Velar Softening: An Acoustic Study in Modern Greek

In (Modern) Greek, velar consonants become palatalized before front vowels following an allophonic rule. In many southern dialects, the variants that result from palatalization further undergo softening in this same position. While velar softening is well-documented in Greek dialectology studies, most previous work is based on impressionistic data. In the present study, several acoustic and psychoacoustic measures were applied to examine the characteristics of velar palatalization/softening in voiceless plosives of two regional varieties of the language: a ‘nonsoftening’ dialect spoken in Thessaloniki and a ‘softening’ dialect spoken in Crete. The effects of speaker’s sex, word position, and stress placement on velar palatalization/softening were also examined. The results provided acoustic evidence of velar softening in the Cretan dialect. We also found an influence of sex, word position, and stress on the extent of velar softening.