1.1 Previous studies on /l/ in Spanish and other languages

This study has two goals. Firstly, it aims to describe patterns of reduction affecting word-final /l/ in Spanish in a range of phonetic environments on the basis of electropalatographic (EPG) data. Secondly, it relates the experimental findings to phonological questions of syllabification and to phonetic effects of coarticulation.

The articulatory variability of /l/ in Spanish has been the subject of phonetic investigation for over a century. Based on tongue imprints collected from Peninsular Spanish speakers using static palatography, Josselyn (Reference Josselyn1907: 121ff.) reports that /l/ displays wide articulatory variability. Josselyn shows that this variability is attributable both to phonotactic contextual factors as well as idiosyncratic speech habits of subjects. For example, palatographic imprints from what Josselyn terms ‘strong articulations’ reveal that /l/ is sometimes articulated with full midsagittal contact across the alveolar region of the palate. Other realisations show that /l/ may have a ‘relaxed’ articulation, particularly in word-final contexts.Footnote ¹

Josselyn’s findings have informed other descriptive phonetic studies on the Spanish Language. Navarro Tomás (Reference Navarro Tomás1957: §111) notes that relaxed articulations of /l/ – in which the tongue gently brushes against the alveolar ridge without making complete contact – occur in colloquial or familiar speech (see also Navarro Tomás Reference Navarro Tomás1917). Likewise, Gili Gaya (Reference Gili Gaya1966: 147) reports that syllable-initial /l/ is usually articulated with full alveolar contact, at least in careful speech. However, in syllable-final or word-final positions, relaxed /l/-articulations often occur in more casual speech styles.

Cross-dialectally, various patterns of assimilation and reduction have also been documented. Hualde (Reference Hualde2014: 189) mentions Andalusian speech, in which certain varieties display neutralisation of /l/ and /ɾ/ in preconsonantal position and deletion of /l/ in word-final prepausal environments: e.g. alto [aɾto] ‘high’, hospital [ohpita] ‘hospital’. Neutralisation of /l/ and /ɾ/ is also noted to have a range of dialect-specific outcomes in other Spanish varieties. Guitart (Reference Guitart1976: 23–24), for example, reports that syllable-final /l/ undergoes categorical assimilation to following sounds in the educated speech of Havana: e.g. el golpe [eɡːobpe] ‘the blow’, el jamón [exːamoŊ] ‘the ham’ and el medio [emːeði̯o] ‘the middle’. The same effects are observed for coda /ɾ/ in this variety, both word-medially and across word boundaries: e.g. orquídea [oɡkidja] ‘orchid’, ser padre [seb.paðɾe] ‘to be a father’, ser mejor [semːexoɾ] ‘to be better’.Footnote ²

Alba (Reference Alba1979) discusses the vocalisation of /l/ (i.e. desconsonantización) in syllable-final environments in the Cibaeño dialect of Dominican Spanish. In this variety, /l/ occurs as a high vocoid in examples like golpe [ɡɔi̯pe] ‘blow’, baúl lleno [baui̯ɟeno] ‘full chest’ and papel [papei̯] ‘paper’ (i.e. preconsonantal and prepausal environments). In intervocalic contexts, however, /l/ is realised as a lateral consonant (e.g. dólar [dola] ‘dollar’). The lateral also occurs where word-final /l/ resyllabifies across a word boundary: e.g. el hombre [e.lom.bɾe] ‘the man’, el agua [e.la.ɣu̯a] ‘the water’.

These descriptions, whilst largely impressionistic, confirm that /l/ in Spanish displays interesting patterns of variability that bear similarities to those reported for other languages on the basis of instrumental data. For example, Hardcastle & Barry (Reference Hardcastle, Jones, Knight, Trudgeon and Calder1989) studied the reduction of coda /l/ in English in different preconsonantal contexts using EPG. Traditional phonological analyses of English (e.g. Chomsky & Halle Reference Chomsky and Morris1968) describe an allophonic pattern which causes /l/ to have a ‘light’ realisation in onset positions (i.e. [l]) and a ‘dark’ realisation (i.e. [ɫ]) in coda positions. Further to this, a number of dialects exhibit coda /l/-vocalisation (Tollfree Reference Tollfree, Paul and Gerard1999, Johnson & Britain Reference Johnson and David2007). Hardcastle & Barry’s results reveal that the degree to which /l/ undergoes reduction or vocalisation depends both on subject-specific speech habits and phonotactic factors. With regard to the phonotactic factors, the place of articulation of the consonant in /lC/-clusters has a robust effect: /l/-vocalisation (to [ɤ], [ö] or [ʊ]) occurs most frequently before velar consonants, somewhat less frequently before palato-alveolar consonants, and least frequently before following alveolar consonants. Furthermore, the preceding vowel exerts an influence: Hardcastle & Barry observe a tendency for /l/ to vocalise more frequently after front vowels than after back vowels.

Additionally, a study carried out by Scobbie & Pouplier (Reference Scobbie and Marianne2010) provides further insights on patterns of reduction and vocalisation in English word-final /l/. Comparison of EPG data from speakers of Scottish English and Southern British English shows that Scottish speakers vocalise word-final /l/ more frequently than the English speakers, both preconsonantally (before /b/ and /h/) and prevocalically. The five English participants in the study generally displayed more conservative patterns: two speakers consistently vocalised before /b/, but not before /h/; two other speakers vocalised only sporadically; and for the other English participant, word-final /l/ always had a consonantal realisation. Prevocalically, none of the English participants exhibited vocalisation, whereas evidence of vocalisation in this environment was observed in almost all tokens produced by two of the Scottish speakers. Two other Scottish speakers vocalised /l/ in approximately 40–50% of prevocalic tokens. These results therefore echo Hardcastle & Barry’s finding that articulatory reduction and vocalisation of /l/ in English displays clear idiolectal trends of variation, as well as interdialectal variation. In addition, since distinct rates of vocalisation are observed word-finally before different word-initial consonants and before following vowels, these data raise important challenges for analyses of /l/-vocalisation which attempt to predict the articulatory behaviour of /l/ on the basis of syllabification.

Gibbon, Hardcastle & Nicolaidis (Reference Gibbon, Hardcastle and Katerina1993) examined the spacio-temporal properties of /kl/-sequences in six European languages. As well as interesting asymmetries in degree of overlap for /k/ and /l/ that depend upon surrounding vowels, some evidence for language-specific patterns of articulatory reduction and overlap was also found. For example, Catalan speakers in this study tended to overlap /k/ and /l/-gestures most extremely, whereas Swedish speakers showed no overlap tendency. The authors note that this result emerges because the articulation of Catalan dark /l/ is more gesturally compatible with the dorsal gesture for /k/, and this therefore results in a strong tendency for coarticulation in /kl/-clusters. In Swedish, not only is the language-specific light /l/ less compatible with /k/ – in other words, /k/ and light /l/ display articulatory antagonism (Recasens, Pallarès & Fontdevila Reference Recasens, Dolors Pallarès and Fontdevila1998, Recasens & Pallarès Reference Recasens and Maria2001) – but /kl/-clusters are typically heteromorphemic in Swedish, and stress placement may also play a role (Gibbon et al. Reference Gibbon, Hardcastle and Katerina1993: 174). Strong speaker-specific trends were also observed for the other languages studied, namely English, French, German, and Italian (see Hardcastle Reference Hardcastle1985 for further data on English and Bombien et al. (Reference Bombien, Mooshammer, Hoole and Kühnert2010) on /kl/-sequences in German).

Further phonetic work on Catalan provides useful contextualisation for studying lateral articulations in Spanish. For example, Recasens (Reference Recasens2004) discusses dialect-specific variation in the articulation of /l/. EPG data collected from speakers of Mallorcan Catalan, Eastern Catalan and Valencian Catalan provides evidence for different degrees of darkening in intervocalic /l/-realisations. Speakers of the Mallorquí variety show the darkest realisations: palatograms from these speakers confirm that intervocalic /l/ is produced with a lowered and retracted tongue-dorsum and relatively reduced linguo–alveolar contact. At the other end of the scale, speakers of Valencià display characteristically light /l/-realisations. Palatograms extracted from intervocalic /l/ tokens produced by these speakers show full contact in the anterior region of the palate, and also high levels of activation of the peripheral electrodes along both sides of the palate in anterior and posterior contact regions. The Eastern Catalan speakers produce /l/-realisations that fall between these extremes. The darkness of intervocalic /l/ in Eastern Catalan is less extreme than in the Mallorquí dialect, but the anterior/peripheral contact that characterises /l/-lightness is also less robust than in tokens produced by the Valencià speakers (see also Recasens & Espinosa Reference Recasens and Espinosa2007 for articulatory comparisons of rhotic consonants in Valencià and Eastern Catalan, and Simonet Reference Simonet2010b for acoustic comparisons of /l/-realisations in Catalan–Spanish bilingual speech).

Regarding coarticulation, Calatan /l/ shows behaviour that distinguishes it from other sonorants. For example, Recasens (Reference Recasens1996) notes that both Catalan dark /l/ and German light /l/ resist coarticulation with flanking vowels to a greater extent than /n/ or /ɾ/. Conversely, dorsum retraction in Catalan dark /l/ significantly affects the quality of preceding vowels (Recasens, Pallarès & Fontdevila Reference Recasens, Dolors Pallarès and Fontdevila1997). This is to say that whilst Catalan /l/ itself is the source of strong C-to-V coarticulatory effects, it is less robustly affected by V-to-C coarticulation than other sonorants. For Spanish, however, Martínez Celdrán & Fernández Planas (Reference Martínez Celdrán, Planas and María2007: §3) observe on the basis of EPG data that /l/ and /n/ are similarly affected by vocalic context, at least in the dorsal region. Both /ana/ and /ala/-realisations display less dorsal contact than /ini/–/ili/ and /unu/–/ulu/, respectively. Furthermore, tongue-tip contact for /l/ tends to be more advanced in front-vowel contexts (i.e. /ili/) than in central and back contexts, i.e. /ala/ and /ulu/ (Martínez Celdrán & Fernández Planas Reference Martínez Celdrán, Planas and María2007: 138). Nevertheless, comparisons of /l/-realisations produced by 4 Spanish speakers in Fernández Planas (Reference Fernández and María2000: 167–169) shows that this pattern is not consistent across speakers, and there is also intra-speaker variation.Footnote ³ Fernández Planas (Reference Fernández and María2000: 240) also argues that Spanish /l/ is somewhat less sensitive to vocalic coarticulatory effects than /n/ (i.e. on a scale of decreasing sensitivity to coarticulatory effects, [ɾ > n > l > s > r]).

With respect to C-to-C coarticulation, instrumental work has tended to focus on the behaviour of nasals in Spanish. As is the case with English, these studies have unearthed complexities that are not necessarily predicted by phonological descriptions of the language. Harris (Reference Harris, Mark and Richard1984) claims that the place of articulation of syllable-final nasals is dependent upon following consonants: i.e. that feature-spread operations produce patterns of categorical assimilation in NC-sequences, e.g. [kam.po] ‘field’, [maŊ.ko] ‘one-handed’ and [pam.bu̯e.no] ‘good bread’, [paŊ.ka.ɾo] ‘expensive bread’. However, Ramsammy (Reference Ramsammy2012) argues on the basis of acoustic and EPG data that assimilation in NC and N#C-clusters in Peninsular Spanish is characterised by gradience and speaker-specific articulation strategies. More specifically, the outcome of assimilation depends on an interaction of factors, including the phonetic properties of the post-nasal sound, the type of boundary (prosodic or morphosyntactic) that intervenes between the nasal and the following consonant, and the dialect-specific realisation of word-final nasals in non-assimilation environments (i.e. as alveolar [n] or velar [Ŋ]). Further EPG work carried out by Kochetov & Colantoni (Reference Kochetov and Laura2011b) shows that assimilation in NC-clusters can be categorical in Argentinian and Cuban varieties, typically where C is a stop. In other contexts, for example in nasal-fricative sequences, assimilation is more gradient and dependent on dialectal factors and speaker-specific coarticulation strategies. The results of this study therefore resemble the findings of Honorof (Reference Honorof1999), where EMA data from Peninsular Spanish speakers indicate that syllable-final nasals have similar stricture targets to following obstruents. More generally, these studies confirm that coarticulation in NC-clusters in Spanish is complex, and the articulatory patterns of syllable-final nasals are not entirely predictable on the basis of the phonological properties of following consonants. Similar results also emerge from EPG studies on other languages: e.g. Italian (Farnetani & Busà Reference Farnetani and Grazia Busà1994, Celata et al. Reference Celata, Calamai, Ricci and Bertini2013), English (Ellis & Hardcastle Reference Ellis and Hardcastle2002) and French (Steele, Colantoni & Kochetov Reference Steele, Colantoni and Kochetov2019).

The findings of existing research therefore leave outstanding questions concerning the articulatory behaviour of /l/ in Spanish. Evidence for /l/-reduction was reported as far back as in Josselyn’s (Reference Josselyn1907) study; however, there is a lack of research on these patterns using modern articulatory imaging techniques. In addition – and unlike what has been described for nasals – phonological descriptions of Spanish have not identified processes of feature sharing between laterals and surrounding sounds. However, the phonological distribution of laterals in the language is almost identical to that of nasals, which suggests that laterals should be sensitive to some of the same structural constraints. As already noted for Cibaeño (Alba Reference Alba1979), /l/ may display different phonetic properties depending on its phonological patterning in coda vs onset positions (and, potentially, also in derived-onset contexts). Thus, an outstanding issue is to what extent /l/-reduction patterns can or cannot be predicted by syllabification generalisations.

1.2 Syllabification and resyllabification in Spanish

There is general agreement in phonological descriptions of Spanish as to how syllables are structured in the language. The maximal syllable shape is CCVCC (e.g. [tɾans.pa.ɾen.te] ‘transparent’), and onsetless syllables are tolerated word-initially (e.g. uva [u.βa] ‘grape’). Word-medially, a range of consonants occur in coda position, with liquids, nasals and the fricatives /s/ and /θ/ being particularly common (Hualde Reference Hualde2014: 62). Furthermore, /n l ɾ s θ d/ are the only sounds that regularly occur word-finally in the language.Footnote ⁴

Regarding VCV sequences, the consensus is that intervocalic consonants exceptionlessly syllabify with following vowels. Of particular relevance to the current study is the claim that this process applies both word-medially and across word boundaries. Theoretical and descriptive work on Spanish consistently highlights the operation of categorical resyllabification in /-VC#V-/ sequences, e.g. [klúβ.la.tí.no] ‘Latin American club’ vs [klú.βes.pa.ɲól] ‘Spanish club’ (Hualde Reference Hualde2014: 74–76,Footnote ⁵ see also Macpherson Reference Macpherson1975: §5.13, p. 36; Hualde Reference Hualde, Héctor and Fernando1991a; Colina Reference Colina1997, Reference Colina, Fernando and Sonia2006, Reference Colina2009: 45–51). Navarro Tomás (Reference Navarro Tomás1957: §154) also provides various examples of this type of resyllabification (e.g. el oro [e.lo.ɾo] ‘the gold’), commenting that ‘the final consonant of a word, when in contact with the initial vowel of a following word, is treated as intervocalic in rapid speech, and groups syllabically with said initial vowel’.Footnote ⁶ Lipski (Reference Lipski1989: 53) adds that resyllabification is ‘nearly exceptionless’ in rapid speech, whereas it may be blocked in slower, more formal speaking styles. Colina (Reference Colina1995: 26) further highlights that resyllabification affects single intervocalic consonants (in Catalan and Galician, as well as in Spanish), such that ‘[a]ll three languages resyllabify C.V across words, but not C.CV, even if the resulting cluster would be permissible’; hence, ^*[klú.βla.tí.no].

This situation contrasts with phonological studies on English in which there is less general agreement about resyllabification across word boundaries. As mentioned, an often-encountered statement is that /l/ is light in the onset and dark in the coda. However, various experimental studies have shown this assumption to be problematic. For example, Turton (Reference Turton2014, Reference Turton2017) shows that English /l/-darkening varies across dialects, and that some patterns display sensitivity to morphosyntactic boundaries. Ultrasound data reveal that speakers of RP and London English use a darker variant of /l/ with more extensive tongue-dorsum raising and retraction in canonical coda positions (i.e. utterance-finally and preconsonantally), whereas prevocalic /l/-realisations are much lighter, involving a dominant tongue-tip gesture. This finding, on the one hand, might be interpreted as providing evidence that word-final /l/ resyllabifies into onset position in English in prevocalic contexts, thereby escaping the phonological environment in which allophonic darkening in triggered. However, in other dialects (e.g. Essex English, General American English), the patterns are more complex, suggesting more fine-grained distinctions that evade a straightforward syllable-based analysis (recall Scobbie & Pouplier’s Reference Scobbie and Marianne2010 EPG study discussed above; Sproat & Fujimura Reference Sproat and Osamu1993, Lee-Kim, Davidson & Hwang Reference Lee, Sang-Im and Sangjin2013).

For Spanish, various pieces of evidence have been presented to illustrate the application of categorical resyllabification across word boundaries. A frequently mentioned example is emphatic trilling of /ɾ/. Word-final coda /ɾ/ in Spanish can optionally be realised either as a tap or a trill (with the trill being characteristic of emphatic speech): e.g. [maɾ] or [mar] ‘sea’ (Harris Reference Harris1983: 70–71). However, emphatic trilling is blocked in word-final prevocalic environments: thus, only a tap can occur in examples like mar azul ‘blue sea’. Since emphatic trilling is restricted to coda position, the fact that word-final /ɾ/ never undergoes trilling in prevocalic environments is argued to be evidence for the operation of a resyllabification process that converts /maɾ#aθul/ into [ma.ɾa.θul] (^*[ma.ra.θul], even under emphasis; see also Lipski Reference Lipski1990: 155–156; Bermúdez-Otero Reference Bermúdez-Otero, Marc, Ewen, Elizabeth and Keren2011). Similarly, numerous dialects of Spanish display aspiration of coda /s/ in word-final environments: e.g. [maɾeh] ‘seas’. However, in certain dialects, aspiration fails to occur prevocalically in examples like mares azules ‘blue seas’ (see Kaisse Reference Kaisse, Bullock and Reed1999 on Argentinian Spanish; and relatedly, see Hualde Reference Hualde1991b on the non-aspiration of /ð/ in word-final prevocalic contexts in the Chinato dialect).Footnote ⁷ Just like word-final prevocalic /ɾ/, the failure of final /s/ (and Chinato final /ð/) to aspirate before vowel-initial words has been interpreted as further evidence for resyllabification of word-final consonants into onset position across a word boundary: i.e. [ma.ɾe.sa.su.leh].

Despite these facts, the phonetic consequences of resyllabification remain largely unclear. There is some evidence, for example, that word-final intervocalic /s/ is treated in the same way as word-medial intervocalic /s/ as being a target for gradient voicing in Quito Spanish (Strycharczuk et al. Reference Strycharczuk, van ‘t Veer, Bruil and Linke2014). Yet with regard to /l/-reduction, it remains to be seen to what extent the articulatory profile of putative derived-onset /l/ in VC#V sequences may or may not differ from that of /l/ in canonical coda positions.

1.3 The present study

Given that the earliest descriptions of /l/-reduction in Spanish rely on static palatographic images, the first goal of this study is to provide a more accurate, quantifiable description of this phenomenon using electropalatography. The second goal is to assess to what extent articulatory reduction of /l/ is dependent on coarticulation with surrounding segments, and whether the reduction patterns can be predicted on the basis of syllabification or not. Analysis of EPG data ultimately shows that assumptions about the syllabic affiliation of word-final /l/ do not make strong predictions about articulatory reduction. On the contrary, /l/-reduction is best explained as the outcome of competing coarticulatory forces that operate independently of syllabification.

The paper is organised as follows. Section 2 presents an overview of the experiment design and methodology. The results are presented in Section 3. Section 4 discusses how the experimental findings bear upon (i) resyllabification of final consonants across word boundaries, and (ii) the role of coarticulation in the articulatory relaxation of /l/ in Spanish. Section 5 concludes the paper.