Chapter 6
Intervocalic phonemic stop realization in Amazonian Peru
The case of Yagua Spanish
This study explores intervocalic phonemic stop realization in Spanish by monolingual and bilingual speakers in the Peruvian Amazon. We performed an acoustic analysis of sociolinguistic interviews conducted in Spanish with Spanish monolinguals and Yagua-Spanish bilinguals. We focus on Yagua-Spanish bilinguals since the substrate language, Yagua, does not contrast voiceless and voiced stops. Our results, derived from phonetic measurements of relative intensity and consonant duration, show that there is greater lenition of stops by Spanish monolinguals than by Yagua-Spanish bilinguals. They further suggest that ethnic Yagua communities are converging toward Spanish-like patterns of lenition of /p t k b d ɡ/. Altogether, this study contributes to the literature on Spanish contact phonology through an investigation of Spanish-Yagua bilingualism in Amazonian Peru.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Background
- 2.1Phonemic stops in Spanish and Yagua
- 2.2Previous research on lenition of stop phonemes in L1 and L2 Spanish
- 2.3Theoretical framework and research questions
- 3.Methods
- 3.1Data collection
- 3.2Participants
- 3.3Acoustic analysis
- 3.4Statistical analysis
- 4.Results
- 5.Discussion
- 5.1Responses to research questions
- 5.2Implications
- 6.Conclusion
-
Notes
-
References
-
Appendix
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Cited by
Cited by 1 other publications
Fafulas, Stephen A., Nicholas Henriksen & Erin O’Rourke
2022.
Sound change and gender-based differences in isolated regions: acoustic analysis of intervocalic phonemic stops by Bora-Spanish bilinguals.
Linguistics Vanguard 8:s5
► pp. 557 ff.

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