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Article published In:
Spanish in Context
Vol. 20:3 (2023) ► pp.490–512

Intervocalic /ɡ/ realization in Border Uruguayan Spanish

| Arizona State University
| New Mexico State University
| Arizona State University
| New York University
| San José State University

In Border Uruguayan Spanish, intervocalic voiced obstruents have been known to be produced as stops due to the variety’s contact with Portuguese. The present study investigates intervocalic /ɡ/ in a corpus of sociolinguistic interviews. Using an acoustic measure, a consonant-vowel intensity ratio, as an index of constriction of /ɡ/, we found that, similar to /b/ and /d/, the speaker’s age, Spanish use, and sex have a strong impact on the realization of intervocalic /ɡ/. Specifically, younger speakers, those that speak Spanish most of the time, and men are likely to use less constricted variants such as approximants and elision. Given the parallels that these results have with findings of studies of intervocalic /d/ and, to a lesser extent, /b/ in this variety, we discuss support for the notion that the three phonemes behave as a series and not independently.

Keywords: language contact, phonetic variation, intervocalic /ɡ/
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Phonological variation in Border Uruguayan Spanish
  • 3.Acoustic approaches to Spanish obstruent constriction
  • 4.Methodology
    • 4.1Data
    • 4.2Acoustic measurements
    • 4.3Predictors
      • 4.3.1Word position
      • 4.3.2Social predictors
    • 4.4Analysis
  • 5.Results
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 6 December 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sic.00096.gra
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