Lenition of syllable-initial /p t k/ in a variety of Andalusian Spanish: Effects of linguistic factors and speech rate
Keywords:
Andalusian Spanish, Lenition, Voicing, Voiceless stopsAbstract
This article examines the lenition patterns of post-vocalic /p t k/ in Eastern Andalusian Spanish (EAS). Twelve speakers 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.
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