1.1 Word final consonant clusters in Valencian Catalan: General characteristics

In Valencian Catalan, an underlying oral stop is expected to be realized phonetically after a homosyllabic nasal, /l/, /s/ or /r/ in word final position whether before a pause or a word initial vowel, e.g. /mp/ ([kamp] ‘field’, [kampesˈtɾet] ‘narrow field’), /lt/ ([alt] ‘tall’, [alti ˈpɾim] ‘tall and thin’) and /rt/ ([art] ‘art’, [artapsˈtɾakte] ‘abstract art’). Regressive place assimilation renders the two consecutive consonants homorganic in clusters with a nasal C1 at the bilabial (/mp/), dentialveolar (/nt/) and velar ([ŋk]) place of articulation, and the same applies to /lt/ where /l/ becomes dentialveolar. The production of the clusters /st/ and /rt/ involves either fronting of the tongue tip/blade from a more retracted centroalveolar or postalveolar constriction for /s/ and /r/ to a more anterior alveolar or dental closure location for /t/, or else the same place of articulation for the two consonants at the C1 constriction location (Recasens Reference Recasens1993). This scenario is in contrast with that for other Catalan dialects such as Eastern Catalan, where the word final oral stop is not realized after a homorganic nasal (except for [ŋk] in some dialectal areas) or after homorganic /l/ (except for learned words), and may be deleted after /s/ and /r/ in informal and/or fast speech. Therefore, the examples referred to above are realized [kam], [kam əsˈtɾɛt], [al], [ali ˈpɾim], [ar(t)] and [ar(t) əpsˈtɾaktə] in the Eastern Catalan dialect.

Consonants are homorganic in most of the clusters with /s/ under study in the present paper (Recasens Reference Recasens1996: 213, 349; Reference Recasens, Goldstein, Whalen and Best2006). In consonant sequences with an alveolar or alveolopalatal C1, C1 and C2 are homorganic in /ns, ls, rs/ because the two consonants are alveolar originally; as for /nts, lts, rts, ʎs, ɲs/, a high degree of articulatory constraint for the alveolar fricative causes the preceding consonant to be articulated at the alveolar zone as well. Homorganicity is also available in the Valencian Catalan realizations [ʎʃ, ɲʃ] of /ʎs, ɲs/ where /s/ has become [ʃ] through progressive palatalization. As for the remaining clusters, C1 and C2 agree in place of articulation at the labial and velar zone in the sequences /mps/ and [ŋks], and the two consonants keep their original place of articulation in the case of the cluster /ms/.

1.2 Underlying stop clusters

The issue as to whether the underlying oral stop is realized or not in three-consonant clusters with a nasal, lateral or rhotic C1 and ending in /s/ in Valencian Catalan (e.g. whether /kamps/, /alts/ and /arts/ should be realized as [kamps], [alts] and [arts] or as [kams], [als] and [ars]) is open to debate and will be of concern in the present paper. Generally speaking, the elision of the oral stop may be attributed to gestural merging between homorganic C1 and C2 causing the stop consonant to cease to be heard. Several place and manner of articulation factors may affect the degree of perceptibility of the oral stop element.

Regarding place of articulation, [ŋks] is expected to exhibit a more prominent oral stop (and thus to be more resistant to simplification) than /mps, nts, lts, rts/. This ought to be so since, in comparison to labial and dentialveolar consonants, the production of velars involves a slower and more gradual motion of the primary articulator, a larger contact area and a longer stop burst (Fischer-Jørgensen Reference Fischer-Jørgensen1954). Acoustic prominence is expected to be least for /mps/ since labials have no resonating cavity and thus the weakest burst (Ohala Reference Ohala, de Mori and Suen1985).

The manner of articulation of C1, i.e. whether a nasal, /l/ or /r/, may also play a role in the phonetic implementation of the underlying oral stop. This observation is supported by the fact that, in Eastern Catalan, the underlying stop is elided systematically after a nasal in the sequences /mp, nt/ and [ŋk] but only in specific conditions after /l, r/ in the clusters /lt, rt/ (see Section 1.1 above). Progressive nasalization causing the oral pressure level for the oral stop to lower and the stop to become less audible may account for the elision process in this case (Solé Reference Solé, Trouvain and Barry2007). Indeed, it appears that stop elision in the clusters /mp, nt/ and [ŋk] in the Eastern Catalan dialect reflects a historical process through which the plural endings /mps, nts/ and [ŋks] underwent progressive shortening of the underlying oral stop as it became increasingly nasalized followed by elision of the stop consonant (Veny Reference Veny1998). Also in American English, the underlying stop has been reported to be longer for /lts/ than for /nts/, and longer and more frequent for /ldz/ than for /ndz/ (Fourakis & Port Reference Fourakis and Port1986).

1.3 Epenthetic stop clusters

Stop insertion is associated with a transitional oral closing period resulting from the temporal overlap between the articulatory gestures for the consonants in the cluster (Browman & Goldstein Reference Browman, Goldstein, Mattingly and Studdert-Kennedy1991). The present study is concerned with whether stop insertion occurs in Valencian Catalan (and, if so, how frequently and robustly in comparison with other language scenarios), and what contextual, articulatory and aerodynamic factors are involved in stop epenthesis implementation in this Catalan dialect.

It remains unclear whether Valencian speakers may insert a homorganic oral stop in the clusters without an underlying stop /ms, ns, ls, rs, ʎs, ɲs/. According to available descriptions such as those referred to above, an audible oral stop appears to be regularly inserted in clusters with an alveolopalatal C1 ([aʎ(t)s/ʃ] ‘garlics’, [aɲ(t)s/ʃ] ‘years’). As for the remaining clusters, an audible stop transition has been reported to occur between /m, n, l/ and following /s/ in Eastern Catalan, i.e. [m^ps], [n^ts], [l^ts] (Brasington Reference Brasington1973, Wheeler Reference Wheeler1979: 281). Another issue is whether stop insertion occurs more or less often than in other languages. In American English, stop epenthesis has been reported to occur 100% of the time in the sequences /ls, ns/ (though 10% or less in the voiced cluster cognates /lz/ and /nz/) (Fourakis & Port Reference Fourakis and Port1986), and just about 25% in the case of /n(#)s/ (Blankenship Reference Blankenship1992). According to the first study, the process does not apply in South African English. Data for the sequences /ms, ns, ŋs/ embedded in non-words and produced by Dutch speakers show an epenthetic stop very often, i.e. 80–100% of the time (Warner & Weber Reference Warner and Weber2001). As for the Romance languages, the process operates highly frequently on the word internal heterosyllabic sequences /ns, ls, rs/ in Central and Southern Italian ([perˈ(t)sona] ‘person’, [ˈpen(t)so] ‘I think’, [ˈfal(t)so] ‘false’; Rohlfs Reference Rohlfs1968: 381).

Several factors appear to be involved in stop insertion in the consonant clusters of interest. In clusters with a nasal C1, a premature raising of the velum may cause the final portion of the nasal to become denasalized; since the articulators are still placed in the articulatory configuration for C1, the air pressure is released at the C1 place of articulation, thus giving rise to an oral stop which is homorganic with the nasal stop (Ohala Reference Ohala1997). Another source of stop insertion in nasal stop clusters appears to be the combined effect of a decrease in nasal murmur intensity towards the end of the nasal consonant, which resembles a short silent gap, and the burst-like abrupt oral release for the following fricative before velic closure is achieved (Ali et al. Reference Ali, Daniloff and Hammarberg1979 and Busà Reference Busà, Solé, Beddor and Ohala2007: 163–164). As for clusters with a lateral consonant, stop insertion is triggered by raising the sides of the tongue, thus creating complete oral closure before the central apical closure for the alveolar lateral is released (see Ohala Reference Ohala1997 regarding /ls/).

The audibility of the stop burst and thus the emergence of the oral stop is facilitated by an increase in oral pressure behind closure location for clusters with a non-nasal C1, as well as for clusters with a nasal C1 once the velum is raised (first closure formation mechanism above) or else during the nasal even more so when the velic opening is small (second closure formation mechanism). An increase in intraoral pressure level is also favored by the high aerodynamic requirements for the fricative and for C1 = /r/ mostly if realized as a trill (Black Reference Black1950, Malécot Reference Malécot1955), and by an increase in linguopalatal contact and a reduction in back cavity size associated with the presence of an alveolopalatal or velar C1 in the cluster. An increase in articulatory contact may also occur presumably when the two consonants are homorganic as opposed to when they are not, e.g. for /ns, ls/ vs. /ms/. Therefore, epenthetic stop bursts are expected to be more prominent in the sequences /ʎs, ɲs/ vs. /ms, ns, ls, rs/ and perhaps for the lingual vs. labial sequences. Also in Dutch, the stop bursts turned out to be more intense, longer and perceptually more prominent for /ŋs/ than for /ms, ns/ though no clear differences in burst frequency of occurrence and in closure duration were found to hold between the two cluster groups (Warner & Weber Reference Warner and Weber2001).

While studies on stop epenthesis have emphasized that voicing is interrupted during the formation of the oral stop closure period (Ali et al. Reference Ali, Daniloff and Hammarberg1979, Ohala Reference Ohala1997), voicing into closure may certainly occur if the intraoral pressure level is low enough to allow vocal fold vibration. Voiced stop epenthesis has been reported in experimental studies (Fourakis & Port Reference Fourakis and Port1986) and is widely attested diachronically (Catalan [səmˈbla] from unattested [səmˈla] Latin SIMILARE ‘to look like’).

1.4 Underlying vs. epenthetic stop clusters

Another research topic of the present investigation is whether the stop element is phonetically more prominent in the underlying stop clusters /mps, nts, lts, rts/ than in the non-underlying cognates /ms, ns, ls, rs/.

Since, in principle, underlying stops occur in the language's phonological representation while epenthetic stops do not, one would expect the former to be longer and to exhibit a more salient burst than the latter. Moreover, in comparison to epenthetic stops, underlying stops should occur more systematically and their phonetic implementation ought to be less variable across tokens and speakers. In partial agreement with this expectation, data for the word final sequences /l(t)s, n(t)s/ in American English reveal that, while occurring 100% of the time, underlying and epenthetic stops differ in closure duration, i.e. the closure period is shorter for inserted [t] (less than 40 ms) than for underlying /t/ (about 40 ms after /n/ to about 70 ms after /l/) (Fourakis & Port Reference Fourakis and Port1986). According to other studies dealing with the pair /nts/–/ns/, the oral stop closure does not exceed 40 ms and is longer for underlying /t/ than for epenthetic [t] (Yoo & Blankenship Reference Yoo and Blankenship2003), and both the closure period and the stop burst are more frequent for the former vs. latter stop type (Arvaniti & Kilpatrick Reference Arvaniti and Kilpatrick2007). Also, Dutch data for the sequences /m(p)s, n(t)s, ŋ(k)s/ show that 20–25 ms long epenthetic stops occur highly frequently and are identified as stops about 60–90% of the time though less so than underlying stops, presumably because they are less prominent acoustically (Warner & Weber Reference Warner and Weber2001). Not all studies report the expected differences in phonetic prominence between the two stop types. Thus, data for /n(#)s/ and /nt(#)s/ presented in Blankenship (Reference Blankenship1992) indicate that, while the alveolar oral stop segment occurs more frequently in clusters with an underlying stop than in those without it, closure duration is non–significantly longer for the former cluster class than for the latter both word medially (35 vs. 30 ms) and utterance finally (76 vs. 73 ms).

Closure voicing may also contribute to differentiating underlying from epenthetic stops. In principle, voicing could affect (shorter) epenthetic rather than (longer) underlying stops, as well as shorter than longer stop closures within each category. Voicing is expected to sit more comfortably on shorter than on longer stops due to the requirement that the intraoral pressure level does not increase above the subglottal pressure level as closure is lengthened for vocal fold vibration to occur (Ohala Reference Ohala1981). Moreover, voicing is expected to be maintained more easily whenever contextual /s/ becomes voiced (see Section 1.5 below), as well as in clusters with anterior vs. posterior consonants in line with differences in back cavity size, and in nasal clusters since air leakage for nasality allows simultaneous voicing to take place (Ohala Reference Ohala and MacNeilage1983, Solé Reference Solé, Trouvain and Barry2007).

Other segmental correlates of the underlying/epenthetic stop distinction will be subject to analysis as well, i.e. the duration of the first consonant (C1), the preceding vowel (V) and following /s/. If these phonetic segments contribute to distinguishing underlying vs. epenthetic stops, their duration should vary inversely with that of the stop closure and, therefore, C1, V and /s/ ought to be shorter in the clusters /mps, nts, lts, rts/ than in the sequences /ms, ns, ls, rs/. Moreover, the entire /VC(C)s/ string (where the second consonant occurs in clusters with an underlying stop but not in those without it) is expected to be longer in clusters with an underlying stop, or else, if intersegmental temporal compensation occurs, to exhibit about the same duration independently of whether the oral stop is underlying or epenthetic. Data for American English are by no means clear in this respect. In an early study, Ohala (Reference Ohala1981) reported a shorter V + nasal sequence duration in the word clampster (with underlying /p/) than in clam(p)ster (with or without epenthetic [p]). Fourakis & Port (Reference Fourakis and Port1986) found different trends for nasal and lateral clusters: as for nasal sequences, there was no compensatory effect of the vowel, the nasal C1 or /s/ and an increase in word duration for the underlying stop sequence in the case of the voiced cluster pair /ndz/–/nz/, and a compensatory effect of the nasal C1 but no change in vowel, /s/ or word duration for the voiceless pair /nts/–/ns/; regarding the sequences with /l/, there was a compensatory effect of vowel and fricative duration but no difference in word duration as a function of cluster type for /lts/–/ls/, and a compensatory effect of vowel duration but no change in fricative or word duration for /ldz/–/lz/.

Perceptual identification tests will also be carried out in order to ascertain whether underlying stops may be distinguished perceptually from epenthetic stops in the Valencian Catalan clusters of interest.

1.5 Utterance position and syllable and word affiliation

Another goal of this investigation is to find out the extent to which the acoustic prominence of the oral stop varies as a function of utterance position and of syllable and word affiliation.

Experimental data for American English reveal that the inserted stop is longer and more prone to occur word finally where /s/ syllabifies with /n/ than word medially where /n/ and /s/ belong to different syllables, i.e. its duration was found to range between 15 ms and 25 ms in words such as intense and science and was less than 10 ms in lexical items such as census and consent (Yoo & Blankenship Reference Yoo and Blankenship2003, Arvaniti Reference Arvaniti2006). Analogous evidence has been reported for Dutch (Warner & Weber Reference Warner and Weber2002). In a complementary fashion, impressionistic phonetic transcriptions indicate that stop epenthesis is more prone to occur word finally than across a word boundary in Catalan dialects such as Valencian, e.g. in [aɲs/ʃ] ‘year, pl.’ than in [aɲ saˈbatik] ‘sabbatical year’ (Recasens Reference Recasens1996: 274). As for the role of stress (a variable which will not be subject to analysis in the present paper), stop epenthesis in American English has been found to operate more often next to an unstressed vowel than to a stressed one (Blankenship Reference Blankenship1992), and to be favored word medially rather than word finally in postaccentual clusters, i.e. census > consent but science > intense (Yoo & Blankenship Reference Yoo and Blankenship2003).

In order to ascertain the effect of utterance position and of syllable and word affiliation on the phonetic realization of underlying and epenthetic stops, oral stop closure duration and other analysis parameters will be measured in prepausal position and in /VC(C)#sV/ and /VC(C)s#V/ sequences. Some information about syllabification and other segmental rules operating in these three positional conditions in Valencian Catalan is provided next:

1. (a) In prepausal position, all consonants in the eleven clusters under analysis are homosyllabic and homolexical. Both /s/ and the underlying or epenthetic stop consonants are expected to be phonetically voiceless since a devoicing rule applies to the word final fricative, and the preceding stop assimilates to it in voicing ([mans] ‘hands’, [kamps] ‘fields’).

2. (b) In a /VC(C)#sV/ string, the syllable boundary appears to be located at the word boundary. Therefore, the consonants in the cluster are split by a syllable and a word boundary and are thus neither homosyllabic nor homolexical. Word initial /s/ is always voiceless, and the preceding underlying or epenthetic oral stop should become phonetically voiceless after application of the regressive voicing assimilation rule referred to in (a) above ([ram ˈsɔl] ‘a single branch’, [kampsemˈbɾat] ‘a sown field’).

3. (c) In a /VC(C)s#V/ string, all consonants in the cluster belong to the same word but not to the same syllable since a syllable boundary occurs before /s/, as in (b) above. The fricative becomes voiced through the application of a voicing rule operating on word final fricatives and affricates before a word initial vowel, and regressive voicing assimilation ensures voicing in the preceding stop as well ([manˈzamples] ‘broad hands’, [kambˈzamples] ‘broad fields’). In the Central Valencian dialect spoken by a subset of the speakers subjected to analysis in the present study, however, the fricative and the preceding stop consonant stay voiceless in /VC(C)s#V/ sequences.

In light of the data from the literature reported above, it is predicted that the stop should be most prominent and perhaps more frequent whenever the consecutive consonants in the cluster belong to the same syllable and to the same word and occur prepausally (condition (a)), or else belong to the same word in case they do not occur prepausally and in the same syllable (condition (c)). Therefore, the stop consonant is expected to decrease in prominence in the progression (a) > (c) > (b). This prediction could, however, be counteracted by the presence of voicing in /s/ and in the stop in condition (c), which is in line with English data showing that stop insertion is less prone to apply in voiced than in voiceless contextual environments (see Section 1.3 above).

1.6 Summary

A summary of the main predictions regarding the prominence of the oral stop closure element in Valencian Catalan clusters with and without an underlying stop is presented next.

Epenthetic stops could occur more or less systematically (as in American English) or be absent (as in Southern African English). If there is a contrast between underlying and epenthetic stops, the former are expected to be longer and perhaps less variable, occur more systematically, show a more salient burst and be less extensively voiced than the latter. Consequently, underlying stops should be perceptually more prominent than their epenthetic counterparts. There could be a compensatory effect between the oral stop and the neighbouring phonetic segments; if so, the vowel, the first consonant in the cluster and /s/ ought to be longer in the case of clusters without an underlying stop than of those with it.

Place and manner of articulation and voicing may affect the phonetic integrity and the frequency of occurrence of the oral stop. Thus, the stop is predicted to be more prominent and more frequent in non-nasal than in nasal clusters, if dorsal vs. non-dorsal and if apical vs. labial, and in homorganic vs. non-homorganic sequences. Stops could be more extensively voiced in clusters with a nasal vs. non-nasal C1 and with a voiced vs. voiceless fricative. Moreover, they ought to be more salient prepausally than utterance medially, and in homolexical than in heterolexical clusters though the Catalan voicing assimilation rules may render the opposite outcome possible as well.