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The Romance Languages Spanish This article was downloaded by: 10.3.98.104 On: 28 Sep 2021 Access details: subscription number Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG, UK The Romance Languages Martin Harris, Nigel Vincent Spanish Publication details https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9780203426531.ch3 John N. Green Published online on: 28 Jan 1988 How to cite :- John N. Green. 28 Jan 1988, Spanish from: The Romance Languages Routledge Accessed on: 28 Sep 2021 https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9780203426531.ch3 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR DOCUMENT Full terms and conditions of use: https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/legal-notices/terms This Document PDF may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproductions, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The publisher shall not be liable for an loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. 3 Spanish John N. Green 1 Introduction Spanish is by far the most widely spoken of the modern Romance lan- guages, and as an international vehicle for commerce and diplomacy is fast encroaching on the preeminent position long enjoyed by French. (Details of its geographical distribution together with speaker statistics will be found in Chapter 1. See also Map I.) In most Spanish-speaking regions the terms espanol and castellano are used interchangeably, but a useful distinction can be drawn between 'Spanish' as a diasystem and 'Castilian' as its prestige form in Europe, the basis of the standard language and still, for many speakers, the model for pronunciation. In common with all spatially diffused languages, Spanish is subject to regional and sociolinguistic variation and also — in its international role — to conflicting normative pressures, but despite some well-publicised diver- gences of pronunciation and vocabulary (discussed in sections 2 and 5 below), the range of variation is not very great and only rarely disrupts mutual comprehensibility. In Spain, the 'purest' form of Castilian is tra- ditionally identified with Burgos, but in practice the norm has long been the educated usage of Madrid, which has consistently been more open to outside influences. In Latin America, the prestige formerly attaching to Colombian Spanish (perhaps because Colombia was the first ex-colony to establish its own language Academy in 1873) has now unquestionably moved northwards to Mexico City, by far the most populous Spanish- speaking conurbation in the world. The modern focus of the two 'norms' does not, however, mean that their geographical boundary can be neatly located between Europe and the New World, since Andalusian in southern Spain and the dialects of the Canary Islands share many of the distinguishing features of Latin American. Despite the vast discrepancy in populations, the Castilian norm continues to be highly valued — though not necessarily imitated — in most of Latin America. An ironical recent development in Spain, however, has been the spread, among younger speakers, of modes of pronunciation whose origin is unmistakably Andalusian. 79 Downloaded By: 10.3.98.104 At: 05:27 28 Sep 2021; For: 9780203426531, chapter3, 10.4324/9780203426531.ch3 80 SPANISH 2 Phonology In this sketch of Spanish phonology we shall concentrate on the Castilian norm, making reference as appropriate to variant articulations and socio- linguistic status. An arrangement of material adopted in the interests of economy should not, however, be taken to imply that other varieties of Spanish are deviations from, nor yet dialects of, Castilian. Auditory Impression Before considering the segmental units, we should say a little about pro- sodic characteristics and general auditory impression. Spanish has often been quoted as a textbook example of a syllable-timed language, with a delivery sometimes likened to a recalcitrant machine gun. A newer pro- posal suggests Spanish would be more accurately described as 'segment timed' since the delivery, though perceptually regular, does not always produce isochronous syllabification or isochronous stress intervals. The rhythmic pattern, naturally, has implications for intonation, which tends to avoid abrupt changes and readily accommodates melodic units of ten to fifteen syllables. Castilian, whose everyday register is confined to little more than an octave, has a basic rise-fall for simple declaratives, a sustained rise for most yes-no questions, and the characteristic Western Romance level or rising tone to mark enumerations and sentence-medial clause boundaries. A prominent feature of Castilian is its 'dynamic' or intensity accent, which is noticeably free from tonal modulation. Most writers also comment on the resonant quality that Castilians and northern dialect speakers impart to their everyday speech. This has been variously ascribed to an unusual articulatory setting, to the rhythmic structure, to the predominance of low, open vowels, and to the stability of vowel sounds in both stressed and unstressed positions. Though all these factors may be contributory, the principal cause must be articulatory setting, since many other regional varieties of Spanish are produced with a less marked resonant quality despite sharing the other structural features of Castilian. Consonants The segmental consonant system of Castilian, given in Table 3.1, can be presented as neatly symmetrical, with four articulatory positions and five degrees of aperture, but this disguises some interesting irregularities in distribution. While, for instance, the absence of any point-of-articulation opposition between oral stops and affricates argues for a merger of the categories, they differ in that /dz/ is by no means securely established in the system, and neither palatal enters into syllable-initial clusters, which the stops do freely. The reintroduction of [dz], which was present in Old Spanish probably as an allophone of /z/, is comparatively recent and its phonemic status remains doubtful. Since, as we shall see (p. 84), it occurs as the exponent of two distinct phonemes, its incorporation would neces- Downloaded By: 10.3.98.104 At: 05:27 28 Sep 2021; For: 9780203426531, chapter3, 10.4324/9780203426531.ch3 SPANISH 81 Table 3.1: The Castilian Consonant System Bilabial Dento-alveolar Palatal Velar Oral stops [—voice] P t k [+voice] b d g Affricates [—voice] tf [+voice] (dz) Fricatives [—voice] f θ s X Nasal stops m n η Laterals 1 λ Vibrants [+tense] r [—tense] r sarily provoke a realignment of the system. The Castilian voiceless stops are unaspirated plosives. The voiced series is in complementary distribution with a corresponding set of voiced spirants, the plosives occurring word-initially and medially after nasals, and the spirants elsewhere: boca 'mouth' ['boka] but cabo 'end' ['kaβo], donde 'where' ['donde] but nudo 'knot' ['nudo], grande 'big' ['grande] but magro 'lean' ['mayro]. A word-initial plosive, however, is also liable to replace- ment by the corresponding spirant when intervocalic within a breath- group: la boca [la'βoka]. Moreover, in indigenous words neither /b/ nor /g/ occurs word-finally, and orthographic -d is weakened to [d] or lost completely. It has traditionally been assumed that the spirants are the sub- ordinate members of these pairs, since the weakening of plosives to fricatives in comparable environments is well attested as a historical process in Romance. But the distinction is equally amenable to analysis as a strengthening of spirants in group-initial or post-nasal position, and recent research on language acquisition among Mexican children seems to show that the spirants are acquired first and remain dominant. The future of the medial spirants is, however, less secure than their present frequency implies. The Latin intervocalic voiceless plosives from which many of them derive have in French often undergone a third stage of lenition resulting in their complete loss and a consequent syllabic merger (see p. 39), compare VĪTAM 'life' > Sp. ['bida], Fr. [vi]; MĪCAM 'crumb' > Sp. ['miya], Fr. [mi]. There are a number of pointers to a similar out- come in Spanish. One is the very lax articulation often given to intervocalic /-g-/ especially when followed by the labio-velar glide /w/; in a word like agua 'water' the g is rarely more than a frictionless velar approximant and Downloaded By: 10.3.98.104 At: 05:27 28 Sep 2021; For: 9780203426531, chapter3, 10.4324/9780203426531.ch3 82 SPANISH is sometimes lost altogether. Another sign is the disappearance of /-d-/ from past participles in -ado/-ido. This change, which is now virtually com- plete among younger speakers, has been the subject of intense normative disapproval, giving rise in turn to amusing hypercorrections like [baka'lado] for bacalao 'cod'. Curiously, the same change has gone unnoticed in the reflexive imperative, where the coalescence of levantad + os as ilevantaos! 'stand up' (familiar plural) is even accepted by the standard orthography. The loss of /-d-/ in these contexts is still clearly dependent on morphological factors (in the past participle, it affects the feminine form -ada less frequently than the corresponding masculine -ado), but it may signal the first stage of a more general phonological process. The three Castilian sibilants are the remainder of what was in Old Spanish a much larger set, including a voiced phonemic series whose demise is still not wholly explained. The absence of phonemic voiced sibilants now sets Spanish apart from most other Romance varieties, though [z] is used by some speakers as an alternative realisation of /λ/ (see below), and [z] occurs infrequently as an allophone of /s/ before voiced obstruents, but not intervocalically, thus desde 'from/since' ['dez e] but esposa 'wife' [εs'posa] — compare Port.
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