Chapter published in:
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. 384–420

Spanish phonology in contact with Catalan

On implementations of gradience and discreteness in the study of sociolinguistic variation of laterals

| University of California, Berkeley
This study investigates sociophonetic variation in the production of the alveolar lateral /l/ in Catalan and Spanish, the velarization of which is considered the hallmark feature of Catalonian Spanish (Arnal, 2011; Casanovas Català, 1995; Hickey, 2012). Using an innovative combination of both gradient and categorical analyses to evaluate lateral production in Spanish and Catalan elicited from Catalan-Spanish bilinguals and Madrid monolinguals stratified by gender and exposure/usage of Catalan, we assess the degree to which lateral velarization pervades this contact setting. In so doing, we demonstrate that lateral velarization and the inventory of lateral categories in these languages are best approached using gradient and relative hierarchies of lateral darkness rather than discrete applications of intrinsically light [l] or dark [ɫ].
Keywords: lateral velarization, Spanish-Catalan contact, sociophonetics, dark and light /l/, bilingualism
Published online: 06 August 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.28.14dav
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