Chapter 9
Phonological processes in flux
Variation in palatal lateral production in the Ecuadorian Amazon
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.
Article outline
- Introduction
- Background
- Language contact and sound change
- Acoustic analysis of Spanish palatal lateral and related segments
- Present study
- Setting and participants
- Materials and data elicitation
- Data analysis
- Results
- Analysis of closure
- Analysis of transition
- Analysis of total duration
- Findings summary and discussion
- Conclusion
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Acknowledgements
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Notes
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References
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Appendix