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Testing for underlying representations: Segments and clusters in Sevillian Spanish

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Abstract

The current study investigates the representational status of [Ch] sequences in Sevillian Spanish. Like many Spanish varieties, Sevillian debuccalizes coda /s/ to [h] (/sC/ → [hC]). Unlike other varieties, Sevillian is undergoing a change whereby [hC] sequences are variably realized as [Ch] sequences. I argue that surface (phonetic) [Ch] sequences are metathesized versions of underlying /sC/ clusters, and have not phonologized into a new series of aspirated stops . Evidence supporting the /sC/ cluster analysis comes from a perception study in which Sevillians reconstruct /s/ on the word preceding [Ch] sequences. Listeners of other dialects do not attribute [h] in [Ch] sequences to a preceding /s/. I present a brief cross-dialectal analysis corresponding to the participant groups’ different behavior in the perception experiment, in which the dialects share underlying representations but map them differently to surface forms. I also discuss reasons the aspirated stop analysis may be implausible, from both a learning and analytical perspective. The findings have broader implications for our understanding of the mapping between underlying and surface forms, segments, and the connection between dialect variation and perception.

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Notes

  1. In principle, they could also be realizations of an underlying /Ch/ cluster. I do not discuss this representation here for reasons described in later sections—namely, that tautosyllabic /Ch/ clusters are cross-linguistically rare, and that there is surface variation in Sevillian between [.Ch] ∼ [s.C] ∼ [h.C]. The latter two surface forms do not lend themselves to a /Ch/ representation. These reasons are further discussed in Sect. 2.

  2. Cross-linguistically, distinguishing between segments and clusters at the surface level is difficult because phonetic diagnostics do not always correlate with hypothesized segmental status (see Sect. 5.3).

  3. English does have stop-h sequences across morpheme boundaries, e.g., top-hat. These are heterosyllabic, and are clearly clusters because the two segments come from different morphemes (as in Finnish).

  4. Previous studies refer to [h] in [Ch] as VOT and postaspiration. I do not, because this term implies that [h] belongs to the stop, an analysis I argue against.

  5. Vowel laxing and harmony in the environment of coda /s/ weakening is commonly reported for Eastern Andalusian Spanish, but not for varieties of Western Andalusian Spanish (e.g., Henriksen 2017; Herrero de Haro 2016; see Herrero de Haro 2017 for overview).

  6. Although metathesized [h] and VOT may not be phonetically identical, I assume that shortening metathesized [h] to the same length as a short-lag Spanish VOT sounds similar enough to naturally-produced short-lag VOT. Indeed, the experiment shows that listeners accept shortened [h] as the VOT of intervocalic /p, t, k/.

  7. Diphthongs occur only in stressed syllables, which is why /tu/ and /bos/ forms differ in both stress and quality of the first vowel ( vs. ).

  8. Note that the expected pattern of results under the aspirated stop analysis for Seville is the same as for Mexico under a cluster analysis. In that case, how would we know that the representation for Sevillian Spanish differs from that of Mexican Spanish? My results suggest that Mexican listeners essentially treat post-posed [h] as linguistically irrelevant. For Sevillian listeners, in contrast, post-posed [h] has been found to be one of the strongest cues to the /C/-/sC/ contrast (Ruch and Peters 2016), so it would be unlikely for them not to perceive it. If they perceive it but do not attribute it to phonological context, that suggests that they may consider it part of the stop.

  9. There are several reasons that 2sg responses may not be at 100% for the longest [h] step. First, overall accuracy for identifying [h] in [hC] and [Ch] sequences hovers around 75–80% in other studies too, even for listeners whose native dialects have debuccalization (Bedinghaus 2015). A more interesting possibility is that the stimuli provide conflicting cues, since the verb comes from a 3sg sentence and the nonce word comes from a 2sg sentence. As reported for other varieties spoken in Southern Spain (Henriksen 2017), my 2sg verbs showed some vowel laxing in the wake of /s/ weakening (/tjenes/ → [tjenɛ]) compared to 3sg verbs. Inserting nonce words with long [h] after 3sg verbs leads to a conflict: the verb-final vowel indicates 3sg, but the long [h] indicates 2sg. This conflict may have lowered the rate of 2sg responses, but the high rate of 2sg responses (78%) suggests that [h] duration carries more weight than preceding vowel quality. Thanks to Aaron Kaplan for bringing this to my attention.

  10. The directionality of the emmeans effects is reversed from the effects in the models, where positive estimates indicate higher likelihood of a 2sg response. This is because the baseline level of the comparison is different. The models predict the likelihood of a 2sg response at Step-1 and Step-2 as compared to the baseline Step-0. The positive effects indicate more 2sg responses in those steps as compared to Step-0. In contrast, emmeans compares the likelihood of a 2sg response at Step-0 vs. Step-1 and Step-2, and Step-1 vs. Step-2. The baselines are the shorter h-duration steps; negative effects indicate fewer 2sg responses at the shorter steps as compared to the longer ones.

  11. Readers may wonder if place of articulation affects listeners’ responses. The patterns are very similar across places of articulation: 2sg responses increase as [h] duration increases. In Seville, listeners have numerically higher 2sg response rates for /st/, followed by /sk/ and /sp/, at all H-Duration steps. Rates of 2sg responses are also higher for /st/ than /sk, sp/ in Mexico and Argentina. However, when place of articulation is included in the main model (three-way interaction between Region*H-Step*POA), the only statistically significant effect is for /st/ in Seville at Step-2. That is, there is a disproportionate boost in 2sg responses at Step-2 for /st/ in Seville. This tendency to interpret long [h] in [th] as 2sg cannot just be due to [h] duration: in the stimuli, [h] is longer on [k] than on [t] (see Table 2). Instead, this tendency follows if the change started in /st/ sequences (as proposed in e.g., Ruch and Peters 2016), and listeners are most used to the metathesized realization of these sequences. Excluding place of articulation from the main model did not affect direction or significance of other effects, so I omit it to focus on the effect of [h] duration, which holds across places of articulation.

  12. Recall that Argentinian Spanish typically uses a different form for 2sg (Table 4). However, when Argentinian Spanish speakers do produce the 2sg form of the other dialects, it is with debuccalization, as in Table 8.

  13. My constraints limit codas by restricting place features in coda position, and I assume that these features can be delinked independently of other features. Other approaches force coda reduction with constraints that limit the feature [continuous] (e.g., Morris 2000), force delinking of the entire supralaryngeal node (place and manner) (e.g., Hualde 1989b), or force delinking of both place and manner separately (e.g., Lloret and Martínez-Paricio 2020). My basic analysis could be framed in any of these ways. A closer analysis of some phenomena I do not analyze—total assimilation and gemination of an /sC/ sequences to [C:], debuccalization and metathesis of coda /p, t, k/, and coalescence in /sb, sd, sg/ sequences (e.g., /desde/ → )—may favor one approach or another.

  14. The specific formulation of the constraints is affected by this assumption, but the structure of the analysis does not hinge on it.

  15. Thanks to Michael Kenstowicz for this suggestion.

  16. Recall that voiced stops in this context are spirantized, with no closure or release.

  17. In Seville, these variants are sociolinguistically conditioned, within and across speakers. Conditioning factors include gender, age, and level of education (Ruch 2008; Horn 2013; Ruch and Peters 2016; Moya Corral and Tejada Giráldez 2020). There is also stylistic variation: some variants are more frequent in certain speech styles (Ruch 2008; see also Table 10).

  18. In /pt, kt/ sequences. The other combinations are extremely rare.

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Acknowledgements

This work was carried out at NYU. I’d like to thank Maria Gouskova, Lisa Davidson, Gillian Gallagher, Juliet Stanton, and Joseph Casillas for helpful guidance in developing this work. Thanks also to audiences at AMP 2020, LSA 2020, and the NYU PEP Lab for helpful feedback, and to Julio López Otero for recording the experimental stimuli. Finally, thanks to Michael Kenstowicz and several NLLT reviewers for feedback that substantially improved this paper.

This work is partially supported by a public grant overseen by the IdEx Université Paris Cité (ANR-18-IDEX-0001) as part of the Labex Empirical Foundations of Linguistics - EFL.

A preliminary version of this work appeared in the Supplemental Proceedings of AMP 2020: Gilbert, Madeline, 2021. Segments vs. clusters: Postaspiration in Sevillian Spanish. In Ryan Bennett, Richard Bibbs, Mykel Loren Brinkerhoff, Max J. Kaplan, Stephanie Rich, Nicholas van Handel & Maya Wax Cavallaro (eds.), Supplemental Proceedings of the 2020 Annual Meeting on Phonology. Washington, DC: Linguistic Society of America. https://doi.org/10.3765/amp.v9i0.4909. The proceedings paper reports experimental results from two listener groups. This paper reflects further development of the experimental and theoretical work: an additional experi- mental group is included to test another part of my hypothesis, and the experimental results are analyzed within a formal framework.

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    Madeline Gilbert

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Appendices

Appendix A: Stimuli

Table 13 Full illustration of test, control, and filler items for pali. [p] = Step-0; = Step-1; [ph] = Step-2/Naturally long
Full size table

Appendix B: Model results

Table 14 Model results for Mexico, Seville, and Argentina data together
Full size table

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Gilbert, M. Testing for underlying representations: Segments and clusters in Sevillian Spanish. Nat Lang Linguist Theory (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-023-09575-4

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