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Spanish Phonetics and Phonology in Contact: Studies from Africa, the Americas, and Spain
Edited by Rajiv Rao
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 28] 2020
► pp. 13–32

Chapter 1
Equatorial Guinea Spanish non-continuant /d/

More than a generic L2 trait

| The Pennsylvania State University

In Equatorial Guinea, the only sub-Saharan African nation in which Spanish is widely spoken, prevocalic /d/ frequently receives a short occlusive articulation that approximates [ɾ]. A similar pronunciation occurs in some contemporary Afro-descendant populations in Latin America, and Afro-Hispanic literary stereotypes also include the /d/ > [ɾ] shift. Based on an acoustic analysis of naturalistic speech, this study proposes that non-continuant realizations of /d/ are part of a cluster of traits that include an alveolar realization of /t/ and /d/, partial neutralization of /ɾ/-/r/, and prominent svarabhakti vowels. A combination of incomplete L2 acquisition, L1 carryovers, and structural re-alignment emerges as the most likely account of Equatorial Guinean /d/ > [ɾ], which may partially extend to other Afro-Hispanic speech communities.

Keywords: Equatorial Guinea, Afro-Hispanic language, prevocalic flapping, language contact
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The Spanish of Equatorial Guinea
  • 3.Realizations of /d/, /ɾ/, and /r/ in Equatorial Guinean Spanish
  • 4.Extraction of data on intervocalic /d/ and /ɾ/ in Equatorial Guinean Spanish
  • 5.Results of the acoustic analysis
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 6 August 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.28.01lip
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