15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-15) Barcelona, Spain August 3-9, 2003

Notes on the Historical Palatalization and Assimilation of [j] in the Nasal Alveolar Consonant [n] in Spanish

M. Cuevas Alonso

University of Oviedo, Spain

In this paper we want show that the historical palatalization of [n] and the assimilation of [j] to form a nasal palatal sound [ɲ] is nowadays incomplete. The results of our experiments seem to show that there are still some remainings of the semivocalic sound [j].
   We have observed that a little increase of the first and the second formants and a progressive growth of the global intensity appear at the end of the nasal structure in the realization of [ɲ]. We have also appreciated that if the nasal formant (F2a) exists, it disappears in the beginning of the rising of the second formant. In the cases in which it does not disappear, it also undergoes a frequency increase.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Alonso, M. Cuevas (2003): "Notes on the historical palatalization and assimilation of [j] in the nasal alveolar consonant [n] in Spanish", In ICPhS-15, 3041-3044.