Microvariation in Accentual Alignment in Basque Spanish
Abstract
This paper presents patterns of accentual alignment in two varieties of Spanish spoken in the Basque Country: Lekeitio Spanish (LS), with speakers whose other native language is Lekeitio Basque (LB); and Vitoria Spanish (VS), with monolingual speakers of Spanish from the city of Vitoria. These patterns are compared to those of Madrid Spanish (MS), compare Face (2002). In LS, accents are realized as pitch rises rather than falls, like in MS and unlike in LB, but peaks are aligned before the offset of the accented syllable, unlike in MS and like in LB. At the end of the subject phrase, peaks display later alignment, like in MS. Thus, LS displays mixed properties of Basque and Spanish intonation. In VS, stress is also realized as a tonal rise, with peaks aligned after the offset of the accented syllable, like in other varieties of Spanish and unlike LS. The low tone target is aligned before the onset of the stressed syllable, earlier than in LS and MS. The continuum of tonal target alignment is observed in LS, VS, and MS, and the difficulties in identifying a “starred” tone lead to a discussion of the suitability of the starred tone notation.
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1.
1 Two of the speakers were monolingual speakers of Spanish, and the third had learned Basque at school, but Spanish was her clearly dominating language. In fact, she was chosen because previous observations identified her as a good representative of VS, and therefore she raised no doubts about her belonging to the same group as the other two. Our study of VS revealed no significant speaker differences, confirming our belief.
2.
2 Although the age ranges of the LS and VS speaker groups differ, we do not believe that speaker age has an effect on our results, since the youngest LS speaker (30 years old) and the oldest VS speaker (27) are close in age and yet are clearly representative of their respective speaker groups, as far as the intonational features studied in this paper are concerned.
3.
3 In response to a suggestion from a reviewer that differences in alignment between LS and VS may be due to rhythmic or speech rate differences or both, we note that there is no significant difference in the durations of the utterances from the two speaker groups, and no claims have been made for rhythmic differences between the varieties (i.e., they are both syllable-timed, as varieties of Spanish).
4.
4 Although Speaker 2 did not produce utterances corresponding to the sentences in (4)—(5), the average value of F0 valley location for this speaker was − 9.94 ms, and an ANOVA test showed that this value was not significantly different from the other speakers.
5.
5 In (5) there was only one word in the subject phrase, which for the purposes of Location of F0 valley was coded as the first word in the subject phrase (as it is the first word in the utterance) and for the purposes of Location of F0 peak was coded as the second word in the subject phrase, that is, the final word in the subject phrase.
6.
6 Unfortunately, separate calculations per speaker could not be carried out due to the low number of tokens in the second position in the object phrase for each speaker (between 11 and 12 tokens in this position). We faced the same problem for all subsequent calculations discussed in the article, and thus all calculations with fixed factors are made without including Speaker as a factor. We leave for future work a consideration of this factor as a possible source of significant differences, with a sufficient number of tokens per speaker.
7.
7 Unfortunately, we do not have access to the utterance files of MS. Hence, we cannot calculate the average utterance length nor check whether there are rhythmic or speech rate differences between this variety and LS or VS. However, there are no reports or claims in the literature that MS is rhythmically different from other Peninsular varieties (i.e., they are all syllable-timed).
8.
8 The figure representing MS was not printed in Face (2002) but is part of the data collected for that study. It has been provided to us by Tim Face himself, for which we are grateful.
9.
9 The alignment values for the second accent in the subject could now be different if the criterion for choosing the accentual peak were adjusted, in the light of the previous discussion.
10.
10 The caveat would be that a vowel is not a metrical unit, so the left edge of a mora would have to be assumed instead. The problem is that the existence of a moraic level of representation in Spanish phonology is subject to debate among specialists.
11.
11 Interestingly, a similar situation arises in Cuzco Spanish, according to O'Rourke (2004). In the speech of bilingual speakers of Quechua and Spanish, accentual peaks display an earlier alignment than in the speech of monolingual speakers of Spanish, and O'Rourke attributes this fact to the influence of Quechua's H*+L pitch accent. I am grateful to José Ignacio Hualde for bringing this finding to my attention.
12.
12 We have not carried out a specific perception test, but we have asked native speakers of MS and of Peninsular Spanish to listen to VS utterances, and they have told us that the pitch accents in VS sound very similar to those in their own variety.
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