Coda obstruents and local constraint conjunction in north-central Peninsular Spanish

Abstract

In this study, the principle of local constraint conjunction is applied to account for the distribution of coda obstruents in a variety of colloquial Peninsular Spanish. The dialect in question is spoken primarily in north-central Spain. Martinez-Gil (1991), a study of rule parameters in Peninsular Spanish phonology, labels this dialect “Dialect B” and argues that it can be differentiated from “Dialect A,” which corresponds to standard Castilian, by means of rule reordering. This dialect is also alluded to frequently in Hualde’s (1989) study on Spanish consonant processes and feature geometries, as well as in Navarro Tomas’s (1967) Manual de pronunciacion espanola, which remains a definitive analysis of standard Castilian phonetics. These and other studies generally concur that the dialect spoken in the north-central region is characterized by considerable interand intra-speaker variation. It is therefore likely that this dialect is in a state of transition (cf. Labov 1994). A presentation and evaluation the relevant data from Dialect B is followed by a discussion of local conjunction. An Optimality Theoretic analysis is then proposed. It is shown that the principle of local conjunction can be applied to account for unexpected input-to-output mappings which would otherwise pose a problem for Optimality Theoretic analysis. Finally, the significance of local conjunction for phonological theory, in light of the present analysis, is discussed.