Intervocalic /ɡ/ realization in Border Uruguayan Spanish

Publication Date

12-31-2023

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Spanish in Context

Volume

20

Issue

3

DOI

10.1075/sic.00096.gra

First Page

490

Last Page

512

Abstract

In Border Uruguayan Spanish, intervocalic voiced obstruents have been known to be produced as stops due to the variety's contact with Portuguese. The present study investigates intervocalic /ɡ/ in a corpus of sociolinguistic interviews. Using an acoustic measure, a consonant-vowel intensity ratio, as an index of constriction of /ɡ/, we found that, similar to /b/ and /d/, the speaker's age, Spanish use, and sex have a strong impact on the realization of intervocalic /ɡ/. Specifically, younger speakers, those that speak Spanish most of the time, and men are likely to use less constricted variants such as approximants and elision. Given the parallels that these results have with findings of studies of intervocalic /d/ and, to a lesser extent, /b/ in this variety, we discuss support for the notion that the three phonemes behave as a series and not independently.

Keywords

intervocalic /ɡ/, language contact, phonetic variation

Department

World Languages and Literatures

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