Final‐word lengthening in Spanish

Abstract

In an ongoing work about segmental duration and rhythm in Spanish it was observed that not only final vowels were lengthened but also many final‐word segments seemed to be elongated. The present paper was undertaken in order to quantify this effect. A set of words which occurred in utterance final position, in utterance nonfinal position, and prior to a major constituent boundary were chosen. All syllables were open, bearing the penult syllable the stress. Results showed that the elongation was of different magnitude across the final‐word segments. The greater increment was observed in the final‐syllable vowel (mean final‐nonfinal ratio: 2.03). The lengthening of the penult syllable may be attributed to the stress, to the positional condition or to both factors. Results showed that penult‐syllable elongation was due to a positional factor in the consonant case and to both factors, stress and position, in the vowel case. It was also observed that preboundary words were longer than nonfinal but somewhat shorter than final words. Preboundary words also showed various degrees of lengthening.