Articulatory characteristics of coronal consonants in Argentine Spanish: An electropalatographic study.

Abstract

Previous articulatory investigations of Spanish have been largely limited to its Peninsular varieties. This study uses electropalatography (EPG) to investigate articulatory characteristics of coronal consonant contrasts in Argentine Spanish as part of a larger project examining phonetic variation across Spanish dialects. Simultaneous EPG and acoustic data were collected from four female speakers of Buenos Aires Spanish reading sentences with various intervocalic coronal consonants. Results revealed consistent differences in terms of anterior/posterior tongue placement and the amount of linguopalatal contact with the primary distinction between (denti-)alveolar and post-alveolar articulations within the classes of stops/affricates, fricatives, nasals, and laterals/rhotics. Inter-speaker variation was observed, however, in the articulation of some consonants, namely, in the apical or laminal realization of the post-alveolar fricative and in the palatal or palatalized alveolar realization of the post-alveolar nasal. These findings diverge from those reported for Peninsular Spanish [A. M. Fernández Planas, Estudios de fonética experimental, 16, 11–80 (2007)], revealing some dialectal differences in the degree of fronting of denti-alveolars. Additionally, results suggest a sound change in progress in Argentine Spanish, such as the depalatalization of the palatal nasal. [Work supported by Connaught, University of Toronto.]