Perceptual lateralization of coda rhotic production in Puerto Rican Spanish

摘要

When speakers of Puerto Rican Spanish (PRS) produce phonemic coda taps, Spanish-speakers of other dialects often perceive these as laterals. We observed production of phonemic coda laterals and taps by a male PRS speaker in real-time MRI. Temporal and spatial characteristics of tongue tip movements during coda liquid production are inconsistent with accounts positing a categorical change from rhotic to lateral in coda for this speaker. Perceptual coding of coda tap production by naive listeners suggests that both preceding vowel type and the relative strength of a proximal prosodic boundary may impact the proportion of the subject's phonemic taps that received a lateral percept. Results are discussed in the context of persistent difficulties in modeling the gestural representation of liquid consonants.