Original Paper Phonetica 2010;67:201–218 Received: September 2, 2010 DOI: 10.1159/000322312 Accepted: October 17, 2010 Differences in Base of Articulation for Consonants among Catalan Dialects Daniel Recasens Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and Institut d’Estudis Catalans, Barcelona, Spain Abstract Electropalatographic data for several front lingual consonants, i.e., the den- tal /t/, the alveolars /n, l, s, r/ and the alveolopalatals /tʃ, ʃ, ʎ, ɲ/, show differences in constriction anteriority among Catalan dialects varying in the progression Valencian > Eastern, with the Majorcan dialect occupying an intermediate posi- tion. These differences do not conform to speaker- dependent differences in palate morphology and, to the extent that they operate on a varied range of conso- nants, may be attributed to base of articulation. Deviations from this pattern are associated with manner of articulation and symmetry demands. A specific dialect- dependent relationship between tongue dorsum contact and constriction fronting is interpreted assuming the existence of less laminal, more apical dental and alveolar stops, and less dorsal, more laminal alveolopalatals, in Valencian than in the other two dialects. These data are interpreted in terms of the articula- tory characteristics for different tongue front settings which have been proposed in the literature. Copyright © 2011 S. Karger AG, Basel 1. Introduction 1.1. Articulatory Positioning While the terms ‘articulatory setting’ and ‘base of articulation’ enjoy a long tradi- tion in the phonetics literature, very few studies have examined their scientific validity by means of experimental data. Several phoneticians suggest that differences in ‘accent’ among languages stem from the way speakers place their articulatory organs for pro- ducing vowels and consonants in continuous speech. Moreover, it may be argued that the articulatory setting of a particular language may remain relatively unmodified for long periods of time and, consequently, could shape language sound inventories and trigger specific sound changes and phonological processes. Language- and dialect- dependent differences in base of articulation may be traced through differences in tongue and lip configuration for vowels [Disner, 1983], and in constriction location and in the primary lingual articulator for consonants. The present © 2011 S. Karger AG, Basel Daniel Recasens 0031–8388/10/0674–0201 Departament de Filologia Catalana Fax ϩ41 61 306 12 34 $26.00/0 Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona E- Mail [email protected] Accessible online at: Bellaterra 08193, Barcelona (Spain) www.karger.com www.karger.com/pho Tel. +34 3 457 8183, Fax +34 3 581 2782 E- Mail [email protected] investigation deals with settings of the anterior region of the tongue according to which dialects and languages may favor front lingual consonants produced against the teeth and front alveolar zone with the tongue blade rather than with the tongue tip (e.g., French), or else at the more retracted central and back alveolar zones with the tip rather than with the blade (e.g., English) [Delattre, 1953; Honikman, 1964; Laver, 1980, p. 49]. In a carefully conducted palatographic study, Dart [1991, 1998, p. 32] has reported indeed that /t, d, n/ are mostly apicolamino- dental in French and apico- alveolar in English. It has also been stated that differences in place of articulation and in primary articu- lator may co- occur with differences in placement and configuration of the tongue body, which has been reported to be advanced, raised and convex to the roof of the mouth in languages exhibiting a laminal setting (French), and posterior, lowered and concave in languages showing an apical setting (English) [Honikman, 1964]. These language- dependent differences in tongue body position and shape could explain differences in degree of darkness in /l/ (i.e., /l/ is ‘light’ in French and ‘dark’ in English), and possibly the presence of a large number of alveolopalatal consonants in French. Moreover, they have been argued to account for differences in vowel quality, i.e., ‘bright’ vowels in French as opposed to ‘dull’ and central vowels in English [Heffner, 1950, p. 99], and for specific vowel changes, i.e., /a/ fronting into /ε/ in French [mer MARE; Malmberg, 1974, p. 246]. According to early studies [Heffner, 1950, p. 99; O’Connor, 1973, p. 289], prefer- ence for the tongue blade over the tongue tip as the primary articulator could induce a higher degree of tongue pressure and tension during front lingual consonant produc- tion, e.g., in French versus English. Possible correlates of an increase in tension are expected to be the formation of a larger tongue contact area at constriction location, a higher intraoral and/or subglottal pressure and a slower constriction release [Laver, 1980, pp. 149– 156]. The jaw may also contribute to the tongue tip and blade settings. Experimental data reveal that the jaw occupies a lower position during consonant production in English than in French [Gick et al., 2004; Wilson, 2006], which matches a well- known trend for apical consonants to exhibit a lower jaw than laminal ones [see Lindblad and Lundqvist, 2003 for /l/, and Honikman, 1964, pp. 78– 79 for retroflex consonants in the languages of India and Pakistan]. Early descriptive studies have pointed out, however, that the jaw is kept slightly open by speakers of French and loosely closed by speakers of English [Honikman, 1964], and moves less in the latter language than in the former [O’Connor, 1973, p. 289]. 1.2. Symmetry and Manner of Articulation Articulatory symmetry, i.e., a trend for phonetic segments specified for a given place or manner feature to exhibit the same or a highly similar articulatory implemen- tation of that feature, needs to be taken into consideration in studies dealing with artic- ulatory setting. Symmetry appears to play a relevant role in the distribution of vowels in vowel spaces, mostly so regarding F1, since this formant is the main spectral correlate of vowel height and is more intense than other formants [Lindblom, 1986; Boersma, 1998, pp. 347– 350]. This characteristic holds for the number of vowels in vowel inventories, i.e., languages tend to have the same number of mid front and mid back vowels. It also applies to the vowel formant frequencies, i.e., both mid front and mid 202 Phonetica 2010;67:201–218 Recasens back vowels show a very similar F1 frequency in five vowel systems and may share particularly open or close realizations (e.g., both /ε/ and /ɔ/ are particularly open in the Majorcan and Valencian dialects of Catalan [Recasens and Espinosa, 2006a, 2009]). There is some evidence that consonants agreeing in place but not in manner of articulation may be produced with roughly the same constriction location provided that the manner requirements for at least one of the consonants subject to compari- son do not prevent this symmetrical relationship from occurring. Thus, in Majorcan Catalan, the nasal stop phoneme /ɲ/ and the oral stop allophone [c] of /k/ may share approximately the same closure location either at the alveolopalatal or at the palatal zone depending on speaker [Recasens and Espinosa, 2006b]. It has also been shown that the constriction placement for /ʃ/ may agree very closely with the constriction and, less so, the closure location for the affricate /tʃ/ [Dixit and Hoffman, 2004; Recasens and Espinosa, 2007b]. It appears, therefore, that consonants subject to a symmetrical relationship ought to be related in a similar way to a specific base of articulation char- acteristic. Thus, the place of articulation of the two consonants /c/ and /ɲ/, as well as that of /ʃ/ and /tʃ/, referred to above is expected to be more anterior or more posterior depending on the language or dialect taken into account. Laterals, fricatives and trills may not conform to differences in articulatory set- ting in line with the strict manner of articulation demands involved in their production [Mennen et al., 2010]. Thus, while dentoalveolar stops are more anterior in French than in English, the opposite may hold for apical /l/, which is clear in the former language and dark in the latter (see also section 1.3), and /s/ has been reported to be mostly laminal (less apical) in the two languages [Dart, 1998]. In a similar fashion, the lateral phoneme /ʎ/ is articulated invariably at the alveolar or alveolo- prepalatal zone in the Romance languages and thus, at a more anterior location than the alveolopalatal or palatal cognates /ɲ/ and /c/, presumably since its production requires the formation of one or two channels at the sides of the oral cavity for the passage of airflow [Recasens and Espinosa, 2006b]. Once manner of articulation requirements and the possible effect of symmetry are taken into consideration, a given articulatory setting is expected to affect all or the majority of the phonetic segments produced at a specific articulatory zone, e.g., front lingual consonants, front vowels. This is so since the base of articulation charac- teristics are supposed to be present ‘more or less all the time that a person is talking’ [Abercrombie, 1967, p. 91]. 1.3. The Catalan Case Linguopalatal contact data obtained by means of electropalatography (EPG) reveal differences in constriction anteriority for consonants among the three Catalan dialects Eastern (which is spoken in the Eastern part of Catalonia, a region located in the northeast of Spain), Majorcan (which is spoken in the island of Majorca) and Valencian (which is spoken in the Valencian provinces located south of Catalonia and bordering on Spanish territories to the west). A clear case is that of the lingual fricatives /s/ and /ʃ/, which have been found to be articulated with a more anterior constriction in Valencian than in the other two dialects; moreover, based on EPG data on constric- tion location, length and shape, it has been suggested that the lingual constriction is more laminal in Valencian and more apical in Majorcan and Eastern in the case of /s/, and laminal or lamino- predorsal in Majorcan and just laminal in Valencian in the case Base of Articulation for Catalan Consonants Phonetica 2010;67:201–218 203 of /ʃ/ [Recasens and Espinosa, 2007b].