sign in sign up
<<
Home , Assibilation, Dictation (exercise), Front vowel, Hiatus (linguistics), Metaphony, Monophthongization

Florida State University Libraries

Honors Theses The Division of Undergraduate Studies

2012 Palatals in Spanish and French: An Analysis Rachael Gray

Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected]

Abstract (Palatal, Spanish, French) This thesis deals with palatals from into Spanish and French. Specifically, it focuses on the diachronic history of each with a focus on palatals. I also look at studies that have been conducted concerning palatals, and present a synchronic analysis of palatals in modern day Spanish and French. The final section of this paper focuses on my research design in second language acquisition of palatals for native French speakers learning Spanish.

2

THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

PALATALS IN SPANISH AND FRENCH: AN ANALYSIS

BY:

RACHAEL GRAY

A Thesis submitted to the Department of Modern in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation with Honors in the Major

Degree Awarded: 3

Spring, 2012

The members of the Defense Committee approve the thesis of Rachael Gray defended on March 21, 2012

______Professor Carolina Gonzaléz Thesis Director

______Professor Gretchen Sunderman Committee Member

______Professor Eric Coleman Outside Committee Member

4

Contents Acknowledgements ...... 5 0. Introduction ...... 6 I. Diachronic Development of with a focus on palatals ...... 9 1. From Latin to ...... 9 1A. ...... 9 1a-2 ...... 12 1a-3 New Diphthongs in Spanish ...... 13 1.B ...... 14 1b-1 The development of the prepalatal order ...... 14 Geminates in the creation of the Spanish palatal order...... 17 2. From Late Latin to ...... 17 2.A. Vowels in Late Latin to Old French...... 17 2A-1. New diphthongs in Gallo-Roman ...... 18 2a-i. Short [e] and short [o] ...... 18 2a-ii.Long [e:] ...... 19 2a-iii. Long [o:] ...... 19 2a-iv. The [a] ...... 19 2A-2 Loi de bartsch ...... 20 2B. Consonants ...... 20 II. Palatal consonants in present day Spanish and French ...... 23 II.A. Previous Studies ...... 23 II.B. Synchronic Analysis of Palatals in Spanish and French today ...... 25 II.B-1. Palatal Consonants in Present day Spanish ...... 25 II B-2. Palatal Consonants in Present day French...... 29 III. Research Design...... 31 III B. Design Proposals in Perception and Production ...... 31 Design for an experiment in perception ...... 31 Overview ...... 31 Control Group ...... 32 Variables ...... 32 5

Tasks ...... 33 First task ...... 33 Second task ...... 35 Design for an Experiment in Production ...... 36 Overview ...... 36 Control Group ...... 36 Variables ...... 37 Task ...... 37 Further research ...... 39 Markedness ...... 41 Conclusion ...... 42 Works Cited ...... 44

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank first and foremost, Dr. Gonzalez for her support, and guidance throughout this long process. Her dedication to her students in their pursuit of higher education is truly remarkable. I would also like to thank my committee members Dr. Gretchen Sunderman and Dr. Eric Coleman without whom, I would not have been able to defend a thesis. Their advice has helped to advance clarity throughout my paper. I am immensely grateful to my fellow classmates. I would especially like to thank Anne Bailey and Christine Weissglass for sharing with me their knowledge of linguistics, which has been invaluable. They have been a constant source of encouragement.

6

0. Introduction

My goal in this paper is to make a comprehensive overview of the evolution of palatals in Spanish and French from their earliest forms to present day, and to contribute to the study of second language acquisition. To do this, I have divided this paper into three parts. Part one addresses the diachronic history of Spanish and French from Latin, which focuses on the changes from Latin that occurred in Spanish and French. Part two focuses on a synchronic analysis of palatals in present day, and includes a brief section that describes a few language studies that have thus far been conducted. The third is a research design proposal for the acquisition of palatals for Native French speakers learning Spanish.

Part one is sub-divided into two subsections titled “from Latin to Old Spanish” and “from

Latin to Old French”. In this section, I have tried to only address those historical changes that are the most important, and the most relevant to palatals, as it would be quite lengthy, if I attempted to document every change that has occurred. I have included processes that have led to the creation of palatals in each language. Subsections in this part of the paper will address processes that had a large impact on the language throughout its evolution which include some broader linguistic phenomenon.

The second part of the paper discusses palatal as they appear in Spanish and

French today, with consideration of their allophonic counterparts and dialectal variation. This section also includes research pertaining to other language studies that have been conducted.

Throughout my research I have attempted to target second language acquisition studies, and have found only one by Manuel Diaz-Campos (2004) which I will explore in part three. 7

The final section of this paper is the research design phase which will begin with a summarization of the previously mentioned acquisition study by Manuel Diaz-Campos (2004). I continue this section with an abstract that focuses on my hypothesis of palatal acquisition for

Native French speakers learning Spanish. I use Oller and Ziahosseiny’s (1970) moderate version of contrastive analysis to support my design. I hope to be able to fill in some gaps in our current knowledge of palatal acquisition, and have designed studies in perception and production to do this.

Each of these sections is divided into an ‘overview’, ‘control group’, ‘variables’, and

‘task(s)’ section. The first study has two tasks to measure perception. The first is a task in identification which measures a subject’s ability to distinguish between palatals, and the second, is a discrimination task, to determine if the subject is able to provide a response according to what they hear. The second study in production, will measure how they say the palatal, and will only have one production task.

I will follow up this part with a ‘further research’ section which will focus on research on palatals that I have collected while in the lab during class, and compare my results with one of my colleagues’ to insure reliable measures. I include this section as a precursor to future studies. This section is important because if I decide to conduct this experiment in the future, I will first need to understand how palatals are produced by native speakers, and the information included will allow me to begin to make this measurement. The final part of this section includes information that may help to assess the validity of my hypothesis, namely markedness. 8

I will close with a concluding section that sums up some of the main points of this paper, and what I hope to have contributed by the end of this project.

9

I. Diachronic Development of Romance Languages with a focus on palatals

1. From Latin to Old Spanish Before I begin, I want to provide a very brief overview of the history of the Spanish

language. Latinization of Spain occurred in the 3rd century. The Spanish Medieval period begins with the Visigoth rule in the 5th century which lasts until the 8th century (Bianchini 2011 and

Penny 1991: 11). In the year 711 an Islamic invasion brought Christian Europe in contact with the languages which lead to semantic borrowing (Penny 1991: 11). Other important dates throughout time include the creation of Castille in 1035 and the capture of Toledo in 1085.

Penny (1991) considers Old Spanish to be from the 12th-15th centuries. In the 13th century, the language was standardized by Alfonso X, and the medieval period ends in 1492 (O'Callaghan

1975: 1).

1A. Vowels The classical Latin vowel system was characterized by long and short vowels. The early

Latin vowel system consisted of ten phonemes which were classified according to aperture (or height), advancement (front, central,back) and length (this moras and mora system) (Table 1).

High aperture included /i/ /i:/ /u/ /u:/ middle aperture /e/ /e:/ /o/ /o:/ and low aperture /a/ /a:/.

Front vowels were /i/ /i:/ /e/ /e:/ and were distinguished from back vowels /u/ /u:/ /o/ /o:/ and two vowels that were neither front or back /a/ /a:/. Long vowels were /a: i: e: o: u:/ and short vowels were /i e a o u/ (Penny 1991:37).

Table 1: Latin vowel system-10 phonemes in Classical Latin (Penny 1991:37)

Front Central Back High /i:/ /i/ /u:/ /u/ Middle /e:/ /e/ /o:/ /o/ Low /a:/ /a/

10

Examples of these vowels in minimal pairs are in table 2.

Table 2: Examples of Latin (Lloyd 1987:71)

/i:/ LĪBER ‘free /i/ LIBER ‘book’ /e:/ SĒDES ‘abode’ /e/ SEDES ‘you sit’ /a:/ MĀLUM ‘apple /a/ MALUM ‘evil/bad’ /o:/ ŌS ‘mouth /o/ OS ‘bone’ /u:/ FŪRIS ‘of a thief’ /u/ FURIS ‘your rage’

One of the earliest fundamental changes in the vowel system was the loss of distinction between the short and long /a/ which occurred no later than the first century A.D. This is shown in Tables 3 and 4 below (Penny 1991:38).

Table 3 and 4: Change from 9 vowel phonemes to 7 through merger of height (Penny 1991:38)

Table: 3 Table: 4 /i/ /u/

/I/ /ʊ/ /i/ /u/ /e/ /o/ /e/ /o/ /ʊ/ /ʊ/ /ʊ/ /ʊ/ /a/ /a/

This now nine vowel system represented in table 3 was unstable, and it eventually resulted in a merger of seven vowels as shown in table 4 (Penny 1991: 39). The /I/ and /e/ merged into /e/, and the /ʊ/ and /o/ merged into /o/. This seven-vowel system is known as the vowel system (Penny 1991:39). This change in vowels led to the reduction of in later Latin because there are fewer vowels to articulate, which affected the nature of the accent of the language. This hiatus was reduced by converting the weaker vowel (often the first vowel) into a glide either [] or [w] (Penny 1991: 51 and Lloyd 1987: 118). This changes the vowel-vowel 11

combination into a vowel-glide combination. Among the less well educated, this resulted in

confusion in spelling between /e/ and /i/ and /o/ and /u/ as seen below (Penny 1991: 52).

1. ALEUM was written instead of the proper ALIUM ‘garlic’ (Penny 1991: 52) 2. CLUACA was written instead of the proper CLOACA ‘sewer/drainage’ (Penny 1991: 52) 3. VINIA was written instead of the proper VINEA ‘vineyard’ (Penny 1991: 52)

Often, vowels of Vulgar Latin were raised by one degree of aperture when a palatal glide [j]

or [i] followed the vowel, a phenomenon known as (Penny 1991: 40).

4. /e/ raised to /i/: VINDĒMIA>vendimia ‘grape harvest’ (Penny 1991: 40) 5. /ʊ/ raised to /e/: MĀTERIA>madera ‘wood’ (Penny 1991: 40) 6. /ʊ/ raised to /o/: FOLIA>hoja ‘leaf’ (Penny 1991: 40) 7. /o/ is raised to /u/: *CUENA>cuña ‘wedge’1 (Penny 1991: 40) 8. /a/ raised to /e/: ĀREA>era ‘threshing-floor’ (Penny 1991: 40)

The highest vowels /i/ and /u/ were exempt from metaphony because they are already high

and therefore immune to .

The glide sometimes combined with an adjacent , and had no effect on the

preceding vowel. This is the case of the glide [j] proceeded by Latin /t/ or /k/ (Penny 1991:40). In

the following example the glide [j] combines with /t/ but does not change /e/ (Penny 1991:39-

40).

9. LENTEU>lienzo ‘fabric’ (Penny 1991:40) 10. FORTIA>fuerza ‘strength’ (Penny 1991:40)

Stressed /ʊ/ and stressed /ʊ/ are unaffected by metaphony and remain mid-open vowels but

diphthongized to [jé] and [wé] respectively (Penny 1991:40):

Some examples of [έ] to [jé] are: (Pharies 2007: 82)

1 This is a reconstructed form* “indicates the lack of confirmation from written sources, and therefore the hypothetical status of the word concerned” (Penny 1991:5) 12

11. BENE>bien ‘well’ (Pharies 2007: 82) 12. METU> miedo ‘fear’ (Pharies 2007: 82) 13. FERRU>hierro ‘iron’ (Pharies 2007: 82) 14. TEMPUS>tiempo ‘time’ (Pharies 2007: 82)

Examples of [ʊ] to [wé] are: (Pharies 2007:82)

15. BONU>bueno ‘well’ (Pharies 2007: 82) 16. ROTA>rueda ‘wheel’ (Pharies 2007: 82) 17. OSSU>hueso ‘bone’ (Pharies 2007: 82) 18. SOLIDUS>sueldo ‘salary’ (Pharies 2007: 82)

When stressed /o/ or stressed /o: / is followed by [j] within the same or if the vowel (/o/ or /o:/) is followed by [ʊ] they result in [wé] (Penny 1991:40-42 and Fradejas Rueda 1997: 55-

105)

19. CORIU> /koriu/ >kʊrjo/>/koiro/ cuero ‘leather’ (Fradejas Rueda 1997: 55) 20. SOMNIU /sʊn:jo/>/sueʊo/ sueño ‘dream’ (Fradejas Rueda 1997: 55) 21. CICŌNIA>/kiko:nia/> /tsegueʊa/>cegüeña (medieval Spanish) >/θigueʊa/> cigüeña ‘stork’ (Fradejas Rueda 1997: 66) 22. VERĒCUNDIA>/were:kundia/>/bergueʊa/> vergüeña (medieval Spanish) > /berguenθa/ vergüenza ‘shame’ (Fradejas Rueda 1997: 55)

1a-2 Diphthongs

The three central Latin diphthongs were orthographic AE /ai/ orthographic OE /oi/ and

orthographic AU /au/. One of the earliest diphthongs to monophthongize was AE /ai/ in the first

century AD (Lloyd 1987: 105). /ai/ and /oi/ were reduced to the simple vowels /ʊ/ and /e/

respectively (Penny 1991:45).

23. CAELUM /kέlo/>cielo ‘sky’ (Penny 1991:45) 24. QUAERIT /kwέret/>quiere ‘to want-third person singular’ (Penny 1991:45) 25. POENA /péna/ >pena ‘penalty’ (Penny 1991:45) 26. FOEDUS /fédo/>feo ‘ugly’ (Penny 1991:45)

13

A of /au/ to /a/ was regular. This happened when /au/ precedes both a and /u/ (Lloyd 1987: 107):

27. AUGUSTO>AGUSTO ‘a Latin name’ (Lloyd 1987: 107) 28. AUSCULTĀRE> ASCULTĀRE> ‘to listen attentively’ (Lloyd 1987: 107) 29. AUGURIUM>AGURIUM ‘prophecy’ (Lloyd 1987: 107)

There are a few cases of reduction of /au/ to /o/ and it was not until later that the reduction of/au/

became /o/ (Penny 1991: 45).

30. PAUCU>poco ‘little’ (Penny 1991: 45) 31. TAURU>toro ‘bull’ (Penny 1991: 45) 32. CAUSA>cosa ‘thing’ (Penny 1991: 45)

1a-3 New Diphthongs in Spanish In Spanish /ʊ/ and /ʊ/ lengthened through , into intermediary diphthongs shown below (Penny 1991:44):

Table 5

/i/ /u/ /e/ /o/ /ʊ/ >[eʊ] [oʊ] < /ʊ/ /a/

These new intermediary diphthongs were observable in early Spanish and were interpreted as

two vowel phonemes which went through the following changes (Penny 1991: 44):

33. [eʊ]>[iʊ]>[je] (orthographic IE) a. BENE=/bέne/>bien ‘well’(Penny 1991: 44) b. PETRA=/pέtra/>pierda ‘stone’ (Penny 1991: 44)

34. [oʊ]>[uʊ]>[wo]>[we] (orthographic UE) a. BONUS=/bʊno/>bueno ‘good’ (Penny 1991: 44)

14

A modification of vowels that occurred after this period was the occasional reduction of /ie/ to /i/ when followed by /λ/ (Penny 1991:46):

35. CASTELLU>castiello>castillo ‘castle’ (Penny 1991:46) 36. CULTELLU>cuchiello>cuchillo ‘knife’ (Penny 1991:46) 37. SELLA>siella>silla ‘chair’ (Penny 1991:46)

1.B Consonants

The consonant system in classical Latin was comprised of thirteen phonemes, many of which had geminate counterparts with the exception of /h/, /f/ /b/ /d/ and // shown in Table 5

Table 6 (Penny1991: 52):

labial Dental-alveolar Velar Voiceless /p/ /pp/ /t/ /tt/ /k/ /kk/ Voiced plosives /b/ /d/ /g/ Voiceless /f/ /s/ /ss/ /h/ Nasal /m/ /mm/ /n/ /nn/ Lateral /l/ // Trill /r/ /rr/

1b-1 The development of the prepalatal order

While Latin had no phonological palatal consonants, the short vowel /i/ had a variant, the palatal glide [j] which developed from the atonic /e/ and /i/ in hiatus. Originally, in Latin, vowels that were in contact maintained their character by being pronounced in separate .

However, in Late Latin, they began to be fused into a single syllable with the following vowel.

The pronunciation of /i/ in hiatus as a palatal semiconsonant [j] was called yod (Lloyd 1987:

132). This glide often modified the preceding consonant changing the drawing it towards [j] and sometimes changing its from to 15

or called palatalization (Penny 1991:53-54). Generally yod influences

consonants articulated closest to the ; dentro-alveolars, and velars (Penny 1991: 54).

It is assumed that /i/ in word initial was the glide [j] hence IĀNUĀRIUS ‘January’ was pronounced [ja:nua:rius]. In spoken Latin [j] became the consonant fricative [ʊ] (Penny 1991:

53). We know it was a consonant because of the misspellings which confused [ʊ] with the

apico-alveolar /s/ (Penny 1996: 53). The appearance of this [ʊ] is considered to be the first step in the creation of a palatal order (Penny 1991: 53).

38. SUSTUS written instead of IUSTUS ‘just/right’ (Penny 1991: 53) 39. ZERAX written instead of HIERAX ‘hawk’ (Penny 1991: 53)

Palatalization of a consonant through combination with yod was common and also happened in

French. For example the combination of the consonant /k/ with the yod [j] created [tʊ]

(Penny1991:54).

40. ERICIU /e:ri:kiu/>[eritʊo]> [eriθo] erizo ‘hedgehog’ (Fradejas Rueda 1997: 99)

This yod also happened with /t/ to create [ts]. This is one of the earliest forms of palatalization appearing in the second century. Examples include the following (Fradejas Rueda 1997: 98):

41. PUTEU /puteu/ >[potso]>…>[poθo] pozo ‘well’ (Fradejas Rueda 1997: 98) 42. MARTIU /ma:rtiu/>…> [martso]>…> [marθo] marzo ‘march’ (Fradejas Rueda 1997: 98)

Another example of the creation of the palatal affricate /tʊ/ is with the consonant cluster /kt/ often spelt with an orthographic ‘CT’ (Fradejas Rueda 1997: 110):

43. LACTE /lakte/ >/letʊe/ leche ‘milk’ (Fradejas Rueda 1997 : 110) 44. NOCTE /noktu/ >/notʊe/ noche ‘night’ (Fradejas Rueda 1997 : 110)

The creation of [ʊ] occurred in Spanish with the sound /ks/ represented by orthographic ‘X’.

(Fradejas Rueda 110): 16

45. AXE /akse/ > /eʊe/ exe (medieval Spanish) ‘axle’ (Fradejas Rueda 110) 46. DIXI /di:ksi:/ ./diʊe/ dixe (medieval Spanish) ‘say/declare’ (Fradejas Rueda 110) 47. MATAXA /mataksa/ >/madeʊa/> mexiella (medieval Spanish) ‘a name in Latin’ (Fradejas Rueda 110)

This /ʊ/ is considered to by Hualde (2005) to be a , but is used only in Argentinean

Spanish. It is becoming more and more frequent in Buenos Aires and is spreading to surrounding areas (Hualde 2005: 166).

In the middle ages, the combination of /d/ and [j] and /g/ and [j] were often pronounced as geminates and were often written with an orthographic ‘’ (Fradejas Rueda 1997: 103). The first two examples are /d/+[j] and the last one is an example of /g/+[j].

48. MODIU /modiu/ >[mʊðjo]> /mojo/ moyo ‘flower pot’ (Fradejas Rueda 1997: 103) 49. PODIU /podiu/ >[pʊðjo]> [pʊjo]> /pojo/ poyo ‘stone bench’ (Fradejas Rueda 1997: 103) 50. ARRURIU /a:ugiu/>[ar:oʊjo]>[ar:ojo]>/arojo/ arroyo ‘brook/stream’ (Fradejas Rueda 1997: 103)

In many places, /l/ and [j] became the lateral [λ]. Later in pre-literary Castilian

[λ] was modified to [ʊ] in order to maintain the contrast between palatal consonants that changed because of yod, and those that were spelt orthographically as ‘ll’ (Penny 1991: 55).

51. ALIU /a:liu/>[alijo]>[aλo]>/aʊo/ ajo ‘garlic’ (Fradejas Rueda 1997:102) 52. FOLIA /fʊlia/>/ [fʊλa]>[foλa]>[foʊa] >[foja]>[oxa]>hoja ‘leaf’ (Fradejas Rueda 1997:102)

Today, this palatal lateral is still seen today in Paraguay, parts of Columbia, Ecuador, Peru,

Bolivia, and parts of Chile in contrast with the voiced fricative palatal (Hualde 2005: 180).

Many students learning Spanish for the first time are confronted with the ‘ñ’. This evolved from

/n/ when combined with yod [j] which produced the voiced nasal palatal /ʊ/ (Penny 1991: 55):

53. ARĀNEA /ara:nea/>[aranja]> /araʊa/ araña ‘spider’ (Fradejas Rueda 1997:103) 17

54. HĪSPĀNIA /i:spa:nia/> [ispanja]> /espaʊa/ España ‘spain (Fradejas Rueda 1997:103) 55. SENIŌRE /senio:re/> [senjore]> /seʊore/ señor ‘sir’ (Fradejas Rueda 1997:103) 56. VĪNEA /wi:nea? >[winja]> /biʊa/ viña ‘vineyard’ (Fradejas Rueda 1997:103)

Geminates in the creation of the Spanish palatal order It is argued that geminates were also responsible for the creation of the palatal consonants in

Spanish. The geminate ‘nn’ is said to have resulted in what is the voiced nasal palatal /ʊ/

(Fradejas Rueda 1997: 109).

57. ANNU /an:u/> /aʊo/ año ‘year’ (Fradejas Rueda 1997: 109) 58. CANNA /kan:a/>/kaʊa/ caña ‘cane’ (Fradejas Rueda 1997: 109). 59. GRUNNĪRE /grun:i:re/> /gruʊir/ gruñir ‘to growl, groan’ (Fradejas Rueda 1997: 109).

Orthographic ‘ll’ change to the palatal lateral /λ/ (Fradejas Rueda 1997:109):

60. CAPILLU /kapil:u/>/kabyλo/ cabello ‘hair’ (Fradejas Rueda 1997: 109) 61. GALLINA /gal:i:na/ > /gaλina/ gallina ‘hen’ (Fradejas Rueda 1997: 109)

2. From Late Latin to Old French

2.A. Vowels in Late Latin to Old French

French can be split up into Period I which consists of Gallo- Roman (5th-9th century) and

Early Old French (9th-11th century) and Period II which is split up into Later Old French (11th -

14th century) and Middle French (14th century-16th century) (Pope 1952:9). In this section, I will

go up to approximately the 13th century when French palatals stopped evolving. First however, I will address a limitation in French diphthongs that did not exist in Spanish. Unlike Spanish, diphthongs in French only appear in free tonic syllables (those that end in a vowel) (Lloyd 1987:

122 and Machonis 1990:64). This is further explained below. 18

In French, the diphthongs /ai/ and /oi/ were reduced to closed [ʊ] and open [e] respectively as they were in Spanish: (Pope 1952: 73,190 and Machonis 1990: 228)

62.SAEPE> [sʊpe] >souvent ‘often’ (Pope 1952 : 190) 63. CAELUM [kʊlu] >ciel ‘sky’ (Machonis 1990: 228) 64. POENA> [pena] >peine ‘pain’ (Pope 1952 : 190) 2A-1. New diphthongs in Gallo-Roman

2a-i. Short [e] and short [o] Both [ʊ] and [ʊ] elongated becoming the diphthongs [ʊʊ] and [ʊʊ]. This was an intermediary step before [ʊʊ] changed to [iʊ] in the third century and [ʊʊ] became [uʊ] in the

fourth century (Machonis 1990: 64):

65. FE.RUM> [fiʊru]>fier ‘proud’ (Machonis 1990: 64) 66. MO.RIT>[muʊrit]> meurt ‘die’ (Machonis 1990: 64)

Because the syllables FE and MO in numbers 88 and 89 above end in vowels, they are

considered to be in open syllables. A vowel is said to be free if it is in an open syllable. Thus, the

above “FERUM’ and ‘MORIT’ can be diphthongized. Only these free tonic syllables could be

diphthongnized in French. This should be contrasted with closed syllables, (syllables ending in a

consonant) that did not change to diphthongs. In the following two examples, the first syllables

end in consonants /r/ and therefore did not diphthongize (Machonis 1990: 64).

67. FER.RUM>[fʊrru]>fer ‘iron’ (Machonis 1990: 64) 68. MOR.TEM>mort ‘dead’ (Machonis 1990: 64)

Both short [e] and short [o] were affected by semi-consonants (Machonis 1990: 178). The short

[e] experienced the same changes that the Spanish short [e] did.

Short [ʊ] changes to [we] as in Spanish, then loses its semi-consonant element and passes to

[woe] before rounding to [oe]: (Machonis 1990: 176) 19

[o]>[uʊ]>[ue]>[we]>[woe]>[oe] (Machonis 1990: 178)

2a-ii.Long [e:] In the sixth century there was diphthonization of [e:] and [o:] to [ei] and [ou] (Machonis 1990:

230). This did not happen in Spanish. It only occurred in French (Fox 1968: 32).

69.TELAM>[teila]>toile ‘cloth’ (Machonis 1990 : 230) 70. FLOREM>[floure]>fleur ‘flower’ (Machonis 1990 : 230)

In the 11th -13th centuries, French had a tendency to eliminate diphthongs replacing the first element of the diphthong with a semi consonant (Machonis 1990: 177). A summary of the process of the evolution of long [e] is below:

[e:]>[ei]>[oi]>[oʊ]>[uʊ]>[wʊ] (Machonis 1990: 178)

Above, [uʊ] changed to this semi consonant + vowel [wʊ] described above, eliminating the

vowel-vowel combination and making it a semi consonant -vowel combination (Machonis 1990:

178).

2a-iii. Long [o:] The process of evolution of long [o:] is:

[o:]>[ou]>[eu]>[oeu]>[oe] (Machonis 1952: 178).

When [ou] changes to [eu], it undergoes rounding because of the influence of the [u] resulting in

[oeu] which, eventually became [oe] ( Machonis 1952: 178).

The vowel [o] stayed the same until the 12th century when it was modified to [u]: (Machonis

1990: 95)

CORTE [kort]>[kurt]>cour [kuR] ‘heart’ (Machonis 1990: 95)

2a-iv. The Vowel [a] The tonic vowel [a] underwent a change from [a] to [aʊ] in initial open syllable position

in French and simplified to [ʊ] very quickly thereafter (Machonis 1990: 95): 20

MARE>[maʊre]> [mʊre] (Machonis 1990 : 95)

2A-2 Loi de bartsch

As seen above, tonic [a] becomes [ʊ] in when in an open syllable. When it makes contact with a preceding palatal consonant, it undergoes another change. First [a] in free tonic position becomes [aʊ] but when preceded by a palatal, it becomes [iʊ] through the intermediary steps of

[iaʊ] and then [iʊʊ] (Machonis 1990:96):

71. CARU> [tʊaru]>[tʊiaʊru]>[tʊiʊʊru]> [tʊiʊr] ‘dear’ (Machonis 1990: 96) 72. PURGARE> [purdʊare]>purdʊaʊre]>purdʊiʊr] ‘purge, clean, clear’ Machonis 1990: 96)

In the examples above, the ‘a’ in CARU is stressed and therefore is tonic, and is open as well because the syllable ends in ‘a’. In PURGARE, the ‘a’ is also stressed and they syllable ends in

‘a’ and can therefore be diphthongonized (Machonis 1990: 96).

When [a] came in initial position and was free, it became [e] when preceded by a palatal consonant (Machonis 1990:96).

73. CABALLU>[tʊaballu]>[tʊevallu]>[ʊəval] cheval ‘horse’ Machonis 1990: 96)

In this case, the palatal consonant tends to close the vowel that follows hence the change from

Latin orthographic ‘a’ to the orthographic ‘e’ in French. The evolution of [a] to either [iʊ] or [e] after a palatal consonant is called Bartsch’s law (Machonis 1990:97).

2B. Consonants Latin ‘’ was pronounced as [k] before all vowels (Katzner 2002: 64):

74. LACUNA /laku:na/ ‘tongue’ (Fradejas Rueda 1997: 123) 75. DECEM /dekem/ ‘ten’ (Fradejas Rueda 1997: 122) 76. CAPITIA /kapitia / ‘head’ (Fradejas Rueda 1997 121)

21

In the second century the consonants [k] and [g] were palatalized when in the first

syllable, or in word initial position, before the vowels [i] and [e] as shown below (Machonis

1990: 63).

77. CERVU> [tʊʊrvu]> ‘deer’ (Machonis 1990 : 63) 78. ARGENTU>[ardʊʊntu]> ‘money’ (Machonis 1990: 63)

These new palatalized consonants underwent a that produced the sounds [ts] and

[ʊ]exemplified below (Machonis 1990: 63).

79. CERVU >[tʊʊrvu]> [tsʊrvu]> ‘deer’ (Machnois 1990 : 63) 80. ARGENTU>[ardʊʊntu]> [ardʊʊntu] ‘money’ (Machonis 1990: 63)

This change in the third century of the [ts] was created by - the creation of an

alveolar after a palatal consonant. These two new sounds became and remained

affricates until the 13th century when [ts] was simplified to /s/ and [dʊ] was simplified to /ʊ/

(Machonis 1990: 63 and 232):

81. CERVU>[tsʊrvu]>[sʊr]> ‘deer’ (Machonis 1990: 63) 82. ARGENTU>[ardʊʊntu]>[arʊʊ:]> ‘money’ (Machonish 1990: 63)

The (weakening) of /t/ simplified the affricate [tʊ] to the fricative [ʊ] and the affricate

[dʊ] to the fricative [ʊ] at the beginning of the 13th century (Machonis 1990: 64):

83. [tʊarabone]>[ʊarbo] ‘carbon’ (Machonis 1990: 64) 84. [dʊamba]>[ʊab] ‘leg’ (Machonis 1990: 64)

In the fifth century there was further palatalization of [k] and [g] in initial position before [a]

(Machonis 1990: 229):

85. CARU> [ʊʊaru]>cher ‘dear’ (Machonis 1990: 229) 86. LARGA [lardʊa]>large ‘large/tall’ (Machonis 1990: 229) 87. CARBONE>[tʊarbone]>[tʊarbone] ‘carbon/coal’ (Machonis 1990: 229) 88. GAMBA>[dʊamba]>[ʊamba] ‘leg’ (Machonis 1990: 229)

22

The voiced plosive palatal [ʊ] was created by the palatalization of /d/ and [j] and of [g] following /e/,/ i/, or /ʊ/ (Pope 1952: 130).

89. DIURNUM> d[ʊ]ornu>dornu>szorn>zur>jor, jur ‘journal’ (Pope 1952: 131) 90. DEORSUM> d[ʊ]osu>dzus>jus ‘beneath’ (Pope 1952: 131) 91. HORDEUM>ord[ʊ]u>ordze>orze>orge ‘barley’ (Pope 1952: 131)

In French, the lateral palatal /λ/ was created by the consonant /l/ +[j] as it was in Spanish, however, unlike Spanish this lateral palatal simplified in the 18th century to a semi consonant [j] as heard in the word ‘rien’ /rjʊ/ (Posner 1996: 112). It can still be heard in parts of , and

Switzerland (Pope 1952:55).

The consonant groups ‘ks, kt, kr’ ,and ‘gr’ changed in pronunciation over time in Latin. The

‘k’ in ‘ks’ and the ‘k’ in ‘kt’ were both changed to the voiceless fricative [x]. ‘Kr’ and ‘gr’ plosives similarly changed. The ‘k’ in ‘kr ‘and the ‘g’ in ‘gr’ were affected, but because they followed a voiced [r] they adopted the voiced counterpart of [x]; [ʊ] (Fox 1968: 38). In Spanish these consonant clusters changed to [x] also.

92. FACTUM>faxto2 (Fox 1968: 38) 93. FACERE>faʊre>fairə>flaʊrarʊ>flairier. 3 (Fox 1968 : 38)

In Gallo-Roman, if the velar fricative [ʊ] came before /a/ and was preceded by a

(/i,e,a/), it palatalized to [j]. Spanish intervocalic [g] changes to the velar fricative [ʊ] in the

same conditions, as French, but does not palatalize (Pope 1952: 128).

94. BACA>[baka>baga>baʊa>baje>baie] (Pope 1952: 128)

The latin /k/ + (a, o, u) changed to /g/ + (a, o, u) in Gallo-Roman hence the change from

baka>baga (Pope 1952: 137).

2 ‘kt’ example 3 ‘kr’ example 23

In French, unlike Spanish as mentioned above, baʊa palatalizes to [baje]. After this, jod occurs

[j]+ /e/ and creates a diphthong resulting in [baie].

Here is another example:

95. MICA> [miga> miʊa>mije

First the ‘ka’ (orthographic CA) combination changes to ‘ga’ and then becomes the fricative velar [ʊ] in intervocalic position which is then palatalized and undergoes yod [j] +[e] to become a diphthong [mie] (Pope 1952: 128) .

II. Palatal consonants in present day Spanish and French This section is divided into studies that have been done in the recent past on palatals, and the second part is a synchronic analysis of palatals in Modern day Spanish and French. This analysis will be important moving forward as it provides an inventory of palatals, in both modern Spanish and French some of which I will be using in my research design for second language acquisition.

II.A. Previous Studies All my research has culminated in only one study on second language that deals with palatal acquisition in Spanish. Other studies I did find however provide an interesting spectrum of what kind of research is being done with language today. One of them entitled “an EMMA study of segmental complexity in alveolopalatals and palatalized alveolars” by Daniel Recasens and Joaquín Romero (1997) suggest a difference in articulatory complexity between the palatalized Russian alveolar and the Catalan alveolopalatal. A study conducted by B.

Chang (2008) analyses the nature of palatal variation through acoustic analysis for speakers of

Spanish from Buenos Aires finding that there are at least six different of the palatal phoneme in this area. A study conducted by Caroline Corneau (2000) focuses on palatal gestures in the production of /t/ and /d/ in standard Belgium French through the use of an 24

electropalotography and found that production varies according to the following vowel. The one

study that I have been able to find on palatal acquisition was done by Manuel Diaz-Campos

(2004) and is summarized below.

Context of learning of Spanish second language acquisition by Manuel Diaz-Campos (2004)

Díaz-Campos performed a study that focuses on second language acquisition. He first

identifies issues that a native English speaker might have with acquiring the palatal /ʊ/ in

Spanish, including the fact that English does not have a similar palatal, which may make acquisition difficult. Also, it has been found that native English speakers often produce the palatal /ʊ/ as a voiced [g] and an alveolar voiced nasal.

Methodology Díaz-Campos carried out his study with an experimental group and a control group. His

experimental group is identified as ‘study abroad’ (SA) and his control group is identified as ‘at

home’ (AH). The Study abroad group contains 26 individuals and the at home group contains 20.

He had everyone in both groups take a test that had participants read a section of written text

aloud. He found that many speakers were able to correctly produce sounds and words in isolation

but that in running they slip back into L1 patterns.

Results His evidence indicates that neither contexts of learning (whether the student was at home or

abroad) nor the time of recording (entrance and exit time) had an effect on the production of the

native-like palatal variant. The native palatal was produced accurately 84% of the time.

Interaction between context of learning and time of recording was not statistically significant,

and phonological gain could not be predicted. 25

The ‘study abroad’ group used the palatal nasal 80% of the time on the entrance test and 73%

on the exit test. The ‘at home’ group used palatal nasals 95% of the time on the entrance test and

90% percent of the time on the exit test. Overall, the palatal nasal was produced faithfully 84%

of the time before and after treatment, and the tests do not reveal striking differences between

study abroad and at home students.

Unfortunately, this study was not very revealing, which is one of the reasons I found it

important to continue to study, and explore this area of research.

II.B. Synchronic Analysis of Palatals in Spanish and French today

II.B-1. Palatal Consonants in Present day Spanish Today there are approximately 17-20 phoneme consonants in Spanish depending on the

dialect. It should be noted that Hualde (2005) proposes that there are two

phonemes; the Argentinean /ʊ/, the /ʊ/, and the lateral palatal /λ/ found in Colombia, Ecuador,

Peru, Bolivia and Paraguay. Other scholars like Guitart however use /ʊ/ to refer to the orthographic ‘y’ and ‘ll’ (Guitar 2004: 139).

26

Table 7: Modern Spanish Phonemes: (Hualde 2005:33)

Consonants Bilabial Labiodental Interdental Dental Alveolar Prepalatal Palatal Velar

Plosives p b t d k g

Fricative f θ4 s (ʊ)5 x

(ʊ)6

Affricate tʊ

Nasal m n ʊ

Lateral l ( λ)

Rhotic ʊ r Tap trill

Table 8: The Vowel Phonemes of Spanish: (Hualde 2005:121)

Front Central Back

High i u

Mid e o

Low a

The palatal fricative consonants include /ʊ/ as in the Spanish mayo ‘may’ and /ʊ/7 as in the

English ‘measure’. The palatal affricate phoneme is /tʊ/, as in the Spanish chico ‘boy’. The

nasal palatal is /ʊ/ as in the Spanish año ‘year’ and the lateral palatal is /λ/ as in the Spanish

4 In Peninsular Spanish only 5 In Argentinean Spanish only 6 /ʊ/ and /λ/ are commonly combined into one phoneme / ʊ/ 7 Found only in Argentinean Spanish 27

llana ‘plain’. The lateral palatal /λ/ is only found in Northern and central Spain, parts of

Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Paraguay (Hualde 2005: 53).

The following table describes the contrast that Hualde makes between the voiced fricative

palatal phoneme [ʊ], and the voiced lateral palatal [λ]. He considers both to be phonemes. Other

researchers would disagree with this and not make this distinction, as the lateral palatal [λ] is disappearing from speech (Hualde 2005:56).

Table 9: Orthographic ‘y’ and ‘ll’: (Hualde 2005:8)

Phoneme Orthographic representation Example

/ʊ/ ‘y’ ‘Vaya’ [baʊa] (s(he), I go)

/λ/ ‘ll’ ‘Valla’ [baλa] (fence)

In addition to these phonemes, I will also be looking at the palatal [ʊ] which

occurs in Argentinean Spanish, because it is the weakened counterpart of /tʊ/ and is a palatal.

i. Palatal Fricatives in Spanish [] and // The palatal fricative allophone [ʊ] in Spanish, which is the de-affrication of the affricate

[tʊ] counterpart is common in places such as Andalusia, Northern Mexico (Sonora and

Chihuahua) Panama and parts of Chile. The /ʊ/ is devoiced to [ʊ]. This

sound is common in Buenos Aires (Hualde 2005: 152).

The palatal fricative /ʊ/ in Spanish is characterized by the narrowing of the passage of air

in the oral cavity created by the articulators which creates turbulence. It is common in Argentina

and Uruguay. In standard Argentinean Spanish often times orthographic ‘y’ and orthographic ‘ll’

is pronounced as /ʊ/ a phenomenon known as yeísmo rehilado or zeísmo (Hualde 2005: 56). 28

ii. Palatal Affricates in Spanish /t/ In Spanish, the voiceless palatal affricate [tʊ] is pronounced as in mucho ‘much’. The place of articulation however varies. For example, the [ts] counterpart can be found in Chile and the Basque region of Bilbao. In the Canaries and in Cuba, it develops a fully palatal sound, and becomes a voiceless palatal plosive [c] or the voiced palatal plosive [ʊ]. Today /tʊ/ is limited to a prevocalic position and in rare cases final position (Hualde 2005: 152).

iii. Nasal Palatal in Spanish [] In Spanish the nasal palatal rarely occurs in word-initial position as Latin did not have the palatal nasal. The dictionary of the Spanish Academy lists 49 words that start with the nasal palatal, many of which are words used specific to certain regions (Hualde 2005: 173).The

Spanish palatal nasal in word initial position can usually be traced back to a word that was borrowed from a different language like ñandú ‘South American ostrich’ (Hualde 2005: 173).

iv. The Lateral Palatal [] and the Fricative palatal [λ] The fricative palatal allophone [ʊ] appears in intervocalic position in words such as ‘mayo’

‘may’ or calle ‘street’. According to the dialect it can be produced with more or less aperture and can be classified as an consonant instead of a fricative. (Hualde 2005:165). To produce this sound, there is contact between the tongue dorsum and the central part of the palate with air flowing freely through one of the sides of the tongue.

The [λ] palatal lateral today, it is part of the phonological system of only a minority of

Spanish speakers. Many speakers in Spain under the age of fifty have merged this phoneme with

/ʊ/. In Latin America the lateral palatal is still found as an independent phoneme in Paraguay and the Andean region: parts of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and parts of Chile. However, as in Spain, most of these South American nations are losing this phoneme. An exception is

Paraguay where it is still found in firm contrast with [ʊ] (Hualde 2005: 180). 29

II B-2. Palatal Consonants in Present day French

There are 18 phonemes in modern French, three of which are palatals.

III. Table 10: Modern French Phonemes: (Fougeron and Smith 1997:78)

Bilabial Labiodental Dental alveolar Palatao- Palatal Velar Uvular

alveolar

Plosive p b t d k g

Fricative f s z ʊ

ʊ

Nasal m n ʊ ŋ

Approximant ʊ

Lateral l

Table 11: The vowel phonemes of French: (Charliac and Motron 1998:24) Front Central Back

High i u

Mid e o

ʊ ʊ

Low ʊ

a

30

In French, the palatal phonemes are /ʊ/, /ʊ/ and / ʊ/. The affricate phonemes /dʊ/ and /tʊ/ were once phonemes, but disappeared from the language in the 13th century as demonstrated earlier (Machonis 1990:179).

i. Palatal Fricatives in French // and // The /ʊ/ sound in French is produced with lips slightly projected, the mouth nearly closed, with the blade of the tongue drawn back from the position for [s] raised close to the gums and the front palate, with the sides of the tongue pressed against the upper molars and gums producing a broad groove along the front part of the blade. The breath is forced along the groove and strikes against the front teeth. This sound is standard in all French dialects. These sounds are found in every day French (Nicholson 1937:63-64).

The /ʊ/ sound is found in words such as:

1. The orthographic j in jour [ʊu:r] ‘day’ (Nicholson 1937:63-64) 2. The orthographic ge in geôle [ʊo:l] ‘jail’ (Nicholson 1937:63-64) 3. The orthographic g as in gigot [ʊigo] ‘leg of lamb’ (Nicholson 1937:63-64)

ii. The French Nasal Palatal // This sound is traditionally conveyed through through gn or ign:

1. Règne [rʊʊ] ‘reign/rule’ (Nicholson 1937:56) 2. Oignon [ʊʊʊ] ‘onion’ (Nicholson 1937:56)

In French, to make this sound the nasal passage is open and the velum is lowered. The mouth opens slightly and the tip of the tongue rests against the inside of the lower front teeth. The front of the tongue is pressed against the hard palate and the vocal cords vibrate producing a resonance in both the mouth and nose. The lips do not play a part in the formation of this sound (Nicholson

1937: 56).

31

III. Research Design

III B. Design Proposals in Perception and Production

Abstract: In this design, I focus on the palatal (in Spanish and French the

palatal are the same). The French palatal obstruyents include the voiceless fricative

palatal-alveolar /ʊ/, and the voiced fricative palatal-alveolar /ʊ/. The Spanish palatal obstruents are the voiced fricative palatal /ʊ/, and the voiceless affricate palatal /tʊ/.

According to Oller and Ziahosseiny’s moderate version of contrastive analysis theory

“similar structures in L1 and L2 cause more difficulty than dissimilar structures” (Oller and

Ziahosseiny 1970: 186). I define ‘similarity’ to be articulatory, taking into account whether the

sound is voiced or voiceless along with the manner and place of articulation. I hypothesize that

the voiced fricative palatal /ʊ/ in Spanish will be more difficult than the voiceless affricate

palatal /tʊ/ to acquire because the /ʊ/ shares more similarity with the French voiced fricative

palatal-alveolar /ʊ/ whereas the Spanish voiceless affricate palatal /tʊ/ has a different manner of

articulation than the French phonemes.

Design for an experiment in perception

Overview

In order to produce and acquire a phoneme, it is necessary to first be able to be able to

hear it (Major 2008:75). The purpose of this study is to determine whether native French

speakers learning Spanish are able to perceive the difference between the /tʊ/ sound and the /ʊ/ 32

sounds in Spanish. The contrasting phonemes in French are /ʊ/ and /ʊ/ respectively. I hypothesize that although these phonemes are not present in French, they will be able to differentiate between these two phonemes quite easily because they do not share the same manner of articulation, and the / ʊ/ is voiced while the /tʊ/ is not.

There are 30 Native French speakers who will participate in the study representing beginner, intermediate and advanced levels of Spanish. The subjects are students attending a

French university that are taking Spanish classes. The students will be given a pre-test to determine their level of fluency. I will draw from Elementary Spanish (SPN1120 and SPN 1121), intermediate Spanish, those taking SPN 3300 (Grammar and Composition) and SPN 3400

(reading and conversation) and advanced Spanish- SPN 4420 (advanced Spanish and composition) and SPN 4540 (Amazonia). Students will be invited to participate in this study to receive three points of extra credit at the end of the semester. If they choose not to participate in the study, they can get extra credit by opting to do other written assignments.

Control Group

I will use a group of 10 native speakers that have a variety of regional dialects as a control group. Including those from Graus (Northern Aragon), Mexico city, Obregon (East coast of Mexico) Lima, Peru, Barcelona, Santiago Chile, Arica (Northern Chile) Cordoba (central

Argentina), Cuba, and Miami. I am using a sample that attempts to include those from urban areas, as well as more rural areas to account for variations in dialect.

Variables

I am controlling for factors like age, gender, and language experience (travel/study abroad/potential interfering third language) in order to get a reliable measure of perception 33 across the groups. Thus, the participants will all be relatively the same age, although I realize there are limitations considering the range from young learners in their undergraduate studies which may range from students in their first year in college to older individuals that may be learning a new language for the first time. To control these factors among levels, I will interview students before they participate in the study. It is important to have a sample that is representative of the average individual at each learning level so that the results of this study are applicable to the majority of students.

Tasks

First task This study will be split into two separate tasks. The first is a discrimination task where two stimuli are presented and the listener will decide if the stimuli are the same or different

(Strange and Shafer 2008:160). For this first task I use what is referred to as AXB; (A) and (B) are tokens of different phonemes, and are compared to the stimulus (X) (Strange and Shafer

2008: 161). The advantage of this type of task is that it has a smaller memory load because (X) comes between (A) and (B) so participants don’t have to recall (X) to discriminate between the two sounds (Strange and Shafer 2008: 161). Thus, the subject will be presented with three stimuli in sequence, where the subject has to say whether the second (X) is more similar to the first stimulus (A) or the second stimulus (B). The test will be conducted three times on each subject to insure reliability, and last a total of 10-13 minutes. Since the subjects will answer either (A) or (B) it is a closed –set identification task. Minimal pairs (words than are the same with the exception of one sound to determine whether or not that sound is a phoneme) will be used. Since the only difference between the words will be the sound being studied, they are ideal candidates to determine whether the students perceive the difference between them or not.

Nonsense words will be used (words that have no meaning) to guard against bias. The reasoning 34 behind this is that if I use a real word and a nonsense word paired together then students might simply choose words they recognize, and if I use real words there are not enough minimal pairs to create a reliable data set. This task should be done in a phonetics lab on a standard computer while the subject wears headphones to eliminate distractions. The stimulus will be recorded in the language lab as well, by an Olympus LS11 recorder. The stimulus will be the recorded of a multiple native Spanish speakers, and the subject will choose either (A) or (B) from a keyboard. The tokens will be placed word initially. In the first task, there will be 20 tokens- Ten for / ʊ/ and ten for /tʊ/. The tokens will be:

Tokens for / ʊ/ Tokens for /tʊ/

1. llan 11. chan 2. llemo 12. chemo 3. yerpa 13. cherpa 4. yomo 14. chomo 5. yaba 15. chaba 6. yoz 16. choz 7. llepana 17. chepana 8. llono 18. chono 9. llas 19. chas 10. llasas 20. chasas

In this task I expect to find that the subjects can easily distinguish between the two phonemes.

Distracters will include:

1. bemo 2. bas 3. bepana 4. berpa 5. bava 6. bas 7. merpa 8. mepana 9. tava 10. terpa 35

Second task The second task is a task of identification where recorded stimuli are presented one at a

time, and listeners categorize each token through oral or written responses, or as in this case, by

selecting from one of the two responses provided by the experimenter (Strange and Shafer 2008:

160). In this task, the subjects will be presented with the stimulus (X) and will be asked to write

what they hear. Each stimulus will be said twice with time in between for the participant to

record their response. This task should be done on the computer while the subject wears

headphones to eliminate distractions. The stimulus will be the recorded voice of multiple Spanish

speakers. The tokens will be the same for the first task. Below they are shown in context:

Tokens for / ʊ/ Tokens for /tʊ/

1. la llan corre rápida 11.la chan corre rápida 2. el llemo es gordo 12. el chemo es gordo 3. la gata tiene una yerpa 13. la gata tiene una cherpa 4. el perro yomó la gente 14. el perro chomó la gente 5. la gente yaba los perros 15. La gente chaba los perros 6. la mujer yoz el caja 16. La mujer choz el caja 7. tu llepana 17. Tu chepana 8. vamos al llono 18. Vamos al chono 9. los niños llas patio 19.los niños chas patio 10. tu llasas la policia 20. tu chasas la policia

This task differs from the first task in that the first test asks the subject to make a choice concerning the relationship between the sounds provided, while this asks them to write what they hear. In this latter task, the students identify what they hear through a written response and the tokens are in context rather than in isolation. 36

This is an important distinction because when the word is isolated, there is more control over what is being tested. When the tokens are in context, the advantage is that you can test whether the subjects understand the differences as they occur naturally in native like production.

Design for an Experiment in Production

Overview As with the experiment in perception, the subjects of this experiment are native French speakers learning Spanish, with 30 participants ranging from beginner, and intermediate to advanced Spanish. One difference between this experiment and the one above is that the subjects’ speech is being studied to determine how native- like it is rather than their ability to understand and make distinctions between sounds.

Control Group The native or non-native like production of the subjects is determined by three judges with phonetics training from Mexico City Mexico, Santiago Chile, and Barcelona Spain. There are a few issues that I would like to address with judgments on ratings by the native speakers before we proceed. The first is that ratings by native speakers are not reliable. Studies show that raters may be unable to distinguish between native and nonnative accents (Ioup 2008: 54). Also, those who have been trained in phonetics do not respond to second language utterances the same way someone without such experience would (Munro 2008:200). Linguists that are experienced are more reliable overall than inexperienced raters, but were also more lenient (Ioup 2008: 54).

I have considered this and will control for it by giving the would-be judges a survey that explores aspects such as their experience with different dialects, and whether or not they have had training in phonetics. Since linguists that have experience are generally more reliable, we 37

want our judges to be experienced. Furthermore, a suitable candidate would be someone with

more experience not only of phonetics, but also someone with more experience of the language

that is being judged. In one study only 7/30 monolinguals of English were said to be native.

Perhaps this could this be from the judges’ lack of knowledge about regional dialect. If so, it is

necessary to include language experience as a factor when selecting judges (Ioup 2008: 54).

Variables The same variables will be taken into account as in the perception study including age,

gender, travel/study abroad, and whether the speaker knows other languages or not. The native

speakers of Spanish will be interviewed after they have been selected as in the first study to keep

the sample representative.

Task For this task, the subjects will be asked to read from a short meaningful text which has

been modified to include 20 palatal tokens- ten of the palatal /ʊ/ and ten of the palatal /tʊ/. The stimuli read by the subjects will be recorded, and analyzed by the three different native Spanish speakers described above to determine the comprehensibility of the speech and not the degree of foreign accentedness. This will be stressed in the directions for the judges which will appear as follows:

You will be asked to rate 30 different students in various levels of Spanish who are native

French speakers over the course of 6 non consecutive days. In these studies, you will focus on the tokens ‘checo, chino, charla, chiste, choza, cheque, chapa, chacra, chabola, chalote, llave, llama, yeso, llaga, llamada, yerno, yo, yodo, yunta, and llano’ to determine how the subjects produce them, and rank them on the following five point scale: 1 = ‘did not understand at all’ 2=

‘understood with great difficulty’ is 3= ‘understood with some difficulty’ 4= ‘understood with 38 little difficulty’ 5= ‘understood with no difficulty’. Only these tokens should be judged and nothing else. Whether the subject has a non-native like accent should not influence your ranking.

You should rank only according to how well you understand the token they produce. On the first day you will listen to five speakers who will read from the stimulus for approximately four to five minutes. This will be repeated three times to insure the speaker produces them as they naturally would and to account for nervousness that may occur during the first recording. This will continue for five more days. You will listen to five speakers a day. On the first day of the experiment you will listen to subjects and on the following day you will have a break. This pattern will continue until you are done, so if you participate you should be prepared to be available on the required days. The speakers will not be grouped according to level, so on any given day you may listen to beginners, intermediate learners, and advanced speakers. This is done to guard against bias in the expectation that beginners may be less able in production than advanced learners.

The rankings will be compared in order to analyze whether one sound is rated as more native like than the other. The reading will take place in a quiet classroom or in a phonetics lab if one is available. The experiment will last for 13-15 minutes per speaker. The tokens are the following:

Tokens for /tʊ/: Tokens for / ʊ/ 1. Checo ‘Czech ’ 11. llave ‘key’ 2. Chino ‘Chinese’ 12. llama ‘flame’ 3. charla ‘chat’ 13. yeso ‘plaster’ 4. chiste ‘joke, funny story’ 14. llaga ‘wound’ 5. choza ‘hut’ 15. llamada ‘call’ 6. cheque ‘travelers check’ 16. yerno ‘son in law’ 7. chapa ‘plate, sheet’ 17. yo ‘I’ 8. chacra ‘farm’ 18. yodo ‘iodine’ 9. chabola ‘shack’ 19. yunta ‘yoke’ 10. chalote ‘shallot’ 20. llano ‘flat, plain’ 39

A potential drawback of this controlled task is that it may lack naturalness because it is

not formulated by the speaker, and may include mistakes due to unfamiliarity with a word or

because of unnatural (Munro 2008: 200).

The results will further be analyzed through PRAAT (dutch for ‘talk’) which is software

for acoustic analysis (Boersma, and Weenink 2012). The first thing that will be examined is the

length of the , and the duration of the fricative for / ʊ/ and the duration of the occlusion

and fricative for the affricate /tʊ/. I will also look at the most prominent frequency each fricative segment occupies and compare the results with typical measurements of production such as duration. This process has been started and is described below under further research. For the affricate I will measure Voice Onset Time (VOT) which can only be measured in a stop or an affricate. VOT can be defined as “the time that elapses before the vocal folds begin to vibrate after the lips open for the initial sound” (Ohala 2008:32).

Further research While in the phonetics lab, I have been able to measure a few palatals and gather information on the duration of Spanish Northern Peninsular palatals. These sound files that I used were samples from class SPN 5900. I will only report on the fricative and affricate palatals.

I did not collect them, and I do not know the subjects who uttered them. This is a preliminary look at palatals which should be used as a starting point only. I supply them only as informational and no definite conclusions should be drawn from them. I will compare my findings with those of a colleague (Anne Bailey) who is vastly more experienced than I. At times our data is quite different, and I blame that on my lack of experience in the linguistics lab as well as my lack of familiarity with the software. The results on the left are mine; the results on the right are those of my colleague. 40

Table 12: Duration

Words Duration of each segment in Duration of each segment in milliseconds and milliseconds and manner of manner of articulation: (Bailey) articulation: (Gray) LLena 79 ms –Affricate 78 ms- Affricate Yerba 42 ms-Fricative 41 ms- Fricative Hierba 36 ms-Fricative 41 ms- Fricative

Table 13: Frequency of Fricatives

Words Frequency for Fricatives in hertz: Frequency for Fricatives in hertz: (Bailey) (Gray) Yerba 3472 Hz 3260 Hz Hierba 3472 Hz 3874 Hz

Table 14: Duration of Affricate (Stop and Fricative)

Duration of the first and second part of Duration of the first and second part of the the affricate measured in milliseconds: affricate measured in milliseconds: (Bailey) (Gray) Stop 56 ms 56 ms Fricative 16 ms 23 ms

Table 15: Voice Onset Time

Voice Onset Time of the stop measured Voice Onset Time of the stop measured in in milliseconds (Gray) milliseconds: (Bailey) Stop 54 ms 56 ms

These preliminary results contribute to my experiment by providing acoustic data about palatal production, primarily in the production phase of my experiment. If there is contention about whether pronunciation is native like or not we will be able to measure it against data that has already been collected. It will also give us insight in determining what types of differences exist in the production of a native speaker and a speaker learning the language that may help us improve upon how we teach, and what we focus on in the classroom. 41

Markedness Throughout my research I have investigated the effect of Markedness on the Spanish

phonemes /ʊ/ and /tʊ/ and their French counter parts /ʊ/ and /ʊ/ to see how my hypothesis

holds up to it as it is an important aspect of language acquisition, and think it is worth noting

here. Markedness is defined as an opposition with an unmarked more dominant counterpart that

has a wider distribution which is contrasted with a more basic counterpart (Eckman 1977:321).

Eckman proposes that with this model of markedness we can predict:

(a) “those areas of the target language which differ from the native language and are more

marked than the native language will be difficult” (Eckman 1977:321).

(b) “The relative degree of difficulty of the areas of difference of the target language

which are more marked that the native language will correspond to the relative degree

of markedness” (Eckman 1977:321).

(c) “Those areas of the target language which are different from the native language, but

are not more marked than the native language will not be difficult” (Eckman

1977:321).

One problem with Eckman’s theory is that he uses the term “more marked” without defining

what exactly that means. In terms of universal markedness, I have found that the most common

type of fricative is the voiceless (Maddieson 1984:44). This means that the Spanish

voiced fricative palatal /ʊ/ is marked, as is the French voiced palatal-alveolar fricative, while the

French voiceless palatal-alveolar fricative /ʊ/ is not marked. The most common non-lateral and

non-ejective affricates are palatal-alveolars which are sibilant in nature (Maddieson 1984:38).

The affricate /tʊ/ is both marked and unmarked. The stop is unmarked while the fricative is

marked. 42

As stated above, Eckman (1977) notes that when a part of the target language differs from

the native language, (in this case, the difference in the place of articulation between the voiced

fricative palatal /ʊ/ and the voiced fricative palatal alveolar /ʊ/) and is more marked, then it will be difficult to acquire. The next step in this research would be to determine whether /ʊ/ is more marked than /ʊ/ which is a good consideration for further research.

Conclusion

While Spanish and French share a common background, they have diverged into two clearly distinct languages. I will quickly outline some of the changes discussed in each section, beginning with section I. First, in their evolution from Late Latin both Spanish and French began to transition with the reduction of the vowel system. The first fundamental change was the loss of distinction between short /a/ and long /a:/ making the 10 vowel system a 9 vowel system.

Shortly after this, the vowel system was further reduced to 7 vowels commonly referred to as the

Vulgar Latin vowel system by the merger of /e/ and /I/ into /e/ and the /o/ and /ʊ/ into /o/. The process of metaphony was also common, which raised vowels before a palatal glide. We saw the effect of palatalization through yod which was clearly an essential process in the creation of the palatal order. Among other important processes, we looked at the effects of the reduction of diphthongs and creation of diphthongs in each language. We looked at the restrictions between diphthongization in French and Spanish through open and closed syllables, namely that in

French, only vowels in open syllable position could diphthongize while in Spanish, vowels could diphthongize in open and closed syllables.

In section II we examined the current research being done involving palatals in linguistics, as well as the synchronic aspect of palatals in present day Spanish and French, 43 revealing some interesting results, primarily that while, there are some similarities across the two languages, (for example they share the same nasal palatal /ʊ/) they are in fact, quite independent.

French has three clear phonemes, while Spanish has up to five, depending on the dialect of

Spanish.

In the third section, the research design examines the acquisition of two Spanish palatal phonemes (/ʊ/ and /tʊ/) for Native French speakers. In this section, I included perception and production as research suggests that they are the most accurate measures of acquisition. I used identification and discrimination tasks to test perception, and a dictation task for identification.

In the second half of the study, I used a reading passage and native speakers’ rankings to determine the degree of difficulty a French speaker might in acquiring the two palatal phonemes.

I also included topics for further research that may enhance the credibility of my hypothesis, including measures for palatals to enhance our understanding of their production. Throughout this work, I hope to have contributed to the historical aspect of palatals by creating a clear and concise summary of palatals in Spanish and French from Latin. I also hope that the exploration of acquisition through the theoretical framework focused on in this paper will provide further research inquiries for future students of linguistics.

44

Works Cited

Bianchini, Janna. 2008. Re-defining medieval Spain. The English Historical Review 522: 1167- 1179.

Boersma, Paul & Weenink, David (2012). Praat: doing phonetics by computer [Computer program]. Version 5.3.10, retrieved 12 March 2012 from http://www.praat.org/

Corneau, Caroline.2002. An EPG study of Palatalization in French: Cross dialect and Inter- subject variation. Language Variation and Change 12, 25-49.

Chang, Charles B. 2008. Variation in palatal production in Buenos Aires Spanish. Selected Proceedings of the fourth workshop on Spanish sociolinguistics Maurice Westmoreland, Juan Antonio Thomas (Eds.).54-63.

Charliac, Lucile. And Motron, Annie-Claude. 2006. Phonetique progressive du Francais. San Francisco : CLE International.

Diaz-Campos, M. (2004). Context of learning in the acquisition of Spanish second language . Studies in Second Language Acquisition 26 (2), 249-273.

Eckman, F. 1977. Markedness and the contrastive analysis hypothesis. Language Learning 27: 315-330.

Fradejas-Rueda. José Manuel. 1997. Fonología histórica del Española. Madrid: Visor Libros.

Fougeron, Cecile; Smith, Caroline, L. 1999. Introduction to the IPA, French. Handbook of the International Phonetic Association. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 78-81.

Fox, John, Robin Wood. 1931. A concise history of the : phonology and . New York: Barnes and Noble.

Hualde, José.2005. The sounds of Spanish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hualde, José I, Anxton Olarrea, Anna María Escobar. 2001. Introduction a la linguística hispánica. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.

Ioup, Georgette 2008. Exploring the role of age in the acquisition of a second language phonology. Jette G. Hansen Edwards, Mary L. Zampini (Eds.).In Phonology and second language acquisition. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company: 41-62. 45

Katzner, Kenneth. 2000. The languages of the world. London & New York: Routledge.

Lloyd, Paul M. 1987. Del Latín al español, Vol. I. Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society.

Machonis, Peter. 1990. Histoire de la langue du latin a l’ancien français. Lanham, Maryland, University Press of America, Inc.

Maddieson, I. 1984. Patterns of sounds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Major, Roy C. 2008. Transfer in second language phonology. Jette G. Hansen Edwards, Mary L. Zampini (Eds.).In Phonology and Second Language Acquisition. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company: 63-94.

Munro, Murray J. 2008. Foreign accent and speech intelligibility. Jette G. Hansen Edwards, Mary L. Zampini (Eds.) .In Phonology and Second Language Acquisition. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company: 193-218.

Nicholson, G.1937. A practical Introduction to French Phonetics for the use of English-Speaking students and Teachers. London: Macmillian and Co, Limited.

O’Callaghan, Joseph. 1975. A History of Medieval Spain. Ithaca: Cornell University Press

Ohala, D. 2008. Phonological acquisition in a first language. Jette G. Hansen Edwards, Mary L. Zampini (Eds.). In Phonology and Second Language Acquisition. Amsterdam /Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company: 20-37.

Oller, J.W., and S.M. Ziahosseiny. 1970. The Contrastive analysis hypothesis and spelling errors. Language Learning 20, 183-189.

Penny, Ralph J. 1991. A history of the . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Pharies, David A. 2007. A brief History of the Spanish Language. Chicago: the University of Chicago Press.

Posner, Rebecca. 1966. The romance languages; a linguistic introduction. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books.

Pope, Mildred.1952. From Latin to Modern French with Especial consideration of Anglo- Norman. Manchester: University of Manchester University Press.

Recasens, Daniel, and Joachím Romero. 1997. An EMMA study of segmental complexity in alveolopalatals and palatalized alveolars. Phonetica the International journal of phonetic science.54, 43-58. 46

Strange, Winifred; Shafer, Valerie L. 2008, in second language learners. Jette G. Hansen Edwards, Mary L. Zampini (Eds.). In Phonology and Second Language Acquisition. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. 153-191.