Karolina Broś

University of Warsaw | UW · Institute of Applied Linguistics

In this paper, we investigate the phonological and prosodic effects of lenition in Canary Islands Spanish using new methodology. In a motion capture study conducted in the field, we show that using an internet camera for lip tracking can help disentangle several problems related to the contexts of stop lenition. First, we demonstrate that there is...

This study investigates the compensatory effects of /s/ aspiration and deletion on the preceding vowel in Canary Islands Spanish. No such effects have been reported to date for this dialect. A phonetic analysis focused on the amount of breathiness in the target vowel, as marked by cepstral peak prominence, shows that the second part of the vowel is...

In this paper we investigate the cues governing stress perception in Spanish-an issue that has been subject to debate and remains largely unresolved. While there is general agreement as to the ability of Spanish listeners to detect and reliably produce stress contrasts, there is some disagreement on the roles played by individual stress cues. In th...

In this paper, we present novel data from Spanish spoken on Gran Canaria which show an interaction of two lenition processes: final consonant deletion and vowel apocope. We show that in certain positions in an utterance, these processes optionally combine in a fed counterfeeding interaction. Furthermore, the variation present in the dialect due to...

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that alternative methods of data collection are necessary to continue working in certain fields of linguistics. This is a challenge for (socio)phoneticians and phonologists who have to rely on good quality sound but cannot do fieldwork or gather recordings in a traditional manner. In this paper, I show that audio rec...

This paper discusses the corpus of Gran Canarian Spanish gathered in 2016 in order to provide an in-depth sociolinguistic account of the lenition processes identified in the dialect. After a detailed description of the methodology and database preparation, I present two case studies showcasing the utility of such corpora. First, I show the phonetic...

Gran Canarian Spanish: A Reflection of Weakening Language Change in the Spanish-Speaking World The aim of the paper is to present a thorough description of the terms weakening and lenition in the context of language change, and to present major theories of lenition proposed in the framework of generative phonology. Among the most recent theories of...

It is unclear whether word stress in a language is stored as part of the word or whether it is generated by a rule. We test the generativist hypothesis of lexical storage stating that only unpredictable stress is stored in long-term memory against the contrasting usage-based approach assuming that all phonetic information regardless of its (un)pred...

This study explores ongoing lenition of postvocalic /p t k b d g/ in the Spanish of Gran Canaria. Duration, intensity and harmonics-to-noise ratio of 16,454 sounds produced by 44 native speakers were measured, with the latter phonetic parameter used for the first time to investigate lenition. The results show a path of gradual sound shortening and...

This paper examines opaque examples of phrase-level phonology taken from Chilean Spanish under the framework of Stratal Optimality Theory (OT) (Rubach 1997; Bermúdez-Otero 2003, 2019) and Harmonic Serialism (HS) (McCarthy 2008a, b, 2016). The data show an interesting double repair of the coda /s/ taking place at word edges. It is argued that Strata...

Background/aims: This paper examines the process of postvocalic voicing in the Spanish of Gran Canaria from the point of view of language change. A perception-production study was designed to measure the extent of variation in speaker productions, explore the degree to which production is affected by perception and identify variables that can be c...

This paper examines opaque examples of phrase-level phonology taken from Chilean Spanish under the framework of Stratal OT (Rubach 1997; Bermúdez-Otero 2003, forthcoming) and Harmonic Serialism (McCarthy 2008a, 2008b, 2016). The data show an interesting double repair of the coda /s/ taking place at word edges. It is argued that Stratal OT is superi...

This paper takes a series of lenition phenomena from Gran Canarian Spanish as a point of departure to discuss the influence of phonology on the phonetics component. Based on phonetic and phonological data, it can be concluded that a blocking effect ensues between the process of coda deletion and post-vocalic voicing, giving rise to phonetic opacity....

Spanish dialects show substantial variation in coda s weakening. Yet, to provide a comprehensive treatment of this phenomenon, a bigger prosodic constituent than just the coda position should be considered. Crucially, two aspirating varieties of Spanish are considered. The Granada dialect weakens s to [h] inside words, at word edges and at prefix e...

This paper takes a series of lenition phenomena from Gran Canarian Spanish as a point of departure to discuss the influence of phonology on the phonetics component. Based on phonetic and phonological data, it can be concluded that a blocking effect ensues between the process of coda deletion and post-vocalic voicing, giving rise to phonetic opacity...

This paper discusses the dialectal differences in phrase-level obstruent voicing in Polish. The language distinguishes between two regional varieties, one of which apparently involves presonorant assimilation across word boundaries. Although both Warsaw and Poznań/Kraków dialects present voice assimilation, only the latter admits voicing before son...

Kilka uwag na temat korelacji między akcentem a redukcją głosek w języku hiszpańskimJak powszechnie wiadomo, w języku hiszpańskim występuje wiele procesów redukcji spółgłosek. Jednocześnie, system samogłoskowy tego języka jest dość prosty. Obejmuje on 5 stabilnych, równomiernie rozłożonych fonemów, których realizacje są niezmienne bez względu na ak...

En el presente artículo se pretende considerar dos cambios fonéticos en el español de Gran Canaria y sus consecuencias para el inventario de fonemas de esta variedad. Más específi camente, se describen los alófonos de las obstruyentes interruptas producidos mediante la aproximantización y la sonorización post-vocálica. Los dos procesos contribuyen...

The Spanish of Gran Canaria has been reported to have post-vocalic voicing (/p t k tʃ/ -> [b d g dʝ]) inside words and across word boundaries (e.g. Oftedal 1985): apasionado [a.ba.sjo.na.ð̞o] 'enthusiastic', fonetica [fo.ne.di.ga] 'phonetics', tengo una prima [teŋ.go.u.na.bri.ma] 'I have a cousin', etc. What is more, the process is blocked after vo...

Kiparsky (1999, 2013) and Berm´udez-Otero (2003, 2011), among others, propose that opacity can be dealt with in Optimality Theory by distinguishing between three levels of derivation. This means that the morphology-phonology interface is structured in a way that explains non-transparent mappings without recourse to any other information. Transition...

Poster presented at the NELS 46 meeting in Montreal

Poster presented at the 2015 Manchester Phonology Meeting

Survival of the Fittest provides an in-depth analysis of weakening processes attested in Spanish and English within the framework of Optimality Theory (OT). The book examines fricative lenition as an instance of sound change in progress, contributing to the study of phonological change and the notion of strength in phonology. It also provides motiv...

Poster presented at the OCP conference in Barcelona, 2015

The aspiration of syllable-final /s/ is a well-studied phenomenon in Spanish phonology across all dialects. It is typically described as coda /s/ weakening to [h] in preconsonantal contexts spreading from word-medial to word-final and even phrase-final position. This paper further explores the process as an interesting interaction of aspiration and...

En este artículo se estudia la llamada aspiración de /s/ implosiva y su pérdida en una variedad del español contemporáneo encontrada en Chile. El concepto de debilitamiento del fonema /s/ se presentará en términos generales, seguido por la presentación del problema dentro de los principales marcos teóricos desde los años 90 del siglo XX hasta hoy e...