The acoustic realization of the /a/-/ə/ alternation in Majorcan Catalan

This study examines the acoustic realization of the Catalan /a/-/əә/ alternation as a function of lexical stress together with the production of the Majorcan Catalan stressed /əә/ by 30 Spanish-dominant and 30 Catalan-dominant early Spanish-Catalan bilinguals in Majorca (Spain). The acoustic analyses show that there are no differences between language dominance groups in the implementation of the phonological Catalan vowel reduction rule: both groups consistently produced /a/ as a central midvowel [əә] in unstressed position. The analysis of Majorcan stressed /əә/ revealed that both groups differed in their phonetic behavior: the stressed /əә/ of Spanish-dominants was realized with a higher F2, approximating the front mid-vowel acoustic region. A closer analysis of the individual data confirms that the degree of language dominance plays a significant role in the production of this dialectal feature.