Sound change and gender-based differences in isolated regions: acoustic analysis of intervocalic phonemic stops by Bora-Spanish bilinguals

Abstract

Abstract This study examines Spanish phonemic stops in the speech of 15 ethnically Bora bilinguals (8 males, 7 females) living in the Peruvian Amazon, within the broader context of examining gender-based phonetic variation in small speech communities. We target pronunciation of intervocalic phonemic /p t k b d g/ extracted from sociolinguistic interviews. The acoustic analysis focuses on consonant duration and relative intensity of each target phoneme. The results reveal clear gender-based variation, with males adopting more lenited variants of certain phonemic stops than females. We discuss these findings in light of gender-based research on phonetic variation in communities undergoing sound change. More generally, our study contributes to the literature on language variation and societal contacts in small speech communities in Amazonia.