ITRW on Experimental Linguistics Athens, Greece August 28-30, 2006

Effects of VV-Sequence Deletion Across Word Boundaries in Spanish

Irene Barberia (1,2)

(1) Department of Philology, University of Deusto, Spain
(2)Department of Spanish, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

Spanish does not allow vowel deletion in unstressed syllables the way languages like English do. However, it may occur in contexts of VV-sequences across word boundaries, under durational reduction in connected speech. This paper explores the effects of vowel deletion on the perception of [-high] vowel sequences on 8 native speakers of Peninsular Spanish. The results are then compared to the speakers’ production of those sequences. This double experiment suggests that, although matching between perception and production does not correlate, production cues are relevant to the perception of the words containing tautosyllabic vowels. Likewise, it is claimed that perceptual cues influence the production of vowel sequences, suggesting that perceptual distinctiveness is relevant to the understanding of acoustic and articulatory preferences.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Barberia, Irene (2006): "Effects of VV-sequence deletion across word boundaries in Spanish", In ExLing-2006, 85-88.