An acoustic analysis of phonation in Peninsular Spanish

This study examines phonation in utterance-final vowels in two dialects of Peninsular Spanish in two prosodic contexts: the end of intermediate phrases (ip), and the end of intonational phrases (IP). Non-modal phonation, like creaky voice and breathy voice, is understudied in Spanish [Garellek and Keating, 2015; González et al., 2022, 2024; Gordon and Ladefoged, 2001]. Creaky voice has slow, more constricted vibration, while breathy voice allows more airflow with less constricted vibration [Esling et al., 2019], Data from an elicitation task of 10 participants was examined acoustically using waveforms and spectrograms in Praat following Spanish ToBi [Aguilar et al., 2009; Boersma & Weenink, 2022]. Sample sentences included: Veo una boca ]IP (‘I see a mouth’) in the IP context; and Veo una boca ]ip y una nariz (“I see a mouth and a nose”) in the ip context. Chi-Square tests were performed in SPSS. Based on results from six speakers, while breathy voice is pervasive in both dialects (Burgos 46%, Málaga 39%), there is a significant difference in creaky voice, being more prevalent in Burgos (26.4%) than Málaga (5.3%). Additionally, both creaky and breathy voice differ significantly in both prosodic contexts (p < 0.001).