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In:Bridging Boundaries: Interdisciplinary perspectives on Hispanic Linguistics
Edited by Gregory L. Thompson and Scott M. Alvord
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 46] 2026
► pp. 333–358

Chapter 13
Perception of the assibilated trill in Argentine Spanish

 | University of Arizona
 | Michigan State University
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
Abstract
This study seeks to determine whether an Argentine regional variant of /r/, [ɹ̌], is perceptually confusable with the postalveolar fricative allophones of /ʝ/, [ʃ], and [ʒ], and to examine the degree to which the factors of regional origin and dialect contact affect the perception of these phones. The acoustic similarity between [ɹ̌] and the fricative allophones [ʃ] and [ʒ] raises the possibility that these variants are perceptually confusable to native speakers. We employed a perception task across two regional dialect groups (Argentines and Spaniards) to examine this possibility. We found that both Argentines and Spaniards frequently misidentify [ɹ̌] as the segments represented orthographically as <y> or <ll>. Further, our data revealed significant effects of regional origin and dialect contact, though no evidence of a two-way confusion between [ɹ̌] and either postalveolar fricative was found. We follow up with an analysis and interpretation of the main findings, discussing how they both align with and differ from previous work on cross-dialectal perception.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Trill variation in Spanish
    • 2.2Regional variation of fricative /ʝ/ variants in Argentine Spanish
    • 2.3Cross-dialectal perception
  • 3.Research questions and hypotheses
  • 4.Method
    • 4.1Participants
    • 4.2Stimuli and task
    • 4.3Background questionnaire
      • 4.3.1Self-reported dialect contact
      • 4.3.2Region of origin
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Dialect contact and region of origin: Argentines
  • 6.Discussion
    • 6.1Dialect contact
    • 6.2Regional background
    • 6.3Confusability of Argentine fricative variants
    • 6.4Non-Argentine listeners
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Author queries
  • References
  • Appendix
References (29)
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