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Orality, Identity, and Resistance in Palenque (Colombia): An interdisciplinary approach
Edited by Armin Schwegler, Bryan Kirschen and Graciela Maglia
[Contact Language Library 54] 2017
► pp. 245–267

Chapter 5
Intonation in Palenquero Creole and Palenquero Spanish (Colombia)

This paper compares the intonation of declarative utterances in Palenquero Creole and Palenquero Spanish (a local variety locally called Kateyano). A corpus of spontaneous speech is analyzed to describe the basic intonational contours of these two languages. The discussion pays special attention to four topics: (1) intonational correlates of narrow focus, (2) intonational phrases without downstep, (3) final downstepping, and (4) vowel lengthening of phrase-final words with penultimate stress (penultimate lengthening). The data show that there are no significant phonological differences between these two languages. However, when speakers use Kateyano, the intonational contours tend to be neutral (e.g., with a high plateau in declaratives) more often than when they speak Creole. From a phonological point of view, the intonation of Palenquero Creole and Palenquero Spanish (Kateyano) is very simple: they exhibit a monotonal pitch accent H* that can be produced with upstep (¡H*) or downstep (!H*), and a bitonal pitch accent L+H*, commonly used in narrow focus statements. At the end of intonational units, there are two possible boundary tones: L% and H%.

Keywords: declaratives, final downstep, Kateyano, narrow focus, Palenquero, Palenquero Creole, Palenquero Spanish, penultimate vowel lengthening
Article outline
  • 0.Introduction
  • 1.Corpus
  • 2.Narrow focus
  • 3.Pitch contours without downstep
  • 4.Final downstepping
  • 5.Penultimate Vowel Lengthening
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 19 December 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/coll.54.06cor
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