Spirant approximants in Galician - ResearchGate

58 E. Martínez-Celdrán & X. L. Regueira
5000
4000
Frequency (Hz)
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0
0.361555
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Time (s)
l a e a e
0.797409
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Figure 4 Image of open spirant approximants.
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Frequency (Hz)
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0.2353
Figure 5 Image of a closed spirant approximant.
Thus, spirant approximants are arranged as a continuum, where we differentiate three
main realizations, with fuzzy boundaries, by their spectrographic image: closed, open and
vocalic. As we will see, the distinction between closed and open spirant approximants is
justified by statistically significant differences in duration and intensity (see tables 8, 9 and
12 below). That does not mean that we conceive open and closed spirant approximants as
different categories of sounds. On the contrary, we will argue that these are two subtypes of
the same category, that of spirant approximants, conceived as a prototypical category. We
will defend the position that the prototype is the open approximant because it is by far the
most frequent realization, and because of its centrality on a scale whose ends are closed
approximants, next to plosives, and vocalic approximants, next to vowels.