Acoustic investigation of anticipatory vowel nasalization in a Caribbean and a non-Caribbean dialect of Spanish

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AbstractSpanish dialectology observes that dialects with a preference for velarized variants of /n/ (e.g. Caribbean dialects) include nasalized vocalic allophones in their inventory. Instrumental cross-dialectal comparisons of Spanish anticipatory nasalization, however, remain surprisingly rare. To this end, I compare the time-course of nasality in pre-nasal vowels in Argentine and Dominican Spanish, as well as across a number of linguistic variables described in the phonetic, sociolinguistic and historical literature. Twenty-eight speakers from Santo Domingo and twenty-six from Buenos Aires were recorded with a nasometer, an ideal instrument for data collection in the field. Measurements of nasal energy were extracted to acoustically characterize the time-course of nasality. Results indicate that Dominican speakers present more extensive anticipatory vowel nasalization than Argentine speakers. These findings are consistent with observations of allophonic nasalization (i.e. phonologized) in the Caribbean dialect under study, Dominican Spanish. Regarding the linguistic variables, stressed pre-nasal vowels showed earlier onset of nasalization, particularly among the Caribbean speakers, which further provides support for the phonological differences in vowel nasality.