scholarly journals Broad focus declaratives in Veneto-Spanish bilinguals: Peak alignment and language contact

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hilary Barnes ◽  
Jim Michnowicz
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
Strong Sense ◽  
Small Community ◽  
Peak Alignment ◽  
Ethnolinguistic Identity ◽  
Early Peak ◽  
Spanish Bilinguals

AbstractThis paper examines peak alignment in Veneto-Spanish bilinguals in the small community of Chipilo, Mexico. We have two goals: First, to provide a description of the peak alignment patterns present in bilingual Chipilo Spanish. As Chipilo Spanish is in contact with a northern Italian variety (Veneto), we hypothesize that changes in peak alignment from monolingual norms, specifically regarding early peak alignment, may be due to transfer from Veneto. Second, we seek to compare the present data, based on controlled speech, to the results of a previous study on semi-spontaneous speech in Chipilo Spanish, contributing to the literature that compares methodologies in intonation research. Our results show that bilinguals demonstrate early peaks in controlled speech, although to a lesser extent than in semi-spontaneous speech. We attribute this to contact with Veneto and a strong sense of ethnolinguistic identity that leads speakers to maintain features of a Chipileño variety of Spanish.

scholarly journals La entonación de los enunciados aseverativos del español de contacto de hablantes bilingües de San Miguel Canoa, Puebla: una variedad del español mexicano

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 65-116
Author(s):  
Stefany Olivar Espinosa
Keyword(s):  
Older People ◽  
Educational Level ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
Social Variables ◽  
Mexican Spanish ◽  
Peak Alignment ◽  
Early Peak ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Pitch Accents

The aims of this article are a) to describe the tonal configurations used in statements of contact Spanish in the area of San Miguel Canoa, Puebla, and b) to show the relationship between pitch accents and social variables such as gender, age, educational level, and bilingualism of the informants. The analysis of these semi-spontaneous speech utterances showed that i) it is a variety that promotes the use of pitch accents with (very) early-peak alignment, such as H*, L+H* and L+>H*, both in prenuclear and nuclear positions, ii) the nuclear pitch configurations L+H* L% and L+>H* L%, reinforced by the upstep diacritic at times, characterize the statements of broad, narrow and contradiction focus in this variety of Spanish, and iii) the use of pitch accents whose peak its early it is correlated with adults or older people, who have a low or no educational level, and who are usually bilingual Nahuatl-Spanish. These findings contribute to research on prosodic contact and prosody of Mexican Spanish.

scholarly journals Information structure and intonation in Andean Spanish

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 10
Author(s):  
Antje Gerda Muntendam
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Peak Height ◽  
Stressed Syllable ◽  
Peak Alignment ◽  
Andean Spanish ◽  
Contrastive Focus ◽  
Picture Story ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Spanish Bilinguals

This study examines information structure and intonation in Andean Spanish. The data come from picture-story tasks and an elicitation task with 22 Quechua-Spanish bilinguals from Peru. The target sentences were sentences with broad focus, (contrastive) focus on the subject, on the object, and on the VP. The duration of the stressed syllable/word, peak height, peak alignment, and intensity were measured. The results showed that in Andean Spanish pre-nuclear peaks are aligned early and there are fewer prominence-lending features than in non-Andean Spanish, possibly indicating a Quechua influence. The study contributes to research on intonation, bilingualism and language contact.

scholarly journals Language contact within the speaker: Phonetic variation and crosslinguistic influence

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Khia A. Johnson ◽  
Molly Babel
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Mutual Influence ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
Recent Model ◽  
Phonetic Variation ◽  
English Bilingual ◽  
Speech Communities ◽  
Crosslinguistic Influence ◽  
Cross Language ◽  
Language Influence

A recent model of sound change posits that the direction of change is determined, at least in part, by the distribution of variation within speech communities (Harrington, Kleber, Reubold, Schiel, & Stevens, 2018; Harrington & Schiel, 2017). We explore this model in the context of bilingual speech, asking whether the less variable language constrains phonetic variation in the more variable language, using a corpus of spontaneous speech from early Cantonese-English bilinguals (Johnson, Babel, Fong, & Yiu, 2020). As predicted, given the phonetic distributions of stop obstruents in Cantonese compared to English, intervocalic English /b d g/ were produced with less voicing for Cantonese-English bilinguals and word-final English /t k/ were more likely to be unreleased compared to spontaneous speech from two monolingual English control corpora (Pitt, Johnson, Hume, Kiesling, & Raymond, 2005; Swan, 2016). Cantonese phonology is more gradient in terms of voicing initial obstruents (Clumeck, Barton, Macken, & Huntington, 1981; W. Y. P. Wong, 2006) than permitting releases of final obstruents, which is categorically prohibited Bauer & Benedict (2011); Khouw & Ciocca (2006). Neither Cantonese-English bilingual initial voicing nor word-final stop release patterns were significantly impacted by language mode. These results provide evidence that the phonetic variation in crosslinguistically linked categories in bilingual speech is shaped by the distribution of phonetic variation within each language, thus suggesting a mechanistic account for why some segments are more susceptible to cross-language influence than others in studies of mutual influence.

scholarly journals Arabic-Spanish Language Contact in Puerto Rico: A Case of Glottal Stop Epenthesis

Languages ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 93
Author(s):  
Sherez Mohamed ◽  
Carolina González ◽  
Antje Muntendam
Keyword(s):  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Syllable Structure ◽  
Spanish Language ◽  
Language Dominance ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Bilingual Group ◽  
Glottal Stop ◽  
Vowel Height ◽  
Spanish Bilinguals

The current study examines the realization of adjacent vowels across word boundaries in Arabic-Spanish bilinguals and Spanish monolinguals in Puerto Rico, focusing specifically on the rate of glottal stop epenthesis in this context (e.g., hombre africano to [ˈom.bre.ʔa.fri.ˈka.no]). It was hypothesized that Arabic-Spanish bilinguals would show a higher rate of glottal stop epenthesis than Spanish monolinguals because of transfer from Arabic. In addition, we investigated the possible effects of stress, vowel height, language dominance and bilingual type on the rate of glottal stop epenthesis. Results from a reading task with 8 participants showed no significant difference in glottalization between bilinguals and monolinguals. For monolinguals, glottalization was significantly more likely when the first vowel was low or stressed; significant interactions between vowel height and stress were found for the bilingual group. Language dominance was a significant factor, with Arabic-dominant bilinguals glottalizing more than the Spanish-dominant bilinguals. In addition, early sequential bilinguals favored glottalization slightly more than simultaneous bilinguals, without reaching significance. Our data suggests some effects of syllable structure transfer from Arabic, particularly in Arabic-dominant participants. To our knowledge, our study is the first exploration of Arabic and Spanish in contact in Puerto Rico, and the first to acoustically examine the speech of Arabic-Spanish bilinguals.

Uh, bueno, em … : Filled pauses as a site of contact-induced change in Boston Spanish

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Erker ◽  
Joanna Bruso
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spanish Speaking ◽  
Filled Pauses ◽  
Frequent Use ◽  
Linguistic Inquiry ◽  
A Site ◽  
Do So

AbstractThere is mounting evidence that the filled pauses that pervade spontaneous speech constitute a rich site of linguistic inquiry. The present study uses a comparative variationist method to explore possible effects of language contact on pause behavior, examining 3810 filled pauses produced by 24 Spanish-speaking residents of Boston, Massachusetts. Interspeaker differences in pause behavior correlate with intensity of contact. Participants who have lived in the United States for a larger fraction of their lives, who use English more frequently, and who do so more proficiently fill pauses differently when speaking Spanish than do those who have spent less time in the contact setting and whose English skills and usage are more restricted. Results show that a greater degree of contact corresponds to increased use of centralized vowels in phonologically filled pauses (i.e., more frequent use of [a(m)] and [ə(m)] at the expense of [e(m)]). This pattern is interpreted as evidence of contact-induced change.

scholarly journals Object case variation of the pronoun mis ‘what’ in spontaneous spoken Estonian and Estonian dialects

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 259-301
Author(s):  
Hanna Pook
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
Relative Pronoun ◽  
Object Position ◽  
Syntactic Features ◽  
Usage Frequency ◽  
Estonian Language

Abstract. The Estonian language makes a systematic distinction between total and partial objects on the basis of semantic and syntactic features: total objects occur in nominative or genitive, partial objects in partitive. However, in the case of the interrogative-relative pronoun mis ‘what’, the partitive mida in the expected partial object position can be replaced with the nominative mis. The aim of this paper is to determine which variables significantly affect this object case variation, how the variation differs between contemporary speech and archaic dialects and what might have possibly motivated the development of this variation. This study is based on the data in the Phonetic Corpus of Estonian Spontaneous Speech and the Corpus of Estonian Dialects. The results show that the variation is most affected by verb type, clause type, length of the following word and dialect. It is concluded that there might be multiple motivations behind this variation, mainly language contact (or a lack of it in certain areas), high usage frequency of the pronoun mis and the effect of the standardisation of language. Kokkuvõte. Hanna Pook: Pronoomeni mis käände varieerumine objekti positsioonis spontaanses eesti keeles ja eesti murretes. Eesti keeles eristatakse täis- ja osasihitist mitmete semantiliste ja süntaktilise tunnuste põhjal; täissihitis on nominatiivis või genitiivis, osasihitis partitiivis. Relatiiv-interrogatiivpronoomeni mis puhul võib aga oodatud osasihitise positsioonis asendada partitiivi mida nominatiiviga mis. Selle artikli eesmärk on välja selgitada, millised tunnused mõjutavad oluliselt pronoomeni mis objekti käände varieerumist, kuidas see varieerumine erineb vanemates kohamurretes ja tänapäevases spontaanses kõnes ning mis on selle varieerumise võimalikud põhjused ja mõjurid. Analüüs põhineb eesti keele spontaanse kõne foneetilisel korpusel ja eesti murrete korpusel. Tulemused näitavad, et mis ja mida varieerumist osaobjekti positsioonis mõjutavad kõige enam verbitüüp, lausetüüp, järgneva sõna silpide arv ja murre. On tõenäoline, et pronoomeni mis käände varieerumine on korraga olnud mõjutatud mitmest tegurist, peamiselt keelekontaktidest (või kontaktivähesusest teatud piirkondades), pronoomeni mis suurest kasutussagedusest ja keele standardiseerimisest.

Prosodic timing and language contact: Spanish and Yagua in Amazonian Peru

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Henriksen ◽  
Stephen Fafulas
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Acoustic Analysis ◽  
Spanish Speakers ◽  
Oral Narratives ◽  
L2 Spanish ◽  
Spanish Bilinguals

AbstractThis study examines measures of prosodic timing (i. e., segment-to-segment durational variability) in Yagua and Spanish spoken in Amazonian Peru. We performed an acoustic analysis of consonantal and vocalic durations from sociolinguistic interviews in Spanish (for Yagua-Spanish bilinguals and Spanish monolinguals) and from oral narratives in Yagua (for Yagua-Spanish bilinguals). Subsequently, we applied variability metrics to the speech of each group to compare their respective timing values. Our results show that, first, Yagua displays more segment-to-segment durational variability than monolingual Spanish. Second, L1-Yagua/L2-Spanish speakers show primarily Yagua-like timing values in Spanish, whereas Yagua-Spanish simultaneous bilinguals show primarily Spanish-like values in Spanish. These results suggest that ethnic Yagua communities are converging toward Spanish-like patterns of prosodic timing. This research contributes to the Spanish contact and prosodic timing literature by offering bilingual and monolingual data from one of the world’s most complex and typologically diverse geolinguistic areas.

scholarly journals How Software Features and Linguistic Analyses Add Value to Orthographic Markup in Transcription of Multilingual Recordings for Digital Archives

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Enrique Rodriguez ◽  
Robert Vann
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
Linguistic Analysis ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Digital Archives ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Linguistic Analyses ◽  
Digital Language

This report discusses the importance of accounting for language contact and discourse circumstance in orthographic transcriptions of multilingual recordings of spoken language for deposit in digital language archives (DLAs). Our account provides a linguistically informed approach to the multilingual representation of spontaneous speech patterns, taking steps toward documenting ancestral and emergent codes. Our findings lead to portable lessons learned including (a) the conclusion that transcriptions can benefit from a bottom-up approach targeting particular linguistic features of sociocultural relevance to the community documented and (b) the implication (for researchers developing transcriptions for other DLAs) that the principled implementation of particular software features in tandem with systematic linguistic analysis can be helpful in finding and classifying such features, especially in multilingual recordings.

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