The phoneme /ʝ/ in Spanish is known to have a wide range of phonetic realizations, even within a single dialect. Whereas the influence of different contextual factors in conditioning the allophony of /b d ɡ/ has been the object of much recent acoustic investigation, somewhat surprisingly there are no comparable studies of the voiced palatal obstruent. We report on an acoustic investigation of this consonant in Peninsular Spanish. Both preceding context and stress appear to be relevant factors. We also find an effect of style, with more constriction in more formal styles. The presence of a word boundary also affects the degree of constriction, although to a lesser extent. Although we have identified several conditioning factors in the degree of constriction of this consonant, compared to /b d ɡ/, there appears to be greater variability in a given context, including very constricted, stop-like realizations of /ʝ/ in conversational styles even within the intervocalic context. Whereas our results largely confirm previous nonquantified description, they offer a more nuanced view of the continuum of the degree of constriction in the realization of this consonant and the factors that affect it, going beyond earlier views that postulated distinct allophones.

This study describes the acquisition of the two rhotic phonemes in Spanish, the tap [ɾ] and the trill [r], within and across words, by English speakers learning Spanish. These two segments are especially difficult for learners to acquire as the contrast does not exist in English, and the two sounds are difficult to produce. Listeners heard fragments of phrases and had to decide whether or not the word they saw on the screen could correspond to the portion of the phrase they heard. This tests the learners’ lexical encoding of such words, not only where the phoneme to grapheme correspondence is transparent (word‐ internally), but also where it is not (word‐finally and initially). The results show much variation among speakers: not all speakers have acquired this distinction, even at very high proficiency levels.

Are palatal consonants articulated by multiple tongue gestures (coronal and dorsal) or by a single gesture that brings the tongue into contact with the palate at several places of articulation? The lenition of palatal consonants (resulting in approximants) has been presented as evidence that palatals are simple, not complex: When reduced, they do not lose their coronal gesture and become dorsals; instead, they manifest reduced linguopalatal contact while retaining their anterior place of articulation. The frequently-reported deocclusivization of the Brazilian Portuguese (BP) palatal nasal may support this claim. However, the linguopalatal configuration of this sound has not been studied directly. Electropalatographic evidence from three speakers of BP (compared with data from three speakers of Peninsular Spanish) demonstrates that the palatal nasal is frequently realized as an approximant. There is no evidence of anterior occlusion in BP’s post-palatal, lenited nasal. Under conditions of focus/hyperarticulation, there is no evidence of stronger/more anterior occlusion. We argue that the articulatory target of the BP palatal nasal is neither occluded nor anterior.

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