The vowel system of Eastern Andalusian Spanish speakers with articulation disorders: The effect of consonant deletion on preceding vowels in Western Almería

Abstract

Eastern Andalusian Spanish deletes coda consonants and the effects of such deletions have been widely studied. However, this has been done almost exclusively for /s/. Furthermore, no study has considered Eastern Andalusian speakers with articulation disorders. The present paper explores the consequences of /s/, /r/, and /θ/ deletion on preceding vowels in Eastern Andalusian speakers with articulation disorders. The vowels from eight speakers affected by articulation disorder are analysed and the results are compared to findings from other studies which focus on speakers from the same geographical area with no articulation disorder. Acoustic and statistical analyses show that the vowels of speakers with an articulation disorder present a similar tendency to those of speakers without it: the vowels suffer different alterations depending on the underlying consonant they precede but the intensity of such alterations varies between both groups of speakers. It is hypothesized that functional compensation forces explain why speakers with articulation disorders acquire some features of Eastern Andalusian vowels but not others.