Comparación acústica de los sistemas vocálicos del asturiano y el español de Asturias en habla leída

Abstract

The vowel system of Asturian has traditionally been of great interest to dialecto logical studies due to the phenomenon of metaphony and the alternation of vowel quality in the unstressed final back vowels /-u#, -o#/, which marks the distinction between masculine and neuter genders. However, these phenomena are rarely analyzed using acoustic data. The aim of this study is to provide a detailed acoustic description and a comparison between the vowel systems of Asturian and the Spanish of Asturias in 23 contemporary bilingual speakers in read speech. The results provide reference values for Asturian vowels and indicate that, in middle-aged bilingual speakers, 1) there is a merger of back vowels in both Asturian and Spanish, although to a lesser degree in Asturian; 2) there is no merger of front vowels; and 3) there is no palatalization of /a/ in the unstressed final position.