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A STRUCTURAL APPROACH TO THE ANALYSIS OF SPANISH INTONATION
Author(s) -
Anthony Ann
Publication year - 1948
Publication title -
language learning
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.882
H-Index - 103
eISSN - 1467-9922
pISSN - 0023-8333
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-1770.1948.tb00886.x
Subject(s) - intonation (linguistics) , linguistics , citation , psychology , library science , computer science , philosophy
ERY LITTLE has been done with a phonemic or structural V analysis of Spanish intonation.‘ A knowledge of the significant levels of pitch and intonation contours of Spanish could be an important tool in teaching Spanish or in teaching English to students with a Spanish language background. The goal of this brief paper is to indicate the lines along which a structural analysis might proceed. It represents only a small part of a larger investigation which I hope to complete in the future. I am grateful to my informant, Miss Ana Castillo, from Barquisimeto, Venezuela, for her cooperation in furnishing the oral material for this study.2 Many of the conclusions must necessarily be tentative until investigation has been made of all types of utterances in the language. The factor of dialect differences must also be kept in mind. A superficial check of the intonation of several speakers from Caracas showed similar patterns, somewhat differently distributed. It is hoped, however, that the material to be presented will bring to light some characteristics of Spanish intonation typical of the language as a whole. Intonation may be said to be the melody or the music given to spoken language. Professor Kenneth L. Pike remarks, “The changes of pitch which occur within a sentence are not haphazard variation. In each language . . . the use of pitch fluctuation tends to become semi-standardized, or formalized, so that all speakers of the language use basic pitch sequences in similar ways under similar circumstances. These abstracted pitch sentence melodies may be called intonation contours.”