Variation and phonological change. The case of yeísmo in Spanish

Abstract

[eng] Recent studies on sound change suggest that change is not possible without allophonic variation, since it seems to be the triggering factor in phonetic evolution (see Lindblom 1990a, 1990b, Ohala 1974, 1993, 2013 or Blevins 2004). When focusing on Spanish yeísmo, recent research draws attention to the fact that it is a change in progress (see Moreno Fernández 2005). Since the beginning of the 20th century, /ʎ/ has been gradually merging with a palatal phoneme, traditionally considered as a fricative consonant in spite of its formantic structure. Nevertheless, in this process there is not a real dichotomy between a lateral and an approximant consonant. Instead, there is an array of allophones that concur as variants of /ʎ/ ([ʎ], [j], [ʒ] or [ɟ͡j] are a few examples of them). Hence, this paper focuses on investigating the enormous variation in the phonetic representation of /ʎ/ and how it is evolving in the reorganization of the Spanish sound system which, obviously, has significant phonological consequences. This will be achieved by experimental means (analysing speech acoustically) and by the collection of data for different dialects, which will give us information about (i) the existence of intra and inter-speaker variation and (ii) how this variation functions. The results lead us to think of a restructuring of the palatal system of Spanish, at least in some parts of its linguistic territory, which seems to prove that the merger process is still progressing.