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Spanish Phonetics and Phonology in Contact: Studies from Africa, the Americas, and Spain
Edited by Rajiv Rao
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 28] 2020
► pp. 141–162

Chapter 6
Intervocalic phonemic stop realization in Amazonian Peru

The case of Yagua Spanish

| University of Michigan
| University of Mississippi
| University of Alabama

This study explores intervocalic phonemic stop realization in Spanish by monolingual and bilingual speakers in the Peruvian Amazon. We performed an acoustic analysis of sociolinguistic interviews conducted in Spanish with Spanish monolinguals and Yagua-Spanish bilinguals. We focus on Yagua-Spanish bilinguals since the substrate language, Yagua, does not contrast voiceless and voiced stops. Our results, derived from phonetic measurements of relative intensity and consonant duration, show that there is greater lenition of stops by Spanish monolinguals than by Yagua-Spanish bilinguals. They further suggest that ethnic Yagua communities are converging toward Spanish-like patterns of lenition of /p t k b d ɡ/. Altogether, this study contributes to the literature on Spanish contact phonology through an investigation of Spanish-Yagua bilingualism in Amazonian Peru.

Keywords: Spanish, Yagua, Peruvian Spanish, Language contact, Lenition
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Phonemic stops in Spanish and Yagua
    • 2.2Previous research on lenition of stop phonemes in L1 and L2 Spanish
    • 2.3Theoretical framework and research questions
  • 3.Methods
    • 3.1Data collection
    • 3.2Participants
    • 3.3Acoustic analysis
    • 3.4Statistical analysis
  • 4.Results
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1Responses to research questions
    • 5.2Implications
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 6 August 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.28.06hen
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