Spanish nasal assimilation revisited: A cross-dialect electropalatographic study

Alexei Kochetov, University of Toronto
Laura Colantoni, University of Toronto

Abstract

This study employs electropalatography to investigate the implementation of nasal assimilation in two Spanish dialects (Argentine and Cuban) that differ in the realization of word-final nasals as alveolar or velar. 5 speakers of Argentine and 3 speakers of Cuban Spanish were presented with various utterances containing nasals followed by labial, coronal, and dorsal stops and fricatives under two stress conditions. Results revealed that place assimilation of nasals was consistently accompanied by stricture assimilation. The process was generally categorical, that is, the final alveolar or velar nasal adopted the articulation of the following consonant. Nasal + fricative sequences, however, showed a somewhat different behavior: occasional blocking of nasal assimilation before non-coronals, consistent gradient nasal assimilation before coronals (Argentine), or categorical/gradient strengthening of post-nasal obstruents (Cuban). Overall, the results are largely consistent with Honorof’s (1999) study of Peninsular Spanish and together provide evidence for dialect-specific grammars of assimilation, which nevertheless share certain general principles of gestural organization.