Probing syllabic affiliation of word-initial and word-medial consonant sequences in north-central Peninsular Spanish.

Abstract

There is now a large literature probing syllable affiliation of consonant sequences through phonetic measurements. These studies often use one of two diagnostic measures: (1) temporally stable intervals using relative standard deviation, and (2) compensatory shortening effects. In this study, we argue that both measures are difficult to infer from without precise theoretically predicted expectations and additional controls. We studied eleven native speakers of North-Central Peninsular Spanish who pronounced disyllabic real/nonce Spanish words with varying consonant sequences. On the face of it, our temporal stability and compensatory shortening results challenge the standard analysis of syllabic affiliation in Spanish phonology, potentially supporting a complex onset analysis for /sl/ and /sm/. However, in post hoc analyses we observed shortening effects outside the target syllable due to consonant sequences, indicating evidence for poly-constituent shortening. Therefore, compensatory shortening effects within a syllable cannot automatically be assumed to be due to syllable structure. Our results and simulations suggest that, despite superficial evidence of a c-centre alignment, the clusters are more consistent with a right-edge alignment once poly-constituent shortening and domain-initial lengthening are taken into consideration.