15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-15)

Barcelona, Spain
August 3-9, 2003


A Contrastive Study of Voiced Alveolo-Palatal Affricates in the Catalan of Lleida and Barcelona

Ana Ma. Fernández-Planas (1), Josefina Carrera-Sabaté (2), Miquel Àngel Pradilla-Cardona (3)

(1) Universitat de Barcelona, Spain
(2) Universitat de Lleida, Spain
(3) Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Spain

The realization of the voiced alveolo-palatal affricate consonant in Catalan presents a lot of variation as far as the voicing and duration of both plosive and fricative segments are concerned. This variation is related to the different geographical varieties of Catalan and it ranges from voiced to voiceless realizations with their corresponding intermediate stages. A number of studies have attempted to find out whether the segment that devoices first is the plosive or the fricative element. The present study aims to characterize and contrast various realizations of voiced alveolo-palatal affricates in the Catalan of Lleida and Barcelona in a sample of words containing these consonants (voiced and voiceless) in intervocalic position. The results show that the phenomenon of devoicing first begins in the fricative segment in the two varieties of present-day Catalan, although it is more widespread in the Catalan of Barcelona.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Fernández-Planas, Ana Ma. / Carrera-Sabaté, Josefina / Pradilla-Cardona, Miquel Àngel (2003): "A contrastive study of voiced alveolo-palatal affricates in the Catalan of Lleida and Barcelona", In ICPhS-15, 937-940.