The vowel system of Eastern Andalusian Spanish speakers with articulation disorders

Abstract

Eastern Andalusian Spanish deletes coda consonants and the effects of such deletions have been widely studied. However, this has been done almost exclusively for /s/. Furthermore, no study has considered Eastern Andalusian speakers with articulation disorders. The present paper explores the consequences of /s/, /r/, and /θ/ deletion on preceding vowels in Eastern Andalusian speakers with articulation disorders. The vowels from eight speakers with articulation disorders are analysed in word-final position and before underlying /-s/, /-r/, and /-θ/. Acoustic and statistical analyses show that speakers with an articulation disorder do not simply delete word-final consonants, as posited in the literature for these type of speakers, but they also display lowering and fronting/backing, which is typical in this variety of Spanish. The results from the analyses of the 524 vowels from the present study are compared to data of speakers not affected by articulation disorders from the literature. While the vowels of both groups of speakers suffer different alterations depending on the underlying consonant they precede, the intensity of such alterations varies between both groups. It is hypothesised that functional compensation forces explain why speakers with articulation disorders acquire some features of Eastern Andalusian vowels but not others.