This accessible textbook provides a clear introduction to the sounds of Spanish, designed particularly for English-speaking students of the language. Assuming no prior knowledge of linguistics, it explains from scratch the fundamentals of phonetics (the study of sounds) and phonology (the study of sound systems) and describes in detail the phonetic and phonological characteristics of Spanish as it is spoken in both Spain and Latin America. Topics covered include consonants, vowels, acoustics, stress, syllables, intonation and aspects of variation within Spanish. Clear comparisons are made between the sounds of Spanish and those of English, and students are encouraged to put theory into practice with over fifty graded exercises. Setting a solid foundation in the description and analysis of Spanish sounds, The Sounds of Spanish will help students improve their pronunciation of the language, and will also be useful to those studying the linguistic structure of Spanish for the first time. All the sounds discussed in this book are demonstrated on The Sounds of Spanish audio CD, included with this book.
JOSÉ I. HUALDE is Professor in the Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese and the Department of Linguistics at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is co-author of Introducción a la lingüística hispánica (Cambridge University Press, 2001), author of Basque Phonology (1991) and editor of Generative Studies in Basque Linguistics (1993), Towards a History of the Basque Language (1995), and A Grammar of Basque (2003). He has also published a large number of articles and book chapters, mostly on topics in Spanish, Romance and Basque phonology.
José Ignacio Hualde
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo
Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521545389
© José Ignacio Hualde 2005
This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2005
Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
Hualde, José Ignacio, 1958–
The sounds of Spanish / José Ignacio Hualde.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0 521 54538 2 (paperback)
1. Spanish language – Phonetics. 2. Spanish language – phonology I. Title.
PC4135.H83 2005
461′.5 – dc22 2004061593
ISBN-13 978-0-521-54538-9 paperback
ISBN-10 0-521-54538-2 paperback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
List of figures xii | ||
Preface xv | ||
List of abbreviations xvii | ||
Chart of the international phonetic alphabet xix | ||
1 Introduction 1 | ||
1.1 The phonemic principle 1 | ||
1.2 Sounds and symbols: orthographic and phonemic representation 2 | ||
1.3 More on Spanish orthography 3 | ||
1.3.1 Letters with more than one phonemic value 3 | ||
1.3.2 Phonemes spelt differently in different contexts 4 | ||
1.3.3 Phonemes spelt in more than one way in the same context 4 | ||
1.4 Phonemes and allophones 6 | ||
1.5 Phonology and phonetics 12 | ||
1.6 The International Phonetic Alphabet: advantages and shortcomings 15 | ||
Exercises 17 | ||
2 Variation in Spanish pronunciation 18 | ||
2.1 Variation in pronunciation: dialects, sociolects, styles 18 | ||
2.2 Main geographical varieties of the Spanish language in Spain 19 | ||
2.2.1 Northern-Central Peninsular Spanish 20 | ||
2.2.2 Southern Peninsular Spanish 21 | ||
2.2.3 Canary Island Spanish 22 | ||
2.3 Main geographical varieties of the Spanish language in Latin America 23 | ||
2.3.1 Mexico (and the USA) 25 | ||
2.3.2 Central America 27 | ||
2.3.3 Caribbean 28 | ||
2.3.4 Andean Region 29 | ||
2.3.5 Paraguay 30 | ||
2.3.6 Chile 30 | ||
2.3.7 River Plate 31 | ||
2.4 More on the limitations of dialectal classification 31 | ||
2.5 Other varieties of Spanish 33 | ||
2.6 The Ibero-Romance languages 35 | ||
2.7 The notion of standard language. Is there a standard Spanish pronunciation? 35 | ||
2.8 What’s in a name: Castilian or Spanish? ¿Castellano o español? 37 | ||
Exercises 39 | ||
3 Consonants and vowels 41 | ||
3.1 Consonants and vowels 41 | ||
3.2 Description and classification of consonantal sounds 41 | ||
3.2.1 Manner of articulation 41 | ||
3.2.2 Place of articulation 46 | ||
3.2.3 Activity of the vocal folds: voiced and voiceless consonants 50 | ||
3.3 The Spanish consonant inventory 52 | ||
3.4 Description and classification of vowels: the Spanish vowel system 52 | ||
3.5 Glides 54 | ||
3.6 Dialectal differences in phoneme inventory 55 | ||
Exercises 56 | ||
4 Acoustic characterization of the main classes of Spanish speech sounds 58 | ||
4.1 Introduction 58 | ||
4.2 Vowels and voiceless plosives 59 | ||
4.3 Fricatives and affricates 63 | ||
4.4 Voiced plosives and approximant allophones of /b d g/ 64 | ||
4.5 Sonorant consonants 68 | ||
Exercises 69 | ||
5 The syllable 70 | ||
5.1 Introduction 70 | ||
5.2 Syllable structure 70 | ||
5.3 Syllabification rules: consonants 73 | ||
5.3.1 The CV rule 73 | ||
5.3.2 Consonant clusters 73 | ||
5.3.3 Codas 74 | ||
5.3.4 Adaptation of word-initial consonant sequences in borrowings 77 | ||
5.4 Syllabification rules: vocoids (vowels and glides) 77 | ||
5.4.1 Lexical distribution of exceptional hiatus 81 | ||
5.4.2 Historical origin of diphthong/hiatus contrast 86 | ||
5.5 Resyllabification and contraction processes 87 | ||
5.5.1 (Re-)syllabification of consonants across word and prefix boundaries 87 | ||
5.5.2 Syllable contraction across word boundaries 89 | ||
5.5.3 Reduction of word-internal vowel sequences in colloquial speech 91 | ||
5.5.4 Sequences of three or more vocoids 93 | ||
5.6 Contrasts in syllabification 94 | ||
5.7 Syllable contact 95 | ||
5.8 Sequences of identical consonants across word boundaries 97 | ||
Exercises 98 | ||
6 Main phonological processes 102 | ||
6.1 Introduction 102 | ||
6.2 Neutralization of phonemic contrasts 102 | ||
6.2.1 Neutralization and phonological schools 104 | ||
6.3 Assimilation 107 | ||
6.3.1 Consonant-to-consonant assimilation 107 | ||
6.3.2 Consonant-to-vowel assimilation 108 | ||
6.3.3 Vowel-to-vowel assimilation 109 | ||
6.3.4 Vowel-to-consonant assimilation 110 | ||
6.4 Dissimilation 110 | ||
6.5 Weakening and deletion 111 | ||
6.6 Strengthening 112 | ||
6.7 Epenthesis 113 | ||
6.8 Metathesis 114 | ||
6.9 Consequences of the overlap of articulatory gestures 114 | ||
Exercises 117 | ||
7 Vowels 120 | ||
7.1 The Spanish vowel system from a typological perspective 120 | ||
7.2 Spanish and English vowels contrasted 124 | ||
7.3 Acoustic characterization of Spanish vowels 127 | ||
7.4 Dialectal phenomena involving vowels 128 | ||
7.4.1 Eastern Andalusian vowels 130 | ||
7.4.2 Metaphony and pretonic vowel raising in Asturian and Cantabrian dialects 131 | ||
Exercises 135 | ||
8 Plosives 138 | ||
8.1 Voiceless and voiced plosives: main allophones 138 | ||
8.2 The voiced/voiceless contrast by phonological context 138 | ||
8.2.1 Utterance-initial plosives 138 | ||
8.2.2 Intervocalic plosives 141 | ||
8.2.3 Postconsonantal plosives 144 | ||
8.2.4 Syllable-final plosives 146 | ||
8.3 Spanish and English plosives in contrast 149 | ||
Exercises 151 | ||
9 Fricatives and affricates 152 | ||
9.1 Affricates 152 | ||
9.2 Fricatives 153 | ||
9.2.1 /θ/ and /θ/ 153 | ||
9.2.2 Variation in the articulation of /ⅹ/ 154 | ||
9.2.3 Summary of dialectal variation in the place of articulation of the fricatives 155 | ||
9.2.4 /θ/ and /θ/ and Spanish ‘jota’ in historical perspective 155 | ||
9.2.5 Syllable-final and word-final fricatives 159 | ||
9.2.5.1 Voice assimilation of coda fricatives 159 | ||
9.2.5.2 Aspiration and deletion of /θ/ 161 | ||
9.3 On the phonemic status of /ʝ/ 165 | ||
Exercises 172 | ||
10 Nasals 173 | ||
10.1 Nasal phonemes 173 | ||
10.2 Nasals in coda position 174 | ||
10.2.1 Word-internal coda nasals 174 | ||
10.2.2 Word-final nasals 176 | ||
Exercises 177 | ||
11 Liquids (laterals and rhotics) 178 | ||
11.1 Liquid consonants: laterals and rhotics 178 | ||
11.2 Laterals 178 | ||
11.2.1 Phonemes and allophonic distribution 178 | ||
11.2.2 The fate of the lateral palatal /ʎ/: yeísmo and related phenomena 179 | ||
11.3 The rhotics 181 | ||
11.3.1 Phonemes and allophonic distribution 181 | ||
11.3.2 Historical origin of the tap/trill contrast 185 | ||
11.3.3 Dialectal phenomena involving the rhotics 186 | ||
11.4 Neutralization and deletion of liquids in the coda of the syllable in Spanish dialects 188 | ||
Exercises 189 | ||
12 Main morphophonological alternations 190 | ||
12.1 Morphophonological rules 190 | ||
12.2 Historical origin of morphophonological alternations 192 | ||
12.3 Alternations between diphthongs and mid vowels: e/ie, o/ue 193 | ||
12.3.1 Verbs with e/ie, o/ue alternations 193 | ||
12.3.2 The mid vowel/diphthong alternation in derivational morphology 196 | ||
12.3.3 Historical origin of the alternation between diphthongs and mid vowels 198 | ||
12.4 Alternation between high and mid vowels in verbs: i/e, u/o 200 | ||
12.5 Verbs with velar increment 202 | ||
12.5.1 Historical origin of the velar increment 202 | ||
12.6 Other alternations in verbs 204 | ||
12.7 Plural formation 205 | ||
12.7.1 Historical origin of the -s/-es allomorphy of the plural suffix 207 | ||
12.8 Feminine el 210 | ||
12.8.1 Historical origin of feminine el 211 | ||
12.9 Diminutives 212 | ||
12.9.1 Historical origin of the alternation 216 | ||
12.10 Morphophonology and phonological schools 217 | ||
Exercises 218 | ||
13 Stress 220 | ||
13.1 What is stress? 220 | ||
13.2 Generalizations regarding stress in Spanish 221 | ||
13.3 Stress properties of nouns and adjectives 222 | ||
13.3.1 Unmarked, marked and exceptional stress patterns 222 | ||
13.3.2 Proparoxytones 224 | ||
13.3.3 Consonant-final paroxytones 224 | ||
13.3.4 Unifying the statement of stress patterns for consonant- and vowel-final nouns and adjectives 225 | ||
13.3.5 Stress in compounds 226 | ||
13.3.6 Stress in truncated forms 227 | ||
13.4 Adverbs 228 | ||
13.5 Verbs 228 | ||
13.5.1 Present tense (indicative and subjunctive) and imperative 229 | ||
13.5.2 Past tenses 231 | ||
13.5.3 Future and conditional 232 | ||
13.5.4 Compound tenses 233 | ||
13.6 Grammatical words 233 | ||
13.6.1 Pronouns 233 | ||
13.6.2 Determiners 234 | ||
13.6.3 Prepositions 234 | ||
13.6.4 Question words (interrogative pronouns) 235 | ||
13.6.5 Conjunctions 235 | ||
13.7 The Latin stress system and its continuation in Spanish 236 | ||
13.8 Phonetic correlates of stress 239 | ||
13.9 Secondary stress 246 | ||
13.10 Lexical stress and orthography 246 | ||
13.10.1 Basic orthographic accent rules 246 | ||
13.10.2 Diacritic use of accent marks to indicate hiatus 248 | ||
13.10.3 Monosyllables and pseudo-monosyllables 248 | ||
13.10.4 Diacritically distinguished pairs 249 | ||
13.10.4.1 Monosyllabic segmental homophones 249 | ||
13.10.4.2 Question words 250 | ||
13.10.4.3 Demonstratives 251 | ||
13.10.4.4 Other cases of diacritic accent 251 | ||
Exercises 252 | ||
14 Intonation 253 | ||
14.1 Tone and intonation 253 | ||
14.2 The atoms of intonation 254 | ||
14.3 Simple declarative sentences: nuclear and prenuclear accents 255 | ||
14.4 Differences from English in the placement of nuclear accents 257 | ||
14.4.1 Repeated information 258 | ||
14.4.2 Object pronouns and indefinites 258 | ||
14.4.3 Final predicates and adverbials 259 | ||
14.4.4 Narrow focus 260 | ||
14.5 Non-neutral declarative sentences 260 | ||
14.5.1 Old and new information 260 | ||
14.5.2 Contrastive narrow focus on nonfinal words 264 | ||
14.5.3 ‘Circumflex’ declarative contours 266 | ||
14.6 Questions 267 | ||
14.7 Intonation and phrasing 271 | ||
14.8 A note on rhythm 272 | ||
14.9 A note on dialectal differences in prosody 273 | ||
Exercises 274 | ||
Appendices 276 | ||
Appendix A Summary of main aspects of Spanish pronunciation in contrast with English 276 | ||
A.1 Aspects of variation 276 | ||
Appendix B Why isn’t Spanish orthography completely phonemic? 277 | ||
Appendix C Spanish among the Ibero-Romance languages 281 | ||
C.1 A brief historical overview 281 | ||
C.2 The other languages of Spain today and their influence on the pronunciation of the regional form of Spanish in bilingual areas 286 |
||
C.2.1 Galician and related varieties 287 | ||
C.2.2 Modern descendants of Old Leonese 288 | ||
C.2.3 Aragonese varieties 289 | ||
C.2.4 The extinct Navarrese Romance 289 | ||
C.2.5 Catalan 289 | ||
C.2.6 Aranese Gascon 290 | ||
C.2.7 Basque 290 | ||
C.2.8 English and Spanish in Gibraltar 293 | ||
C.2.9 Ceuta and Melilla 293 | ||
Appendix D Bilingualism in Latin America 293 | ||
Glossary of technical terms 295 | ||
References 303 | ||
Index 313 |
2.1 | Main dialectal areas of Latin American Spanish. | page 26 | |
2.2 | Areas without weakening of preconsonantal and final /s/ and area where the palatal lateral phoneme /ʎ/ has been preserved. | 32 | |
3.1 | Articulators. | 42 | |
3.2a | Apical /θ/. | 48 | |
3.2b | Predorsal (laminal) /θ/. | 49 | |
4.1 | Waveform of a production of apetito. | 59 | |
4.2 | Quasi-periodic waveform of /i/ from /apetíto/. | 60 | |
4.3 | Waveform of the vowel /a/ produced with a fundamental frequency of about 100 Hz. | 61 | |
4.4 | Spectrogram of apetito. | 62 | |
4.5 | Waveform of /osítos/. | 62 | |
4.6 | Waveform of /-os/ from Fig. 4.5. | 63 | |
4.7 | Spectrogram of /osítos/. | 64 | |
4.8 | Spectrogram of hacha /át□a/. | 65 | |
4.9 | Spectrogram of sabe todo /sábe tódo/ ‘s/he knows everything’. | 65 | |
4.10a | Spectrogram of ave /ábe/ [áϐe] ‘bird’. | 66 | |
4.10b | Spectrogram of Eng. abbey [æb]. | 66 | |
4.11 | Spectrogram of paso /páso/ ‘step’ and vaso /báso/ ‘glass’. | 67 | |
4.12 | Spectrogram of caro /káɾo/ and carro /ká□o/. | 67 | |
4.13 | Spectrogram of la lana ‘the wool’. | 68 | |
5.1 | Spectrogram of the examples la liana, with exceptional hiatus, and italiana, with a diphthong. | 96 | |
5.2 | Waveforms and spectrograms of the contrasting triplet pie ‘foot’, pié ‘I chirped’ and píe ‘(that) I / θ/he chirp’. | 100 | |
6.1 | Partial voice assimilation of /θ/ as anticipation of the laryngeal gesture. | 115 | |
6.2 | Nasal assimilation. | 116 | |
6.3 | Intrusive plosive. | 116 | |
7.1 | Spectrogram of /pipepapopu/. | 127 | |
7.2 | Formant chart of Spanish vowels. | 129 | |
7.3 | Raising of stressed vowels in metaphony contexts in Lena Asturian. | 133 | |
8.1 | Spectrogram of paso /páso/ and vaso /báso/. | 140 | |
8.2 | Waveforms of /pa/ and /ba/. | 141 | |
8.3 | Waveform and spectrogram of pidió todo /pidió tódo/. | 142 | |
8.4 | Spectrogram of la bodega, la petaca /labodégalapetáka./. | 143 | |
8.5 | Waveform and spectrogram of tienta /tiéNta/ and tienda /tiéNda/. | 144 | |
8.6 | Spectrogram of rasco /□ásko/ and rasgo /□ásgo/. | 145 | |
13.1a | Spectrogram of hipopótamo. | 240 | |
13.1b | Spectrogram of hippopotamus. | 240 | |
13.2 | Waveform, intensity and F0: mi número, me numero, me numeró. | 241 | |
13.3a | Waveform and F0: mi número de velas. | 242 | |
13.3b | Waveform and F0: me numero de veras. | 242 | |
13.3c | Waveform and F0: me numeró de veras. | 243 | |
13.4 | Waveform, intensity and F0: ¿Pero número? ¿Pero numero? ¿Pero numeró? | 244 | |
14.1 | Waveform and F0: Miraban a Mariano. | 255 | |
14.2 | Waveform and F0: Miraban a Mariano (falling nuclear accent). | 257 | |
14.3 | Waveform and F0: Mariana miraba la luna (new information). | 261 | |
14.4 | Waveform and F0: Mariana miraba H- la luna. | 262 | |
14.5 | Waveform and F0: Emilio viene H- mañana. | 262 | |
14.6 | Waveform and F0: Emilio H- viene mañana. | 263 | |
14.7 | Waveform and F0: EMIlio viene mañana (narrow focus). | 264 | |
14.8 | Waveform and F0: Mariana miraba la luna (narrow focus). | 265 | |
14.9 | Waveform and F0: Mariana mi raba la luna (narrow focus). | 266 | |
14.10 | Waveform and F0: Miraba la luna (circumflex declarative contour). | 267 | |
14.11 | Waveform and F0: ¿Cuándo llega Mariano? (neutral pronominal question). | 268 | |
14.12 | Waveform and F0: ¿Cuándo llega Mariano? (pragmatically marked pronominal question). | 269 | |
14.13 | Waveform and F0: ¿Miraban a Mariano? (neutral yes/no question). | 269 | |
14.14 | Waveform and F0: ¿Miraban a Mariano? (circumflex interrogative pattern). | 270 | |
14.15 | Waveform and F0: Cuando llegó Manolo, me dio la vela. | 271 | |
14.16 | Waveform and F0: Cuando llegó, Manolo me dio la vela. | 272 | |
C.1 | Ancient languages in the Iberian Peninsula. | 283 | |
C.2 | Linguistic situation in the Iberian Peninsula in the tenth century. | 284 | |
C.3 | The languages of the Iberian Peninsula in the fifteenth century. | 285 | |
C.4 | The languages of the Iberian Peninsula today. | 287 |
The idea for this book was suggested to me by Dr Katharina Brett, of Cambridge University Press. The proposal was to write a book that could be used as a text for an introductory course in Spanish phonetics and phonology, but could also serve for independent study and as a reference book for anyone interested in obtaining information about Spanish pronunciation, following the model of Bernard Tranel’s The Sounds of French. That is what I have tried to accomplish in these pages.
The first six chapters are of a general nature. In Chapter 1, the basic concepts of phonological analysis are introduced. Chapter 2 offers an overview of geographical and social variation in Spanish pronunciation. Chapter 3 provides an introduction to the articulatory analysis of Spanish vowels and consonants, and Chapter 4 does the same thing from an acoustic perspective. The structure of the syllable in Spanish is the subject of Chapter 5, and Chapter 6 illustrates the main types of phonological process. In Chapters 7, the different classes of Spanish phonemes are discussed in some detail.
Alternations in sounds between related words, like the one observable in the first syllable when we compare puedo ‘I can’ and podemos ‘we can’, for instance, are usually not discussed at all in books on Spanish phonology written from a structuralist perspective (e.g., Quilis 1993). On the other hand, these facts take a central role in books on Spanish phonology with a generative orientation (e.g., J. Harris 1969, or Núñez-Cedeño and Morales-Front 1999) and knowledge of these phenomena is usually an important component of the Spanish phonology curriculum at North American institutions. In the present book, morphophonological alternations are treated in a separate chapter, Chapter 12. The two last chapters are devoted to Spanish stress (Chapter 13) and intonation (Chapter 14). The volume is complemented with four appendices on topics such as Spanish orthography and bilingualism in Spain and Latin America. There is also a glossary of important terms. These terms appear in small capitals in the text on their first occurrence, and again when reference to a definition seems appropriate. Incidentally, Latin roots of Spanish words, for which the usual convention is to use small capitals, are, in addition, italicized in this book, in order to visually distinguish them from glossed terms.
I have tried to be even in my coverage of both Latin American and Peninsular Spanish. It is, however, unavoidable that those varieties with which I have more familiarity are better represented.
To finish this preface, I want to thank Kate Brett, Helen Barton, Mary Leighton and Karl Howe of Cambridge University Press; my copy-editor, Leigh Mueller; and an anonymous reader. For comments and help of various kinds, I am grateful to Jennifer Cole, Erin O’Rourke, Marta Ortega, Pilar Prieto and Erik Willis. Este libro se lo dedico a mis padres.
A | Adjective |
And. | Andean |
Andal. | Andalusian |
Arg. | Argentinian |
Ast. | Asturian |
augm. | augmentative |
Bol. | Bolivian |
Bq. | Basque |
CA | Central American |
Can. | Canary Islands |
Car. | Caribbean |
Cast. | Castilian |
Cat. | Catalan |
Chil. | Chilean |
Col. | Colombian |
CR | Costa Rican |
Cu. | Cuban |
dim. | diminutive |
Dom. | Dominican |
Ec. | Ecuadorian |
Eng. | English |
Fr. | French |
IPA | International Phonetic Alphabet |
It. | Italian |
Gal. | Galician |
Lat. | Latin |
LatAm. | Latin American |
Mex. | Mexican |
ModSp. | Modern Spanish |
N | Noun |
NMex. | New Mexico |
OSp. | Old Spanish |
Par. | Paraguayan |
Port. | Portuguese |
PR | Puerto Rican |
RAE | Real Academia Española |
RP | Received Pronunciation |
SA | South American |
Sp. | Spanish |
subjunct. | subjunctive |
V | Verb |
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