ABSTRACT

This chapter examines the patterning of rhotics in North-Central Peninsular Spanish within the context of contemporary research on the phonetics-phonology interface. As phonological categories, the apico-alveolar tap and trill are in contrastive distribution between vowels within the morphological word. The contrast is neutralized elsewhere: within a syllable, prenuclear rhotics are in complementary distribution, while postnuclear rhotics are in free variation. Experimental studies have provided detailed information about the production and perception of these consonants, whose phonetic realization is much more continuous and gradient than suggested by the discrete and categorical symbols of broad transcription. This chapter presents a novel analysis of Spanish rhotics that formalizes a modular interface between an optimization-based phonology and an implementation-based phonetics. Both operate on articulatory gestures that can be coupled, or coordinated with each other in time, as represented in an intergestural coupling graph. The phonology uses abstract phonetic knowledge about perceptual distinctiveness to help optimize the distribution of consonant duration contrasts. The distribution of rhotics in the phonological output is predicted by an interaction among perceptibility, faithfulness to input gestures, and markedness constraints on rhotic-vowel coupling. When optimal coupling graphs are phonetically implemented, lawful changes in the overlap and magnitude of gestures give rise to gradient and continuous variation in the articulatory and acoustic output. Combining perceptual distinctiveness with gestural coupling makes possible a simpler analysis of the phonological distribution of Spanish rhotics, as compared with two alternative theoretical accounts. The proposed analysis distinguishes between phonology and phonetics as distinct but representationally linked modules. There is no transduction from categorical segments and features into gradient physical parameters, only optimization and implementation of intergestural coupling graphs.