An exploratory study of nasal decomposition and mid-vowel gliding in Argentine Spanish
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Abstract
The present paper reports an exploratory study analyzing a potential link between mid-vowel gliding and nasal decomposition in Argentine Spanish. Argentine Spanish has been reported to decompose the palatal nasal, /ñ/, into a sequence of nasal and glide sequence, [nj] (Bongiovanni, 2015a, 2015b, in preparation; Kochetov & Colantoni, 2011; Malmberg, 1951). As a result, words like hura~no /uɾañio/ `unsociable' and uranio /uɾanio/ `uranium' are no longer contrastive in this dialect of Spanish. At the same time, this dialect exhibits mid-vowel gliding in hiactic vowel sequences. A potential link between these two processes has been posited in recent research (Colantoni & Kochetov, 2010), as participants who decoupled the articulatory gestures involved in the production of the palatal nasal also presented categorical diphthongization of hiatic sequences. The present study compares the production of the vocalic portion in the syllables /ña/, /nia/ and /nea/ in present day Buenos Aires Spanish to determine whether the presence of nasal decomposition was accompanied by the dipthongization of the mid-vowel in /nea/ sequences. For this purpose, two acoustic cues were examined: (1) duration and (2) formant trajectories of the vocalic portion. The results in the present study indicate no link between these two phonological processes.
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