"Voiced" versus [+ Voice] in Spanish Obstruents

lengua espaflola (Hispania, 61 [September 1978], 498-503), MAximo Torreblanca points out several apparent errors in traditional opinions and technical discussions of Spanish s. Among these is the treatment in my Spanish Phonology (SpPh)1 of the assimilation of /s/ to a following as in de[s']de versus ha[s]ta. I freely acknowledge that SpPh is indeed in need of correction in many respects, including the treatment of /s/. But Torreblanca's presentation of it, no matter how well intended, will surely lead the unwary reader into confusion as to what SpPh actually claims. Thus while I have no desire to defend anything in SpPh that is incorrect, I would like to set the record straight about /s/, in the hope that this might help future research to concentrate on the real problems involved, without the distraction of misinterpretations. According to Torreblanca, the Spanish consonants p, t, k are classified in SpPh as sonoras. Thus, he argues, given the rule of voicing assimilation proposed in SpPh, s would have to sonorizarse before p, t, k. Consequently, supuesto, los resultados de regla [de asimilaci6n] no concuerdan con los ejemplos de sonorizaci6n dados por Harris en primer lugar (p. 499). However, Torreblanca continues with the assertion that la regla de Harris no es totalmente err6nea, pues, a pesar de todo lo escrito por los expertos de fon6tica espafiola, s puede ser sonora ante cualquier sonido (p. 499). We return to this point below. The trouble with Torreblanca's summary is that it allows, indeed invites, the reader to believe that the SpPh distinctive feature [+ voice] can be equated with the traditional terms voiced and sonoro. It can't. In the pages of SpPh that Torreblanca cites, considerable pains were taken to emphasize that, in terms of the theory of distinctive features utilized there, sounds that are [+ voice] may or may not be 'voiced' (SpPh, p. 42).2 Thus, from the fact that p, t, k, and s are assigned the feature [+ voice] it does not follow that they are voiced or sonoras, in the traditional sense in which Torreblanca uses these words. Lest this distinction between voiced or sonoro and [+ voice] seem obfuscatory, it should be observed, as an elementary principle of phonetic description, that terms like voiced, consonant, palatal, etc., are devoid of precise meaning except insofar as they are associated, in an explicit phonetic theory, with their acoustico-articulatory correlates. Of course the same is true of

Linguistics · Obstruent · Voice · History · Philosophy · Phonetics and Phonology Research · Spanish Linguistics and Language Studies

• Asymmetries in the Acquisition of Consonant Clusters in Spanish

  Open Access•Jessica A Barlow•The Canadian Journal of…•2003

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