Intonation of pronominal subjects in Porteño Spanish Analysis of spontaneous speech

• Andrea Pešková ^[1]
  1. [1] University of Osnabrück

     University of Osnabrück

     Kreisfreie Stadt Osnabrück, Alemania

     
• Localización: Methods in prosody: A Romance language perspective / Ingo Feldhausen (ed. lit.), Jan Fliessbach (ed. lit.), Maria del Mar Vanrell Bosch (ed. lit.), 2018, ISBN 978-3-96110-104-7, págs. 45-79
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Based on spontaneous data obtained in face-to-face free conversations, the present paper discusses the impact different information-structural functions have on intonational realizations of pronominal subjects (PS) in Buenos Aires Spanish (Porteño). The study applies the Spanish ToBI labeling system and examines its applicability to spontaneous speech. One of the questions addressed is whether PS with different functions have clear phonological correlates. It will be shown that intonation plays an important role in distinguishing topics from focus, but not in the interpretation of different types of topics. By means of an acoustic-phonetic analysis, the research also demonstrates that overt PS are not always emphatic or contrastive, as commonly asserted in previous, mostly theoretical, studies. Despite a high degree of variability found in the data, the paper argues for the need to use spontaneous material as well as further laboratory phonology techniques in the study of grammatical variation.