The dynamic nature of Rioplatense Spanish vowels

Abstract

Common assumptions in Hispanic phonetics pointed out that as Spanish vowels are stable entities, even if we were to measure formants at the 25%, 50% and 75% of the duration of the vowel, formant frequencies of native Spanish speakers would not show significant differences. Spanish contrasts with English, as English vowels have been shown to evidence Vowel Inherent Spectral Change (VISC), that is, systematic variations in their formant frequencies across the duration of the vowel. However, a series of previous studies have reported that River Plate Spanish vowels / ε ο/ show spectral change both in the first and second formants, evidencing greater spectral change mostly on the first portion of the vowel in comparison to the second one (Romanelli & Menegotto 2018; Romanelli, Menegotto & Smyth 2018). In the present article, we assess two different dynamic acoustic measures to track the formant movement of vowels over time with data from two of those experiments. We also propose a new measure that combines the advantages of these two measures, as it specifies not only the magnitude of spectral change but also the direction of the change for each formant frequency and each vowel portion. In doing so, we confirm that River Plate Spanish vowels / ε ο/ evidence spectral change.