The extension of vowel lowering in mid vowels across Andalusia; preliminary analysis from the Interactive Linguistic Atlas of Andalusian Accents (ALIAA)

Abstract

The deletion of coda /s/ is general across Andalusia and consonants following an underlying /s/ undergo gemination. However, the realisation of vowels preceding underlying /s/ does vary between areas. Vowel lowering before underlying /s/ has been widely described for the eastern provinces and it is used as a criterion to distinguish between Eastern and Western Andalusian Spanish. The sixth volume of the Linguistic and Ethnographic Atlas of Andalusia (ALEA) describes the extension of vowel lowering across Andalusia; however, no other study has analysed the extension of this phenomenon since then. The current paper discusses preliminary acoustic results from the Interactive Linguistic Atlas of Andalusian Accents regarding the extension of vowel lowering across Andalusia. A total of 222 words across 68 points are analysed and the results seem to indicate that vowel lowering has spread westwards, and it is now found in Huelva and Cadiz; these were the only two provinces where ALEA did not find vowel lowering. From an acoustic and descriptive point of view, theseresults show that vowel lowering is found today further west than it was when the data for ALEA were collected in the 1950s. From a theoretical and terminological perspective, these results show the need to identify a different criterion to distinguish between Eastern and Western Andalusian Spanish, since the presence or absence of vowel lowering seem to be no longer an effective feature to differentiate between these two varieties.