Rhotics in Costa Rican Spanish

Variation in the rhotic pronunciation in the central valley region of Costa Rica is widespread, yet the subject of disagreement in the literature. Previous studies highlight either approximants or assibilated fricatives as the main variants, while presenting limited acoustic evidence. This project was devised to contribute to clarifying the distribution and to assess the acoustic properties for the rhotic variants in this dialect. The methods involved analyzing audio recordings of three native speakers of Costa Rican Spanish. Participants performed a reading task involving multiple contexts known to exhibit rhotic variants. Recordings were analyzed using the acoustic software Praat in order to analyze rhotic manner of articulation, duration, voicing, and acoustic characteristics for produced rhotics. Results show a distribution encompassing both attested trill and tap variants alongside both assibilated fricatives and approximants. These findings ultimately contribute to the wider conversation on the distribution of rhotics in the Costa Rican dialect as well as present values for the spectral and formant frequencies of the fricative and approximant variants.