Journal of Linguistic Geography (2014) 2, 4–24.

& Cambridge University Press 2014 ORIGINAL RESEARCH

doi:10.1017/jlg.2014.1

Sociophonetic analysis of phonemic trill variation

in two sub-varieties of Peninsular Spanish

Nicholas Henriksen*

University of Michigan

In this paper we provide a preliminary characterization of the phonemic trill (i.e., /r/) as produced by twenty-four
speakers of northern and central Peninsular Spanish. The acoustic analysis revealed a considerable number of
non-canonical variants containing one or zero apical occlusions. The quantitative results showed robust effects of the
following three factors on trill articulation: Speaker dialect, gender, and preceding vowel. Regarding social factors,
central Peninsular speakers and male speakers showed the greatest propensity to produce fewer occlusions per
phonemic trill. Regarding linguistic factors, non-canonical variants were especially common in contexts of preceding /u/;
we interpret this result on articulatory grounds given the antagonistic gestures required for the trill and the high back
vowel. All in all, these findings offer empirical support that geographically-oriented studies within a sociophonetic
framework offer critical information on the diachrony of trill consonants.

1. Introduction: Trill Variation and Rhotic Shift families, that unify this class of sounds. Rhotic
dorsalization, or shift from coronal [r] to uvular [O],
Trill sounds exhibit a wide range of phonetic variation
is well-documented in particular. Data on this
cross-linguistically (Demolin, 2001; Ladefoged &
phenomenon are available for French (Webb, 2011),
Maddieson, 1996; Lindau, 1985). This may be due to
Caribbean Spanish (Vaquero & Quilis, 1989), German
the precise articulatory and aerodynamic demands
(Howell, 1987), modern Hebrew (Devens, 1981),
of trill production, such that even small deviations
and Cambodian (Whitley, 2003:83), to name a few
result in failure of the trilling gesture (Dhananjaya,
examples. For Western European languages, there is
Yegnanarayana & Bhaskararao, 2012; Solé, 2002).
debate on whether modern dorsal trills share a
Non-trill productions include coronal and dorsal
common historical origin (see Trautmann, 1880) or
approximants, fricatives, taps and flaps, and vocoids
whether they result from independent changes in
(Muminović & Engstrand, 2001). Researchers often
different languages (see Runge, 1974). To cite one
investigate whether there are shared acoustic and/or
well-known example from Spanish, Willis (2007)
articulatory properties of ‘deviant’ trill articulations to
suggests that the Dominican pre-breathy voiced trill
understand attested variations on more principled
likely represents a ‘‘bridge allophone’’ (46) between
grounds (e.g., Boyce & Espy-Wilson, 2007; Zhou,
the standard alveolar production and the dialectally
Espy-Wilson, Boyce, Tiede, Holland & Choe, 2008).
marked dorsal production. Given the common histor-
Psycholinguistic work has now begun to explore the
ical connections among rhotics, researchers often rely
perceptual correlates of coronal and dorsal trills,
on data showing synchronic variation, framing their
although currently data are limited to approximant
findings within principles of sociolinguistic theory to
trills (Engstrand, Frid & Lindblom, 2007). In spite of
make inferences on whether there is change in progress
their complex articulation, trills are not typologically
or stable variation (e.g., Clermont & Cedergren, 1979;
uncommon. More than one third of the world’s
Dı́az-Campos, 2008; Sankoff & Blondeau, 2007).
languages are reported to have trills, and of the
Another means of examining language change is with
languages that use rhotic sounds, half or more of
geographic data, comparing differences in adjacent
these are trills (Maddieson, 1984; Ruhlen, 1975).
dialect areas under the assumption that dialect continua
On the whole, no single phonetic or acoustic
reflect successive historical fragmentation from an
correlate may be available as a unifying property for
earlier state in the language (Hock, 1991:447–455).
trills. Rather, it may be the historical connections
This was a common practice in early descriptive
between trill types, and more specifically, similar
work on Hispano-Romance (see Dworkin, 2008;
diachronic developments in different language
Lipski, 2008 for review), and in the current paper
we will follow in this tradition by examining acoustic
*Address for correspondence: Nicholas Henriksen, Romance
Languages and Literatures, 4108 Modern Languages Building,
data for two adjacent sub-varieties of Peninsular
812 East Washington Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1275 Spanish spoken in the north-central region of the
(Email: nhenriks@umich.edu) Iberian peninsula.

Alternations involving two or more rhotics are seen
in a wide range of languages, and it is noted that
historical shifts bear strong resemblance to cases of
synchronic variation. In the case of Continental French,
rhotic shift was well-attested as early as the 16th
century (see Webb, 2011, for review), and by the
second half of the 17th century, writers observe that
dorsals [O] and [C] had replaced coronal variants
among upper class speakers (cited in Thurot,
1966:272–273). Webb reiterates the importance of social
factors as key motivators in the diachronic shift: ‘‘[y]
all sources examining the issue in French underscore
the prestige associated with upper class speech and the
strong preference for dorsals that emerged in these
circles over the course of the 16th and early 17th
centuries’’ (92).1 For Spanish, a reasonable hypothesis
is that historical developments have led to current
widespread use of fricative realizations in varieties like
Puerto Rican Spanish (Vaquero & Quilis, 1989), although
there is debate on the role of individual variation
(Henriksen & Willis, 2010). Nonetheless, recent research
shows that social variables condition rhotic production
within single speech communities (Dı́az-Campos, 2008;
Lastra & Martı́n-Butragueño, 2006).
In this paper we examine the geographic distribution
of phonemic trill variation for speakers of northern
Peninsular Spanish (León, Spain) and central Peninsular
Spanish (Ciudad Real, Spain).2 As can be gathered
from the current research, these are geographical areas
for which acoustic data on rhotic production are
presently unavailable and for which no geographically
remarkable production of the phonemic trill had been
reported prior to this research study. Nevertheless, as
noted in Hammond (1999), there are relatively few
experimental studies on dialect variation addressing
northern and central varieties of Peninsular Spanish
when compared to the abundance of work on regional
variation in Latin American Spanish (see, for example,
Canfield, 1981; Lipski, 1994). Given a recent finding
that speakers of southern Peninsular Spanish produce
the phonemic trill in non-canonical fashion (i.e., with
less than two lingual occlusions, see Henriksen &
Willis, 2010), the question that arises is whether this
variation is likewise prevalent in central and northern
varieties, and if so, what factors have led to the present
state of affairs. We know that trill production is highly
sensitive to small variations in its aerodynamic and
articulatory demands (Ladefoged & Maddieson, 1996;
Solé, 2002), but have much less information on the
envelope of variation for non-canonical trill variants
within one dialect area or over adjacent dialect areas.
It is also possible that for Spanish the distribution is
like that of English /a/, where variation at the level of
the individual speaker has been well-documented
(e.g., Boyce & Espy-Wilson, 1997; Zhou et al., 2008).
Phonemic trill in Peninsular Spanish 5
The primary objective of this paper, given this
background, is to provide a sociophonetic analysis
of phonemic trill production in two sub-varieties of
Peninsular Spanish. We investigate the influence of
certain social and linguistic factors to achieve a more
thorough assessment of how trill variation is manifested
in Spanish. These data, in turn, allow for speculation
on how trill variants are spread throughout Spanish-
speaking speech communities.
2. Background
2.1. Spanish Phonemic Trill
Spanish has two contrastive rhotic segments: A tap
/N/ and a trill /r/. These phonemes contrast in
intervocalic position in word-initial (aroma ‘aroma’
vs. a Roma ‘to Rome’) and word-medial contexts (e.g.,
caro ‘expensive’ vs. carro ‘car’) (Hualde, 2004, 2005:183)
(1a).3 In other contexts, taps and trills distribute
complementarily, with trills appearing after a hetero-
syllabic consonant or word-initially (1b) and taps
appearing tautosyllabically in the second position of
a complex onset or word-finally when resyllabified
into a following vowel-initial word (1c). In syllable-
final position, taps and trills are non-contrastive,
typically showing free variation, although the most
common realization is the tap (1d).4
(1) a. Contrast V__V (intervocalic)
/kaNo/ ‘expensive’ vs. /karo/ ‘cart’
b. Only trill /r/ #__ (word-initial)
/roka/ ‘rock’
C.__ (after heterosyllabic consonant)
/enredo/ ‘mess’
c. Only tap /N/ C__ (after tautosyllabic consonant)
/bNoma/ ‘joke’
V__#V
/seN o no seN/ ‘to be or not to be’
d. Variable rhotic V__(#)C (before consonant)
/paNte/ [paNte] , [parte] ‘part’
V__## (word-final before pause)
/seN o no seN/ ‘to be or not to be’
In synchronic terms, researchers working with
acoustic data typically consider the phonetic realiza-
tions for the phonemic tap and trill as articulatorily and
acoustically distinct (Martı́nez Celdrán, 1998; Martı́nez
Celdrán & Rallo, 1995; Quilis, 1993; Recasens, 1991;
Recasens & Pallarès, 1999; Willis & Bradley, 2008).
Standard descriptions claim that production of the trill
involves two or more brief occlusions between the
tongue apex and the alveolar ridge (Hualde, 2005:181;
Martı́nez Celdrán, 1997; Quilis, 1993: 329–332), as
6 N. Henriksen
Frequency (Hz) 5000
la
l a
0 0.518
Figure 1. Word-initial canonical phonemic trill production containing three apical occlusions for la rana ‘the frog’
(trill duration 108ms).
exemplified in Figure 1. Nevertheless, it is well-known
that the Spanish phonemic trill is not always realized
in canonical fashion (e.g., Hammond, 1999, 2000;
Henriksen & Willis, 2010; Willis, 2006, 2007).
For Dominican Spanish, evidence on trill variation
was reported in Willis (2006, 2007); the most common
phonemic trill productions included a pre-breathy-voiced
tap, a pre-breathy-voiced trill, and breathy-voiced
frication. From a phonological standpoint, Willis and
Bradley (2008) and Bradley and Willis (2012) argue
that the contrast between the phonemic tap and trill is
maintained by means of overall segmental duration
even when there is no difference in the number of
lingual contacts.5 For Argentinean Spanish, Colantoni
(2006a,b) shows that non-trill variants include frica-
tives and approximants, noting that similar degrees of
periodicity in approximant and multiple-occlusion
productions may lead to a perceptual similarity between
the two rhotic types (see also Engstrand et al., 2007).
Experimental evidence on phonemic trill production
is slowly extending to dialects of mainland Spain.
Blecua Falgueras (2001) and Lewis (2004) analyzed trill
tokens produced by speakers of Peninsular Spanish.
In both studies phonemic trills were produced
most commonly with multiple alveolar occlusions,
although, of note, the data collection methodologies of
Lewis and Blecua Falgueras were limited to read
speech protocols, and there is a likely possibility that
prescriptive norms influence speaker productions in
rana
r a n a
Time (s)
formal speaking settings. More recently, Henriksen
and Willis (2010) examined data on phonemic trill
production in unscripted speech samples taken from
16 native speakers from Andalusia, Spain, located in
the southernmost part of the Iberian Peninsula. Nearly
two-thirds of phonemic trill productions contained
zero or one apical closures, distributed among frica-
tives, approximants, and r-colored variants. No single
non-canonical variant could be selected as the proto-
typical Andalusian variant, a distribution reminiscent
of that of English /a/ (e.g., Boyce & Espy-Wilson, 2007;
Zhou et al., 2008). Regarding methodology, most
research documenting variation in Spanish phonemic
trill articulation is based on data extracted from semi-
spontaneous or spontaneous speech protocols under
the premise that read aloud methodologies require a
greater amount of attention to speech. This study
follows in the former tradition, analyzing data for
speakers who participated in semi-spontaneous oral
narratives, an experimental protocol implemented
originally in Willis (2006, 2007).
2.2. Trill Articulation
Trill production requires the vibration of a supra-
laryngeal articulator (e.g., tongue-tip, uvula, lips)
caused by certain aerodynamic forces (Barry, 1997;
Ladefoged & Maddieson, 1996; Spajić, Ladefoged &
Bhaskararao, 1996). From an articulatory standpoint,

the conditions for initiating tongue-tip trilling involve
muscle contraction of the tongue to assume require-
ments in position, shape and elasticity. Specifically,
trills must exhibit retraction of the postdorsum and
lowering of the tongue predorsum so that space can be
made for the vertical movements of the blade and apex
(Proctor, 2009; Recasens & Pallarès, 1999). From an
aerodynamic standpoint, oropharyngeal pressure
must build up behind the linguopalatal constriction
so that a sufficient pressure difference across the
lingual constriction may initiate vibrations across the
apex. Once the trill gesture begins, vibration is self-
sustained. As reported in Solé (2002), voiced trills are
highly constrained in their aerodynamic requirements
such that the smallest variations in oropharyngeal and
subglottal pressure lead to non-trilled fricative produc-
tions (see Blecua Falgueras, 1999; Spajić et al., 1996).
Two topics of note regarding rhotic articulation in
Spanish and other Romance languages are positional
strengthening and segmental coarticulation. Recasens
(2002) discusses the correlates of positional strengthen-
ing and weakening in Romance. Weakening is defined
as a consonantal substitution involving decrease in
duration, decrease in constriction degree, or change in
glottal activity yielding voicing. Following Posner
(1996:288), Recasens argues that trills are stronger
than taps due to distributional considerations; namely
it is shown in Romance that trills occur in word-initial
position, after a heterosyllabic consonant, and even
after a tautosyllabic consonant. From an acoustic
standpoint, there is evidence that trills exhibit correlates
typical of consonantal strengthening (e.g., Raymond &
Parker, 2005). Recasens and Espinosa (2007) show that
in Catalan dialects /#r/ sequences often exhibit one
long contact followed by an approximant phase or
several contacts with a long first occlusion, whereas
postconsonantal trills have two contacts presumably
since the first contact is short in duration. Of note,
Recasens and Espinosa suggest that speaker dialect
weighs heavily on such strengthening mechanisms.
Regarding segmental coarticulation, Recasens and
Pallarès (1999) show that Catalan trills exert larger and
longer effects than taps on adjacent vowels and are
less sensitive to vocalic effects, suggesting that the
tongue body is more constrained for /r/ than /N/.
Specifically, patterns of coarticulation for trills are
more in line with those of the dark lateral [ l~ ] since
trills and dark [ l~ ] have in common predorsum
lowering and postdorsum retraction. In this regard,
Recasens and Pallarès (1999) argue that the articu-
latory configuration for /r/ is most compatible with a
low front vowel. On the other hand, /r/ is least
compatible with a high front vowel due to tongue
dorsum lowering and retraction for the trill in
combination with tongue dorsum raising and fronting
Phonemic trill in Peninsular Spanish 7
prior to the high front vowel. Using articulatory data,
Recasens (2013) shows that [r] influences greater
tongue dorsum lowering for [i] and greater tongue
dorsum raising for [a] in comparison to [ ~l ].
2.3. Goals and Hypotheses
Given this background, two broad research goals can
be highlighted. First, we begin to explore the extent of
social conditioning of rhotic variation in Peninsular
Spanish. Studies on North American English suggest
that variation is at the level of the speaker (e.g., Boyce
& Espy-Wilson, 1997; Zhou et al., 2008), whereas
studies on many Romance languages indicate that
social factors contribute to variation systematically
in tandem with linguistic factors (e.g., Sankoff &
Blondeau, 2007). Of note, gender is a recurrent
motivating factor for trill variation (Dı́az-Campos,
2008; Lastra & Martı́n Butragueño, 2006). In the case
of French, diachronic shifts cannot be fully explained
unless social factors are appropriately acknowledged
(Webb, 2011). In this paper we limit our scope to two
social factors: Speaker dialect (León, Spain and Ciudad
Real, Spain) and speaker gender.6 León, Spain is a city
located in the northwest part of the Iberian Peninsula,
with a population of roughly 130,000 inhabitants.
Ciudad Real, Spain is somewhat smaller in size,
located in the south-central part of the peninsula, with
an approximate population of 80,000 inhabitants. We
chose these cities for study given their comparability in
size; they are medium-sized provincial capitals, but
not large enough to constitute autonomous commu-
nity capitals. The variety of Spanish spoken in both
areas is generally considered Castilian Spanish, resis-
tant to phonological innovation such as syllable-final
/s/-weakening, merger of the /s/-/y/ distinction, and
velarization of /n/ (Alvar, 1996; Escobar, 2009;
Hualde, 2005:121). Of note, Ciudad Real Spanish
(commonly termed ‘Manchego Spanish’; see Henriksen,
2012) exhibits some segmental weakening typical
of southern varieties (e.g., /s/-lenition; see Calero
Fernández, 1993; Garcı́a Mouton & Moreno Fernández,
1994). In this regard, we may hypothesize that Ciudad
Real speakers will show a greater propensity toward
non-canonical trill variants than León speakers. For
speaker gender, we have no clear hypothesis.
A second goal is to explore the influence of linguistic
factors on trill variation. To this end, we investigate the
effects of word position, prosodic stress, preceding
vowel, and following vowel. We may hypothesize
weaker trill articulations (i.e., shorter duration or
less contacts) in less prominent prosodic positions,
namely in word-medial position and in unstressed
syllables (Recasens, 2002). We will also examine the
potential for coarticulation effects with adjacent vowels.
8 N. Henriksen
Previous work in this area shows that trills are less
sensitive to vocalic effects than taps, suggesting a more
constrained tongue body position for trills (Recasens &
Pallarès, 1999). Nonetheless, we can hypothesize
higher frequency of canonical trill articulations when
in contact with low vowels and of non-canonical trill
articulations when in contact with high vowels. Insight
into trill weakening and/or coarticulation effects may
be useful for understanding the linguistic contexts that
promote innovative articulations and thus serve as
mechanisms of change within a speech community.
3. Method
3.1. Participants and Recordings
The informants for this study were 24 native speakers
of Peninsular Spanish: 12 speakers were from the
northern province of León, and 12 others were from
the south-central province of Ciudad Real. Each dialect
sample was balanced for speaker gender (i.e., six men
and six women per dialect sample), and each speaker
was recorded in his/her dialect location. The age range
for all speakers was between 18 and 30, and the
average age was 24. All speakers were born and raised
in their home city until the start of post-secondary
education. All subjects reported that their mother and
father were natives of the respective home city, and
that the native language for both in all cases was
Spanish. All participants were concurrently enrolled in
post-secondary education in Madrid or Valencia, the
first and third most populated cities in Spain,
respectively. The decision was made to recruit speakers
who attended university away from their home
province since this characteristic reflects a common
demographic of post-secondary Spanish adults.7
Speakers narrated the children’s picture book story by
Mercer Mayer, Frog, Where Are You? (1969). The picture
book story is about a little boy, a dog (perro /péro/),
and a frog (rana /rána/). Other potential target words
containing Spanish phonemic trills were: jar (tarro
/táro/); branch (rama /ráma/); run (correr /koréN/);
river (rı́o /rı́o/; and land (tierra /tiéra/). A valid token
was defined as being uttered in phrase-internal inter-
vocalic position. The data were recorded with a SONY
HI-MD MZ-RH1 minidisc recorder and a Shure WH20
head-mounted microphone; sound files were digitally
transferred into .wav format and analyzed with the
acoustic analysis software PRAAT (Boersma & Wee-
nink, 2010). A total of 622 phonemic trills were produced
(25.91 trill tokens/speaker average), and the distribution
was 320 phonemic trills for León speakers and 302
phonemic trills for Ciudad Real speakers.
Auditory and acoustic inspection of all 24 speech
recordings revealed phonetic and phonological properties
that are characteristic of Northern-Central Peninsular
Spanish: Contrast between /s/ and /y/; a strong
post-velar pronunciation of the /x/ phoneme; and
merger of the palatal /Y/ and /l/ phonemes (Hualde,
2005:20–21). For most speakers, syllable-final /s/
showed retention, although there was a greater trend
toward aspiration (and in some cases, deletion) in the
Ciudad Real speech sample.
3.2. Acoustic Analysis
The total duration of each syllable-initial phonemic trill
segment was extracted from PRAAT.8 The number of
occlusions was recorded for each target production,
with occlusions ranging from zero to five per token
(see y4.1 for examples). The acoustic cues leading to the
determination of an occlusion were the presence of
lingual contacts, a reduction in the amplitude of the
waveform, a transition in F3 and F4 formant structure,
and changes in intensity (Martı́nez Celdrán, 1998).
Many phonemic trill tokens were not produced in
canonical fashion (i.e., with two or more alveolar
occlusions), and often there was considerable r-coloring
following the contact(s) of the trill segment. For the
purposes of this paper, r-coloring is defined as a rhotic-
sounding approximant that typically followed a single
alveolar occlusion (see Figure 3 for example).9
Each token was coded for four linguistic variables:
Word position (i.e., initial or medial); stress (stressed
syllable or unstressed syllable); preceding vowel (/a/,
/e/, /i/, /o/, /u/); and following vowel (/a/, /e/,
/i/, /o/, /u/). The gender and dialect of each speaker
were also coded for each production.
4. Results
4.1. Acoustic Results
We begin the report of results with a descriptive
acoustic characterization of phonemic trill production
based on the full sample of 24 speakers. Rhotic
variants were initially sorted according to number of
closures produced, which ranged from 0 to 5 per
token, shown in Table 1.
The most common trill articulation contained two
occlusions, comprising 45.2% of the total corpus.
A sample phonemic trill with two occlusions is shown
in Figure 2. Trills containing three or more occlusions
were also common, at 25.6%, and an example was
presented earlier in Figure 1.10
Next, 1-closure trills were produced at a rate of
17.8% (111/622). For these variants the beginning of
the trill has a clear occlusion in both the waveform and
the spectrogram, as seen in Figure 3. Between this
closure and the following vowel, there is a long period
of r-colored voicing with lowering of the third
 Phonemic trill in Peninsular Spanish 9

formant. In this example, the occlusion lasts 24ms and
the r-colored portion lasts 29ms.
The fourth most common variant was the 0-closure
variant, produced at a rate of 11.4% (71/622). This
variant had several realizations based on voicing and
degree of amplitude in the waveform. A typical voiced
approximant production is shown in Figure 4.
In order to determine consistency in the acoustic
analysis, an interrater reliability test was performed
with a second linguist who has considerable experi-
ence in spectrographic analysis. We conducted the
reliability test for 100 total phonemic trill tokens
(approximately one-sixth of the full corpus). The
interrater reliability for the raters was found to be
Kappa 5 0.88 (p , 0.001), 95% CI (0.80, 0.94); this is
considered almost perfect agreement.
4.2. Statistical Results
The complete dataset was submitted to a six-way
(2 3 2 3 2 3 2 3 4 3 5) fully factorial Multivariate Analysis
Table 1. Occurrences of phonemic trill tokens based on number
of occlusions per production
Occlusions 0 1 2 3
Tokens (n) 71 111 281 142
% 11.4 17.8 45.2 22.9
of Variance (MANOVA) to explore the potential
effect of the linguistic and social variables on the
two dependent variables (DV), thus motivating the
division of the original dataset into smaller subsets that
allow for the examination of the research objectives of
this study. The two dependent variables were Occlu-
sions and Duration. The MANOVA was conducted
with DIALECT and GENDER as between-subjects factors
and WORDPOSITION, STRESS, PRECEDINGVOWEL, and FOLLO-
WINGVOWEL as within-subjects factors in addition to
DIALECT-BY-GENDER, DIALECT-BY-WORDPOSITION, DIALECT-BY-
STRESS, DIALECT-BY-PRECEDINGVOWEL, and DIALECT-BY-FOLLO-
WINGVOWEL as interaction contrasts. There were two
levels of DIALECT (Leon vs. Ciudad Real), two levels of
GENDER (female vs. male), two levels of WORDPOSITION
(initial vs. medial), two levels of STRESS (stressed vs.
unstressed), five levels of PRECEDINGVOWEL (/a/, /e/,
/i/, /o/, and /u/), and four levels of FOLLOWINGVOWEL
(/a/, /e/, /i/, and /o/). Following /u/ was not
included in the statistical analysis since three tokens
only satisfied this condition.
In the MANOVA, omnibus tests found overall
effects for DIALECT (Wilks’ Lambda 5 .963, F 5 11.39,
p , .001), GENDER (Wilks’ Lambda 5 .846, F 5 54.18,
4 5 Totals p , .001), WORDPOSITION (Wilks’ Lambda 5 .990,
F 5 3.93, p 5 .024), STRESS (Wilks’ Lambda 5 .976,
14 3 622 F 5 7.39, p 5 . 001), PRECEDINGVOWEL (Wilks’ Lambda 5
2.3 0.4 100.0 .953, F 5 3.65, p , .001), and the interaction contrasts
DIALECT-BY-GENDER (Wilks’ Lambda 5 .989, F 5 3.44,

5000
Frequency (Hz)

al perro

a l p e r o

0 0.818
Time (s)

Figure 2. Word-internal phonemic trill production containing two apical occlusions (plus r-coloring) for al perro ‘to the dog’
(trill duration 92ms).
10 N. Henriksen

Frequency (Hz) 5000

de repente

d e r e p e n t e

0 0.554
Time (s)

Figure 3. Word-initial phonemic trill production containing one apical occlusion (plus r-coloring) for de repente ‘suddenly’
(trill duration 53ms).

5000
Frequency (Hz)

su ropa

s u r o p a

0 0.729
Time (s)

Figure 4. Word-initial phonemic trill production containing zero apical occlusions for su ropa ‘his clothes’
(trill duration 80ms).

p 5 .033) and DIALECT-BY-PRECEDINGVOWEL (Wilks’ F 5 1.77, p 5 .110) or the interaction contrasts DIALECT-
Lambda 5 .972, F 5 2.12, p 5 .031).11 No effect was BY-WORDPOSITION (Wilks’ Lambda 5 .998, F 5 .626,
found for FOLLOWINGVOWEL (Wilks’ Lambda 5 .973, p 5 .535), DIALECT-BY-STRESS (Wilks’ Lambda 5 .996,
 Phonemic trill in Peninsular Spanish 11

Table 2. Standard deviation ratios for dependent variables (a)

Occlusions and Duration OCCLUSIONS
2.5

DV IV 1SD –SD Ratio

2.0

Mean OCCLUSION
Occlusions PREVIOUSVOWEL 1.316 .774 1.70
FOLLOWINGVOWEL 1.021 .751 1.35 1.5
WORDPOSITION 1.024 .943 1.08
STRESS .994 .990 1.00
1.0
DIALECT .979 .909 1.07
GENDER .935 .904 1.03
0.5
Duration PREVIOUSVOWEL 27.40 21.07 1.30
FOLLOWINGVOWEL 27.11 19.34 1.40
0.0
WORDPOSITION 26.13 22.63 1.15
LEÓN CIUDAD REAL
STRESS 25.98 22.56 1.15
DIALECT
DIALECT 23.78 18.65 1.27
GENDER 24.20 23.79 1.01 (b)
DURATION
100

F 5 1.08, p 5 .339), or DIALECT-BY-FOLLOWINGVOWEL (Wilks’ 80

Lambda 5 .989, F 5 1.06, p 5 .381), so statistical results
for these factors will not be reported in the following
sections.
In order to verify the assumption of equal variances
across factors, a Levene’s test was run for the two
dependent variables. The results were significant for
both dependent variables: p , .001 for occlusions, and
p 5 .003 for duration. Following Glass, Peckham, and
Sanders (1972), standard deviation ratios were calcu-
lated by dividing the highest standard deviation by the
lowest standard deviation (s1/s2) for each indepen-
dent variable based on the two dependent variables.
Table 2 displays the highest standard deviation
(1SD), the lowest standard deviation (–SD), and the
resulting ratio for all independent variables. All
ratios of the standard deviations were less than
1.4 with the exception of PREVIOUSVOWEL on occlusions,
which was 1.7 (between /u/ and /o/). Mild hetero-
geneity of this size is not expected to influence
MANOVA results.
4.3. Social Factors
In Figure 5 we provide data for the mean number
of occlusions and duration based on dialect. León
speakers produced more occlusions than Ciudad
Real speakers (2.18 (SD 5 0.90) to 1.56 (SD 5 0.98),
respectively) and also produced phonemic trills with
longer duration (88.61ms (SD 5 23.75) to 65.35ms
(SD 5 18.65), respectively). The MANOVA showed a
significant effect of DIALECT on both dependent vari-
ables: Occlusions, F(1, 618) 5 13.66, p , .001; and
duration, F(1, 618) 5 18.82, p , .001.
In Table 3 we see that the most common trill variant
contained two visible occlusions, produced at near
Mean DURATION (ms)
60
40
20
0
LEÓN CIUDAD REAL
DIALECT
Figure 5. Mean number of occlusions (a) and duration (b)
based on dialect.
identical rates: 45.3% for León, and 45.0% for Ciudad
Real. However, there were dissimilar distributions for
less common variants. For León, the 3-closure trill was
the second most common variant (33.7%), followed by
the 1-closure trill (11.9%) and the 0-closure trill (5.9%).
For Ciudad Real, the 1-closure trill (24.8%) was the
second most common variant, followed by the 0-
occlusion trill (17.2%) and then the 3-occlusion trill
(11.2%).
The fact that 42% of Ciudad Real tokens and 17.8%
of León tokens contained 0 or 1 apical contacts
calls into question whether these phonemic trills
are acoustically differentiated from phonemic taps.
Knowing that the duration of the phonemic tap
typically ranges between 15 and 30ms (cf. Martı́nez
Celdrán, 1998; McDonough & Johnson, 1997:8;
Nicolaidis, 2001:75; Quilis, 1993), the question that
arises is whether trill variants comprised of less than
two occlusions are durationally equivalent to the
phonemic tap. Duration measurements were extracted
12 N. Henriksen

Table 3. Occurrences of trill type based on dialect

Dialect Occlusions 0 1 2 3 4 5 Totals

León Tokens (n) 19 36 145 108 11 1 320

% 5.9 11.9 45.3 33.7 3.4 0.3 100.0

Ciudad Real Tokens (n) 52 75 136 34 3 2 302

% 17.2 24.8 45.0 11.2 0.9 0.6 100.0

200

150

LEÓN
100
Mean DURATION (ms)

135 132
50 94 105
67 77

DIALECT
0
200

CIUDAD REAL
150

100

108 120
50 86
68 65
51
0
0 1 2 3 4 5

OCCLUSION

Figure 6. Duration (ms) based on dialect and occlusions.

for each trill type, shown in Figure 6. As can be
seen, there is a general increase in duration as the
number of occlusions per token increases. The exception
is the 0-closure trill, which was longer than 1-closure
and 2-closure trills in both dialect samples. Otherwise,
1-closure trills lasted 67ms on average in the León
corpus and 51ms on average in the Ciudad Real corpus.
These means are considerably greater than those known
to correspond to the phonemic tap; we have little reason
to believe that phonological merger is prevalent in
either variety (e.g., Willis & Bradley, 2008).
Next, the data were sorted according to gender and
dialect, plotted in Figure 7. León women produced
more occlusions in addition to longer phonemic trills
on average than León men (2.45 to 1.89, and 88.21ms to
87.52ms, respectively). The same pattern held for
Ciudad Real women vs. men (2.05 vs. 1.19, and
71.73ms vs. 60.59ms, respectively). An ANOVA test
was conducted for the effect of GENDER on both
dependent variables, and the differences were signifi-
cant: Occlusions, F(1, 618) 5 108.54, p , .001; and
duration, F(1, 618) 5 20.25, p , .001. As for the
DIALECT-BY-GENDER interaction contrast, there was a
significant effect on occlusions, F(1, 618) 5 6.76,
p 5 .010, but not on duration, F(1, 618) 5 2.17, p 5 .141.
Follow-up post hoc tests on occlusions revealed a
significant difference for Ciudad Real speakers (t 5 4.97,
p , .001), but not for León speakers (t 5 1.35, p 5 .175).
Given the statistical effect of DIALECT-BY-GENDER,
Figure 8 was generated in which each histogram
represents the distribution of phonemic trill tokens based
on occlusions for each dialect-by-gender combination.
León men and Ciudad Real women obtained similar
distributions overall: For both groups, the most
common variant contained two occlusions, followed
by the 3-closure trill, and much fewer productions of
1- and 0-closure trills. In contrast, León women favored
3-closure trills, and trills with zero or one occlusions
were rare in their sample. Ciudad Real men produced
more frequently 0- and 1-closure trills.
 Phonemic trill in Peninsular Spanish 13

(a) trill. Similar tendencies were found for duration data;

OCCLUSIONS
of note, all speakers showed mean duration scores
3.0 GENDER
greater than 50ms.
FEMALE
MALE
4.4. Linguistic Factors
2.5
This section explores the effect of linguistic variables
(word position, prosodic stress, and adjacent vowel)
Mean OCCLUSION

2.0
on trill production. Analysis of these factors
was motivated by proposals on positional strengthen-
1.5 ing and coarticulation patterns in rhotics (Recasens,
2002; Recasens & Espinosa, 2007; Recasens & Pallarès,
1.0 1999).
The data in Figure 9 and Table 5 show results for
the number of occlusions and the duration of phonemic
0.5
trills based on word position. Trills in word-medial
position contained slightly more occlusions than those
0.0 in word-initial position for both dialects; the effect on
LEÓN CIUDAD REAL
duration was not consistent. The MANOVA showed a
DIALECT
significant effect of WORDPOSITION on occlusions, F(1,
(b) 618) 5 5.56, p 5 .019, but not on duration, F(1,
DURATION 618) 5 .275, p 5 .600.
100
GENDER Data for the average number of occlusions
FEMALE
MALE
and duration based on word stress are reported in
Figure 10 and Table 6. For both dialects the average
80
number of occlusions was higher in unstressed
Mean DURATION (ms)

position than in stressed position; duration measure-

60
40
20
0 from 1.91 contacts per trill for preceding /o/ to 0.74
LEÓN CIUDAD REAL
DIALECT
Figure 7. Mean occlusions (a) and duration (b) based on
dialect and gender.
In Table 4, we provide a speaker-based analysis of
the data sample. León women obtained the highest
mean occlusions, followed by Ciudad Real women,
León men, and Ciudad Real men. Of note, none of
the female speakers obtained a mean occlusion score
below 1.90. For Ciudad Real men, the highest average
was 1.58, and two speakers obtained averages below
1.0. Duration scores followed these general trends.12
In summary, our analysis revealed the following
consistent effect of DIALECT, GENDER, and the interaction
contrast DIALECT-BY-GENDER: Ciudad Real men produced
the least occlusions per phonemic trill, whereas León
women produced the most occlusions per phonemic
ments were slightly higher in stressed syllables. The
MANOVA showed a significant effect of STRESS on
occlusions, F(1, 618) 5 14.78, p , .000, but not on
duration, F(1, 618) 5 .328, p 5 .071.
In Figure 11 and Table 7, we show data on the effect
of preceding vowel. For León, differences were
arguably minimal, ranging from 2.34 contacts per trill
for preceding /e/ to 1.83 contacts per trill for
preceding /i/. For Ciudad Real, the range was greater,
contacts per trill for preceding /u/. The MANOVA
showed a significant effect of PRECEDINGVOWEL on
occlusions, F(4, 618) 5 4.22, p 5 .002, but not on
duration, F(4, 618) 5 .655, p 5 .623.
Additionally, a significant effect was found for
DIALECT-BY-PRECEDINGVOWEL on occlusions, F(4, 618) 5 3.07,
p 5 .016, but not on duration, F(4, 618) 5 .784, p 5 .536.
Follow-up post hoc tests performed for the effect
of DIALECT-BY-PRECEDINGVOWEL revealed a significant
difference for /u/ vs. /a/ (t 5 4.45, p , .001), /u/
vs. /e/ (t 5 2.61, p 5 .031), and /u/ vs. /o/ (t 5 3.47,
p 5 .005) for Ciudad Real speakers only.13
Given the strong effect of preceding /u/ in Ciudad
Real, Table 8 is a speaker-based analysis of the number
of occlusions per trill token preceded by the high back
vowel. This analysis shows that for Ciudad Real
speakers, 74% (25/34) of trills preceded by the high
back vowel contained zero or one occlusions, whereas
for León speakers, the result was 26% (6/23).14
14 N. Henriksen

DIALECT
LEÓN CIUDAD REAL
80
68 70 68

60

FEMALE
40
32

20
11 13 11
10
Frequency

GENDER
3 2
1
0
80 77

68
64
60

MALE
38 39
40

26

20 14

2
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 0 1 2 3 4 5
OCCLUSION

Figure 8. Histograms based on DIALECT-BY-GENDER.

Table 4. Mean occlusions per phonemic trill for 24 speakers

Dialect León Ciudad Real

Gender Speaker Occlusions Duration Speaker Occlusions Duration

Female 1F 2.80 103.35 7F 2.07 76.35

2F 2.53 88.26 8F 2.20 73.20
3F 2.33 87.50 9F 2.00 67.65
4F 1.90 77.14 10F 1.91 62.77
5F 1.93 79.47 11F 2.08 78.14
6F 2.72 93.59 12F 2.00 65.92
Mean 2.45 88.21 Mean 2.05 71.73

Male 1M 1.57 69.83 7M 1.14 63.17

2M 1.18 99.94 8M 0.95 62.18
3M 1.88 81.36 9M 0.63 51.89
4M 2.47 97.16 10M 1.46 61.31
5M 2.03 97.94 11M 1.29 52.24
6M 1.90 78.95 12M 1.58 68.42
Mean 1.89 87.52 Mean 1.19 60.59

Finally, in Figure 12 and Table 9 we summarize
the effect of following vowel. Differences in occlu-
sions and duration were arguably minimal across
conditions for following vowels. This observation is
supported by the earlier result that there was no
overall effect for FOLLOWINGVOWEL on either DV in the
MANOVA.
To recapitulate, we have indicated statistical effects
for word position, prosodic stress, and preceding vowel.
Our analysis revealed main effects for the DV
Occlusions such that trills in word initial position,
stressed syllable position, and following the high back
vowel contained significantly less lingual contacts. We
did not find significant effects of any variable on the
 Phonemic trill in Peninsular Spanish 15

(a) (a)
OCCLUSIONS OCCLUSIONS
2.5 WORD 2.5 STRESS
POSITION
STRESSED
INITIAL UNSTRESSED
MEDIAL

2.0 2.0

Mean OCCLUSION
Mean OCCLUSION

1.5 1.5

1.0 1.0

0.5
0.5

0.0
0.0
LEÓN CIUDAD REAL
LEÓN CIUDAD REAL
DIALECT
DIALECT

(b) (b)
DURATION DURATION

100 100 STRESS

WORD
POSITION STRESSED
INITIAL UNSTRESSED
MEDIAL
80
80
Mean DURATION (ms)
Mean DURATION (ms)

60
60

40
40

20
20

0
0 LEÓN CIUDAD REAL
LEÓN CIUDAD REAL DIALECT
DIALECT
Figure 10. Mean number of occlusions (a) and duration (b)
Figure 9. Mean number of occlusions (a) and duration (b) based on dialect and prosodic stress.
based on word position.

Table 5. Descriptive results for Occlusion and Duration based on dialect and word position

Occlusion Duration Tokens

Dialect Position Mean SD Mean SD n %

León Initial 2.08 0.95 88.24 22.81 162 50.6

Medial 2.29 0.84 89.03 24.74 158 49.4
Ciudad Real Initial 1.42 0.98 66.55 16.35 158 52.4
Medial 1.77 0.96 64.02 20.86 144 47.6

DV Duration. This suggests that while phonemic trills phonetic characteristic, most likely to preserve phono-
may be articulated with fewer contacts in distinct logical contrast with the phonemic tap counterpart
linguistic contexts, their duration remains a robust (cf. Bradley & Willis, 2012; Willis & Bradley, 2008).
16 N. Henriksen

5. Discussion identity, whereas women prefer variants of a standard

speech variety to gain status in the wider speech
5.1. Social Factors
community in cases of social stratification (Labov,
The goal of this study was to examine sociophonetic (a) OCCLUSIONS
conditioning of phonemic trill production in two
3.0 PRECEDING
sub-varieties of Peninsular Spanish. Although the VOWEL
finding of trill variation in Spanish was not without /a/
/e/
precedent (e.g., Bradley, 2006a; Colantoni, 2006a,b; 2.5 /o/
Dı́az-Campos, 2008; Henriksen & Willis, 2010; Willis, /u/

Mean OCCLUSION
2006, 2007), a review of the literature on this topic
2.0
revealed the need for an assessment of whether this
variation had extended to varieties of Spanish for
which no dialectally remarkable trill pronunciations 1.5
had been reported. We now have preliminary evidence
in favor of the hypothesis that differences in speaker 1.0
dialect contribute to differences in the articulation of
the phonemic trill: León speakers produced significantly
0.5
more occlusions per phonemic trill than Ciudad Real
speakers. A gender effect was also found such that
women produced significantly more occlusions in both 0.0
sub-varieties; this effect was stronger in the Ciudad LEÓN CIUDAD REAL
Real sample. Further distributional analysis indicated DIALECT
higher frequencies of 3-closure trills for León women
and higher frequencies of 0- and 1-closure trills for (b) DURATION
Ciudad Real men. Notwithstanding the small sample 100 PRECEDING
VOWEL
size of this study, we suggest that these findings /a/
/e/
warrant speculation into the social motivations of trill /o/
variation in these varieties. 80 /u/
Mean DURATION (ms)

Under the assumption that the multiple-closure trill

is historically the prototype in Spanish (Hualde,
2005:181; Martı́nez Celdrán, 1997; Quilis, 1993:329–332) 60
and that weakened variants are innovations, it can be
inferred that the trend toward weakened variants (i.e.,
less contacts per phonemic trill, see Recasens, 2002) is 40
more advanced in Ciudad Real than in León, and this
shift is most strongly reflected in the speech of Ciudad
Real men.15 Additionally, there was little distributional 20
overlap based on gender for Ciudad Real speakers:
the lowest individual average for mean occlusions in
the female sample was 1.91, whereas the highest 0
individual average in the male sample was 1.58. As a LEÓN CIUDAD REAL
generally accepted postulate in the variationist para- DIALECT
digm, men often use non-standard variants as part of a Figure 11. Mean number of occlusions (a) and duration (b)
desire to belong to a certain community to mark local based on dialect and preceding vowel.

Table 6. Descriptive results for Occlusion and Duration based on dialect and prosodic stress

Occlusion Duration Tokens

Dialect Stress Mean SD Mean SD n %

León Stressed 2.11 0.91 89.80 21.96 160 50.0

Unstressed 2.26 0.89 87.41 25.41 160 50.0

Ciudad Real Stressed 1.51 0.98 67.82 17.01 152 50.3

Unstressed 1.61 0.99 62.82 19.91 150 49.7
 Phonemic trill in Peninsular Spanish 17

Table 7. Descriptive results for Occlusion and Duration based on dialect and preceding vowel

Occlusion Duration Tokens

Dialect P. Vowel Mean SD Mean SD n %

León /a/ 2.08 0.77 87.24 21.99 130 40.6

/e/ 2.34 0.92 90.48 26.45 145 45.3
/i/ 1.83 0.75 84.00 22.96 6 1.8
/o/ 1.94 0.68 82.75 14.21 16 5.0
/u/ 2.04 1.43 89.73 20.98 23 7.3
Ciudad Real /a/ 1.66 0.86 66.49 16.69 122 40.3
/e/ 1.63 1.00 63.46 20.4 120 39.7
/i/ 1.00 1.00 61.00 21.93 3 1.0
/o/ 1.91 0.84 62.45 21.96 23 7.7
/u/ 0.74 0.93 67.24 15.96 34 11.3

Table 8. Number of occlusions per /ur/ context based on 24 speakers

Dialect León Ciudad Real

Gender Speaker 0 1 2 31 Speaker 0 1 2 31

Female 1F - - - 1 7F 3 - - -
2F 1 - 3 5 8F - - 2 -
3F - - - - 9F - - - -
4F 4 - 1 1 10F - - - 1
5F - - - 1 11F 1 - - -
6F - - 2 1 12F 2 - - -
Male 1M - - - - 7M 5 1 3 -
2M - - - - 8M 1 - - -
3M - - 1 - 9M 4 - - -
4M - - - 1 10M 1 4 3 -
5M 1 - - - 11M 1 - - -
6M - - - - 12M 2 - - -
Total 6/23 0/23 7/23 10/23 Total 20/34 5/34 8/34 1/34
(26%) (0%) (30%) (43%) (59%) (15%) (24%) (2%)

1990; Trudgill, 1972). This attitudinal gender difference
is what Trudgill invokes in his study of men in
Norwich, England who valued positively local speech
variants. Although our findings cannot answer the
question of what are ‘standard’ trill variants, it is not
unreasonable to hypothesize that non-canonical trill
variants (i.e., variants in which multiple closures are
not executed due to failure to meet articulatory and
aerodynamic requirements) in Ciudad Real Spanish
have been adopted by male speakers to acquire a
status of local identity in their speech community.
Such ‘failed’ variants are not uncommon in normal
speech (e.g., Blecua Falgueras, 2001; Dhananjaya et al.,
2012; Engstrand et al., 2007; Solé, 2002), and this would
not be the first study to suggest that articulations other
than alveolar trills are the basis of social stratification
in Romance languages (see Webb, 2011).16
We must also consider the case of León women.
Specifically, these speakers produced the highest
number of 3-closure trills and yielded the highest
mean occlusion average among the four speaker
groups. On the whole, the distribution for León
women was inverse to that of Ciudad Real men;
namely, León women favored 3-closure trills and
barely produced 0- and 1-closure trills. This preference
for stronger variants can be interpreted as evidence
for what has been discussed as ‘quantitative hyper-
correction’ (Janda & Auger, 1992; Yaeger-Dror, 1992)
in its broadest sense. As discussed in Janda and Auger
(1992), hypercorrection occurs in two forms: Qualita-
tive hypercorrection and quantitative hypercorrection.
Qualitative hypercorrection is inferred when speakers
attempt to emulate a speech variety with which they
are not familiar and insert sounds in inappropriate
18 N. Henriksen

(a) OCCLUSIONS prefer weaker variants. At this juncture, we must leave

3.0 FOLLOWING for future research the full extent of this proposal.
VOWEL
/a/
/e/
2.5 /i/ 5.2. Linguistic Factors
/o/
We tested four linguistic variables to determine their
Mean OCCLUSION

2.0 influence on phonemic trill production: word position,

prosodic stress, preceding vowel, and following vowel.
In terms of positional strengthening, data on the effect
1.5
of word position and prosodic stress showed arguably
minimal differences across conditions. The weakest
1.0 phonetic variants actually occurred in word-initial
and stressed syllable position. Given this result, we
0.5 reject our initial hypothesis on positional weakening
(cf. Recasens, 2002) whereby weaker trill variants
should appear in prosodically less prominent positions.
0.0
Although the data dispersion was not especially robust
LEÓN CIUDAD REAL
between word-initial and word-medial positions, we
DIALECT
might suggest that trills in word-medial position
(b) DURATION contain slightly more occlusions due to the fact
that the tap and the trill contrast operates in this
100 FOLLOWING
VOWEL prosodic position primarily (see also Hualde, Simonet
/a/ & Nadeu, 2011).
/e/
80
/i/ Regarding coarticulation patterns with adjacent
/o/
vowels, there was no effect for following vowel, but
Mean DURATION (ms)

one noteworthy finding for preceding vowel such that,

60
40
20
0 Ladefoged discusses further that rounded vowels
LEÓN CIUDAD REAL
DIALECT
Figure 12. Mean number of occlusions (a) and duration (b)
based on dialect and following vowel.
linguistic contexts (Yaeger Dror, 1992). On the other
hand, in contexts of quantitative hypercorrection
speakers use a linguistic variable at a rate higher than
that of the speakers they are emulating or more than a
prescribed norm. One commonly referenced example
is r-reintroduction described by Labov (1966, 1972) for
New York City English.17 A similar state of affairs may
be at work for León women who produce a signifi-
cantly higher number of lingual contacts per trill.
Specifically, we might view the realization of stronger
trills as a way of overtly emulating the prescribed
norm and of marking social distance with groups that
for Ciudad Real speakers, preceding /u/ contributed
to fewer closures per phonemic trill. One explanation
for the effect of preceding /u/ may relate to the
amount of lip rounding needed to produce this vowel.
As noted in Ladefoged and Maddieson (1996:132),
high back vowels have the greatest incidence of lip
rounding of all vowels; lip rounding creates extra
articulatory complexity given the added upward jaw
movement that is required to round the lower lip.
require extra forward jaw movement and also the
pulling together of the corners of the lips in their
articulation. On the other hand, for the alveolar trill
there is evidence that F1 is quite high (it may go up to
650 Hz, Spajić et al., 1996), suggesting that the jaw
must be placed in a relatively low position for
execution of this consonant. As noted by Daniel
Recasens (p.c., e-mail), this acoustic characterization
follows with the observation that the predorsum must
be low for successful production of the alveolar trill
(i.e., lower predorsum implies lower jaw; for further
details, see Proctor, 2009). Given these conflicting
articulatory requirements (i.e., low jaw position for the
alveolar trill and high jaw position for the high back
vowel due to lip rounding), trill initiation may display
greater susceptibility toward misarticulation in the
/ur/ context.18 What remains to be seen is whether the
same explanation would hold for /ru/ sequences.
Unfortunately, there were too few /ru/ tokens in our
 Phonemic trill in Peninsular Spanish 19

Table 9. Descriptive results for Occlusion and Duration based on dialect and following vowel

Occlusion Duration Tokens

Dialect F. Vowel Mean SD Mean SD n %

León /a/ 2.02 0.92 87.91 21.99 129 40.7

/e/ 2.19 0.81 82.85 26.45 21 6.7
/i/ 2.07 0.45 80.27 14.21 15 4.7
/o/ 2.33 0.92 90.87 20.98 152 47.9

Ciudad Real /a/ 1.46 0.98 67.12 16.2 140 46.4

/e/ 1.67 0.81 57.26 17.95 15 5.0
/i/ 1.73 0.88 65.80 21.32 22 7.3
/o/ 1.63 1.00 64.24 20.59 125 41.3

Table 10. Cross-dialectal comparison of descriptive results for Occlusion and Duration; data for Jerez de la Frontera are based on
Henriksen and Willis (2010)

Occlusions Duration (ms)

City Location Speakers (n) Mean SD Mean SD

León Northern 12 2.18 0.90 88.61 23.75

Ciudad Real Central 12 1.56 0.98 65.35 18.65
Jerez de la Fra. Southern 16 1.13 0.92 73.01 25.50

corpus to measure such an effect. We would speculate
that /ru/ sequences may not be as prone to trill failure
as are /ur/ sequences since predorsum lowering (and
subsequent jaw lowering) is required to initiate trill
articulation. Once apical contact has been realized, the
jaw may be readily available for movement to initiate
lip rounding in the /ru/ context.19
All in all, we show partial confirmation for our
hypothesis that trill consonants should display weak-
ening characteristics when in contact with high vowels.
This is because we uncovered weakening effects for
/ur/ sequences in the Ciudad Real sub-variety; we
could not test the effect for /ir/ sequences due to the
small sample size. Recasens (2013) suggests that trills
demonstrate less antagonism with high back vowels
than with high front vowels. Dhananjaya et al. (2012)
show that the frequency resonances of voiced trills are
more in synch with those of /a/ and /u/ rather than
/i/. What remains unclear at this juncture is how to
incorporate into these accounts with the present finding
that preceding /u/ leads to greater trill weakening.
One important difference may lie in data collection
discrepancies across studies; the effect of speaking
condition should be examined in detail in future work.
5.3. Some Broader Implications
A combined analysis of the data on northern and
central Peninsular Spanish (analyzed here) and also of
the data on Jerezano Andalusian Spanish, a southern
sub-variety examined in Henriksen and Willis (2010),
prompts the observations given in Table 10.20
Looking at mean occlusion data alone (2.18 for
León; 1.56 for Ciudad Real; 1.13 for Jerez de la
Frontera), one might propose northward expansion
of a southern innovation, namely, that weakened
variants developed in southern Spain and have spread
north to central varieties, adopted there possibly by
men as markers of local identity. Independent evi-
dence to support this contention would come from
data on syllable-final /s/ weakening, which is
observed at high rates in southern Spanish and to a
lesser extent as far north as Madrid (Hualde, 2005:161;
Penny, 2000:122). For rhotics, researchers have now
proposed a lenition scale based on a continuum of
trill weakening from the multiple-occlusion alveolar
variant to the post-approximantized variant (Bradley
& Willis, 2012, based on Blecua Flagueras, 2001).
However, not all southern innovations expand north
in Peninsular Spanish, and it is well-known that
some southern innovations (e.g., seseo, /-N/ and /-l/
neutralization) hold negative stigma within central and
northern speech communities.21 For trills, Henriksen and
Willis (2010) note much individual variation even
among speakers of the same age and gender, with
some speakers producing mostly multiple-occlusion
trills and other speakers providing almost no instances
of this articulation. The authors deemphasize the
20 N. Henriksen
role of social variables, proposing instead that the
Andalusian situation is reminiscent of English /a/,
where variation at the level of the individual speaker is
known to be very important (Boyce & Espy-Wilson,
1997; Zhou et al., 2008). For both sub-varieties
described here, social differences emerged based on
mean occlusions, with Ciudad Real men adopting
weakened variants in greater numbers. Overall, this
distribution is reminiscent of Labov’s (1990) Principle I
whereby, in contexts of stable sociolinguistic stratifica-
tion, men use a higher frequency of nonstandard forms
than women. In such stable situations in which there is
no change in progress, women are conservative in
linguistic use and favor variants that hold overt social
prestige. Given the present finding that women of both
sub-varieties prefer articulations with two or more
apical occlusions, we might infer that a wholesale shift
toward weakened variants is an unlikely outcome.
Perhaps, as proposed earlier, non-canonical trill
variants are below the level of awareness, employed
most commonly as markers of local identity (cf. Trudgill,
1972) throughout speech communities in mainland
Spain.22 We leave the full extent of this proposal as an
open question for future research.
As a final point, we wish to reiterate that trill
weakening is understood here based on number of
apical occlusions and not duration. Recall that for
all speakers trill productions were fairly long on
average, ranging between 51 and 103 milliseconds
for a particular speaker. Although we lack published
reports on phonemic tap production in León Spanish,
Roller (2011) shows that speakers of Ciudad Real
Spanish produce phonemic taps at 25 millisecond
durations on average. Therefore, there is little evidence
that fewer occlusions in the phonemic trill lead to
phonological merger between the trill and its phone-
mic tap counterpart (cf. Hammond, 1999). On the
whole, the converging finding on trill variation in
Spanish-speaking communities is that non-canonical
variations remain long in terms of duration despite
fewer mean occlusions (e.g., Bradley & Willis, 2012;
Henriksen & Willis, 2010; Willis, 2006, 2007; Willis &
Bradley, 2008), most likely to preserve phonological
contrast with the phonemic tap. For Peninsular
Spanish, this is achieved primarily through r-coloring
(i.e., post-approximantization), although in other
varieties there is evidence for pre-breathy voicing
(e.g., Willis, 2006, 2007).
6. Conclusion
In this paper, we analyzed a total of 622 phonemic trill
tokens produced in intervocalic position for speakers
of two sub-varieties of what is generally assumed a
conservative variety in Spanish segmental phonology.
Results showed that approximately 30% of all pho-
nemic trill productions contained less than two apical
closures, distributed among fricatives, approximants,
and r-colored variants. Production of weakened
variants was conditioned by a number of social and
linguistic variables. Specifically, we have proposed
that synchronic variation results from the application
of two processes (one social and one phonetic):
(1) there is variation in which 0- and 1-closure variants
are adopted by male and central Peninsular Spanish
speakers; additionally, there may be an inverse trend
by female speakers of northern varieties to produce
especially strong or ‘hypercorrected’ variants; (2) trill
failure is common in /ur/ contexts possibly due to
antagonistic jaw position requirements between the
trill and the adjacent high back vowel. The broader
implication is that the present context of variation is
proposed as a stable one: We do not see evidence to
support an account whereby weakened trill variants
are extending within sub-varieties of Peninsular
Spanish in robust fashion, although it will be necessary
to examine intergenerational data to confirm this
proposal. All in all, we have laid out empirical results
that help to answer an important question in Spanish,
specifically, do synchronic data yield insights into the
nature of how rhotics develop within and across
speech communities in Spanish? At this juncture our
answer is an affirmative one, given especially the
combined cross-dialectal findings and also the gender
distribution in the León and Ciudad Real sub-varieties.
There is every reason to believe that, historically, social
as well as linguistic factors played critical roles in the
development of what is currently a wide array of trill
articulations in pan-Hispanic pronunciation. This is
now laid out clearly in French (e.g., Webb, 2011), and it
would seem that there is much scope to test this
hypothesis in Spanish.
Based on these sociophonetic findings, we have
proposed directions for future study on trill articula-
tion in Spanish. Given the preliminary nature of our
experiment, 24 speakers were recruited; a larger
participant pool will be necessary to solidify the
claims on geographic and social variation especially.
It may be necessary to explore additional acoustic
measures of trill articulation as well, perhaps in a more
varied set of linguistic contexts (see, for example,
Dhananjaya et al., 2012; Recasens, 2013). The effect of
word frequency (e.g., Bybee, 2002) may be worth
considering, although recent research reveals that
phonetic context may be the critical factor at
the earliest stages of segmental weakening (Hualde
et al., 2011). In the meantime, it is with a comparative
geographic approach that we have informed historical
work on rhotics through sociophonetic analysis of
synchronic data.

Acknowledgements
This paper has benefited greatly from feedback
provided by Travis Bradley, Steven Dworkin, Lorenzo
Garcı́a-Amaya, Roberto Mayoral Hernández, Terrell
Morgan, Carmel O’Shannessy, Daniel Recasens and
various anonymous reviewers. Stephanie Dickinson also
provided valuable help with statistical analysis. I also
thank Maxim Aleksa, Juan Garvı́ Medina, and Jason
Roller for their research assistance. Portions of this paper
were presented at Hispanic Linguistics Symposium held
in Athens, Georgia in October 2011 and New Ways of
Analyzing Variation held in Bloomington, Indiana in
October 2012. All shortcomings are my own.
Notes
1
Dutch presents a somewhat more complex case, as rhotic
variation is observed across social as well as regional
boundaries (Sebregts, 2005; Van de Velde, 1994).
2
By ‘phonemic trill’, we refer to rhotic sounds produced in
syllable-initial intervocalic position for which a multiple-
occlusion trill sound is the canonical production. For
further clarification, see y2.1.
3
It should be noted that the word-level contrast occurs
exclusively between vowels within a morpheme (i.e., aroma).
4 pronunciation revolves around a voiced alveolar trill pro-
Within a generative framework, it has been argued that
Spanish contains one rhotic phoneme (Harris, 1983;
Núnez-Cedeño, 1994); others contend that two phonemes
are available (Bradley, 2006b; Colina, 2010).
5 dispreference of trills with more than two occlusions
Mean phonemic tap duration ranges from 20–25 ms,
whereas mean phonemic trill duration ranges from
70–90 ms. This situation is unlike that of Judeo-Spanish
dialects that have lost the trill in favor of the tap in all
contexts (Quintana, 2006:84–85, 376).
6
Here we view geographic origin as a social variable since it
references extralinguistic properties (i.e., relative to a
speaker) such as age, sociolinguistic class, gender, etc. See,
for example, Labov, Ash and Boberg (2006).
7
In fact, data released by Spain’s Ministerio de Educación,
Cultura y Deportes [Ministry of Education, Culture, and
Sports] show that Castile-La Mancha is the autonomous
community with the second highest index of university-
age adults who study and live outside of their region, at
49.7% (2011:32).
8
A reviewer asks why rhotic variants in word-final position
were not analyzed, as these are susceptible to free variation
in Spanish. Since our goal was to examine rhotic production
in contexts where the phonemic trill is contrastive, we chose
to limit the acoustic analysis to intervocalic phonemic trill
articulations only.
9
Following Bradley and Willis (2012), this vocalic r-coloring
was considered part of the trill, given especially the
auditory difference between the r-colored portion and the
following vowel. In most cases, the r-coloring portion of
the rhotic differed from the following vocalic segment in
amplitude; one example is provided in Figure 3.
Phonemic trill in Peninsular Spanish 21
10
It may be noted that there is a possibility of a lenited third
lingual contact which contributes to the r-coloring after
the first two contacts. For purposes of this study, two
apical occlusions were tabulated for this production since
the r-colored portion did not satisfy the conditions set out
in y3.2 to qualify as an apical occlusion.
11
Generally speaking, Wilks’ lambda is a measure of the
proportion of variance in the dependent variables that
remains unaccounted for by the independent variable in
question. If a large proportion of the variance is accounted
for by the independent variable then it suggests that there
is an effect from this variable and that the test groups
have statistically different mean values.
12
The lower duration average for Ciudad Real men
(60.59ms) can be attributed to the greater incidence of
0- and 1-closure trills.
13
Data for preceding /i/ are not reported in Figure 11 since
the small number of tokens in this context (n59) yielded
irregular standard deviations.
14
One notes that six speakers did not produce a single
phonemic trill token preceded by /u/.
15
Certainly, whether the voiced alveolar trill was the
historical prototype in Spanish is an open question. As
noted by Terrell Morgan (p.c., email), it is not unreason-
able to hypothesize that synchronic variation of the
phonemic trill is based on a historical voiced alveolar trill
‘target’. From an articulatory standpoint, it is likewise
appropriate to posit that variation in pan-Hispanic rhotic
totype, although we acknowledge the importance of dialect
variation.
16
Although the social motivation for Ciudad Real men’s
remains elusive at this point, it is possible that there is a
rejection of institutional norms imposed by prescriptive
bodies such as the Real Academia Española (2011) that
have direct influence in educational systems and the
speech variants used and taught there. The manual by
Navarro Tomás (1944) also sustains great influence on
school norms in Spain. This ‘school situation’ was dis-
cussed as early as Trudgill (1972) to explain gender-based
variation among school-aged adolescents and young
adults.
17
In the case of r-reintroduction into formerly r-less varieties,
speakers use comparatively more ‘r-ful’ pronunciations
due to self-conscious concerns about the lower prestige
status of r-less pronunciations.
18
Tongue body gestures also deserve attention. Specifically,
the tongue body for an alveolar trill is compatible with
that of /u/ since the postdorsum is somewhat retracted
for /r/ (see Proctor, 2009) and is also retracted for /u/. In
this regard, it is perhaps unreasonable to hypothesize that
tongue position itself can account for the absence of apical
contacts in the /ur/ sequence (see Recasens & Pallarès,
1999 for further discussion).
19
The finding that jaw requirements for a vowel (/u/)
may override those of a following trill when the two are
constrained and highly antagonistic may run counter
to the view of Recasens and Pallarès (1999) that con-
sonantal production is more highly controlled than vowel
22 N. Henriksen
production (see also Recasens, Pallarès & Fontdevila,
1997). This should be queried in follow-up research.
20
It should be borne in mind that the mean age of speakers
in Henriksen and Willis (2010) (42 years) was higher than
the mean age of speakers recruited for this study (24
years). Also, a reviewer asks whether comparison with
data from Jerez de la Frontera is valid, given the historical
influence from England in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. Although there was British presence in the wine
industry especially, we have little reason to believe that
contact with this small merchant population could have
yielded widespread influence on the monolingual Spanish
speech community of Jerez de la Frontera.
21
In fact, informal interactions with the Ciudad Real speakers
who participated in this study indicate that they identify
themselves as Castilians and comment frequently that
‘proper’ Spanish is spoken in areas of northern Spain. There
was little evidence that Ciudad Real speakers base their
speech norms on Andalusian Spanish. On the contrary,
Andalusian Spanish speech patterns are often imitated in
stereotypical fashion. It should be borne in mind that in
order to make a substantial case for northward spread of
trill weakening or for any diatopic assertion, a more
extensive and diverse data set would be needed, involving
regional dialects but also cross-generational data.
22
It has been argued elsewhere that widespread stable
variation in rhotics may have developed as early as Proto-
Indo-European (Catford, 2001; see also Howell, 1987).
Here we hope to have shown what are some social and
linguistic correlates of such stable variation.
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The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 123(6).
4466–4481.