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Variation and Evolution: Aspects of language contact and contrast across the Spanish-speaking world
Edited by Sandro Sessarego, Juan J. Colomina-Almiñana and Adrián Rodríguez-Riccelli
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 29] 2020
► pp. 107–126

Chapter 5
Realizations of /b/ in the Spanish of Lima, Peru

| The University of Illinois at Urbana-Campaign

In canonical Spanish, the letters <b> and <v> represent the same phoneme: /b/. The phoneme has two main allophones, essentially in complementary distribution: [b] and [β] (Harris, 1969). Previous research has found allophonic deviations, such as [v], [Ø], and [w], in both monolinguals (Sadowsky, 2010) and bilinguals (Phillips, 1982; Stevens, 2000). Previous research has not extensively explored the production of /b/ in Peruvian Spanish. Fifty-one participants were recorded at a university in Lima, Peru reading isolated words and paragraphs. Half of the 60 target words were spelled with <v> and the other half with <b>. This study supports previous literature, demonstrating that Peruvian Spanish produces two complementary allophones of <b>.

Keywords: phonology, Spanish, /b/, Peru
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1Orthography and phonetics of /b/
    • 2.2Modern day use of [v]
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Participants
    • 3.2Procedure
    • 3.3Materials
  • 4.Analysis
  • 5.Results
  • 6.Discussion and conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 11 August 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.29.05yar
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