The voiced labiodental allophone [v] of the phoneme /b/ in the Spanish of concepción (Chile): An exploratory study

Abstract

The existence in Spanish of a voiced labiodental allophone [v] of the phoneme /b/ is widely rejected — so much so, in fact, that often the only way to trace this phone is through its absence from descriptions of the Spanish phonetic-phonological system. In the case of Chilean Spanish, however, at least three exceptions to this consensus have emerged in the last two decades. This article presents the results of a pilot study of the allophones of the phoneme /b/ in the Spanish of young adults in the province of Concepción, Chile. The hypothesis that the phoneme /b/ has a voiced labiodental allophone [v] is confirmed, and the frequency and distribution of this allophone in different phonetic environments are analyzed. The analysis shows that [v] accounts for 59.5% of all tokens of /b/, a substantially higher number than the literature predicts. It further shows that [v] is the most frequent allophone in 11 of 20 anterior phonetic environments and 16 of 19 posterior environments, and that the orthographic representation of this phoneme does not influence the selection of allophones.