Stressed postverbal pronominals in Catalan

Abstract

Majorcan Catalan postverbal pronominal elements are typically described as being prominent due to stress shift from their host. This study sheds light on the prosodic phonology of these pronouns through the analysis of duration, vowel quality, and f0 in verb + pronominal sequences, which are compared to a baseline condition without pronominals and to the same sequences in a Catalan variety without stress shift. Our results show acoustic differences in the realization of pronominals in these varieties. The duration and vowel quality patterns are consistent with the stress shift account of postverbal pronominals in Majorcan Catalan. Analysis of f0 contours also reveals phonological differences across varieties. Whereas stressed postverbal pronominals are not rare in Romance, Majorcan Catalan is one of a much reduced number of varieties within the Romance domain, where the attachment of a pronominal element to a host triggers "true" stress shift rather than an additional prominence on the pronominal element, like Sardinian or Neapolitan.

Stressed Clitic Pronouns in Two Spanish Varieties: A perception study

“…The studies that we have just reviewed have revealed that Romance varieties differ in the relative prominence patterns associated with verbs and pronouns in verb+clitic sequences. Acoustic studies have shown that when the stress is perceived to be on the clitic, duration is affected (Colantoni & Cuervo 2013;Kim & Repetti 2013;Nadeu et al 2017) and pitch patterns may also differ from the patterns found in cases where the clitic is unstressed (Kim & Repetti 2013;Nadeu et al 2017). This body of experimental evidence is consistent with early reports of doubly accented clitics in 16th century Spanish poetry and in literary and popular Argentine texts, where the orthographic accent is written on the clitic.…”

“…A recent analysis of Majorcan Catalan (Nadeu et al 2017), a variety in which final stressed clitics had been reported, also found evidence consistent with the claim that the clitic bears primary rather than secondary stress in this Catalan variety. In their study, 8 speakers of Central Catalan, a variety with no ESS, and Majorcan Catalan, which is reported to have ESS, were compared in their production of verb+clitic and verb+non-clitic pronoun sequences using a reading task.…”

“…Variation in stress patterns in verb+enclitic forms has been reported not only across languages but even among dialects of the same language. This is the situation, for instance, in Catalan (Torres Tamarit & Pons Moll 2018), where stress stability on the verb has been reported for Central Catalan, a tendency to shift the stress to the penultimate syllable has been described for Formentera Catalan and a strong tendency to shift to the final syllable is found in Minorcan and Majorcan Catalan (see also Nadeu et al 2017).…”

“…participants and stimuli from a dialect where ESS had not been reported (e.g. Mexican Spanish), as it was the case in Nadeu et al (2017). We believe, however, that testing the perception of speakers from Argentina and Spain constitutes a valuable contribution.…”

Verb-Clitic Structures in Eivissan Catalan: Recursive Prosodic Words and Allomorphy

“…Some examples of stress shift in Majorcan Catalan appear in (1) with one enclitic in (1a,b) and two enclitics in (1c). Vowel reduction to schwa in the verb further demonstrates that stress shifts in forms with enclisis (see also Nadeu et al 2016). The same stress patterns are found in Minorcan Catalan, not exemplified in (1).…”