Intonational analysis of the variety of Spanish spoken in Cáceres

Abstract

The intonation of Extremaduran Spanish is one of the most underexplored aspects of this variety of Peninsular Spanish. Intonational studies based on read speech have been carried out (Congosto Martín, 2007a, 2007b, 2016), but an analysis based on spontaneous speech remains to be undertaken, although this is also true of most other dialects and varieties. In accordance with the Sp_ToBI model of intonational analysis (Beckman et al., 2002; Estebas-Vilaplana and Prieto, 2008, 2010; Hualde and Prieto, 2015), this work analysed the main intonational patterns of declarative utterances and absolute and partial interrogative utterances in the conversational speech of four speakers aged between 26 and 27 years from the city of Cáceres. We extracted a total of 120 declarative sentences, 55 absolute interrogatives and 56 partial interrogatives. We observed several differences with respect to Castilian Spanish, such as high boundary tones in declarative sentences and low or falling final contours in absolute interrogatives. Thus, the Spanish of Extremadura has noteworthy characteristics that distinguish it from central Castilian Spanish.

Keywords

• intonation
• Spanish ToBI
• Extremaduran variety
• spontaneous speech