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Allophonic variation in the voiced stop phonemes of heritage speakers of Spanish
by Rajiv Rao
This presentation reports on a pair of experiments examining intervocalic weakening of the voiced stop phonemes /b, d, g/ to approximant or fricative allophones in heritage speakers of Spanish. In the first experiment, participants were divided into three groups based on language experiences and data was elicited via reading and spontaneous tasks. In the former task type, tokens were additionally analyzed according to syllable type and position in the word. The first group, whose participants have used Spanish extensively throughout life, produced approximants almost exclusively, regardless of phonological context or task. The second group, whose members have one native Spanish speaking parent and the least exposure to Spanish, showed English influence in the reading task in the form of higher frequencies of stop allophones, especially in stressed syllables and at word boundaries, and high rates of [v]. However, approximants were most frequent in their spontaneous tokens, with the exception of [v], which was still pervasive. The third group, with abundant exposure to Spanish only as children, patterned similarly to the second group in the reading task and between the other two groups in the spontaneous task. Overall, the results emphasize the importance of speaker background, phonological context, and task type. They also opened the door for a follow-up study focusing specifically on /b/, incorporating the variables from the first study, as well as issues not considered, such as word frequency, cognate status, and the inclusion of a picture task. The second experiment, currently in progress with twice as many speakers as the first one, will be discussed in-depth in the second half of this presentation. In conclusion, the implications of both experiments will be couched within the larger context of heritage speaker phonetics/phonology and language processing.