Phonetic evidence on phonology–morphosyntax interactions: Sibilant voicing in Quito Spanish

Abstract

This paper presents new experimental data on Quito Spanish /s/-voicing, which has attracted considerable interest from theoretical phonologists owing to the overapplication of voicing to word-final pre-vocalic /s/. Bermúdez-Otero (2011) singles out Quito /s/-voicing as an important test case for discriminating between two competing theories of phonology–morphosyntax interactions: Output–output correspondence and cyclicity. Overapplication in /s/-voicing cannot be captured using correspondence relationship to a base form, which challenges Output–output correspondence as a theory of opacity. However, the argument only holds insofar as word-final pre-vocalic /s/-voicing is considered phonological, as Output–output correspondence can account for /s/-voicing assuming that it only applies in the phonetics (Colina 2009). We discuss the diverging empirical predictions concerning categoricity and gradience in the surface realisation of voicing processes. We further test these predictions based on acoustic data from seven speakers of Quito Spanish. Evidence from speech rate manipulations shows that some speakers produce more voicing during frication at normal speech rate, compared to fast, maintaining a stable voicing ratio across different speech rates. We argue that for these speakers, /s/-voicing is optional but categorical, and so it ought to be analysed as phonological. This result presents a challenge to the Output–output correspondence approach, but can be accommodated within cyclicity.

Resyllabification Reconsidered: On the Durational Properties of Word-Final /s/ in Spanish

“…This is because preceding a voiced consonant, /s/ may undergo voicing (Romero, 1999), which in turn may shorten the fricative. Effects of voice assimilation on the duration of the undergoer have been noted for a number of languages (Jansen, 2004), including the Quito dialect of Spanish (Strycharczuk et al, 2013). For the intervocalic environments, we kept the vowels surrounding /s/ constant.…”

“…However, it is not obvious how to accommodate this distinction in phonology. A body of theoretical work on Spanish involves the assumption that derived onsets and canonical onsets share a common phonological representation (e.g., Bermúdez-Otero, 2011;Colina, 1997Colina, , 2009aFace, 2002;Kaisse, 1999;Ramsammy, 2013;Strycharczuk et al, 2013). Once that assumption is made, the burden of distinguishing between the behaviour of canonical and derived onsets falls onto computation.…”

“…An earlier account proposing a solution involving multiple levels is by Kaisse (1999), who analyzes Spanish /s/-aspiration as being lexical or post-lexical in different dialects of Spanish. The representation of derived onsets and its relevance for output-oriented theories of phonology, such as Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky 2004[1993) is also considered in works by Colina (2002), Broś (2012), Ramsammy (2013), and Strycharczuk et al (2013).…”

Inter-consonantal intervals in Tripolitanian Libyan Arabic: Accounting for variable epenthesis

“…In the case of Figure 6, the terminal nodes (numbered 3, 4, 6, and 7) show the proportions of ICIs in cluster 1, 2, and 3. (See Plug & Carter, 2013, 2014Strycharczuk, Van 't Veer, Bruil, & Linke, 2014 for further examples of the use of this modelling technique in laboratory phonology studies.) Figure 6 confirms that the phonological conditioning seen in Figure 4 is systematic both across the three phonetic parameters and across speakers: ICI Site yields the first, main split in the data, separating sites 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, and 10 from sites 2, 4, 6, and 9.…”

Assessing surface phonological specification through simulation and classification of phonetic trajectories

“…Manipulation of speech rate(Solé 1992, Strycharczuk et al 2014 has also been used to probe phonological specification, the key assumption being that only phonologically specified features (not the mechanical consequences of coarticulation) maintain proportional influence over the phonetic signal across speech rates.…”