The research in this volume addresses several recurring topics in Romance Phonetics and Phonology with a special focus on the segment, syllable, word, and phrase levels of analysis. The original research presented in this volume ranges from the low-level mechanical processes involved in speech production and perception to high-level representation and computation. The interaction between these two dimensions of speech and their effects on first- and second-language acquisition are methodically treated in later chapters. Individual chapters address rhotics in various languages (Spanish, Italian ... More

The research in this volume addresses several recurring topics in Romance Phonetics and Phonology with a special focus on the segment, syllable, word, and phrase levels of analysis. The original research presented in this volume ranges from the low-level mechanical processes involved in speech production and perception to high-level representation and computation. The interaction between these two dimensions of speech and their effects on first- and second-language acquisition are methodically treated in later chapters. Individual chapters address rhotics in various languages (Spanish, Italian, and Brazilian Portuguese), both taps and trills, singleton and geminate; vowel nasalization and associated changes; sibilants and fricatives, the ways in which vowels are affected by their position; there are explorations of diphthongs and consonant clusters in Romanian; variant consonant production in three Catalan dialects; voice quality discrimination in Italian by native speakers of Spanish; mutual language perception by French and Spanish native speakers of each other’s language; poetry recitation (vis-à-vis rhotics in particular); French prosodic structure; glide modifications and pre-voicing in onsets in Spanish and Catalan; vowel reduction in Galician; and detailed investigations of bilinguals’ language acquisition. A number of experimental methods are employed to address the topics under study including both acoustic and articulatory data; electropalatography (EPG), ultrasound, electromagnetic articulography (EMA).