Cover not available

Article published In: Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages: Online-First Articles

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload EPUB
authorization required

Language distinctions and generational effects on polar question intonation among Palenquero/Spanish bilinguals

ORCiD logo with link | Northwestern University, USA
Published online: 2 June 2026
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jpcl.25015.lop
Abstract
This study examines whether Palenquero/Spanish bilinguals maintain intonational distinctions between their two languages in polar questions (PQs). Earlier work reports both temporal and intonational differences, but temporal contrasts seem restricted to older speakers, and evidence is mixed, with older adults possibly showing greater intonational differences. Using two unilingual discourse completion tasks, this study analyzes whether PQ intonation varies by final stress, language, and speaker generation. Functional Principal Component Analysis of time-series F0 trajectories, combined with linear regression, reveals that the nuclear portion of younger adults’ intonation is more sensitive to the stress pattern of the final word than to the language, while older adults produce more language-specific final contours. Younger speakers resemble other Caribbean Spanish varieties. In contrast, older speakers appear to extend a truncation rule: they produce truncated contours in Spanish PQs and non-truncated contours in Palenquero. These findings suggest uneven maintenance of intonational contrasts across generations, likely reflecting generational change.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Temporally and intonationally related patterns
    • 2.1Statement intonation
    • 2.2Polar question intonation
  • 3.Spanish influence on Palenquero polar questions
  • 4.Generational effects
  • 5.Summary of research questions and hypotheses
  • 6.Methods
    • 6.1Palenquero/Spanish bilinguals
    • 6.2Corpus and elicitation process
    • 6.3Data wrangling and statistical analyses
  • 7.Results
    • 7.1The first most important F0 variance (FPC1)
    • 7.1The second most important F0 variance (FPC2)
  • 8.Discussion
    • 8.1Limitations and future directions
    • 8.2Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (86)
References
Aalberse, Suzanne & Pieter Muysken. 2019. Bilingualism and Language Contact. In Annick De Houwer & Lourdes Ortega (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Bilingualism, 524–543. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Armstrong, Meghan E. 2010. Puerto Rican Spanish intonation. In Pilar Prieto & P. Roseano (eds.), Transcription of intonation of the Spanish language, 155–189. Munich: Lincom Europa.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2012. The development of yes-no question intonation in Puerto Rican Spanish. Ohio, USA: The Ohio State University dissertation.
2017. Accounting for intonational form and function in Puerto Rica Spanish polar questions. Probus 29(1). 1–40. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Arvaniti, Amalia. 2022. The Autosegmental-Metrical Model of Intonational Phonology. In Jonathan Barnes & Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel (eds.), Prosodic Theory and Practice, 25–83. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Asano, Yuki, Michele Gubian & Dominik Sacha. 2016. Cutting down on manual pitch contour annotation using data modeling. In Speech Prosody 20161, 282–286.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Aston, John, Jeng-Min Chiou & Jonathan Evans. 2010. Linguistic pitch analysis using functional principal component mixed effect models. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series C (Applied Statistics) 59(2). 297–317.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bailey, Guy. 2001. Real and apparent time. In Jack Chambers, Peter Trudgill & Natalie Schilling (eds.), The Handbook of Language Variation and Change, 312–332. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Beckman, Mary E., Manuel Díaz-Campos, Julia Tevis McGory & Terrell A. Morgan. 2002. Intonation across Spanish, in the Tones and Break Indices framework. Probus (14). 9–36. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight. 1978. Universals of Human Language: Phonology. In Joseph H. Greenberg (ed.), Intonation across languages, vol. 21,471–524. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bullock, Barbara E. 2009. Prosody in contact in French: A case study from a heritage variety in the USA. International Journal of Bilingualism 13(2). 165–194. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bullock, Barbara E. & Almeida Jacqueline Toribio. 2004. Introduction: Convergence as an emergent property in bilingual speech. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 7(2). 91–93. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cabrera-Abreu, Mercedes & Francisco Vizcaíno-Ortega. 2010. Canarian Spanish intonation. In Pilar Prieto & P. Roseano (eds.), Transcription of intonation of the Spanish language, 87–12 Munich: Lincom Europa.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cassiani Obeso, Estilita. 2022. Language Variation and Revitalization: Plural Marking in Palenquero Creole: The Pennsylvania State University dissertation.
Cook, R Dennis. 1977. Detection of influential observation in linear regression. Technometrics 19(1). 15–18. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Correa, José Alejandro. 2012. La entonación del palenquero y del kateyano hablado en Palenque, Colombia. In Graciela Maglia & Armin Schwegler (eds.), Palenque Colombia. Oralidad, identidad y resistencia, 31–56. Bogotá, Colombia: Instituto Caro y Cuervo.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2017. Intonation in Palenquero Creole and Palenquero Spanish, Colombia. Orality, Identity, and Resistance in Palenque, Colombia: An interdisciplinary approach 54. 245. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Díaz, Chaxiraxi & Josefa Dorta. 2018. La entonación de Venezuela. In Josefa Dorta (ed.), La entonación declarativa e interrogativa en cinco zonas fronterizas del español: Canarias, Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia y San Antonio de Texas, 131–158. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Publishing Group.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dussias, Paola E., Jason W. Gullifer & Timothy J. Poepsel. 2016. How psycholinguistics can inform contact linguistics: Converging evidence against a decreolization view of Palenquero. In Armin Schwegler, John McWhorter & Liane Str’́obel (eds.), The Iberian challenge: Creole languages beyond the plantation setting, 181–204. Frankfurt: Iberoamericana Vervuert. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Escandell-Vidal, Victoria. 2017. Intonation and evidentiality in Spanish polar interrogatives. Language and Speech 60(2). 224–241. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gabriel, Christoph, Ingo Feldhausen, Andrea Pesková, Laura Colantoni, Su-Ar Lee, Valeria Arana & Leopoldo Labastía. 2010. Argentinian Spanish intonation. In Pilar Prieto & P. Roseano (eds.), Transcription of intonation of the Spanish language, 285–317 Munich: Lincom Europa.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gooden, Shelome. 2007. Intonational phonology of Jamaican Creole: An autosegmental metrical analysis. In J’́urgen Trouvain (ed.), Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences ICPhS XVI. Saarbrücken, Germany: Universität des Saarlandes.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2022. Intonation and prosody in creole languages: An evolving ecology. Annual Review of Linguistics 81. 343–364. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haan, Judith. 2002. Speaking of questions: An Exploration of Dutch Question Intonation. Utrecht, The Netherlands: Utrecht: LOT.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hay, Jennifer & Katie Drager. 2007. Sociophonetics. Annual Review of Anthropology 361. 89–103. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hualde, José Ignacio. 2006. Remarks on word-prosodic typology. In Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, vol. 32 11, 157–174. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hualde, José Ignacio & Pilar Prieto. 2015. Intonational variation in Spanish: European and American varieties. In Sónia Frota & Pilar Prieto (eds.), Intonation in Romance, 350–391. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hualde, José Ignacio & Armin Schwegler. 2008. Intonation in Palenquero. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 23(1). 1–31. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kouwenberg, Silvia & Pieter Muysken. 1994. Papiamento. In Jacques Arends, Pieter Muysken & Norval Smith (eds.), Pidgins and creoles: An introduction, vol. 15, 205–218. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1972. Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ladd, Robert D. 2008. Intonational Phonology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press 2nd edn. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lipski, John M. 1994. Latin American Spanish. London and New York: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1997. El lenguaje de los negros congos de Panamá y el lumbalú palenquero de Colombia: función sociolingüística de criptolectos afrohispánicos. América Negra 14(150).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2010. Pitch polarity in Palenquero: A possible locus of H tone. In Olarrea Colina & Carvalho (eds.), Linguistic studies in Romance languages, 111–127. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2012. The new Palenquero Revitalization and Re-creolization 21–42. Frankfurt am Main/Madrid: Vervuert Verlagsgesellschaft. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2015. “Toned-up” Spanish. In Christina Tortora, Marcel den Dikken, Ignacio L. Montoya & Teresa O’Neill (eds.), Romance Linguistics 2013: Selected papers from the 43rd Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), vol. 9 Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory, 233–256. New York: John Benjamins Publishing Company.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2016. Palenquero and Spanish. Journal of Pidgin & Creole Languages 31(1). 42–81. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2018. Palenquero vs. Spanish negation: Separate but equal? Lingua 202(1). 42–81. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
López-Barrios, Wílmar. 2024. Language-Specific Prosody in Statements of Palenquero/Spanish Bilinguals. Languages 9(4). . [URL]
MacLeod, Andrea, Leah Fabiano-Smith, Sarah Boegner-Pagé & Salomé Fontolliet. 2012. Simultaneous bilingual language acquisition: The role of parental input on receptive vocabulary development. Child Language Teaching and Therapy 29(1). 131–142. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Martín, José & Josefa Dorta. 2018. La entonación de Cuba. In Josefa Dorta (ed.), La entonación declarativa e interrogativa en cinco zonas fronterizas del español: Canarias, Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia y San Antonio de Texas, 109–130. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Publishing Group.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Martínez Guzmán, Verónica. 2018. Educomunicación y Poyecto Educativo Etnográfico: apuntes para un currículo fortalecido desde una perspectiva institucional del emprendimiento digital. Caso de estudio. Cartagena de Indias, Colombia: Universidad de Cartagena dissertation.
Moñino, Yves. 2017. Past, present, and future of Palenquero creole. In Armin Schwegler, B. Kirschen & Graciela Maglia (eds.), Orality, identity, and resistance in palenque, colombia. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Montes, José Joaquín. 1962. Sobre el habla de San Basilio de Palenque. Thesaurus 171.446–450.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Morton, Thomas. 2005. Sociolinguistic variation and language change in El Palenque de San Basilio, Colombia. Pennsylvania, USA: University of Pennsylvania dissertation.
De la Mota, Carme, Pedro Martín Butragueño & Pilar Prieto. 2010. Mexican Spanish intonation. In Pilar Prieto & P. Roseano (eds.), Transcription of intonation of the Spanish language, 319–350. Munich: Lincom Europa.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2001. The Ecology of Language Evolution. Cambridge Approaches to Language Contact. Cambridge Approaches to Language Contact. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Muñetón-Ayala, Mercedes & Josefa Dorta. 2018. La entonación de Colombia. In Josefa Dorta (ed.), La entonación declarativa e interrogativa en cinco zonas fronterizas del español: Canarias, Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia y San Antonio de Texas, 159–186. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Publishing Group.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Murphy, Kelly. 2013. Melodies of Hawai’i: The relationship between Hawai’i Creole English and ’ōlelo Hawai’i prosody. Calgary, Alberta: University of Calgary dissertation.
Navarrete, María Cristina. 2008. San Basilio de Palenque: memoria y tradición. Surgimiento y avatares de las gestas cimarronas en el Caribe colombiano. Cali, Colombia: Programa Editorial, Universidad del Valle.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Noguera, María Claudia, Armin Schwegler, Verónica Gomes, Ignacio Briceño, Luis Alvarez, Daniel Uricoechea, Antonio Amorim, Escilda Benavides, Carlos Silvera, Marlon Charris, Jaime Bernal & Leonor Gusmão. 2014. Colombia’s racial crucible: Y chromosome evidence from six admixed communities in the Department of Bolivar. Annals of human biology 41(5). 453–459. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
O’Rourke, Erin. 2010. Ecuadorian Andean Spanish intonation. In Pilar Prieto & P. Roseano (eds.), Transcription of intonation of the Spanish language, 227–254. Munich: Lincom Europa.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ortiz-Lira, Héctor, Marcela Fuentes & Lluïsa Astruc. 2010. Chilean Spanish Intonation. In Pilar Prieto & P. Roseano (eds.), Transcription of intonation of the Spanish language, 255–283. Munich: Lincom Europa.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Parkvall, Mikael & Bart Jacobs. 2020. Palenquero origins: A tale of more than two languages. Diachronica 37(4). 540–576. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Patiño-Roselli, Carlos. 1983. El habla en El Palenque de San Basilio. In Nina S. de Friedemann & Carlos Patiño-Roselli (eds.), Lengua y sociedad en el Palenque de San Basilio, 83–287. Bogotá, Colombia: Instituto Caro y Cuervo.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pierrehumbert, Janet. 1980. The Phonology and Phonetics of English Intonation. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology dissertation.
Prieto, Pilar & P. Roseano. 2010. Introduction. In Pilar Prieto & P. Roseano (eds.), Transcription of intonation of the Spanish language, 1–13. Munich: Lincom Europa. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ramsay, James, Giles Hooker & Spencer Graves. 2009. Functional Data Analysis with R and MATLAB 2197–5736. New York, NY: Springer 1st edn. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ramsay, James & Bernhard Silverman. 2005. Functional Data Analysis 0172–7397. New York, NY: Springer-Verlag 2nd edn. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Remijsen, Bert & Vincent Van Heuven. 2005. Stress, tone and discourse prominence in the Curaçao dialect of Papiamentu. Phonology 22(2). 205–235. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rickford, John R. & Robin Melnick. 2015. Linguistic Variation: Confronting Fact and Theory chap. A Variationist Approach to Subject-Aux Question Inversion in Bajan and other Caribbean Creole Englishes, AAVE, and Appalachian, 56–72. London/New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Robles-Puente, Sergio. 2011. Absolute Questions Do Not Always Have a Rising Pattern: Evidence from Bilbao Spanish. In Scott Alvord (ed.), Selected Proceedings of the 5th Conference on Laboratory Approaches to Romance Phonology, 98–107. Somerville, MA.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Roettger, Timo B. 2017. Tonal placement in Tashlhiyt: How an intonation system accommodates to adverse phonological environments Studies in Laboratory Phonology 3. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schwegler, Armin. 1992. Hacia una arqueología afrocolombiana: Restos de tradiciones religiosas bantúes en una comunidad negroamericana. América Negra 41. 35–82.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2001. Degrees of restructuring in creole languages chap. The myth of decreolization: The anomalous case of Palenquero, 409–436. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2011. Palenque (Colombia): Multilingualism in an Extraordinary Social and Historical Context. In M. Díaz-Campos (ed.), The Handbook of Hispanic Sociolinguistics, 446–472. Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2015. Lingüística & genética poblacional (adn): Sobre los orígenes africanos de poblaciones afro-colombianas. Neiva, Colombia: Universidad Surcolombiana.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2016. Negation in Palenquero: Syntax, pragmatics, and change in progress. In Viviane Déprez & Fabiola Henri (eds.), Negation and Negative Concord, vol. 55 (Contact Language Library 2), 257–288. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schwegler, Armin, M. Haboud & N. Ostler. 2011. On the extraordinary revival of a creole: Palenquero (Colombia). Endangered Languages–Voices and Images 153–165.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Silva-Corvalán, Carmen. 1990. Current Issues in Studies of Language Contact. Hispania 73(1). 162–176. [URL].
Simonet, Miquel. 2011. Intonational convergence in language contact: Utterance-final f0 contours in catalan-spanish early bilinguals. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 41(2). 157–184. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Smith, Hiram. 2014. Patterns of variable tense-aspect marking in Palenquero Creole. Pennsylvania, USA: The Pennsylvania State University dissertation.
Stefanich, Sara & Jennifer Cabrelli. 2020. Shared or separate representations? The Spanish palatal nasal in early Spanish/English bilinguals. Languages 5(4). 50. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Steien, Guri Bordal & Kofi Yakpo. 2020. Romancing with tone: On the outcomes of prosodic contact. Language 96(1). 1–41. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thomason, Sarah Grey. 2001. Language Contact: An Introduction. Edinburgh, United Kingdom: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thomason, Sarah Grey & Terrence Kaufman. 1988. Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vanrell, Maria del Mar, Ingo Feldhausen & Lluïsa Astruc. 2018. The Discourse Completion Task in Romance Prosody Research: Status quo and outlook. In Ingo Feldhausen, Jan Fliessbach & Maria del Mar Vanrell (eds.), Methods in Prosody: A Romance language perspective, 191–227. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Velásquez-Upegui, E. P. 2014. La entonación de enunciados interrogativos transaccionales en el español hablado en Colombia. Forma y Función 27(2). 207–246. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Venables, William N. & Brian D. Ripley. 2002. Random and Mixed Effects. In Modern Applied Statistics with S, 271–300. New York, NY: Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Willis, Erik. 2004. Dominican Spanish absolute interrogatives in broad focus. Laboratory approaches to Spanish phonology 61–91.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2010. Dominican Spanish intonation. In Pilar Prieto & P. Roseano (eds.), Transcription of intonation of the Spanish language, 123–153. Munich, Germany: Lincom Europa.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Yakpo, Kofi. 2019. A grammar of Pichi, vol. 23 Studies in Diversity Linguistics. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2021. Creole prosodic systems are areal, not simple. Frontiers in Psychology 12(690593). Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue