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EXPERIMENTAL VERIFICATION OF THE PHONEMIC STATUS OF OPEN AND CLOSED VOWELS IN SPANISH

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Date Issued:
1973
Summary:
The phoneme /s/ appEars as the sibilant [s] in standard Spanish and has a high functional load. In those dialects of Spanish in which /s/ --> [ø], however, the question arises as to how, apart from context, those morphological distinctions carried by /s/ are maintained. This study attempts to verify experimentally the often-repeated hypothesis that a compensatory phonemic change in quality takes place in the vowel immediately preceding this [ø] allophone of /s/ in syllable-final and word-final positions. Speech samples were elicited from four native speakers of Cuban Spanish; a perception test was constructed from these samples and was administered to 20 test subjects. The items used on the perception test were also studied spectrographically. In neither the acoustic nor the perceptual portions of this study could we find evidence of any phonemicization of differences in vowel quality before word-final /s/ --> [ø]. This investigation did show that vowel length is phonemic, in this particular dialect of Spanish, in syllable-final position before /s/ appearing as [ø]. A significant increase in vowel length provided the test subjects used in this study with sufficient acoustic cues to correctly discriminate pairs of words such as patillas [patiyas] and pastillas [paøtiyas] at a rate of 91.6%.
Title: AN EXPERIMENTAL VERIFICATION OF THE PHONEMIC STATUS OF OPEN AND CLOSED VOWELS IN SPANISH.
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Name(s): HAMMOND, ROBERT M.
Florida Atlantic University, Degree grantor
Resnick, Melvyn C., Thesis advisor
Type of Resource: text
Genre: Electronic Thesis Or Dissertation
Issuance: monographic
Date Issued: 1973
Publisher: Florida Atlantic University
Place of Publication: Boca Raton, Fla.
Physical Form: application/pdf
Extent: 78 p.
Language(s): English
Summary: The phoneme /s/ appEars as the sibilant [s] in standard Spanish and has a high functional load. In those dialects of Spanish in which /s/ --> [ø], however, the question arises as to how, apart from context, those morphological distinctions carried by /s/ are maintained. This study attempts to verify experimentally the often-repeated hypothesis that a compensatory phonemic change in quality takes place in the vowel immediately preceding this [ø] allophone of /s/ in syllable-final and word-final positions. Speech samples were elicited from four native speakers of Cuban Spanish; a perception test was constructed from these samples and was administered to 20 test subjects. The items used on the perception test were also studied spectrographically. In neither the acoustic nor the perceptual portions of this study could we find evidence of any phonemicization of differences in vowel quality before word-final /s/ --> [ø]. This investigation did show that vowel length is phonemic, in this particular dialect of Spanish, in syllable-final position before /s/ appearing as [ø]. A significant increase in vowel length provided the test subjects used in this study with sufficient acoustic cues to correctly discriminate pairs of words such as patillas [patiyas] and pastillas [paøtiyas] at a rate of 91.6%.
Identifier: 13599 (digitool), FADT13599 (IID), fau:10440 (fedora)
Collection: FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection
Note(s): Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 1973.
Subject(s): Spanish language--Dialects--Phonetics
Spanish language--Phonemics
Held by: Florida Atlantic University Libraries
Persistent Link to This Record: http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/13599
Sublocation: Digital Library
Use and Reproduction: Copyright © is held by the author, with permission granted to Florida Atlantic University to digitize, archive and distribute this item for non-profit research and educational purposes. Any reuse of this item in excess of fair use or other copyright exemptions requires permission of the copyright holder.
Use and Reproduction: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Host Institution: FAU
Is Part of Series: Florida Atlantic University Digital Library Collections.