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Wheeler, Cathy l. (1980). On the relationship between phonology and psychology. Papers
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Yngve, Victor H. (1986). Linguistics as o Science. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana
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Zimmer, Karl E. (1969). Psychological correlates of some Turkish morpheme structure
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\
'rt:
On the diphthong/hiatus contrast in
Spanish: some experimental results*
,;
. . , . .
J OS IGNACIO HUALDE and MNICA PRIETO
. n, :
Abstract
rs;;~e Spanish dialects have a lexical contrast between sequences in hiatus
\ ~~d diphthongs. Thus, whereas, for instance, dueto 'duet' admits a trisyl-
labic pronunciation with the sequence ue realized in hiatus [du. . tol, the
word duelo 'sorrow' can only be pronounced as bisyllabic [dw.lo J .
Similarly, {pi.l '1chirped' contrasts witb {pjl 'foot' in this manner. The
interest of this phenomenon lies in the fact that it represents a clear case
of phonological contrasts between hiatus and djphthong or, in other terms,
between hi h vowels andgJides. What remains largely unknown is tTle
dialectal extension o t is contrast and how consistently specific items are
classified as belonging to either the hiatus or the diphthong class within a
given dialect or across dialects. In this paper we report on an experiment
designed to test the consistency of the distinction in Madrid Spanish, as a
first step in the crossdialectal investigation of the phenomenon. We measured
the duration of the sequence iain a group of test words inserted in a uniform
carrier sentence. The results show that for all six speakers tested, the
hypothesized hiatus and diphthong classes present different durational distri-
butions, the sequence iatending to be longer in hiatus-class words, although A
there is a certain amount of overlap between the groups and some variatiCZ!:!;J
Introduction
r0 Spanish thesyllabificationof sequenees of risingsonority of the type
represented by ia, ie, io, ua, ue, ete., is generally predietable: such
sequenees are normally realized as diphthongs (as in the examples in
[la)), unlessthefirst element islexieallystressed, in whichcasethey are
always realized in hiatus, (1b). (In this paper sequences in hiatus ~~el
redundantly marked with a syllablebreak inphonetie representation~
Linguistics 40-2 (2002), 217-234 0024-3949/02/0042-0217
:> Walter de Gruyter
(
> '~
""
218 J . l. Hualde and M Prieto
(1) General rule
a. Diphthong: varias [brjas] 'several', Santiago [santjyo],
caliente [kaljnte] 'hot', amplio [mpljo] 'wide', dioses [djses]
'gods', guasa [gwsa] 'humor', vuelo [bwlo] 'fiight'
b. Hiatus ifi/u stressed: varas [bari.as] 'you vary', sonre [sonr.e]
'sfhe smiles', desafo [desaf.o] 'challenge', amplo [ampl.o]
'1 widen', pa [p.a] 'barb', flucte [flukt.e] lit fluctuate,
subjunctive' .
~
ThNevertheless, it has been noted that, at least in certain dialects, some
J ~rds are exceptions to the general rule in (1a), being realized with hiatus
even though the stress does not fall on the high vowel in the sequenc; 1
For instance, the words in (2) are given as exceptions to the general rules
in Hualde (1999) (cf. also Real Academia Espaola 1973: 47-58; Navarro
Toms 1977: 159; Monroy Casas 1980; Quilis 1993: 183-188; Harris
1969; Harris and Kaisse 1999; Hualde 1991, 1994, 1997, among others)
rw
Exceptions with hiatus:
riamos [ri.mos] 'we laugh, subjunctive', cliente [kli.nte] 'client',~
bilogo [bi.loyo] 'biologist', dueto [du.to] 'duet'.
J Ine total number of lexical items with the configuration in (2) is much
\ smaller than that represented by the examples in (la). That is, the hiatus
realization is cJ early exceptional pquences of this type where the first
vocoid does not receive the strs In Hualde (1997, 1999) severallexical
tendencies are mentioned in the distribution of items in the exceptional
hiatus c1ass. First of all, some cases of exceptional hiatus have amorpho-
phonological explanation, a fact that has also been pointed out by other
authors. Thus we may find an exceptional hiatus in a given word if the
high vocoid is stressed in a morphologically related word; thus, riada
[ri.a] 'food' with lexical hiatus is explained by ro 'river' (cf. Navarro
Toms 1977: 159). Similarly, the presence of a morphological boundary
may support a pronunciation in hiatus, as in bienio [bi.njo] 'biennium'
vs., for exampl.:: ~lar viento [bjnto] 'wind', Viena [bjna] 'Vienna',
bien [bjn] 'we.!!J ~side from these cases, some phonological contexts
also favor the realization in hiatus in the Castilian dialect considered
in Hualde (1997, 1999). These inc1ude a preceding trill, especial\ y
wJ ,l(q-initial, and the word-initial sequences #(C)ia, #(C~
This is not to say, however, that syllabification is in every case com-
pletely predictable from other factors of morphological structure and
position in the word. Certain morphological and contextual factors favor
(although they do not strictly determine) either hiatus or diphthong, but
the syllabification of a number of lexical items remains unpredictable
The Spanish diphthongjhiatus contrast 219
even taking all these factors into acco~ Thus, in the speech of the
authors, L[wi]sa contrasts with S[u.]za 'Switzerland', s[w]ve 'soft' with \ ~
Z[u.]vo 'Zouave', v[j]/a with b[i.}/ogo 'biologist' and v[j]je 'trip'
with m[i.]ja 'small piece', to give a few examples of w:.ar-minimal pairs
for which there is no identifiable conditioning factillJ This is thus abona
fide contrast in syllable structure that cannot be entirely reduced to other
pr~rties of the phonological or morphological conte&
The contrast with which we are concerned is not marked in the conven-
tibnal orthography of Spanish - which otherwise does an excellent job
at representing phonological contrasts - and appears to be subject to a 1
certain amount of dialectal variation. Nevertheless the fact is that very
little is known about the dialectal distribution of the phenomenon. We
still don't know how much consistency there is among speaker s of
different dialects, or even within a single dialect, in the pronunciation of
S~ifiC lexicaI ite~
lt should be noted that the existence of this diphthong/hiatus contrast
h s important implications for syllabic theory, since it shows that the
identification of syllable nuc1ei and, consequently, the syllabification of
sequences of vocoids cannot be achieved without some type of lexical
marking in Spanish (see Harris and Kaisse 19~Hualde 1991, 1994,
1997; Roca 1997 for different views and anlys~In spite of the theoreti-
cal importance of the phenomenon, most previous work has relied solely
on speakers' intuitions (which are not always consistent), and very little 1
phonetic evidence h~.s~ far been offered for the contrast (Quilis 1993;
Monroy Casas 19821J J The present paper represents a first attempt to
undertake a systematic study of the phenomenon taking both speakers'
intuitions and acoustic data into accou.ml
A surface contrast in the syllabification of vocalic sequences of rising
sonority is also found in other Romance languages, but with a more
marginal phonological status than in Castilian Spanish. In French (see
Battye and Hintze 1992: 127; Walker 2001: 103-106), as in Spanish, the
diphthong is the non:; !, but these sequences are bisyllabic after a complex
onset; for exarnple, liez [Ije] 'you tie up' vs, pliez [plLje] 'you fold' (with
an epenthetic glide). This is not a true phonological contrast since the
distribution is completely predictable from other factors of syllable struc-
ture (i.e. the presence of. a complex onset). In addition, French also
allows a hiatus in these sequences across morpheme boundaries, as in
anti-arien. In Italian too the diphthong is the norm in these sequences,
but for many speakers there can be a hiatus in cases where the high
vowel is stressed in other morphologically related forros. For instance, in
the minimal pair [spjnti] 'you uproot' vs. [spi.nti] 'spying' (Lepschy
and Lepschy 1988: 89), the latter forro owes its hiatus to the fact that it ~
"', - ,
220 J . l. Hualde and M. Prieto
belongs to the same morphological paradigm as, for example, [spa] 's/he
spies', with stressed li/. As mentioned above, th.is paradigm effect is
also found in Spanish. Neither Italian nor French appears to have cases
of completely unpredictable syUabification in the sequences under
consideration.
According to Ch.itoran (1997), Romanian presents a lexical contrast
similar to that found in Spanish, wh.ich the author represents as one
between sequences forming a diphthong, such as C[j] (e.g. [pjtro]
'stone'), and bisyUabic sequences with a transitional glide, such as C[ij]
(e.g. [pijstru] 'Turkish coin'). Although the exact manner in which these
Romanian sequences differ phom; ticaUy from the Spanish ones remains
to be determined, it is c1ear tha~anish shows asomewhat more complex ')
situation, since in this language C[j] contrasts both with C[i] and with (
C[ij]. Sequences of the type [ij] are found in words like pillado [pijo] (
(~[pija60J ) 'caught', wh.ich contrasts with piado [pi.o] 'chirped', in the
hiatus c1ass, and with limpiado [limpjo] or viaje [bjxe] in the diph-
thong class.' The existence of th.is third contrasting sequence lends
the diphthong/hiatus contrast of Spanish even greater theoretical and
typological importance.
1. Methodological considerations
f i n this paper wewant to initiate an investigation in order to try to answer
two related questions regarding the diphthong/hiatus lexical contrast:
a. Are there c1ear acoustic corre1ates of the diphthong/hiatus contrast?
b. To what extent do speakers' syllabification intuitions agree with
their behavior as reflected in objective measurernent
Investigation of th.is phenomenon so far has been for the most part
limited to reports on intuitions, as mentioned above. A problem with
relying on the methodology of asking speakers for their intuitions about
how specific words are divided into syUables is that, whereas some speak-
ers appear to be able to perform this task with great ease, others c1early
do not do as well in th.is type of task. This is the situation that one
typically finds in other similar lin~istic tasks, such as identifying stressed
syllables. The difference is thatlregarding Spanish stress, we know that
the majority of speakers do show complete agreement as to where the
stress falls in all words, even if a small minority of Spanish speakers
appear to be "stress deaf." Th.is nearly universal agreement on intuitions
is what makes the orthographic marking of stress practical in Spanish.
~r the hiatus/diphthong contrast, we still do not know this, and t
facts are further complicated by the existence of a certain amount of
~
(
The Spanisb diphthongfhiatus contrast 221
dialectal variation (whose extent is still unknown). Much work remains
to be done to determine the consistency of syllabification intuitions both
within and across Spanish dialects.
In this pa~{ we primarily watt:o address the questions above, which
relat~ the physical manifestation of the putative contrast in syllabifica-
ti0!.lAddressing this issue involves the analysis of speakers' productions.
Tlis is obviously a much more time-consuming procedure than eliciting
syllabification judgments. If, within a given dialect, speakers were to
show sufficient agreement in their syllabification intuitions regarding
specific items and, furthermore, the results of taking certain objective
measurements were found to correlate well with speakers' intuitions, in
future work we could simply rely on the intuitions of the majority of
speakers from agiven area for the geographical mapping of the phonolog-
ical contrast, just as the intuitions of the majority of speaker sare generally
judged to be solid enough evidence to determine the position of the
syllable with primary stress in a language like Spanish (Ieaving aside for
this purpose the minority of Spanish speakers who do not have c1ear
intuitions regarding stress). But first we must dete.rrnine whether there is
such correlation between intuitions and behavior,
For this we must find a feature in the sj>eechSgnal that indicates in a
more or less straightforward manner whether a given pronunciation
corresponds to a diphthong or to two vowels in hiatus.Quilis (1988:
178) remarks that in sequences realized as a diphthong there is a smooth
transition between the beginning and the end of the sequence, whereas
in sequences in hiatus there is a more abrupt discontinuity in vowel
forrna~(see also Monroy Casas 1980; Quilis 1993: 187-188; Aguilar
19972J Whereas for the smoothness vs. abruptness in the change of
forrnant values it is not easy to obtain reliable measurements, the same
sources point out that under equal conditions there also seems to be a
durational difference between dip~ng and hiatus for the Spanish
sequences we are considering here. In principie, we may assume that a
[
'giVen sequence will be longer if r; ; :jized as a hiatus than as a =.
Wemay thus try to deduce the hiatus/diphthong contrast from durational
f differences in the realization of the sequences under investigati~
vr complication for deducing the lexical affiliation of specific items
from the measurement of production toleens is that the words in the
exceptional h.iatus c1ass in (2) also allow a pronunciation with a diph-
thong in running speech (Hualde 1999). The difference is thus between
a majority c\ ass ofwords that only adrnit a diphthong pronunciation and
an exceptional c1ass of words that-allow a pronunciation in hiatus, even
though a diphthong pronunciation is also possible for the~ ~
r \ t - . . : . ,
222 J . 1 . Hualde and M. Prieto
2, Procedures andsubjects
2.1. Test materials
\ In this paper we begin our investigation of the diphthong/hiatus contrast
with the dialect spoken in Madrid. For the reasons mentioned above, we
start from the hypothesis that the diphthong/hiatus contrast is refiected
in durational differences. Since different vocalic segments have different
intrinsic durational properties, it is important to control for vowel quality
when performing durational measurements. For this reason, we have
decided to concentra te 00 words with the sequence ia. (In future work
other sequences will be tested.) Words with a hiatus sequence [i.) have
been reported to fall into three classes: (a) words morphologically related
to other words where the high vocoid is stressed (like riada 'fiood' related
to ro 'river'), (b) compounds (like boquiancho 'wide-rnouthed', from
boca 'mouth' +ancho 'wide'), and (e) other words, without amorphologi-
cal explanation, the majority of which contain the sequence in initial
position (Hualde 1997, 1999). (But not all words with initial Cia necessar-
ilvJ 2.elong to the hiatus class.)
For this prelirninary ex~ent we have selected a list of 20 iterns
containing orthegraphic ia, without stress on the i. These items were
selected in the following manner. One of the authors (who grew up
primarily in Madrid) designed a list of ten words that, according to his
intuitions, contained the hiatus sequence [i.J , and paired them with ten
other words containing the diphthong [j) matching for phonologieal
context to the extent that that was possib~e twenty words were then
presented to the second author (also a native speaker of Castilian Spanish,
from the Bilbao area) in written forro and in a random order. She was
asked to classify these words as belonging to the hiatus or to the diph-
thong class according to ber intuitions. The agreement between the intu-
itions of both authors was complete. It was thus decided to use this list
of twenty items to test the consistency io intuitions aod behavior of
semal naive speakers from Madrid.\
Of the twenty test items, ten thm contain a hiatus sequence [i.) and
the other ten a diphthong [j) according to the shared linguistic intuitions
I
of the authors. The quality of irnmediately preceding and following
segments has been matched as much as this was possible. Ease of segmen-
tation (for taking the relevant durational measurements) has also been
taken into account in the selection of examples. In our test materials,
seven of the ten examples with postulated hiatus present this sequence
word-initially, whieh are matebed with other words with a word-medial
diphthong. To obtain greater homogeneity, the exarnples with word-
)
The Spanish diphthonglhiatus contrast 223
initial hiatus have been provided with a preceding stress1ess syllable,
generally a c!!!5Thus, for instance, el piano is matched with Ulpiano
(example takenTrom Monroy Casas 1980) and con Diana is matched
with Indiana+ The experimental items where the hiatus has arnorphologi-
cal explanation are the following: iban piando 'they went along chirping'
(cf. pa 's/he chirps') , los vaciamos 'we empty them out' (cf. vaco 'empty'),
lo enviamos 'we send it' (cf. lo enva 's/he sends it'), los guiamos 'we lead
them' (cf. los gua 's/he leads them'), la riada 'the flood' (ef. ro 'river'),
diario 'daily' (cf. dla 'day') and semiviable 'semiviable' (ef. v/a 'path, traek,
way'). The other items, piano, Diana, liana have h morphologically unex-
plained hiatus (they are pure lexical exception.ll:1The complete list of test
items is shown in Table 1.
.-
2.2. Subjects
Ine subjects for this experiment are six Spanish speakers, three male (J L,
J C, and J T) and three female (IP, MH, and AH), in their thirties or
early forties who have lived in Madrid since childhood. None of the
speakers is fluent in any other language ?esides Spani~
2.3. Data-gathering procedures
The subjects eompleted both aproduction task and atest of syllabification
intuitions, in this order.
Table 1. Experimental materials [separation in columns is according to the authors'
intuitions )
i-a ja
el piano [elpi.no) 'tbe piano'
iban piando [bampi.ndo)
'they went along chirping'
con Diana [kondi.na) 'with Diana'
los vaciamos [lozai.mos]
'weempty themout'
lo enviamos [Ioembi.mos] 'wesent ir
lo guiamos [loyi.Amos] 'we guideit'
lariada [lari.a] 'the ood'
semiviable [serniPi.Ple)'serniviable'
casi diario [kasii.rjo] 'almost daily'
y la liana [ilali.na) 'and tbe liana' --
Ulpiano [ulpjno) 'a name'
y limpiando [ilimpjndo]
'and c1eaning'
Indiana [indjna] 'Indiana'
los saciamos [los:a9jmos]
'wesaciate them'
aliviamos [alipjmos) 'wesoothe'
elogiamos [eloxjrnos] 'we praise'
barriada [barja] 'town district; slum'
envidiable [embijllle] 'enviable'
presidiario [presijrjo] 'prisoner, inmate'
italiana [italjna] 'Italian, remo sg.'
~
~
~.,
'" . " _~ , _ , . , ~ . 1 io
224 J . 1 Hualde and M. Prieto
rFor the production task, the test words were typed embedded in the )
fr'ame digo __ porque s '1 say __ just because' and pasted en indivi- \
,J !gal index cards. Thirty distractors were added, using the same frame.
Test sentences and distractors (50 cards) wer~.interspersed in an arbitriry
way before being presented te the subje~ The recordings took place
under quiet co.nditio.~ing a Tascam digital recorder and a head-
mounted micro.pho.m; jThe subjects were all naive as te the purpose o.f
the experiment. Subjects were told te read the typed senteoces at a
comfortable speed and in a natural manner. The experimenter presented
the 50 cards te the subject one by ene. This procedure was repeated three
times with each subject. Between repetitions, the experimenter reshuffled
tl; !uards and, after a short pause, presented them again te the subject. .
After this task was completed, the subjects were presented with aliSt
containing the target words in an arbitrary order, together with anumber
o.f distractors, and were asked te either divide the words into syllables
or count the syllables by tapping and write their answer next te each
word, whichever task they found easier te perform, The purpose of this
second task was te determine te what extent the intuitions of the subjects
abo.ut syllabification matched their behavio.r in the production task.
The results of the production and the syllabificatio.n-intuitio.n~sks
are presented in the next section in reverse order te that in which they
were co.mpleted.
3. Results
3.1. Syllabification intuitions
The results of the test en syllabificatio.n intuitions (which, as mentioned,
was administered after the prcduction test, so. as not te biasfh.e subjects
( in their pro.nunciatio.n) are presented in Table 2. In this table, words with
predicted diphtho.ng are listed before those with predicted hlatus. An X
in a cell indicates that the subject's answer did not co.incide with the
predicted syllabification of the sequence for that word, w1!cIeas an empty
cell represents agreement with the autho.rs' predicti~s can be seen
in the table, the results for three of the six subjects show co.mplete
agreement with the predictio.ns (lF, MH, and AH 20/20). Ano.ther one,
J l., differed only in the syl1abificatio.n of one single item (19/20). lC
deviated frorn the expectations in three cases (17/20), where a hypothe-
sized hiatus was syllabified as a diphth~inally, J T divided the test
words inte syllables in ways that are less co.nsistent with their predicted
syllabification for Castilian Spanish speakers (12/20).1
. jt) ~
The Spanish diphthonglhiatus contrast 225
Table2. Syttabificaton 1IIIIIitloIIS
n. IF J T MH le AH
Hypotbesized diphtbong
U1piano
aliviamos
italiana
presidiario
envidiable
limpiando
saciamos
barriada
elogiamos
Indiana
x
x
. '
x
x
1 ;'
Hypotbesized hiatus
piano
enviamos
liana
diario
semiviable
piando
vaciamos X
riada
guiamos
Diana X
X
X
X
X
~;
'.
x
X
(
I
W1in all, these results demo.nstrate co.nsiderable agreement arnong the
subjects, as well as between the intuitio.ns of the subjects and those of
the authors. We interpret these findings as indicating that wemay reason-
ably expect te obtain fairly consistent intuitio.ns among most speakers
with the same dialectal and sociolectal backgro.und regarding the lexical
distribution of these sequences. Naturally, the small number of subjects
tested prevents us from making any stro.ng predictio.ns at this mo.ment.
(But obtaining syllabification intuitions from a much greater number of
spe"'y:ers is a straightforward matt:0J
t the same time, we no.te that one of the six subjects, J T, deviates
co.nsiderably in bis answers from those of the authors and the o.ther five
subjects. The reaso.n ter this may be a genuine phonological difference
in idiolects (which in principIe should al so. become apparent in the pro-
duction task) or simply less awareness regarding this syllabification con-
trast on the part of this subjecte-The results from the production task, to.
be discussed below, make us lean towards this second possibility. As ~
~,,)
-
226 J . J . Hualde and M. Prieto
I
indicated above, based on our previous experience, we expected to find
some subjects with less clear intuitio~
f
3.2. Production task
rrn all, 360 tokens were obtained (20 test sentences x 3 repetitions x 6
subjects). Of these only one token (by speaker IF) had to be discarded.
The data were transferred to a personal computer and analyzed with
PCQuire, cornmercially available speech-analysis program developed
y ciconrd, For each token, the ia portion was segmented from spectro-
grams and measured. For the segmentation, standard procedures were
followed. As rnentioned, examples were chosen in part considering
ease of segmentation of the re1evant sequence from the surrounding
consonantal conteillExamples are given in Figures 1and 2.
e measurements are first surnmarized in Table 3 in terms of means
(with standard deviations) and ranges. The result of a two-tailed t-test is
also shown, for each of the speaker~fAs can be seen, for all speakers
~"
Figure 1. digo italiana (IF)-dip/hong [ja1
Figure 2. digo y la liana (IF)-hialus [i.a]
The Spanish diphthongjhiatus contrast 227
Table 3. Durational measurements
Speaker
i.a
ja t-test, p =
J L(ro)
rocan value 138.23 114.36 2.39511 E-06
(standard deviation) (in ms.) (15.10) (19.89)
range 106.6-170.1 83.3-179.9
IF (f)
mean value 168.27 138.59 3.93007E-05
(standard devialion) (in ms.) (15.22) (32.57)
range 121.6-195.9 86.1-220.3
J T(m)
mean value 176 118.16 1.34327E-10
(standard deviation) (in ms.) (27.08) (30.29)
range 105.2-218.3 58-188.1
MH(f)
mean value 167.08 131.27 7.18533E-ll
(standard deviation) (io ms.) (15.03) (19.53)
range 142.5-205 106.4-195
AH (f)
mean value 194.74 133.29 1.7494E-17
(standard deviatioo) (in ms.) (23.93) (14.22)
range 138.9-22S.8 101.5-156.2
J e (m)
mean value 151.63 112.88 3.68959E-07
(standard deviation) (in ms.) (27.37) (24.89)
range 106.2-221.2 69.5-178.4
./l
there is asignificant difference in the duration of sequences with predicted ~
hiatus ji.aj and with predicted diphthong jjaj. This includes the data for
J T, whose response in the syllabification intuitions test did not match
that of the other speakers. On the other hand, some \ overlap between the
ranges of the two sets is also found for all speake.!].J
'e-ebtain a clearer picture of the distribution of the data from the
histogra~ in Figures 3-8. In these histograms, x =duration in ms., y =
~ f tokens, white bars =predicted hiatus, and black bars =pre-
dicted diphthong. To the extent that the two sets of items represent
different phonological categories, under our assumption that the
diphthongjhiatus contrast is manifested as a durational difference, we
would expect to obtain two separate distributions. On the other hand,
as we have noticed above, hiatus words may also have a diphthong
pronunciation (in somewhat faster speech), but not vice versa. Given
this, we may expect some tokens that we have classified as belonging to
the hiatus class to fall within jae durational range of diphthongs, but,'
crucially, not vice ver!!:.! $.
~ "
. . .
. .
.1'
. ~ ~
228 J. t. Hualde and M. Prieto
12
1 - -
-
1 - - ~
-
m-
I r 1 n 1 1 1 1
10
j
e
I
z
100-110110.1- 120.1- 130.1- 1-40,'- 150.1- 181.1- 170.'- 180.1- 190.1- 200.1- 210.1- 220.1-
m m ~ ~ ~ m ~ ~ ~ ~ m ~
I~ ~ I
Figure 3. AH
i
15
. .
i
r- - -
f- -
-
1 - f- -
-
r- r- r- f- - f- -
1 - - 1 - -
r
f- - f- -
111
100-"0 110.1-120 120.t-130 130.'-140 140.1-150 150.1-180 teU-170 110.1-180 180.1-190 190.1-200 200.1-210
ICH~ I
. 00pht ho ng
Figure 4. MH
';'i
.~t-
~ ;"I
;p
. '
~"'J '.
~}:; .
i~ 'J
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The Spanish diphthongfhiatus contrast 229
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I I I
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12
10
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80-90 90.1- l00.t- 110.1- 120.1- 130.1- 1<40.1-1SO,t- 181.t- 170.1- 180.1- 190.1. 200.1- 210.'- 220.1.
100 110 120 130 1040 uso 180 170 1&0 180 200 210 220 230
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Figure 5. IF
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150-90 90,1-100 100.1-110 110.,-120 120.1-130 130,'-140 1040.1-150 1SO.11&O181.1.170 170.t-180
lCHMw I
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Figure 6. J L
230 J . 1 . Hualde and M. Prieto
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70 ea 90 100 110 120 130 1<40 150 100 170 180 100 200 210 220 230
ID~AM I
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Figure 7. le
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70 80 90 100 110 120 130 104 0 150 reo 170 100 190 200 210 220
I OH .M I
. CIphIhon g
Figure 8. J T
The Spanis diphthongfhiatus contrast 231
rrr we observe the histograms of our su speakers, the one whose data 1
most closely approach the hypothesized distribution is AH (Figure 3). In [
the data for this speaker, the hypothesized hiatus and diphthong tokens
forro almost completely separate groups, withjust four tokens with hypothe-
sized hiatus falling within the durational range of the hypothesized diph-
thong class. To the extent that there is almost perfect separation in the
tokens for the two word c1asses along the duration dirnension and, in
particular, that there are no diphthong words in the durational range for
hiatus, this subject's data are consistent both with her own syllabification
. tuitions and with the hypothesized distribution of item~
For the other five speakers, the two hypothesized cJ asses also have I
clellIly distinct distributions, but there is a greater degree of overlaEJ
Besides AH, the other two speakers whose answers in the syllabification
intuitions task coincided completely with the expected intuitions are MH
and Il::J ~r MH (Figure 4) there is one token in the hypothesized
diphthong c1assthat falls well outside the normal range. This corresponds
to barriada (195 ms.), alth~u the other two repetitions of this item are
much shorter (138.2, 133.3). For IF (Figure 5), the histograms show that
the two longest tokens be ong to the hypothesized diphthong c1ass. These
are arepetition of presidiario (220.3) and arepetition of barriada (209.6) .
Other tokens of the same words, however, fall within the expected ran~
[speaker J L differed from the hypothesized intuitions in the syllabificatlon \
of vaciamos (syllabified as diphthong, against the hypothesized syllabifica-
tion). His production data, however, do not reflect this difference. His data
show a similar pattem to those of the other speakers discussed above. In I
Figure 6we seethat there is one token in the hypothesized diphthong cJ ass
that in fact has the longest duration of all tokens. This corresponds to
barriada. His three tokens oi vaciamos, on the other hand, are not conspicu-
o 'wy different in their duration from other tokens in the hiatus cJ a~
For J C (Figure 7) as well, the longest hypothesized diphthong token
is a repetition of barriada. In the intuitions test, this subject proposed
diphthong syllabifications for three items in the hypothesized hiatus cJ ass.
A look at the data sheets from which the histograms were drawn does
not reveal anything special about these items. Crucially, though, none of
the fivespeakers whose data we have discussed so far provided a syllabifi-
cation in hiatus in the introspective test for a word with hypothesized
diphthong. The three items that J C syI1abified in a manner not consistent
with the hypothesis were in the opposite direction. As indicated above,
this does not necessarily indicate a phonological difference, since in fast
speech hiatus words can indeed be syllabified with a diphthong.
The only speaker who in his answers to the syllabication-iiitutions
test deviated from the hypothesized syI1abification of words both in the ~
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,-
'-
.- \ -
l_
1- \ -
l_ t _ t _ l_
232 J . l. Hualde and M. Prieto
(
hiatus and in the diphthong class was J T. This is the subject who had
the lowest agreement with the predicted distribution in the test of syllabi-
fication intuitions. When we consider rus production data in Figure 8,
on the other hand, what it is immediately apparent is that his results do
not differ greatly from those of the other speakers. In the production
data for J T there are four hypothesized diphthong tokens within the
hiatus durational range. Consulting the data sheets, it turns out that
these four tokens correspond to al1three repetitions of barriada and one
repetition of U/piano (the shortest one among the four, 152.8 ms). We
may tentatively conclude that for this speaker the word barriada belongs
to the hiatus class (although he did not syllabify it as such in the task of
syl1abification intuitions). Ofthe two possibilities that wesuggested above
to explain the deviant responses of this subject to the syl1abification task:
that his idiolect differs in this respect from that of the other speakers or
that he is in some sense "deaf'" to the contrast, it appears that the second
explanation is the correct one. In production, this speaker's performance
is similar to that of the other subjects, but he is not aware of the
honologica! contrast in syl1abification to the same extent.
inally, it is clear that if we excluded the word barriada, the data
ould show greater conformity with the predictions. This word may
belong to the hiatus c1ass for some speakers (J T) and may fiuctuate
between the two c1asses for other speakers. We may note that although
the realization of ia as a diphthong in this word is suggested by its
morphological relatedness to barrio, fue context fol1owing a trill favors
the hiatus (Hualde 1997, 1999). Nevertheless, even if we leave this item
aside, the segregation between the two hypothesized groups is not perfect
for any speaker
4. Conclusions
~
/
\ Both the "performance" (reading) and the "competence" (syl1abification
intuitions) tests employed support the hypothesized lexical contrast
between a c1ass ofwords with a sequence /i.l in hiatus and another c1ass
of words with the diphthong /jl in the Spanish dialect spoken in Madrid.
rrn the syl1abification task, three of the su speakers performedm
complete agreement with the hypothesized syllabification, that is, with
the intuitions of the authors, but the syllabifications prpposed by one of
the speakers deviate considerably from the hypothe~
The durational measurement test, in its turn, while confirrning the
basic premise about the separation of the items into two lexical c\ asses,
has also revealed the existence of a certain amount of variation. One of
\ -
The Spanish diphthongfhiatus contrast 233
;f"J .
thehypothesized diphthong items employed, barriada, appears to belong (
to hiatus class instead for one of the subjects and perhaps to show
variation in c1ass membership for other subjects. But even leaving this
itemaside, the variation and overlap between the two hypothesized classes I
in production shows that it is not possible to simply rely on durational
measurements in order to determine whether some specific item belongs
to the hiatus or to the diphthong c1ass for a given group of speakers. A
possibility that we leave for further research is that a combination of /
duration and formant va!ues may yield a more clear separation between
hiatus and diphthong sequences,
In conclusion, fue goal oftliis paper has been to provide a deeper
understanding of the nature of the lexical contrast between hiatus and
diphthong sequences in Spanish. We have shown that the contrast has a
durational basis. Words with lexical hiatUstend to have greater duTation
of1he sequenCe'"than words where the relevant sequence is "felt" as being
tautosyllabic by most speakers.
The combination of taskSthat we have used in this paper may be
employed profitably to determine the geographical extension of the
diphthongfhiatus contrast by examining data from speakers of other
dialects. For instance, in some South American dialects, speakers' intu-
itions regarding the syl1abification of the sequences with which we have
been concerned here appear to be very different. In particular, the speak-
ers that we have informally consulted from severa! South American
regions do not establish any syllabification contrasts among the test items
used in this paper. We expect this intuition to be reflected in production
as amuch greater (or complete) durational overlap among the two groups
of items tested in this paper than for Madrid speakers. That is, our
hypothesis is that, using the same materials, speakers of other Spanish
dialects will perform in a very different way from the Madrid speakers
whose data we have reported here. We willleave this for future researc~ I
Received 25 April 2001 University o/ Illinois al Urbana-Champaign
Revised version received
30 August 2001
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Notes
Correspondence address: Department of Spaoisb, Italian aod Portuguese, 4080 FLB,
Uoiversity ofIllinois, Urbana, IL 61801, USA. E-mail: j-bualde@uiuc,edu.
1, Therealization of ortbograpbic y and 11inprevocalic positioo variesagreat deal among
Spanisb dialects. For most younger speakers of Castiliao Spanisb both ortbograpbic
letters represent a palatal pbooeme $-very variable constriction, includiog a glide or
approximaot (j 1as acommon inlervocalic allopbooe; seeAguiJ ar (1997). ~
"",
1-
,~
It ~~(tJ
"1' tl"iv-
--
234 J . L Hualde and M. Prieto
2. An anonyrnous reader suggests that speakers may assign some stress to word-initial
syllables, which could result in lengthening of tbe sequences under consideration in
examples like con Diana (vs. Indiana) and el piano (vs. Utpiano) even in the absence of
phonological contrast. Although the possible existence of word-initial lengthening in
Spanish cannot beruled out apriori and intheabsenceof experimental results, tbefact
istbat Spanish speakers and linguists generally agreetbat sequences such asse para 's{be
stops' and separa 's{heseparates', contabas 'you counted' and CO/1 tabas 'with knuckle-
bones' or ti cano 'the gray-haired one' and Elcano 'asurname' arecompletely bomopbo-
nous. Thus, the differences in duration tbat wefind in tbe test items cannot be purely
attributed to aword-initial effect.
3. Theexperimental work reported inAguilar (1999) carnelo our attention wbenIbisarticle
wasalready al tbeproofs stage. Her results appear tobelargelycompatible withours.
References
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.. ~~
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. ~
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. ' . .
The time-course of inflexional
morphological priming*
f ;"
ALBERTO DOMINGUEZ. J UAN SEGUI, and FERNANDO CUETOS
Abstract
In Spanish. the contrast between the suffixes -a and -o in pairs oJ words
such as loc-a/loc-o 'mad woman'l'madman' has a morphological value
because it allows the gender selection oJ the stem loc. However, in pairs
such as rat-a/rat-o 'rat'l'moment' this contrast has a lexical value, permit-
ting the selection of two different words. The use o/ these two c1asses oJ
word relationship, together with semantically related pairs sucb as saa-
odio 'anger='hate', permits the study pJ the time course oJ morphological,
orthographic, and semantic priming at 32, 64, and 250 ms. SOAs. Two
experiments were carried out in whic the priming effects Jor the previous
categories were compared with unrelated priming and identity priming in a
lexical-decision task. Morphological [acilitation was obtained with 32 ms.
and 64 ms. masked presentations oJ the prime word and with. a 250 ms.
unmasked prime. Ho wever, semantic [acilitation occurred only witn the
unmasked prime and orthographic [acilitation occurred only f or the masked
primes. Morphological, orthographic, and identity priming effects were of
comparable magnitudes Jor the 32 ms. masked primes, whereas f or the
64 ms. masked priming, orthographic priming was half the magnitude of
morphological and identity priming. To what extent the [acilitatian f or
morphological pairs is due to amorphological stage oJprocessing or, rather,
to the summed effects oJ orthographic and semantic Jeatures is discussed.
Agreements and differences with some recent studies in other languages are
considered (Drews and Zwitserlood 1995; Frost et al. 1997; Rastle et al.
2000).
Some of the most important word-recognition models support the
requirement of a morphological treatment of the input at some level of
processing (see McQueen an~utler 1998 for a review). The Jull parsing
models defend a mandatory prelexical segmentation of the word into its '"
Linguistics 40-2 (2002), 235-259 0024-3949/02/0040-00235
eWalter de Gruyter
"'"