Rhotic variation in Spanish codas

Abstract

The present study describes the variation that syllable-final rhotics (preconsonantal and prepausal) exhibit in spontaneous speech in Central Peninsular Spanish. First, a detailed description of the acoustic and temporal characteristics of each variant is provided. At the same time, the effects of contextual factors are analyzed for the different acoustic realizations. The proportion of more relaxed variants (elision and one-component, without a vocalic fragment) is higher in spontaneous speech than in read speech, while only 6.7% of the tokens are trilled. Furthermore, realizations with a fricative opening phase, as opposed to the usual vocalic element, were also obtained. Results indicate that the most important factor in the acoustic definition of rhotics is their position (before a consonant or before a pause). Finally, main effects were found for the place and manner of articulation of the following gesture as well as stress on the number of components of coda rhotics.