Part of
Amazonian Spanish: Language Contact and EvolutionEdited by Stephen Fafulas
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 23] 2020
► pp. 223–258
In this study, we examine the production of the palatal lateral in Spanish, represented orthographically as <ll>, as produced by bilinguals in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The purpose of this study is first to observe what changes may have taken place in the acoustic production of palatal /ʎ/ by Quichua-Spanish speakers in comparison to related segments /l/ and /ʝ/ which may be due to indigenous language contact, and second to determine if extralinguistic influences may have contributed to this change (e.g., differences in gender). While males appear to maintain a distinct palatal lateral and females demonstrate a move towards delateralization, both genders demonstrate cases of depalatalization due to allophony, as in their native language.