Velar palatalization, phonologization, and sound change – A comparative acoustic study of /k/-fronting in Majorcan Catalan

This study explores the acoustics of velar palatalization in two subvarieties of Majorcan Catalan, Manacor (palatalizing) and Artà (nonpalatalizing). Three production studies are reported: i) a study of /k/-fronting in the context of front, central, and back vowels; ii) a study of /a/-fronting in the context of /k/ and /p/; and iii) a study of /k/-fronting in various vowel contexts in the participants’ L2, Spanish. First, while we captured /k/-fronting in the progression /o/ > /a ə/ > /i/ in both subvarieties, effect sizes were much larger in Manacor than in Artà. There were no group differences in the acoustics of /k/ in the context of the back vowel, but there were large differences in the other vowel contexts, particularly before the central vowels. We postulate that, whereas the degree of palatalization found in Artà may result from universal coarticulatory principles, palatalization in Manacor results from speaker-controlled phonetic behavior: enhanced coarticulation. Second, we found that in Manacor (but not Artà) /a/ was more fronted when it followed /k/ that when it followed /p/. We suggest that the /a/-fronting pattern found in Manacor results from the influence of its velar-palatalization process and not vice versa. Finally, we found that the enhanced velar-palatalization process in the Manacor sample was not transferred to their L2. We discuss the implications of our conclusion for our understanding of the diachrony of velar palatalization in Romance.