Lenition of syllable-initial /p t k/ in a variety of Andalusian Spanish: Effects of linguistic factors and speech rate

Fernando Melero-García ^[1]
1. [1] University of Texas at Arlington
  
  University of Texas at Arlington
  
  Estados Unidos
Localización: Estudios de fonética experimental, ISSN 1575-5533, ISSN-e 2385-3573, Nº. 30, 2021, págs. 169-188
Idioma: inglés
Enlaces
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Resumen
- This article examines the lenition patterns of syllable-initial /p t k/ in a variety of Andalusian Spanish. Twelve speakers from the same town completed a semi-directed interview from which a total of 2,400 instances of /p t k/ were extracted and analyzed. Three acoustic correlates were taken from each token: closure duration, intensity measurements, and voicing. The results indicate that more than half of the tokens were produced with, at least, partial voicing. The results also suggest that /p t k/ lenition occurs across word boundaries and is strongly conditioned by phonetic context, speech rate, and lexical stress. This study has significant implications for the study of sound change and language variation which are discussed in this article.