Open AccessInformation structure and intonation in Andean Spanish
Author(s) -
Antje Muntendam
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
lsa annual meeting extended abstracts
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2377-3367
DOI - 10.3765/exabs.v0i0.582
Subject(s) - intonation (linguistics) , linguistics , syllable , focus (optics) , object (grammar) , subject (documents) , psychology , contrast (vision) , language contact , history , computer science , artificial intelligence , physics , philosophy , library science , optics
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.