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

The Duration of the Consonants in Syllable-Final and Syllable-Initial Positions in Castilian Spanish

Miyuki Takasawa

Waseda University, Japan

In the current study we analyzed productions by native speakers of Castilian Spanish in order to investigate whether the syllable-final nasal has a different duration than (a) other consonants in syllable-final position and (b) a nasal in syllable-initial position. The results indicate that stress affects the duration of a syllable but does not affect the duration of a consonant, and that the duration of [m] and [n] in syllable-final position tends to be longer than that in syllable-initial position; furthermore, the duration of [l] in syllable-final position also tends to be longer than that in syllable-initial position. From these results we deduce that the duration of consonants, especially nasal and lateral, is affected by syllable position.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Takasawa, Miyuki (2003): "The duration of the consonants in syllable-final and syllable-initial positions in Castilian Spanish", In ICPhS-15, 3053-3056.