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Hispanic Contact Linguistics: Theoretical, methodological and empirical perspectives
Edited by Luis A. Ortiz López, Rosa E. Guzzardo Tamargo and Melvin González-Rivera
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 22] 2020
► pp. 115–136

Chapter 5
The acento pujado in Yucatan Spanish

Prosodic rhythm and the search for the yucateco accent

| North Carolina State University
| North Carolina State University
Previous research has indicated that the accent of Yucatan Spanish (YS) differs from that of other dialects, in particular standard Mexican Spanish from central Mexico. These studies attribute the YS accent, described as halting/staccato (pujado), to contact with Yucatec Maya, suggesting that yucatecos speak Spanish with a Mayan accent. This claim has never been addressed explicitly in the literature, however. The present study applies several metrics of prosodic rhythm (%V, Cdev & PVI) to spontaneous speech samples from bilingual and monolingual yucatecos. Results show a changing rhythm, with younger speakers moving away from more traditional, possibly Maya-influenced patterns in apparent time. Connections between rhythm and segmental features of YS are discussed, along with possible social implications.
Keywords: Yucatan Spanish, prosodic rhythm, rhytmic timing, language contact, language change
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Accent and rhythm in (Yucatan) Spanish
    • 2.1YS Intonation
    • 2.2Prosodic rhythm
  • 3.Methodology
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1%V and ΔC
    • 4.2PVI
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 14 February 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.22.05mic
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