the sounds spanish · 2015. 2. 25. · 2.5 other varieties of spanish 33 2.6 the ibero-romance...

The Sounds of

Spanish

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.

j o s é i . hua l d e 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 lingüı́stica 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.

www.cambridge.org© in this web service Cambridge University Press

Cambridge University Press978-0-521-54538-9 - The Sounds of SpanishJose Ignacio HualdeFrontmatterMore information

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http://www.cambridge.org/9780521545389http://www.cambridge.orghttp://www.cambridge.org



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The Sounds of

SpanishJosé Ignacio Hualde



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www.cambridge.orgInformation on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521545389

C© José Ignacio Hualde 2005

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exceptionand to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,no reproduction of any part may take place withoutthe written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2005

Printed in the United Kingdom by Clays, St Ives plc.

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication dataHualde, 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 2005461′.5 – dc22 2004061593

ISBN 97811076915678 Paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs forexternal or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that anycontent on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence.

ISBN 9780521546119 CDISBN 9780521545389 Mixed Media

7th printing 2014



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Contents

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

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vi Contents

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 speechsounds 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 �/ 644.5 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



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vii Contents

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



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viii Contents

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 /s/ and /θ/ 1539.2.2 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 /s/ and /θ/ and Spanish ‘jota’ in historical perspective 1559.2.5 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 /s/ 161

9.3 On the phonemic status of /�/ 165Exercises 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/: yéısmo 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



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ix Contents

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 20212.5.1 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



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x Contents

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



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xi Contents

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



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Figures

2.1 Main dialectal areas of Latin American Spanish. page 262.2 Areas without weakening of preconsonantal and final /s/ and area

where the palatal lateral phoneme /ʎ/ has been preserved. 323.1 Articulators. 42

3.2a Apical /s/. 483.2b Predorsal (laminal) /s/. 49

4.1 Waveform of a production of apetito. 594.2 Quasi-periodic waveform of /i/ from /apetı́to/. 604.3 Waveform of the vowel /a/ produced with a fundamental frequency of

about 100 Hz. 614.4 Spectrogram of apetito. 624.5 Waveform of /os ı́tos/. 624.6 Waveform of /-os/ from Fig. 4.5. 634.7 Spectrogram of /os ı́tos/. 644.8 Spectrogram of hacha /átʃ� a/. 654.9 Spectrogram of sabe todo /sábe tódo/ ‘s/he knows everything’. 65

4.10a Spectrogram of ave /ábe/ [áβe] ‘bird’. 664.10b Spectrogram of Eng. abbey [æbi]. 66

4.11 Spectrogram of paso /páso/ ‘step’ and vaso /báso/ ‘glass’. 674.12 Spectrogram of caro /káɾo/ and carro /kár̄o/. 674.13 Spectrogram of la lana ‘the wool’. 68

5.1 Spectrogram of the examples la liana, with exceptional hiatus, anditaliana, with a diphthong. 96

5.2 Waveforms and spectrograms of the contrasting triplet pie ‘foot’, pié ‘Ichirped’ and pı́e ‘(that) I / s/he chirp’. 100

6.1 Partial voice assimilation of /s/ as anticipation of the laryngeal gesture. 1156.2 Nasal assimilation. 1166.3 Intrusive plosive. 1167.1 Spectrogram of /pipepapopu/. 1277.2 Formant chart of Spanish vowels. 129

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xiii List of figures

7.3 Raising of stressed vowels in metaphony contexts in Lena Asturian. 1338.1 Spectrogram of paso /páso/ and vaso /báso/. 1408.2 Waveforms of /pa/ and /ba/. 1418.3 Waveform and spectrogram of pidió todo /pidió tódo/. 1428.4 Spectrogram of la bodega, la petaca /labodé�alapetáka/. 1438.5 Waveform and spectrogram of tienta /tiénta/ and tienda /tiénda/. 1448.6 Spectrogram of rasco /r̄ásko/ and rasgo /r̄ás�o/. 145

13.1a Spectrogram of hipopótamo. 24013.1b Spectrogram of hippopotamus. 240

13.2 Waveform, intensity and F0: mi número, me numero, me numeró. 24113.3a Waveform and F0: mi número de velas. 24213.3b Waveform and F0: me numero de veras. 24213.3c Waveform and F0: me numeró de veras. 24313.4 Waveform, intensity and F0: ¿Pero número? ¿Pero numero? ¿Pero numeró? 24414.1 Waveform and F0: Miraban a Mariano. 25514.2 Waveform and F0: Miraban a Mariano (falling nuclear accent). 25714.3 Waveform and F0: Mariana miraba la luna (new information). 26114.4 Waveform and F0: Mariana miraba H- la luna. 26214.5 Waveform and F0: Emilio viene H- mañana. 26214.6 Waveform and F0: Emilio H- viene mañana. 26314.7 Waveform and F0: Emilio viene mañana (narrow focus). 26414.8 Waveform and F0: Mariana miraba la luna (narrow focus). 26514.9 Waveform and F0: Mariana miraba la luna (narrow focus). 266

14.10 Waveform and F0: Miraba la luna (circumflex declarative contour). 26714.11 Waveform and F0: ¿Cuándo llega Mariano? (neutral pronominal question). 26814.12 Waveform and F0: ¿Cuándo llega Mariano? (pragmatically marked

pronominal question). 26914.13 Waveform and F0: ¿Miraban a Mariano? (neutral yes/no question). 26914.14 Waveform and F0: ¿Miraban a Mariano? (circumflex interrogative

pattern). 27014.15 Waveform and F0: Cuando llegó Manolo, me dio la vela. 27114.16 Waveform and F0: Cuando llegó, Manolo me dio la vela. 272

C.1 Ancient languages in the Iberian Peninsula. 283C.2 Linguistic situation in the Iberian Peninsula in the tenth century. 284C.3 The languages of the Iberian Peninsula in the fifteenth century. 285C.4 The languages of the Iberian Peninsula today. 287



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Preface

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 geo-

graphical 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 7–11, 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 knowl-

edge 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

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xvi Preface

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.



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Abbreviations

A AdjectiveAnd. AndeanAndal. AndalusianArg. ArgentinianAst. Asturianaugm. augmentativeBol. BolivianBq. BasqueCA Central AmericanCan. Canary IslandsCar. CaribbeanCast. CastilianCat. CatalanChil. ChileanCol. ColombianCR Costa RicanCu. Cubandim. diminutiveDom. DominicanEc. EcuadorianEng. EnglishFr. FrenchIPA International Phonetic AlphabetIt. ItalianGal. GalicianLat. LatinLatAm. Latin AmericanMex. MexicanModSp. Modern SpanishN Noun

xvii



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xviii List of abbreviations

NMex. New MexicoOSp. Old SpanishPar. ParaguayanPort. PortuguesePR Puerto RicanRAE Real Academia EspañolaRP Received PronunciationSA South AmericanSp. Spanishsubjunct. subjunctiveV Verb



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Chart of the International Phonetic Alphabet(revised 1993, updated 1996)

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