Chapter published in:
Recent Advances in the Study of Spanish Sociophonetic Perception
Edited by Whitney Chappell
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 21] 2019
► pp. 288–311

The perception-production connection

/tʃ/ deaffrication and rhotic assibilation in Chihuahua Spanish

| University of Texas at El Paso
| University of Texas at El Paso
This study investigates the perception and production of two sociophonetic variables of Chihuahua Spanish: rhotic assibilation ([ř]), a change from above associated with women and higher classes, and deaffrication of the voiceless post-alveolar affricate ([ʃ]), a change from below associated with men and lower social classes. Thirty-three native Spanish speakers from Chihuahua completed a production task to establish whether they produced [ř] or [ʃ] and a discrimination task to determine if they were able to perceive these variants. Results show that while production rates were similar for [ř] and [ʃ], listeners had greater sociolinguistic awareness of [ʃ], resulting in a closer production-perception relationship for this variant. We conclude that the perception and production of phonetic variants interact in variable-specific ways that depend crucially on a combination of linguistic and social factors, including phonological context, frequency, and social salience to the speech community.
Published online: 28 November 2019
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.21.11maz
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