Chapter 16

Presence of the voiced labiodental fricative segment [v] in Texas Spanish

The objective of this study is to analyze the production of voiced labial consonants from an auditory and acoustic perspective in the Spanish of speakers recorded in The Spanish in Texas Corpus Project (Bullock & Toribio 2013). For example, the phrase la vaca ‘the cow’ might be realized as [la.'va.ka] in El Paso, Texas as opposed to the standard Mexican Spanish pronunciation [la.'βa.ka]. While a similar pronunciation is attested in some specific varieties, such as in New Mexican (Torres Cacoullos & Ferreira 2000) or Paraguayan (Lipski 1994) Spanish, it is otherwise rare in the Spanish speaking world, where the oral voiced labial phoneme /b/ is usually realized as a bilabial approximant [β], as in la vaca, or occlusive [b] consonant, as in cien vacas ‘one hundred cows’ [sjẽm.'ba.kas].

The aim of the current paper is to establish if the Texas Spanish speakers from the corpus (1) produce an auditorily and visually perceptible distinction between [v] and [β]/[b], and (2) make an acoustic distinction between [v] and [β]/[b] that correlates with the perception of different categories. Furthermore, this investigation (3) analyzes the linguistic and social factors that condition the use of [v] versus [β] and [b]. The influence of the English language is a fundamental factor that must be taken into account; on the other hand, the realization of /b/ as the voiced labiodental allophone [v] might be an archaism inherited from Old Spanish and preserved in West Texas dialects.

In pursuing these research aims, 850 tokens from video-recorded interviews with 17 participants were submitted to auditory, visual, and acoustic analysis. The results will inform that there are two perceptible categories, labiodental vs. bilabial, and that these also constitute separate acoustic categories.