Variable Fricative Production and Near-Mergers in Central Andalusia

Elena Jaime Jimenez, PhD Candidate

Andalusian Spanish is characterized by the variable production of the interdental and the alveolar fricatives. More precisely, a contrast may be maintained or they may be neutralized resulting in a single interdental or alveolar production. Neutralization scenarios include ceceo, i.e. the production of orthographic <s> as interdental fricative [θ], e.g. <casa> [kaθa], and seseo, i.e. the realization of orthographic <c, z> as alveolar fricative [s], e.g. <caza> [kasa]. On the other, the contrast is maintained with distinción, i.e. the realization of orthographic <s> as alveolar [s] and orthographic <c, z> as interdental /θ/, e.g. <casa> [kasa] and <caza> [kaθa]. There is variation within any single community in Andalusia, including inter-speaker and intra-speaker variation (Villena Ponsoda et al. 1994-1995). Furthermore, recent studies seem to suggest that ceceo is leaving the phonological system, since it has been found to be associated with older male speakers (Villena Ponsoda 2007).

The present study combines a variationist and an acoustic analysis to determine the current status of ceceo/seseo/distinción in the city of Málaga, Central Andalusia. More precisely, this paper explores the status of the phenomena as a change in progress in an innovative way, by examining the conserving effects of priming and frequency through a variationist analysis. These two factors have been identified as conditioning obsolescing linguistic elements (Schwenter 2015). Moreover, ceceo is explored as a lenition process, due to the loss of stridency which it entails. To do that, factors that have been shown to favor weakening in consonants are included in the analysis, i.e. intervocalic contexts, unstressed positions and high number of syllables (Kirchner 2004). The status of neutralization in ceceo and seseo is also analyzed in the present study. Previous acoustic studies on these phenomena have analyzed only acoustic cues that differentiate the interdental fricative from the alveolar fricative (Lasarte Cervantes 2012). The present study goes beyond that by considering for the first time whether there are differences in production as manifested in acoustic cues, among interdentals, on the one hand, and alveolars, on the other, that correspond to different orthographies.

I collected 2748 tokens from 12 speakers from the corpus preseea Málaga. A token was a <c, z>, realized as [s] or [θ], or a <s>, realized as [s] or [θ], in the onset position. No tokens of <c,z> or <s> in the coda position were collected since those are typically aspirated or deleted in Andalusian Spanish. I established the place of articulation for each token via auditory analysis. For the acoustic study, the measurement of Center of Gravity (COG) was taken in Praat, since COG has been described as an important cue to differentiate places of articulation among fricatives (Ladefoged 2003). Each token was coded for its orthography and place of articulation, as well as for speaker’s age, gender and level of education. For the variationist analysis, each token was additionally coded for linguistic factors including priming and frequency of word-forms, due to their association with obsolescing linguistic elements; stress, word position, segmental context, and number of syllables, due to their association with weakening processes. Mixed-effects binomial logistic regression modeling was conducted in R to determine the hierarchical ordering of linguistic factors affecting the variation between the two places of articulation, in terms of their statistical significance. For the acoustic study, linear regression modeling in R was conducted to determine the effect of place of articulation, orthography and age, education and gender on Center of Gravity values.

Results show that there is a higher probability of ceceo in unstressed positions and in words with a high number of syllables, whereas there is a lower probability of ceceo after a pause. This supports my hypothesis that ceceo is a type of lenition, given that it is more common in contexts leading to weakening processes. While there was not an overall effect of frequency, priming plays a role in determining ceceo, but not seseo or distinción. Therefore, a preceding token with ceceo is probable to lead to a subsequent ceceo production. This suggests that ceceo is an obsolescing variant conserved through priming. Regarding the acoustic study, results show that alveolar and interdental fricatives are produced by speakers with high education with a greater difference in COG than medium or low education speakers, indicating that high education speakers are making greater differentiations among the fricatives. Crucially, results demonstrate that there are two acoustically different interdental fricatives and two acoustically different alveolar fricatives, depending on their orthography. Alveolar and interdental realizations of orthographic <c,z> have a higher COG than their alveolar and interdental counterparts of orthographic <s>, so that the former are pronounced less fronted than the latter in articulatory terms. This means that the neutralization of the old Spanish dental affricate /ts/ and the alveolar fricative /s/ in a predorsoalveolar fricative in seseo [s] or in an interdental fricative in ceceo [θ] is phonetically incomplete. In near-mergers, speakers consistently make a small articulatory difference between items of two word classes, although the phonetic distinction might not be heard by speakers (Hickey 2004).

This study presents evidence from the conserving effect of priming for the status of ceceo as a process leaving the system. It also demonstrates that the phenomena of ceceo, seseo and distinción are far from being a mere state of ‘confusion’, as has been claimed in the literature; not only is there a pattern determining the variation, but also this study presents evidence for the status of seseo and ceceo as near-mergers.