<OT> New Posting: ROA-553

[Rutgers Optimality Archive]

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ROA 553-1002

On the Phonetic Reality of Spanish /r/ in Complex Onsets

Travis G. Bradley <tgbradley@ucdavis.edu>
Ben Schmeiser <benschmeiser@ucdavis.edu>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=553


Abstract:
A common trend among contemporary generative studies of 
Spanish rhotics is that of glossing over what are deemed 
to be irrelevant, low-level details of phonetic 
implementation. Consequently, much of the variation 
underlying the phonetic reality of these segments is 
ignored. Such a move is taken, for instance, by Harris 
(1983:62), who reduces the 'astonishing variety of 
r-quality phones ? to just two, [r] and [rr], which will 
be understood to jointly exhaust the rich phonetic 
variety [...] I will say little more about phonetic 
detail?' Recent investigations have begun to redress the 
lack of attention given to phonetic detail (e.g., 
Colantoni 2001, Hammond 1999, 2000, to appear-a,b, and 
Willis and Pedrosa 1998). The present work contributes 
to this line of research by investigating the phonetic 
reality of Spanish /r/ in complex onsets.

This paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we 
identify some prosodic, segmental, and stylistic 
influences on the realization of /Cr/ clusters. In 
Section 3, we develop a formal analysis, couched within 
a phonetically-based version of Optimality Theory (OT; 
Prince and Smolensky 1993, McCarthy and Prince 1995), in 
which the articulatory drive to coarticulate adjacent 
consonantal gestures in the output conflicts with the 
perceptual requirement that input clusters be 
recoverable. Section 4 shows how the analysis captures 
the attested influences on /Cr/ realization. In Section 
5, we discuss the role of phonetic detail in 
phonological analysis and suggest some areas for further 
empirical investigation. Section 6 concludes.

Keywords: Spanish, rhotics, gestural timing, svarabhakti vowels,
coarticulation, phonetically-based Optimality Theory

Areas: Phonology, Phonetics

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=553