The Use of Gheada in Three Generations of Women from Carballo, a Coruña
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The Use of gheada in Three Generations of Women from Carballo, A Coruña Juan Antonio Thomas The University at Albany 1. Introduction Gheada, pronounced [hea¶a], is a phonetic and phonological trait of Galician which consists of the absence of the voiced, velar occlusive [g] and the presence of some type of aspiration, a voiced or voiceless velar, glottal, pharyngeal, or uvular fricative. Although the trait is acoustically and articulatorially similar to the Castilian voiceless velar fricative, the aspirated initial f- in Gascon, and the gorgia toscana, the Galician gheada presents a unique phonemic and sociolinguistic problem among the romance languages. Some consider the gheada to be an influence of Castilian Spanish, a product of the age-old diglossic relationship between Galician and Castilian (Freixeiro Mato, 1998: 154); others have shown that the gheada can be considered an innovation within the Galician sound system (Santamarina, 1980). Its use corresponds to sociolinguistic factors (Recalde Fernández: 1994, 1995; Thomas, 2005) and ever since its origin, it has been spurned (Freixeiro Mato, 1998: 157) as a characteristic of rustic and uneducated speech. The use of the gheada is considered appropriate for the familiar domain but not for formal uses of Galician. The official prescriptive grammar of Galician (Instituto da Lingua Galega/ Real Academia Galega, 2005: 9), approved by the Xunta de Galicia, cites the aspiration as an acceptable allophone of the phoneme /g/ but does not accept its representation in written texts. Many individuals consider the trait to be an innovative characteristic of Galician which distinguishes it from its sister language Portuguese; however, such a positive consideration does not affect the speakers’ linguistic behavior and even intellectuals who proclaim the uniqueness of gheada, avoid its use. 1.1 Description and types of the gheada In order to represent the sound of the gheada orthographically gh is used. This combination demonstrates the alternating nature [g] / [h] of the trait. Not all Galician speakers, regardless of the social value of the trait, possess [h] in their phonetic inventories. Galician without gheada is spoken in the eastern halves of the provinces of Lugo and Ourense. This system is represented in (1). (1) gato cat [gato] un gato a cat[uhgato] o gato the cat [ogato] domingo Sunday [domíhgo] In the phonemic inventory of Galician without gheada, the phoneme /g/ has two allophones: [g] and [g] in complementary distribution. The voiced, velar stop [g] is found in word initial position or after a nasal. The voiced, velar approximant [g] is found after a vowel; a coronal liquid resonant [l] or [r]; or after a coronal strident [s]or [z]. Because of regressive assimilation, the strident [z] usually is found before [g]. Based on the realization of the group - ng- there are three systems of gheada (Fernandez Rei: 167). The system which comprises the majority of the territory is summarized in equation 2. Instead of the (2) gato [háto] un gato [uhháto] o gato [oháto] domingo [domíhho] phoneme /g/, there is a fricative aspiration, here represented as /h/. This phoneme consists of one allophone, very frequently it is the voiceless glottal fricative [h]; other studies (Fernández Rei; Labrana- Barrero, van Oosterzee) cite a different fricative in this system of one phoneme, one © 2007 Juan Antonio Thomas. Selected Proceedings of the Third Workshop on Spanish Sociolinguistics, ed. Jonathan Holmquist et al., 61-73. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. 62 allophone. System (2) is spoken in the major cities of Galicia: Santiago, A Coruña, and Pontevedra, as well as the eastern part of the province of A Coruña (Fernández Rei: 168). There are two other ‘hybrid’ systems. Equation (3) represents the system with the allophones [h] and [g]. Speakers of this variety hale from the western parts of Ourense and Lugo, the northern areas of the (3) gato [háto] un gato [uhháto] o gato [oháto] domingo [domíhgo] province of Pontevedra and the south-eastern areas of the province of A Coruña. The allophone [g] appears only in the middle of words after a nasal resonant. In all other contexts, [h] is found, even in word initial position following a nasal un gato [uhháto]. Castro (1991: 211) describes this phenomenon as two contextually conditioned allophones of one phoneme /g/; however, the two allophones [h] and [g] are articulatorily so different that speakers would have trouble recognizing them as variants of the same phoneme. Santamarina believes (1980: 248) that this system consists of two phonemes /h/ and /g/; however, there are no contrastive minimal pairs of /g/ and /h/ in this description, similar to the situation of /h/ and /h/ in English. There is yet another system in which the speakers have ‘resolved’ the problem of the phonological description of the system shown in (3). Equation (4) represents the system which has two phonemes /h/ and /k/- the allophone [g] is absent from this variety. (4) gato [háto] un gato [uhháto] o gato [oháto] domingo [domíhko] The phoneme /k/ is very stable and exists in many contexts, even after a nasal in word internal position, for example, cinco [qíhko]. The speakers of system four have neutralized the group -ng- as - nk-. System four is found in the western parts of Galicia: in Fisterra and the Ría de Muros. 2. Experimental María Luz Cures Vázquez (Luz), a translator and linguist at the Instituto da Lingua Galega (Galician Language Institute) of the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela in Santiago de Compostela, interviewed and recorded nine females in December, 2001. Table 1 summarizes some biographical information about the participants, who form part of Luz’ social network in the vila of Carballo (a division of population between that of a city and village) in the province of A Coruña. Some of the women are from A Brea, a rural village which has been integrated into Carballo because of the former’s growth during recent years. Hence, the participants are from both urban (U) and rural (R) habitats. Carballo and A Brea are located west of a line drawn between two main cities of Galicia: the city of A Coruña and the capital city Santiago de Compostela. Carballo is in Bergantiños, and according to dialectological studies it is a region where three systems of gheada are in close proximity (Fernández Rei: 165): [domihgo] -[domihho] -[domihko]. All participants have Galician as their first language as well as habitual language. Marital status is designated as (S) single or (M) married. The variables: habitat, relationship to the interviewer, and family relationship to the other participants co- vary. The kinship relations among the participants are shown in (5). The interview of the first three females proceeded as follows: (1) the oral test- Luz read a series of definitions/ descriptions and the interviewees were asked to say a word associated with the description; (2) the reading test- each participant read a list of words and; (3) the free conversation- each participant was asked to narrate some story or detail, of their own choosing, for example, What did they do in the morning, etc? All woman performed part three, but speakers 4 through 8 did not perform the reading test. The items in the oral and reading tests were not exactly the same for all speakers, although many did coincide. Luz gave a copy of the recordings to J. A. Thomas in July 2003. 63 Table 1: Participants’ information person age habitat mari- profession educa- relationship to the relation- U/R tal tion other participants ship to the status interviewer 1Ana 18 U S student high granddaughter of 6 sister Cures school cousin of 2 niece of 3 2 Marta 8 U S student elemen- daughter of 3 cousin tary cousin of 1 granddaughter of 6 3 Belén 43 U M housewife elemen- mother of 2; aunt aunt tary of 1; daughter of 6 4. Ana 14 R S student elemen- daughter of 8;sister friend Suárez tary of 7; niece of 5; granddaughter of 9 5. 41 R S teacher’s high aunt of 4 and 7 friend María assistant school sister of 8 Carme daughter of 9 6. 64 U M fish elemen- mother of 3 grand- María vendor tary grandmother of 2, 1 mother Luz (retired) 7. Tania 20 R S student high daughter of 8; sister friend school of 4; niece of 5; granddaughter of 9 8 45 R M baker elemen- mother of 4, 7 friend Encar- wido tary sister of 5 nita w daughter of 9 9 María > R M baker none mother of 8, 5 friend José 70 grandmother of 7, 4 (5) Family trees of the participants María José (9) María Luz (6) ØØ Encarnita (8) + María Carme (5) Belén (3) + (not a participant) ØØØ Tania (7) + Ana Suárez (4) Marta (2) Ana Cures (1) The goal of this investigation was to analyze and characterize the gheada employed (or not employed) by these nine speakers. The statistical program SPSS was used to answer questions such as is the use of the trait in a particular linguistic context statistically significant or not? The Praat Program was used to determine the phonetic realization of the aspiration. 3. Results and Discussion Table 2 offers a comprehensive summary of the results. The frequency of gheada is reported as a percentage of all the occurrences of [h] with respect to the sum of [g] + [h]. There is a noticeable variation in the percentages in the oral interview test. The youngest participant, Marta (2), used the fricative in the lowest frequency. Her mother, Belén (3), used it at a low frequency but in a slightly higher number of examples than her daughter. Speaker 6 (María Luz) used gheada in a greater number of words than either her daughter (Belén) or granddaughter (Marta), although not as much as other granddaughter, Ana Cures (1), who used it exclusively.