Chapter published in:
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. 79–96

Chapter 6
Hiatus resolution in L1 and L2 Spanish

An optimality account

| Florida State University
| Princeton Day School

This study investigates the acquisition of vowel-vowel sequences across words in twenty-five L2 Spanish learners. Building on González & Weissglass (2016), it analyzes their acoustic realization and examines the incidence of hiatus maintenance, hiatus resolution, and glottal stop epenthesis in L2 Spanish. Eight Spanish native speakers are included for comparison. Based on our data, we propose a preliminary Optimality-Theoretic account of the different stages that L2 learners go through when acquiring vowel-vowel sequences. We find evidence for three possible target grammars in our dataset, which correlate with dialectal differences. Two of these grammars appear to have been acquired by some of the L2 learners investigated.

Keywords: hiatus, hiatus resolution, resyllabification, diphthongization, glottalization, L2 Spanish, interlanguage, Optimality Theory, acquisition, discontinuous transitions
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Data and generalizations
    • 2.1Experimental design
    • 2.2Results
  • 3.An Optimality Theoretical analysis
    • 3.1Grammars and constraints
    • 3.2State initial (L1 English)
    • 3.3State n (Interlanguage)
    • 3.4State target (L2 Spanish)
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 19 October 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/rllt.12.06gon
References
Aguilar, Lourdes
1999 “Hiatus and diphthong: Acoustic cues and speech situation differences.” Speech Communication 28: 57–74. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baković, Eric
2007 “Hiatus resolution and incomplete identity.” In Optimality-Theoretic Studies in Spanish Phonology, ed. by Fernando Martínez-Gil and Sonia Colina, 62–73. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barbería, Irene
2012 The gradient nature of hiatus resolution in Spanish. Doctoral dissertation, University of Deusto, Bilbao.Google Scholar
Boersma, Paul
1997 “How we learn variation, optionality, and probability.” Proceedings of the Institute of Phonetic Sciences 21: 43–58.Google Scholar
Broselow, Ellen
1987 “An investigation of transfer in second language phonology.” In Interlanguage phonology: The acquisition of a second language sound system, ed. by Georgette Ioup and Steven H. Weinberger, 261–278. Cambridge, MA: Newbury House.Google Scholar
Broselow, Ellen, Su-I Chen, and Chilin Wang
1998 “The emergence of the unmarked in second language phonology.” Studies in Second Language Acquisition 20: 261–280. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Colina, Sonia
2009 Spanish Phonology: A Syllabic Perspective. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University.Google Scholar
2012 “Syllable structure.” In The Handbook of Hispanic Linguistics, ed. by Jose I. Hualde, Antxon Olarrea, and Erin O’Rourke, 133–152. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Davidson, Lisa & Daniel Erker
2014 “Hiatus resolution in American English: Against glide insertion.” Language 90: 482–514. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Granda, Germán
1982 “Origen y formación del leísmo en el español del Paraguay: ensayo de un método.” Revista de filología española 62 (3): 259–283. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Lacy, Paul
2004 Markedness: Reduction and preservation in phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University.Google Scholar
Dilley, Laura, Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel, and Mari Ostendorf
1996 “Glottalization of word-initial vowels as a function of prosodic structure”. Journal of Phonetics 24: 423–444. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Esgueva Martínez, Manuel
1999 “Vocales en contacto: La elisión.” In Lengua y discurso: Estudios dedicados al profesor Vidal Lamíquiz, ed. by P. Carbonero-Cano, M. Casado Velarde and P. Gómez Manzano, 287–299. Madrid: Arco Libros.Google Scholar
Flack, Kathryn
2009 “Constraints on onsets and codas of words and phrases.” Phonology 26: 269–302. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Garellek, Marc
2012 “Glottal stops before word-initial vowels in American English: Distribution and acoustic characteristics.” UCLA Working papers in Linguistics 111: 92–122.Google Scholar
González, Carolina and Christine Weissglass
2016 “The Acquisition of Word Boundaries in a Second Language: An Acoustic Study”. Ms. under review.Google Scholar
Hancin-Bhatt, Barbara
2008 “Second language phonology in optimality theory.” In Phonology and Second Language Acquisition, ed. by Jette G. Hansen Edwards, and Mary L. Zampini, 117–146. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hernández, Edith
2009 Resolución de hiatos en verbos – ear: un estudio sociofonético en una ciudad mexicana. Doctoral dissertation, The Ohio State University.Google Scholar
Holt, Eric
2008 “On the acquisition of synalepha and resyllabification in Spanish by English-speaking advanced learners.” Presentation, Current Approaches to Spanish and Portuguese Second Language Phonology, Minneapolis, MN, February 2008.Google Scholar
Hualde, José I., and Prieto, Mónica
2002 “On the diphthong/hiatus contrast in Spanish: Some experimental results.” Linguistics 40: 217–234. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hualde, José I.
2005 The Sounds of Spanish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Jenkins, Devin L.
1999 Hiatus resolution in Spanish: Phonetic Aspects and Phonological Implications from Northern New Mexican Data. Doctoral dissertation, University of New México, Albuquerque, NM.Google Scholar
Lipski, John M.
1994 Latin American Spanish. New York: Longman Group Limited.Google Scholar
Lord, Gillian
2005 “(How) Can We Teach Foreign Language Pronunciation? On the Effects of a Spanish Phonetics Course.” Hispania 88 (3): 557–567. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Monroy-Casas, Rafael
1980 Aspectos fonéticos de las vocales españolas. Madrid: Sociedad General Española de Librería.Google Scholar
Navarro Tomás, Tomás
1996. [1918] Manual de Pronunciación Española (26th ed.). Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas.Google Scholar
Olive, Joseph P., Alice Greenwood, and John Coleman
1993 Acoustics of American English Speech: A Dynamic Approach. New York: Springer-Verlag.Google Scholar
Prince, Alan, and Bruce Tesar
2004 “Learning phonotactic distributions.” In Constraints in Phonological Acquisition, ed. by René Kager, Joe Pater and Wim Zonneveld, 245–291. Cambridge: Cambridge University.Google Scholar
Redi, Laura, and Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel
2001 “Variation in the realization of glottalization in normal speakers.” Journal of Phonetics 29: 407–429. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sanicky, Cristina A.
1989 “Las vocales en contacto en el habla de Misiones, Argentina.” Hispania 72 (3): 700–704. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stockwell, Robert P., J. Donald Bowen, and I. Silva-Fuenzalida
1956 “Spanish Juncture and Intonation.” Language 32 (4): 641–665. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tarone, Elaine
1987 “Some influences on the syllable structure of interlanguage phonology.” In Interlanguage phonology: The acquisition of a second language sound system, ed. by Georgette Ioup and Steven H. Weinberger, 87–111. Cambridge, MA: Newbury House.Google Scholar
Tesar, Bruce B., and Paul Smolensky
1998 “Learnability in Optimality Theory.” Linguistic Inquiry 29: 229–268. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tessier, Anne-Michelle
2007 Biases and stages in phonological acquisition. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA.Google Scholar
Thon, Sonia
1989 “The glottal stop in the Spanish spoken in Corrientes, Argentina.” Hispanic Linguistics 3 (1–2): 199–218.Google Scholar
Umeda, Noriko
1978 “Occurrence of glottal stops in fluent speech.” Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 64 (1): 88–94. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Davidson, Lisa
2021. Effects of word position and flanking vowel on the implementation of glottal stop: Evidence from Hawaiian. Journal of Phonetics 88 ► pp. 101075 ff. Crossref logo
González, Carolina, Christine Weissglass & Daniel Bates
2022. Creaky Voice and Prosodic Boundaries in Spanish: An Acoustic Study. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 15:1 ► pp. 33 ff. Crossref logo
Mohamed, Sherez & Antje Muntendam
2020. The Use of the Glottal Stop as a Variant of /s/ in Puerto Rican Spanish. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 13:2 ► pp. 391 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 01 january 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.