Configuraciones circunflejas en la entonación del español mexicano

Abstract

Los años recientes han visto un despertar de los estudios sobre la entonación del español^. A los materiales clásicos de Tomás Navarro Tomás y de Antonio Quilis ^, se ha sumado en los últimos cinco años un llamativo número de libros y de artículos sobre diferentes problemas melódicos del español^. Dos aspectos caracterizan la investigación moderna. Por un lado, el uso sistemático de técnicas instrumentales para determinar los aspectos fonéticos de las curvas melódicas; por otro, la especificación detallada de los aspectos fonológicos de la entonación. En ese sentido, las formulaciones que se vienen usando con más fi*ecuencia se derivan de la llamada fonología métrica autosegmental. Lo que se hace en esta perspectiva fonológica es asignar una serie de ^ Este trabajo se ha redactado en el marco del proyecto «Diversidad y variación fónica en las lenguas de México» (CONACYT, 4473 iH). Una versión previa más reducida se leyó en el xv

New Information in Naturalistic Data Is Also Signalled by Pitch Movement: An Analysis from Monolingual English/Spanish and Bilingual Spanish Speakers

“…What has been published on general intonation in different dialects of Spanish points to considerable distinctions in the semantic interpretation of prosodic cues depending on the dialect analyzed (Butragueño 2004, and the articles collected in Prieto & Roseano 2010), which makes instrumental studies of the prosodic characteristics of different Spanish dialects such as ours all the more timely.…”

“…Prieto & Roseano's 2010 careful distinction of different varieties of Spanish), where research exploring the acoustic correlates of intonation is generally relatively scarce; as far as we know, in fact, no study has been published on acoustic correlates of intonation and information structure in Spanish before this one. However, what has been published on general intonation in different dialects of Spanish points to considerable distinctions in the semantic interpretation of prosodic cues depending on the dialect analyzed (Butragueño 2004, and the articles collected in Prieto & Roseano 2010). We do not wish to maintain, therefore, that Mexican Spanish is representative of the use of intonation in encoding information structure for all or even just for any other noncontact variety of Spanish, such as, say, Iberian Spanish.…”

“…2. Dutch: van Leeuwen (2014); Dutch and Italian: Swerts et al (2002); German: Röhr & Baumann (2005); for intonation in Spanish see Butragueño 2004, Herrera & Butragueño (2003, and Prieto & Roseano (2010). 3.…”

“…Gussenhoven 2002Gussenhoven , 2007Arvaniti & Garding 2007): different varieties can attribute a different semantic interpretation to the same tunes (sequences of H(igh) and L(ow) pitch on the different syllables of the intonation units) regardless of informationstructural packaging. For instance, in peninsular Spanish, Italian, and in English, a neutral statement ends in a L tone indicating the finality of the utterance and hence the boundary of the intonation unit (Ladd 1996:185, D'Imperio et al 2005), but in Mexican Spanish a neutral statement is more likely to end in a circumflex tone (Butragueño 2004). …”

“…A frequent counterargument to the use of (such more) naturalistic speech is that it is supposed to provide less robust data sets (Butragueño 2004, Clopper & Smiljanic 2011). However, not only can the same be true of the supposedly less noisy experimental conditions -see for instance, the constructed sentences read by Röhr & Baumann's participants, which produced rather noisy data (2010:4) -but we are using statistical methods that are well-suited to handle the kinds of interrelated and potentially noisy data that arise from (more) naturalistic samples.…”