Chapter 7. Declarative intonation in four Afro-Hispanic varieties

This paper applies the Autosegmental Metrical (AM) model of intonation phonology and the Spanish Tones and Break Indices (Sp_ToBI) annotation conventions to compare the intonational contours of declarative sentences in two varieties of Puerto Rican Spanish: (1) San Juan Spanish, spoken in the capital city of San Juan, and (2) Loíza Spanish, an Afro-Hispanic vernacular spoken in Loíza. The geographical proximity between these two municipalities entails constant contact within a shared linguistic space. However, speakers from San Juan perceive Loíza as a municipality that has its own peculiar way of speaking. The acoustic and phonological analysis was carried out with PRAAT to verify whether pitch accents coincide in the spontaneous speech of the two analyzed varieties. The data we examined contain an overall predominance of the bitonal pitch accents L*+H and L+<H* in San Juan Spanish, and L+H* in Loíza Spanish. Findings show both similarities and differences within the two speech communities, as well as with intonational patterns in other (Afro-)Hispanic varieties. These results provide new information on spontaneous declarative intonation in (Afro-)Puerto Rican Spanish by offering a new perspective on the origin of a set of the prosodic phenomena found in these two varieties.

Section: Methodology and Data Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Autosegmental Metrical (Am) Model and Its Annotation Sys...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Autosegmental Metrical (Am) Model and Its Annotation Sys...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Pitch Accents and Boundary Tones Across The Varieties Of Spa...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Pitch Accents and Boundary Tones Across The Varieties Of Spa...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Comparative Analysis of Declarative Sentences in the Spontaneous Speech of Two Puerto Rican Communities

Visconte,

Sessarego,

Rao

2024

A Preliminary Exploration of Declarative Intonation in the Chilean Diaspora of Sweden

Butera,

Rao,

Parada

2023

Motivated by a growing body of research on heritage Spanish prosody, the current study uses the Sp_ToBi framework for the transcription of Spanish intonation to report trends in phonological targets of broad focus declaratives produced by heritage speakers of Chilean Spanish living in Stockholm, Sweden. Data were collected via semi-structured interviews from six participants belonging to the same social network including two Spanish-dominant first-generation immigrants and four Swedish-dominant second-generation speakers who were born and raised in Sweden and are heritage speakers of Spanish. The G1 participants are the primary source of Spanish input for the G2 speakers. Data were analyzed by identifying word- and phrase-level phonological targets and associating them with the appropriate pitch accent and boundary tones. Results show that the heritage Spanish declarative intonation patterns of the G2 speakers closely resemble those of the G1 speakers. These patterns are scrutinized in terms of the potential influence of Swedish and/or other varieties of Spanish. This analysis exhibits evidence of the importance of source input variety and cross-generational transmission of phonological targets in a heritage language as well as the potential contributions of multiple intonational systems in forming the phonological inventory of heritage speakers.

The Intonation of Peruvian Amazonian Spanish Declaratives: An Exploration of Spontaneous Speech

García

2024

The present study explores intonational patterns in spontaneous speech in Peruvian Amazonian Spanish (PAS). The data came from 12 monolingual Spanish speakers in the city of Pucallpa, where the Spanish language has historically been in contact with the Amazonian language Shipibo-Konibo. The speakers responded to an open-ended prompt that elicited broad focus declaratives. Acoustic information from 1524 pitch accents was extracted from 194 sentences and analyzed using Praat. The analysis focused on five features: F0 rises, F0 peak alignment, downstepping, final lowering, and cases of stress clash. The results not only supported previous research on this variety that came from read speech tasks (e.g., F0 peaks consistently aligned with the stressed syllable), but also highlighted the importance of using multiple methodologies to gain a more comprehensive understanding of PAS prosody. Specifically, the varied sentence lengths and structures common in spontaneous speech provided new insights into downstepping, final lowering, and stress clash in PAS intonation. Overall, these results contribute to the growing literature on Spanish prosody in shared linguistic spaces and lend support for trends (such as F0 peak alignment) that have been reported in other language contact varieties.