Acoustic analysis of the rhotic contrast in Chicagoland Spanish
An intergenerational study
Nicholas Henriksen | University of Michigan
This paper reports on an acoustic analysis of the phonemic tap-trill contrast (/ɾ/-/r/) for first and second generation speakers of Mexican Spanish who live in the Chicagoland area. First, it is shown that speakers most commonly produce phonemic trills with a single apical occlusion, although there is much individual variation. Second, nearly all speakers realize the tap-trill contrast by means of segmental duration, and this is especially true for speakers who favor zero or one closures in the phonemic trill. These data suggest that heritage speakers make use of the limits of phonetic variation to the extent that phonological contrasts are intact in their grammar. The findings have implications for disentangling the sources of individual variation in heritage pronunciation. Specifically, we propose that between-speaker instabilities in rhotic production result more directly from an inherently variable speech signal than from the language contact situation.
Keywords: heritage speakers, phonology, Spanish, rhotics, individual differences, Chicago Spanish
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Background
- 2.1Spanish in the United States: The bilingual context
- 2.2Spanish rhotic system
- 2.3Tap and trill articulation
- 3.Method
- 3.1Participants
- 3.2Recording protocol
- 3.3Acoustic analysis
- 3.3.1Phonemic trill
- 3.3.2Phonemic tap
- 4.Results
- 4.1Phonemic trill
- 4.2Phonemic tap
- 4.3Phonological contrast
- 5.Discussion
- 5.1Rhotic contrast
- 5.2Individual variation
- 6.Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
-
References
Published online: 24 July 2015
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.5.3.01hen
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.5.3.01hen
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