Estudios de Fonética Experimental (Jun 2012)
Transcription of intonation of Jerezano Andalusian Spanish
Abstract
Dialect variation in intonation is a widely attested phenomenon in the cross-linguistic literature (see Warren 2005a) and also in the literature on Spanish (Prieto & Roseano 2010, Sosa 1999). Prieto and Roseano (2010) provide an edited volume on the transcription of Spanish intonation for ten different dialects of the language. Two of these chapters characterize the intonation of Spanish spoken in northern and central Spain, but no information is offered on varieties spoken in the southern Andalusia area. This paper is designed to fill this gap in the literature as it investigates the acoustic properties of a series of F0 contours produced in an intonation survey by nine speakers from Jerez de la Frontera, a coastal city located in the southwest province of Cádiz, Spain. Speech data were analyzed in Praat (Boersma & Weenink 2011) following the original Sp_ToBI transcription system (Beckman, Díaz-Campos, McGory, & Morgan 2002) and the revised system put forth in Estebas-Vilaplana and Prieto (2008). Results show that neutral and biased statements were communicated by the L* L% vs. L+H* L% contrast, respectively. Confirmation questions show a variety of patterns based on the speaker’s belief of the proposition in question. Two configurations are possible for information-seeking wh-questions, H+L* L% and L+¡H* L%. Commands are the only prag-matic intent for which the M% boundary tone is used, and vocatives are characterized by L+H* HL% in neutral and marked intents. Although Jerezano Andalusian speakers share intonational characteristics with other varieties of European and American Spanish, there are important differences that motivate a thorough investigation of this language variety. Finally, dialect comparisons are provided to achieve a more comprehensive account of intonational variation in Spanish.
