examine the production of the palatal lateral in Spanish, represented orthographically as <ll>, as produced by bilinguals in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The purpose of this study is first to observe what changes may have taken place in the acoustic production of palatal /ʎ/ by Quichua-Spanish speakers in comparison to related segments /l/ and /ʝ/ which may be due to indigenous language contact, and second to determine if extralinguistic influences may have contributed to this change (e.g., differences in gender). While males appear to maintain a distinct palatal lateral and females demonstrate a move towards delateralization, both genders demonstrate cases of depalatalization due to allophony, as in their native language.
Keywords: Amazonian Spanish, Quichua bilinguals, Ecuador, palatal lateral, language contact
Published online: 15 July 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.23.09oro
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