Prosodic phrasing in Porteño Spanish
-
Christoph Gabriel
Abstract
This paper deals with prosodic phrasing in Porteño Spanish, the urban vernacular of Buenos Aires. Concerning its prosody, Porteño is often described as more closely resembling Italian than other Spanish dialects. While recent work largely focuses on Italian’ features in the domain of pitch accents, the present study shows that phrasing patterns also tend to follow the Italian model. Based on recordings made with 25 speakers from Buenos Aires, we concentrate on broad-focus SVO declaratives, taking different phrasing conditions such as syntactic and prosodic complexity into account. Two main aspects are considered: first, the presence or absence of prosodic breaks, and second, their surface realization, including tonal shape and durational aspects.
Abstract
This paper deals with prosodic phrasing in Porteño Spanish, the urban vernacular of Buenos Aires. Concerning its prosody, Porteño is often described as more closely resembling Italian than other Spanish dialects. While recent work largely focuses on Italian’ features in the domain of pitch accents, the present study shows that phrasing patterns also tend to follow the Italian model. Based on recordings made with 25 speakers from Buenos Aires, we concentrate on broad-focus SVO declaratives, taking different phrasing conditions such as syntactic and prosodic complexity into account. Two main aspects are considered: first, the presence or absence of prosodic breaks, and second, their surface realization, including tonal shape and durational aspects.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents vii
- Foreword 1
-
Part I. Phrasing across languages
- Correlates of phrasing in French and German from an experiment with semi-spontaneous speech 11
- The multi-facetted relation between phrasing and intonation contours in French 43
- Phrasing, register level downstep and partial topic constructions in Neapolitan Italian 75
-
Part II. Phrasing of languages in contact
- Phrase boundary distribution in Catalan 97
- Prosodic phrasing in the spontaneous speech of an Occitan/French bilingual 127
- Prosodic phrasing in Porteño Spanish 153
- Broad-focus declaratives in Argentine Spanish contact and non-contact varieties 183
- Comparing cues of phrasing in German and Spanish child monolingual and bilingual acquisition 213
- Index 235
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents vii
- Foreword 1
-
Part I. Phrasing across languages
- Correlates of phrasing in French and German from an experiment with semi-spontaneous speech 11
- The multi-facetted relation between phrasing and intonation contours in French 43
- Phrasing, register level downstep and partial topic constructions in Neapolitan Italian 75
-
Part II. Phrasing of languages in contact
- Phrase boundary distribution in Catalan 97
- Prosodic phrasing in the spontaneous speech of an Occitan/French bilingual 127
- Prosodic phrasing in Porteño Spanish 153
- Broad-focus declaratives in Argentine Spanish contact and non-contact varieties 183
- Comparing cues of phrasing in German and Spanish child monolingual and bilingual acquisition 213
- Index 235
