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Prosody

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Spanish is a syllable-timed language. Stressed syllables are 50% longer in duration than non-stressed syllables.[1] Although pitch, duration, and loudness contribute to the perception of stress,[2] pitch is the most important in isolation.[3]

Primary stress occurs on the penultima (the next to last syllable) 80% of the time. The other 20% of the time, stress falls on the ultima and antepenultima.[1]

Nonverbs are generally stressed on the penultimate syllable for vowel-final words and on the final syllable of consonant-final words. Exceptions are marked orthographically, whereas regular words are underlyingly phonologically marked with a stress feature [+stress].[4]

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Phonotactics

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  • Coda
    • First consonant (C3): Can be any consonant.
    • Second consonant (C4): Must be /s/. A coda combination of two consonants only appears in loanwords (mainly from Classical Latin), never in words inherited from Vulgar Latin.
    • Medial codas assimilate place features of the following onsets and are often stressed.[5]

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Acquisition as a First Language

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Phonology

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Phonological development varies greatly by individual, both those developing regularly and those with delays. However, a general pattern of acquisition of phonemes can be inferred by the level of complexity of their features, i.e. by sound classes.[6] A hierarchy may be constructed, and if a child is capable of producing a discrimination on one level, he/she will also be capable of making the discriminations of all prior levels.[7]

  • The first level consists of stops (without a voicing distinction), nasals, [l], and optionally, a non-lateral approximant. This includes a labial/coronal place difference (for example, [b] vs [t] and [l] vs [β]).
  • The second level includes voicing distinction for oral stops and a coronal/dorsal place difference. This allows for distinction between [p], [t], and [k], along with their voiced counterparts, as well as distinction between [l] and the approximant [j].
  • The third level includes fricatives and/or affricates.
  • The fourth level introduces liquids other than [l], [ɹ] and [ɾ]. It also introduces [θ].
  • The fifth level introduces the trill [r].

This hierarchy is based on production only, and is a representation of a child’s capacity to produce a sound, whether that sound is the correct target in adult speech or not. Thus, it may contain some sounds that are not included in the adult phonology, but produced as a result of error.

Spanish-speaking children will accurately produce most segments at a relatively early age. By around three-and-a-half years, they will no longer productively use phonological processes the majority of the time. Some common error patterns (found 10% or more of the time) are cluster reduction, liquid simplification, and stopping. Less common patterns (evidenced less than 10% of the time) include palatal fronting, assimilation, and final consonant deletion.[8]

Typical phonological analyses of Spanish consider the consonants /b/, /d/, and /g/ the underlying phonemes and their corresponding approximants /β/, /ð/, and /ɣ/ allophonic and derivable by phonological rules. However, approximants may be a more basic form because monolingual Spanish-learning children learn to produce the continuant contrast between [p t k] and [β ð ɣ] before they do the lead voicing contrast between [p t k] and [b d g].[9] (In comparison, English-learning children are able to produce adult-like voicing contrasts for these stops well before age three.)[10] The allophonic distribution of [b d g] and [β ð ɣ] produced in adult speech is not learned until after age two and not fully mastered even at age four.[9]

The alveolar trill is one of the most difficult sounds to be produced in Spanish and as a result is acquired later in development.[11] Research suggests that the alveolar trill is acquired and developed between the ages of three and six years.[12] Some children acquire an adult-like trill within this period and some fail to properly acquire the trill. The attempted trill sound of the poor trillers is often perceived as a series of taps due to hyperactive tongue movement during production.[13]

Codas

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One research study found that children acquire medial codas before final codas, and stressed codas before unstressed codas.[14] Since medial codas are often stressed and must undergo place assimilation, greater importance is accorded to their acquisition.[5] Liquid and nasal codas occur word medially and at the ends of frequently-used function words, so they are often acquired first.[15]

Prosody

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Research suggests that children overgeneralize stress rules when they are reproducing novel Spanish words and that they have a tendency to stress the penultimate syllables of antepenultimately stressed words, to avoid a violation of nonverb stress rules that they have acquired.[16] Interestingly, many of the most frequent words heard by children have irregular stress patterns or are verbs, which violate nonverb stress rules.[17] This complicates stress rules until ages three to four, when stress acquisition is essentially complete, and children begin to apply these rules to novel irregular situations.

Notes

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  1. ^ a b Conxita 2003, p. 262.
  2. ^ Cotton & Sharp (1988:19–20)
  3. ^ García-Bellido (1997:492), citing Contreras (1963), Quilis (1971), and the Esbozo de una nueva gramática de la lengua española. (1973) by the Gramática de la Real Acedemia Española
  4. ^ Hochberg 1988, p. 684.
  5. ^ a b Conxita 2003, p. 278.
  6. ^ Cataño 2009, p. 456.
  7. ^ Cataño 2009, p. 448.
  8. ^ Goldstein 1998, p. 5-6.
  9. ^ a b Macken 1980b, p. 455.
  10. ^ Macken 1980a, p. 73.
  11. ^ Carballo 2000, p. 588.
  12. ^ Carballo 2000, p. 589.
  13. ^ Carballo 2000, p. 596.
  14. ^ Conxita 2003, p. 271.
  15. ^ Conxita 2003, p. 279.
  16. ^ Hochberg 1988, p. 683.
  17. ^ Hochberg 1988, p. 685.

References

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  • Carballo, Gloria; Mendoza, Elvira (2000), "Acoustic characteristics of trill productions by groups of Spanish children", Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 14 (8): 587–601
  • Cataño, Lorena; Barlow, Jessica A.; Moyna, María Irene (2009), "A retrospective study of phonetic inventory complexity in acquisition of Spanish: Implications for phonological universals", Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 23 (6): 446–472, doi:10.1080/02699200902839818
  • Hochberg, Judith G. (1988), "Learning Spanish Stress: Developmental and Theoretical Perspectives", Language, 64 (4): 683–706, JSTOR 414564
  • Macken, Marlys A.; Barton, David (1980a), "The acquisition of the voicing contrast in English: a study of voice onset time in word-initial stop consonants", Journal of Child Language, 7 (1): 41–74, doi:10.1017/S0305000900007029
  • Macken, Marlys A.; Barton, David (1980b), "The acquisition of the voicing contrast in Spanish: a phonetic and phonological study of word-initial stop consonants", Journal of Child Language, 7 (3): 433–458, doi:10.1017/S0305000900002774
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