Colantoni

Peak alignment of pre-nuclear and nuclear accents in Argentine Spanish: 

Peak alignment of pre-nuclear and nuclear accents in Argentine Spanish Laura Colantoni University of Toronto

Outline: 

Outline Argentine Spanish intonation Controlled speech Buenos Aires Spanish: database for speech synthesis Catamarca, Mendoza, Misiones, Salta and Tucuman Spanish: database for speech recognition Semi-spontaneous speech Corrientes and San Juan Spanish: Linguistic atlas of Argentina

Buenos Aires Spanish: 

Buenos Aires Spanish Broad focus declaratives (Colantoni & Grulekian 2004; cf. also Sosa 1999, Toledo 2000) Pre-nuclear accents Peak aligned within the stressed syllable Valley aligned within the post-tonic syllable Nuclear accents L* (?); valley aligned within the stressed syllable

Pre-nuclear accents: 

Pre-nuclear accents Table 1: Alignment patterns for pre-nuclear accents according to their relative position in the utterance

Pre-nuclear accents : 

Pre-nuclear accents Figure 1: Early peak alignment in aplaZO ‘she/he postponed’, extracted from the sentence La justicia aplazó el referendum en el ayuntamiento ‘The court postponed the referendum in the city hall’

Nuclear accents: 

Nuclear accents Table 2: Alignment patterns in nuclear accents in utterance final intonational contours

Nuclear accents: 

Nuclear accents Figure 2: Final intonation contour extracted from the sentence Cuando sopla viento norte, cambian su comportamiento “When there is a northern wind, (people) change their behavior”

Problems: 

Problems Pre-nuclear accents Early peak alignment: Not frequent but found in other varieties (e.g. Peruvian Spanish; cf. O’Rourke 2004) H* vs. L+H* Nuclear accents L* described for other varieties Probable difference in the magnitude of downstep Phonetic or phonological difference? NB: only BA Spanish; reading style

Other Argentine Spanish varieties: 

Other Argentine Spanish varieties On-going project (Colantoni, Enbe, and Pérez Ibáñez) Data source Database for recognition 1000 speakers Task: sentence-reading Varieties selected Catamarca Mendoza Misiones Salta Tucuman

Pre-nuclear accents: 

Pre-nuclear accents Figure 3: Pre-nuclear accents (alignment patterns) in the five varieties under study

Pre-nuclear accents: 

Pre-nuclear accents General tendency: Peak aligned within stressed syllable Higher degree of variation (when compared to BA Spanish) in varieties under study Cross-dialectal variation: Increasing frequency of low tones aligned within the stressed syllable, especially in Catamarca, Mendoza and Tucuman

Nuclear accents: 

Nuclear accents Figure 4: Nuclear accents (alignment patterns) in the five varieties under study

Nuclear accents: 

Nuclear accents Mendoza, Misiones, (Tucuman) Tendency: peak aligned within the stressed syllable Salta and Catamarca Tendency: low tone aligned within the stressed syllable

Problems: 

Problems Differences in the alignment of pre-nuclear accents Differences in the alignment of nuclear accents Cross-dialectal variation Phonetic vs. phonological differences NB: Reading task Instructions (?)

Semi-spontaneous speech: 

Semi-spontaneous speech Data: Linguistic atlas of Argentina Female speakers: Corrientes (4) San Juan (2) Narratives (only statements were analyzed)

Theoretical questions: 

Theoretical questions Differences between formal and spontaneous speech Cross-dialectal differences and the AM model Status of the differences observed (i.e. phonological vs. phonetic) Alignment and phonological categories

Pre-nuclear accents: 

Pre-nuclear accents

Corrientes: 

Corrientes Late peak alignment Consistent with previous descriptions of other Spanish varieties Similarities with Misiones Spanish (Colantoni et al.) Late peak alignment: second most frequent pattern Early peak alignment Emphasis and/or contrastive focus

Pre-nuclear accents: late peak alignment: 

Pre-nuclear accents: late peak alignment Figure 5: Late peak alignment in miRANdo, ‘looking’, Beron de Astrada (Corrientes)

Pre-nuclear accents: early peak alignment: 

Pre-nuclear accents: early peak alignment Figure 6: Early peak alignment in reIa, ‘to laugh (3ps), San Cosme (Corrientes)

San Juan: 

San Juan Late peak alignment Again, pattern observed in other Spanish varieties Similarities with Mendoza Spanish (Colantoni et al.) Late peak alignment: most frequent pattern for one of the speakers in the study

Pre-nuclear accents: late peak alignment: 

Pre-nuclear accents: late peak alignment Figure 7: Late peak alignment in roBAba, ‘to steal’ (3ps, IMP), Villa Krause (San Juan)

Nuclear accents: 

Nuclear accents

Corrientes and San Juan Spanish: 

Corrientes and San Juan Spanish Corrientes, San Juan vs. Buenos Aires Spanish Higher frequency of peaks aligned within the stressed syllable San Juan vs. Corrientes Peaks aligned within the stressed syllable more frequently in San Juan than in Corrientes; Consistent with our previous analysis of Mendoza and Misiones Spanish

Nuclear accents in San Juan Spanish: 

Nuclear accents in San Juan Spanish Figure 8: Early peak alignment in pioLIN, ‘thread’, Valle Fertil (San Juan)

Nuclear accents in Corrientes Spanish: 

Nuclear accents in Corrientes Spanish Figure 9: Early peak alignment in BAIlan, ‘to dance’ (3pp, present), B. de Astrada (Corrientes)

Concluding remarks: 

Concluding remarks Controlled vs. spontaneous speech Preliminary data seem to indicate that tendencies observed in controlled speech are also valid for semi-spontaneous speech Problems in the analysis of spontaneous speech Sample size Control of contextual factors Transcription

Concluding remarks: 

Concluding remarks Cross-dialectal studies of intonation Capturing the differences with the AM model General tendencies Is it enough? Refining the labeling method Adding duration and intensity analyses

References: 

References Colantoni, Laura & Gurlekian, Jorge. 2004. Convergence and intonation: historical evidence from Buenos Aires Spanish. Bilingualism: language and cognition, 7, 107-119. O'Rourke, Erin. 2004. Peak alignment in Peru: Spanish in contact with Quechua. In: Contemporary approaches to Romance lingusitics. Ed. by J. Auger, J. Clancy Clements and B. Vance, Bloomington, Indiana. Sosa, Juan Manuel. 1999. La entonación del español: su estructura fónica, variabilidad y dialectología. Madrid: Cátedra. Toledo, Guillermo. 2000. H en el español de Buenos Aires. Langues et Linguistique, 26, 107-27.