An acoustic study of /r/ front fricatives in Bolivian Highland Spanish

Abstract

This study focuses on the acoustic characteristics of two fricative variants of /r/ in the highlands of Bolivia: a dominant postalveolar retroflex variant with or without initial linguo-palatal contact, [r̝, ʐ], present alongside a fronted variant [z]. We aim to differentiate these variants and account for the contexts that trigger one or the other allophone. We analyse the productions of 10 speakers reading sentences in which words were inserted, including different stress and vowel contexts where /r/ appears. For 8 speakers, the results indicate that the [z] allophone occurs in 20% of productions, while 2 speakers do not produce this variant. The centre of gravity varies significantly according to the categorisation of [ʐ] vs [z], and the appearance of [z] is favoured by a front vowel context.

Keywords

• fricative rhotics
• Bolivian Highlands of Cochabamba
• Spanish
• sociophonetics