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This paper describes the acoustic characteristics of sound [s] in the cities of: Medellín and Apartadó and explores the hypothesis that the articulation of /s/ will serve to distinguish between the dialects spoken in these two areas. The study analizes 943 [s] produced by a total amount of 32 speakers. The following parameters were considered in the analysis: Center of gravity, spectral peak, standard deviation of the spectrum, skewness, kurtosis, zero crossings and harmonic-noise ratio. Results suggest that: in syllable onset [s] is more apical in Medellín and more dentalised in Apartadó. Also, Medellín’s onset [s] is more sibilant. In coda position, there is no difference between the two dialects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, results of a study on the geographic variation of the phoneme /r/ in the speech of Chilean professionals of eight different cities (Iquique, La Serena, Valparaíso, Santiago, Concepción, Temuco, Coyhaique y PuntaArenas) perfonning a reading-aloud task are presented. The results show that most of the realizations for the phoneme /r/ correspond to the approximant, apicoalveolar consonant [ɹ], regardless of the participant's geographical origin and the gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, results of a study on the geographic variation of the phoneme /r/ in the speech of Chilean professionals of eight different cities (Iquique, La Serena, Valparaiso, Santiago, Concepción, Temuco, Coyhaique y Punta Arenas) performing a reading-aloud task are presented. The results show that most of the realizations for the phoneme /r/ correspond to the approximant, apicoalveolar consonant [ɹ], regardless of the participant's geographical origin and the gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to carry out a comparative sociolinguistic analysis of intervocalic obstruent consonant /d/ variation in urban Granada and Malaga (Spain). To do so, two perfectly comparable spoken corpuses gathered in the frame of the PrESEEa-Project were used. Given that /d/ deletion is quite frequent in southern varieties of Castilian Spanish, our analysis zoomed in on consonant deletion vs. maintenance regardless of the differences of intensity or tension perceptible in maintained consonantal variants. Prior to the comparative analysis itself, an exhaustive bivariate analysis was performed considering both linguistic and speaker (stylistic and social) variables, as well as their respective interaction. Therefore, we carried out two multivariate comparative analyses, the first one involving separate parallel analyses of data from both corpuses and the second one being an integrated analysis of the whole data. Results were amazingly similar for both towns and tend to confirm those obtained for other areas both in Spain and America, basically regarding the fundamental weight of internal factors on /d/ variation (i.e. consonant maintenance in word-roots vs. deletion in morphemes). However, they contradict most of previous results with regard to the effect of the speaker variables (i.e. younger speakers' leadership on /d/ deletion). Finally, conflict sites reveal sharper social stratification and age differences in Malaga than in Granada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study is to examine the relationship between certain variables and the presence/absence to a greater or lesser degree of the personal pronoun together with a conjugated verb in spoken Spanish of Granada (Spain). By doing so, we want to determine the factors involved in using the pronominal subject instead of the phonetic zero in certain statements. In order to define the determining factors, we have followed the coding guidelines proposed for the PRESEEA Project by Bentivoglio, Ortiz and Silva-Corvalán (2011). After the standard statistical processing firstly we verified that the prevalence rate of the personal pronoun is one of the lowest in the Spanish-speaking world and secondly, that the following variables are significant: grammatical person, specificity, ambiguity of the verbal form, semantic class of the verb, periphrastic form, co-reference, the beginning of speech turn and age. This paper focuses on the comments and explanations regarding the possible interrelationships among the values obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tries to quantify the socioeconomic importance of seven phonetic characteristics (seseo, yeismo, /s/-aspiration, /x/-aspiration, /j/-assibilation, /r/-assibilation, and /n/-velarization) whose presence or absence allows distinguishing among twenty-four Spanish dialects. In order to accomplish this goal, we perform a least-square regression analysis to calculate "hedonic prices" for the abovementioned characteristics. The result is that the three more significant characteristics, which seem to operate as signs of a lower per-capita income, are seseo, /x/-aspiration and /r/-assibilation. The first of those characteristics keeps its statistical significance as a sociolinguistic marker when we restrict our analysis to the case of Spain, while /r/-assibilation keeps its statistical significance when we restrict our database to Colombian observations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]