Chapter 13
The unstressed vowel system of Asturian Spanish
Language contact and phonetic contrast in word-final position
Influenced by the minority language of the region, speakers of Asturian Spanish vary in their production of final back vowels in the masculine singular morpheme, with realizations that range from Spanish [-o] (e.g., perro) to Asturian [-u] (e.g., perru). In this study, I compare the acoustic properties of [o] and [u] in unstressed final and non-final position using the Pillai-Barlett Statistic in R. The results show that young speakers and women have significantly lower pillai scores word-finally, indicating a higher degree of merger between the two vowels in that position. I propose that these speakers are producing a “neutral” variant that allows them to minimize the social risk of using a stigmatized form, while being able to index regional identity.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Background
- 3.Methodology
- 3.1Participants and data
- 3.2Acoustic and statistical analyses
- 4.Results
- 4.1Word-final position versus unstressed word-internal position
- 4.2Pillai scores, age, and gender
- 5.Discussion and conclusions
-
Notes
-
References
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