Percepción de acento y acortamiento vocálico en español
Vowel Reduction and Stress Shift Perception in Spanish

Summary/Abstract: ​​Spanish is well-known for its consonant reduction processes across all dialects. At the same time, its vowel inventory is not particularly rich, with five evenly distributed, stable vowel categories that tend not to change their qualities regardless of stress and rhythm. At the same time, several Spanish varieties show vowel reduction, but crucially without accompanying advancement in terms of consonantal weakening. Based on this evidence it is proposed that the two types of reduction are correlated to the extent that one excludes the other. Given the extraordinary stability of the Spanish vowels in the vast majority of the dialects, various cues to stress and reduction were investigated, followed by a series of empirical studies in the form of perception experiments. These studies are based on the assumption that changes in Spanish stress and vowel quality should inhibit comprehension of native categories (sounds, words and prosodic elements). The research conducted in order to test this hypothesis has shown that this is indeed the case. What is more, an indication of a potential boundary between native segments with important implications for speech signal perception has been discovered.

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