zompist bboard

Drydic Guy wrote:This and the palatal stop don't bother me near as much, given there are languages like Spanish/French/Italian, which have one or two palatals with no others in that row/column.

Serafín wrote:But the thing is, I'd swear I pronounce them in the same place of articulation. Dunno whether to call them "postalveolar" (so [n̠], [t͡ʃ] and [d͡ʒ]) or "palatal" (so [ɲ], [c͡ç] and [ɟ͡ʝ]) though. And dunno whether it even really matters that much, because the mouth is so mushy anyway and there isn't a clear division between the two. Maybe the ones who started the tradition of transcribing them as [ɲ], [t͡ʃ] and [ɟ͡ʝ] thought "[c͡ç]" looked too ugly or something?

lctrgzmn wrote:However, I do notice that my <y> and <ll>, which having undergone yeísmo due to my accent, alternate between [j], [ɟ͡ʝ], and [d͡ʒ]. I've yet to notice any particular reason for these alternations, and they do in fact seem quite arbitrary.

Ictrgzmn wrote:I don't really know what goes on, but it's (kind of) akin to the lenition of [d] to [ð] and to [β] that also occurs in my own dialect of Spanish.

Whimemsz wrote:(it seems to me like it's often something in between [ɟʝ] and [dʒ] -- maybe [dʝ]? But it could be alveopalatal. I dunno...)

Whimemsz wrote:

lctrgzmn wrote:However, I do notice that my <y> and <ll>, which having undergone yeísmo due to my accent, alternate between [j], [ɟ͡ʝ], and [d͡ʒ]. I've yet to notice any particular reason for these alternations, and they do in fact seem quite arbitrary.

I'm not a native speaker, but living in Texas (near Conroe, btw, since I see you're from Katy) and hearing Mexican Spanish frequently enough, my impression is that the affricate realization (it seems to me like it's often something in between [ɟʝ] and [dʒ] -- maybe [dʝ]? But it could be alveopalatal. I dunno...) is most frequent initially, and in certain common words like yo and ya. Is that the case for you at all?

That happens in every dialect of Spanish, at least as spoken by native speakers.

lctrgzmn wrote:

That happens in every dialect of Spanish, at least as spoken by native speakers.

I wouldn't say that for every particular lenition. I do see [d] becoming [ð] in many to most (if not all) dialects, but I also know a lot of people that always pronounce as and never change it to [β].

lctrgzmn wrote:My <ñ> and <ch> are pretty standard to be honest. They never stray away from [ɲ] and [t͡ʃ]. However, I do notice that my <y> and <ll>, which having undergone yeísmo due to my accent, alternate between [j], [ɟ͡ʝ], and [d͡ʒ]. I've yet to notice any particular reason for these alternations, and they do in fact seem quite arbitrary. Growing up though, I did have an aunt that was always rather set on differentiating <y> as [ɟ͡ʝ] and <ll> as [ʝ].

I don't really know what goes on, but it's (kind of) akin to the lenition of [d] to [ð] and to [β] that also occurs in my own dialect of Spanish.

Travis B. wrote:I am not a Spanish-speaker, but have you considered that these might be alveolopalatal, so hence [n̠̻] (that should be retracted and laminal), [t͡ɕ], [d͡ʑ] respectively?

AnTeallach wrote:NB I think [ɲ] can be used for a palatalised postalveolar nasal, i.e. something with a similar POA to [dʒ] or [dʑ], e.g. in Polish.

Whimemsz wrote:

lctrgzmn wrote:

That happens in every dialect of Spanish, at least as spoken by native speakers.

I wouldn't say that for every particular lenition. I do see [d] becoming [ð] in many to most (if not all) dialects, but I also know a lot of people that always pronounce as and never change it to [β].

Where are those people from? The only place I knew about where that happened was Yucatan, but I always thought that was because many Spanish-speakers there speak it as a second-language...

(Apparently though, it also happens in a few other places like parts of Ecuador, where there's significant numbers of non-native speakers of Spanish, according to John Lipski)

And it's also reported to happen in the Spanish among people of Equatorial Guinea (a place of recent language contact too, with Fang)... Note that it's reported among native speakers of Spanish in these three areas too, not only non-natives. More support for linguists attacking those who don't believe in substrata.

Well, my comments in the OP and lctrgzmn are after all pretty "impressionistic", so liable to defects...

Whimemsz wrote:

lctrgzmn wrote:

That happens in every dialect of Spanish, at least as spoken by native speakers.

I wouldn't say that for every particular lenition. I do see [d] becoming [ð] in many to most (if not all) dialects, but I also know a lot of people that always pronounce as and never change it to [β].

Where are those people from? The only place I knew about where that happened was Yucatan, but I always thought that was because many Spanish-speakers there speak it as a second-language...

(Apparently though, it also happens in a few other places like parts of Ecuador, where there's significant numbers of non-native speakers of Spanish, according to John Lipski)

lctrgzmn wrote:My mom, for one, always pronounces her 's, and Spanish is her first language. The same can be said for most of the people in my family who don't speak much English. In fact, here it's very common for a Mexican accent in English to entirely lack [v] due to the prevalence of . Although some accents due trigger lenition in /b/ (and other phonemes), not all do.

Serafín wrote:

lctrgzmn wrote:My mom, for one, always pronounces her 's, and Spanish is her first language. The same can be said for most of the people in my family who don't speak much English. In fact, here it's very common for a Mexican accent in English to entirely lack [v] due to the prevalence of . Although some accents due trigger lenition in /b/ (and other phonemes), not all do.

No idea what you're talking about, nope... I must say it'd pretty weird not to have lenition in /b/ but having it in the other three. Where is your madre exactly from?

Serafín wrote:

Travis B. wrote:I am not a Spanish-speaker, but have you considered that these might be alveolopalatal, so hence [n̠̻] (that should be retracted and laminal), [t͡ɕ], [d͡ʑ] respectively?

Nope, I hardly "feel" they sound or that I pronounce them like that... At least from studying a little Mandarin and Cantonese, whose [t͡ɕ] my brain does interpret as "something sounding like [ts] and [tS] 'at the same time'", my [tS] doesn't seem to be like it...

On the other hand, the [tS] from a couple of Spaniards I've met sounded... rather fronted, and you can already see comments in books on Spanish about it. (Maybe this is why you're suggesting it though...)

Travis B. wrote:Actually, by alveolopalatal I meant something very different from what you take it to be here; it is nothing like pronouncing [ts] and [tʃ] simultaneously. Rather, it is essentially a laminal postalveolar, where somewhere about the end of the blade of the tongue is used to articulate at a postalveolar POA while the body of the tongue is raised towards the palate, and where conversely the tip of the tongue is lowered to be behind the lower teeth.

Hence [n̠ʲ] (another way to transcribe it), [tɕ], and [dʑ] are effectively somewhat fronted, and for the latter two sibilant, versions of [ɲ], [cç], and [ɟʝ].

ná'oolkiłí wrote:The second and third commas demarcate a parenthetical phrase.

I'd say your intuition that [ɕ] is between [s] and [ʃ] is correct acoustically, but Travis is right saying articulatorily that isn't the case. Sibilants are very interesting phonetically... there's so much variation from language to language.

lctrgzmn wrote:

Serafín wrote:

lctrgzmn wrote:My mom, for one, always pronounces her 's, and Spanish is her first language. The same can be said for most of the people in my family who don't speak much English. In fact, here it's very common for a Mexican accent in English to entirely lack [v] due to the prevalence of . Although some accents due trigger lenition in /b/ (and other phonemes), not all do.

No idea what you're talking about, nope... I must say it'd pretty weird not to have lenition in /b/ but having it in the other three. Where is your madre exactly from?

Really? Have you ever been to Mexico? It's all over there. She's from Tamaulipas, Mexico, though she spent some time in Mexico City, too.

Serafín wrote:

lctrgzmn wrote:

Serafín wrote:

lctrgzmn wrote:My mom, for one, always pronounces her 's, and Spanish is her first language. The same can be said for most of the people in my family who don't speak much English. In fact, here it's very common for a Mexican accent in English to entirely lack [v] due to the prevalence of . Although some accents due trigger lenition in /b/ (and other phonemes), not all do.

No idea what you're talking about, nope... I must say it'd pretty weird not to have lenition in /b/ but having it in the other three. Where is your madre exactly from?

Really? Have you ever been to Mexico? It's all over there. She's from Tamaulipas, Mexico, though she spent some time in Mexico City, too.

I was just listening to this recording of a speaker from Tamaulipas, and I don't hear what you talk about at all. Just hear her saying "Nuevo Laredo de Tamaulipas" (which she seems to pronounce [nwe.β̞o ˈla.ɾjo], interestingly), or "preventiva" at different parts of the video (which sounds almost like [pɾe.en.ˈti.β̞a].

This other recording (much more formal in tone, however) from another speaker from Tamaulipas doesn't show a lack of lenition in /b/ either.

lctrgzmn wrote:I didn't say they all had a lack of lenition, I just said it was common over there. However, thinking on it a little more, I can think of some instances where it would sound silly to not have lenition, even though said instances could often get away with not being lenited. Just my observation.

Edit: Have you noticed that the lenited consonants tend to disappear in rapid speech? I speak mostly for [d] and , but I've heard "bueno" pronounced as [weno], "abuelita" as [awelita], and then there's the slang-esque pronunciation of "-ado" as "ao", e.g., "pelado" as "pelao", "cuñado" as "cuñao", etc.