Interdentalism in /d̪/ in chilean spanish

Abstract

In this study, the presence of interdental realizations as allophonic variants of the phoneme /d̪ / is reported in speakers with higher education (Professionals) and speakers who did not complete secondary education (Non-professionals) from eight cities in Chile, all of which are regional capitals: Iquique, La Serena, Valparaíso, Santiago, Concepción, Temuco, Coyhaique, and Punta Arenas. The sample involved the elicitation of oral reading of sentences by 80 speakers per group, specifically 10 women and 10 men from each city. In an initial auditory observation, 1680 productions from the Professionals group and 1280 from the Non-professionals group were analyzed. Since it was not possible to determine the articulation point of the /d̪ / realizations through auditory analysis alone, a visual analysis of each phonetic production was conducted. The overall results indicate that 26.2% of the realizations were interdental (778 occurrences), while 73.8% were non-interdental (2182 occurrences), including elided phonetic variants of /d̪ /.