Abstract
Until recently, the consensus was that labiodental realizations of Spanish /b/ did not exist, and that consequently this variation in place of articulation could be safely disregarded. However, new evidence emerged showing that labiodental variants of /b/ do exist in relatively high numbers, at least in some dialects such as in Chilean Spanish. This study set out to determine whether Chilean Spanish listeners are able to perceive the differences between bilabial and labiodental approximant variants of Spanish /b/ (i.e., [β̞] versus [ʋ]). In order to test this, natural and synthetic stimuli were presented to 31 native listeners in identification and discrimination tasks. Results showed that, while the identification task with natural stimuli provided mixed evidence of sensitivity to the contrast, the identification and discrimination tasks with synthetic stimuli provided no evidence of listeners perceiving the phonetic contrast categorically. In sum, listeners do no seem able to perceive the acoustic differences between the two segments, and thus it is unlikely that this phonetic contrast could be employed to encode sociolinguistic information.
Highlights
the consensus was that labiodental realizations of Spanish
new evidence emerged showing that labiodental variants of /b/ do exist in
This study set out to determine whether Chilean Spanish listeners are able to perceive the differences between bilabial
Summary
La variación del fonema /b/ del castellano ha recibido considerable atención dado su rol en varios debates que involucran a la serie natural /b d g/, como el relacionado con el debilitamiento versus fortalecimiento de las variantes de estas unidades fonológicas (Harris, 1969; Lozano, 1978; Goldsmith, 1981; Danesi, 1982; Mascaró, 1984; Hualde, 1989; Baković, 1994; Piñeros, 2002; Barlow, 2003), o discusiones relacionadas con la adecuación de llamar a las variantes no oclusivas de /b d g/ como “fricativas” o no (Martínez-Celdrán, 2004). En otras variedades del español, se ha mostrado que las consonantes aproximantes de /b/ tienen una duración promedio entre los 30 y 60 ms (Almeida y Pérez Vidal, 1991; Martínez Celdrán, 1984, 2013), y que su intensidad relativa se encuentra inversamente correlacionada con su grado de constricción articulatoria (Ortega-Llebaria, 2003; Colantoni y Marinescu, 2010; Eddington, 2011; Hualde, Simonet y Nadeu, 2011; Carrasco et al, 2012; Figueroa Candia, 2016). No existe información respecto de potenciales diferencias acústicas entre las variantes [β] y [ʋ] en castellano, porque los estudios que reportan valores acústicos de las realizaciones aproximantes no han considerado la variable punto de articulación en sus análisis. Finalmente, si se encuentra evidencia de percepción categórica en las dos tareas de identificación (con estímulos naturales y sintéticos), pero no en la tarea de discriminación, puede significar que los oyentes son capaces de reconocer las dos categorías como distintas, pero que la distancia entre los estímulos en la tarea de discriminación es muy pequeña como para proveer juicios de sensibilidad discriminativa
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