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Mary Elizabeth Beaton Dissertation.pdf (4.83 MB)

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Coda Liquid Production and Perception in Puerto Rican Spanish

Beaton, Mary Elizabeth
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1437135547

Abstract Details

2015, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Spanish and Portuguese.
Dialects of Spanish in the Caribbean and southern Spain are described as "switching" liquids in syllable-final position, resulting in the neutralization of the two sounds. This dissertation considers liquid variation in San Juan Spanish (SJS), which is frequently cited as neutralizing /r/ to /l/ such that arma ('weapon') and alma ('soul') are both pronounced [al.ma]. In light of recent work suggesting that neutralization is often incomplete, i.e. small but significant differences exist between two sounds previous considered to be merged, this study examines the formant structure (F1, F2, F3, F4) and duration of rhotics and laterals in SJS to determine the neutralization status of /r/ and /l/. This dissertation also features a perception experiment which tests how well SJS listeners are able to hear acoustic differences between the liquids. Using twenty-four sociolinguistic interviews with SJS speakers, I extracted 2,212 vowel+/r/ and 728 vowel+/l/ sequences. The conditionings of word position, stress, vowel, preceding and following consonants, gender, and age are considered for two separate data analyses. The first analysis considers the conditioning on the manner of articulation of the liquid. Then, approximant liquids, which are the site of potential neutralization, were analyzed for formant structure and duration. In order to develop an understanding of the dynamic formant trajectories, seven equidistant points were sampled for all four formants. These measurements were submitted to both linear regression analyses and Smoothing Spline ANOVAs. To test liquid perception, an online survey with vowel+liquid audio clips with varying formant structure was presented to both SJS and northern Spain Castilian Spanish (CS) listeners. The results for approximant liquid production indicate that rhotics are far more variant in SJS than laterals and their realization depends on linguistic and social factors. Therefore, I propose viewing this dialect as possessing a liquid continuum, rather than as switching /r/ for /l/. I find that rhotics have similar formant structure to the vowel that precedes them, thus becoming more /l/-like after vowels with high or fronted articulation. While rhotics assimilate to vowels, they dissimilate from surrounding consonants. I assert that liquid variation in SJS is motivated by low coarticulatory resistance of rhotics to vowels combined with a sensitivity to sonority sequencing principles such that the liquid segments contrast maximally in sonority from surrounding consonants. Gender plays a role in rhotic manner of articulation; women produce more tap and fricative rhotics, men produce more deletions, and gender plays no role in approximant productions. Speaker age, however, is significant for the production of F3 in approximant liquids. Younger speakers have more tongue bunching for rhotics than laterals, whereas older speakers neutralize the sounds. The tendency for younger speakers to neutralize less may serve to avoid negative social evaluation. In the perception experiment, SJS listeners, unlike CS listeners, were able to hear differences in /r/ and /l/ in the context of less neutralizing vowel environments. This finding suggests that SJS listeners are able to hear liquid differences in their own dialect, whereas listeners with more distinct sounds are unable to utilize these small articulatory differences.
Rebeka Campos-Astorkiza (Advisor)
Scott Schwenter (Advisor)
Terrell Morgan (Committee Member)
308 p.
Foreign Language; Language; Linguistics
linguistics; sociophonetics; sociolinguistics; phonetics; Hispanic linguistics; liquids; rhotics; laterals; Puerto Rican Spanish; San Juan Spanish

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Citations

  • Beaton, M. E. (2015). Coda Liquid Production and Perception in Puerto Rican Spanish [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1437135547

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Beaton, Mary. Coda Liquid Production and Perception in Puerto Rican Spanish. 2015. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1437135547.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Beaton, Mary. "Coda Liquid Production and Perception in Puerto Rican Spanish." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1437135547

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1437135547
2,004
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.