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Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 12: Selected papers from the 45th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Campinas, Brazil
Edited by Ruth E.V. Lopes, Juanito Ornelas de Avelar and Sonia M. L. Cyrino
[Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 12] 2017
► pp. 63–78

Chapter 5
Revising the canon

Social and stylistic variation of coda (-ɾ) in Buenos Aires Spanish

| New York University
| Middlebury College

This study explores phonetic and social variation in coda (-ɾ) production in Buenos Aires Spanish. Although the traditionally described canonical realization of coda /-ɾ/ is occlusion + vocalic element, our results reveal that the “lenited” approximant + vocalic element is the most frequent variant, and that deletion, approximant, trill, and fricative realizations also exist. We found higher rates of lenited forms in informal speech and among younger, male, and working-class speakers. Higher percentages of canonical forms in careful speech and among older, female, and middle-class speakers indicate possible hypercorrection. Finally, we question the “canonical” status of coda (-ɾ) as occlusion + vocalic element, calling for the consideration of variant frequency and context in establishing a baseline description of coda /-ɾ/.

Keywords: Buenos Aires Spanish, coda ɾ, rhotics, sociophonetics, lenition, deletion, hyperarticulation, stylistic variation, Argentina
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The current study
    • 2.1Speakers
    • 2.2Tasks and recording procedures
    • 2.3Acoustic analysis
    • 2.4Statistical analysis
  • 3.Results and discussion
    • 3.1Global results
    • 3.2Age
    • 3.3Sex
    • 3.4Socioeconomic class
    • 3.5Speech style
  • 4.Conclusions
  • References
Published online: 19 October 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/rllt.12.05gil
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