<OT> New Posting: ROA-783

[roa at ruccs.rutgers.edu]

ROA 783-1105

Sibilant Voicing in Highland Ecuadorian Spanish

Travis G. Bradley <tgbradley at ucdavis.edu>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=783


Abstract:
Dispersion Theory formalizes the structuralist notion of
systemic contrast within a constraint-based phonological
framework (DT; FLEMMING, 1995, 2002; NI CHIOSAIN & PADGETT,
2001; PADGETT, 2003a,b,c). Bradley & Delforge (in press)
propose a DT analysis of sibilant voicing patterns throughout
the history of Spanish, from the loss of medieval voiced
sibilants through their reemergence in several contemporary
dialects. Phonetic effects in sibilant voicing are adequately
explained by a distinction between obstruents that are phonologic
ally specified for [voice] and targetless, neutral obstruents
that undergo gradient voicing by phonetic interpolation
(ERNESTUS, 2003, STERIADE, 1997, 1999). It is possible to
incorporate a non-contrastive phonetic category because
in DT, systemic constraints govern the well-formedness of
phonological contrasts. The present study focuses in greater
detail on sibilant voicing in the Spanish of highland Ecuador
and takes into account some additional observations by Robinson
(1979) that have not been addressed in the DT approach thus
far. First, regional variation in the voicing of prefix-final
/s/ is shown to depend on whether prefixes are incorporated
in the lexical phonology, where devoicing is favored, or
in the postlexical phonology, where voicing serves to distinguish
morpheme-final sibilants from morpheme-initial ones in phrasal
intervocalic contexts. Second, native speaker intuitions
regarding the lack of resyllabification of morpheme-final
prevocalic [z] are actually predicted by a theory which
acknowledges the role of systemic contrast in the postlexical
phonology.

Comments: To appear in Lingua(gem) in December 2005.
Keywords: Ecuadorian Spanish, sibilant voicing, phonetic underspecification, Dispersion Theory, contrast, perceptual distinctiveness, neutralization, resyllabification
Areas: Phonology,Phonetics
Type: Journal Article

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=783