Descripción sincrónica del área palatal de los hablantes nativos de Posadas, Argentina

Abstract

In this paper, we identified the current situation of an aspect of the palatal area of native speakers from the city of Posadas: the progress and characterization of the /ʎ/ delateralization process. We analyzed a corpus of the speech obtained from a series of interviews conducted in 2017 to ninety-six different speakers. The sample, significant enough to approach the phenomenon under study, was systematized in accordance with the following contextual extra-linguistic factors: level of education (primary, complete or incomplete, secondary and university education), age (four groups of people whose ages ranged from 18 to 60 years old) and sex. A philological trait that characterized native speakers of the capital cities of Northeastern Argentina (NEA) is the contrast between the central palatal fricative sound phonemes, /ʝ/, and the palatal lateral sound, /ʎ/. In quantitative studies and participatory observations, the process of change of the lateral palatal has been investigated given that the contrastive feature is an isolated opposition in the system and gives a low functional performance. Finally, we anticipate that we have recorded a significant advance in the process of changing the palatal area in speakers from Posadas.