The Tritonal Pitch Accent in the Broad Focus Declaratives of the Spanish Spoken in Cuenca, Ecuador: An Acoustic and Sociolinguistic Analysis

Abstract

This paper presents an acoustic and sociolinguistic analysis of the Andean variety of Spanish spoken in Cuenca, Ecuador, a variety reputed for its “sing-song” intonation. 1,628 pitch accents were analyzed to establish an inventory of broad focus declaratives for this variety. Noteworthy is that a tritonal pitch accent, most frequently attested with other focal contexts, occurred 312 times (19%) throughout the corpus and in all utterance positions. This result is compared to the contexts in which the tritonal has occurred in other Spanish and Romance varieties. Finally, the sociolinguistic portion reveals that gender (as opposed to age or socioeconomic status) is a key variable and explores the possible motivations for the use of the tritonal pitch accent.

Keywords

• Andean Spanish
• Tritonal
• Intonation
• Pitch accents