Article published in:
Advances in Spanish as a Heritage Language
Edited by Diego Pascual y Cabo
[Studies in Bilingualism 49] 2016
► pp. 51–80

On the nuclear intonational phonology of heritage speakers of Spanish

| University of Wisconsin, Madison
This paper employs the Autosegmental-Metrical model and the Spanish in the Tones and Break Indices framework to examine nuclear (i.e., final) statement and question intonation in ten heritage speakers of Mexican Spanish. The statement results indicate that our heritage speakers show evidence of a reduced inventory of phonological targets used to communicate different pragmatic meanings compared to native speakers. Their nuclear question configurations are quite distinct from, yet equally varied as, those of native speakers. The cumulative results imply that the intonation-pragmatics interface evolves differently in heritage and native speakers, and depends on at least utterance type and intended pragmatic meaning. We argue that on a more general level, exposure to diverse forms of intonational input is at the root of the interspeaker differences observed.
Published online: 20 July 2016
https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.49.04rao
References
Aguilar, L., De la Mota, C., & Prieto, P
(2009) Sp_ToBI Training Materials. Retrieved from http://​prosodia​.upf​.edu​/sp​_tobiGoogle Scholar
Alvord, S
(2006) Spanish intonation in contact: The case of Miami Cuban bilinguals. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Minnesota.Google Scholar
(2009) Disambiguating declarative and interrogative meaning with intonation in Miami Cuban Spanish. Southwest Journal of Linguistics, 28(2): 21–66.Google Scholar
(2010) Variation in Miami Cuban Spanish interrogative intonation. Hispania, 93(2), 235–255.Google Scholar
Alvord, S., & Rogers, B
(2014) Miami-Cuban Spanish vowels in contact. Sociolinguistic Studies, 8(1), 139–170. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Amengual, M
(2012) Interlingual influence in bilingual speech: Cognate status effect in a continuum of bilingualism. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 15(3), 517–530. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ávila Hernández, S
(2003) La entonación del enunciado interrogativo en el español de la ciudad de México. In E. Herrera Zendejas & P.M. Butragueño (Eds.), La tonia: dimensiones fonéticas y fonológicas (pp. 331–355). México: Colegio de México.Google Scholar
Au, T.K., Knightly, L., Jun, S.A., & Oh, J
(2002) Overhearing a language during childhood. Psychological Science, 13, 238–243. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Au, T.K., Oh, J., Knightly, L., Jun, S.A., & Romo, L
(2008) Salvaging a childhood language. Journal of Memory and Language, 58, 998–1011. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bartels, C
(1999) The intonation of English statements and questions: A compositional interpretation. New York NY: Garland.Google Scholar
Beckman, M., Díaz-Campos, M., McGory, J., & Morgan, T
(2002) Intonation across Spanish, in the tones and break indices framework. Probus, 14, 9–36. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Benmamoun, A., Montrul, S., & Polinsky, M
(2010) Prolegomena to heritage linguistics [white paper]. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Harvard University. Retrieved from http://​www​.nhlrc​.ucla​.edu​/pdf​/HL​-whitepaper​.pdf
Boersma, P., & Weenink, D
(2014) Praat: Doing phonetics by Computer. Retrieved from http://​www​.praat​.org/Google Scholar
Bullock, B
(2009) Prosody in contact in French: A case study from a heritage variety in the United States. International Journal of Bilingualism, 13, 165–194. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Butragueño, P.M
(2004) Configuraciones circunflejas en la entonación del español mexicano. Revista de Filología Española, 84(2), 347–373. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2006) Proyección sintáctico-discursiva de la entonación circunfleja mexicana. In C. Company-Company (Ed.), El Español en América. Diatopia, diacronía e historiografía (pp. 35–63). México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.Google Scholar
Bybee, J
(2006) From usage to grammar: The mind’s response to repetition. Language, 82(4), 711–733. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, N., & Halle, M
(1968) The sound pattern of English. New York, NY: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Cruttenden, A
(1997[1986]) Intonation (second edition). Cambridge: CUP. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
De la Mota, C., Butragueño, P.M., & Prieto, P
(2010) Mexican Spanish intonation. In P. Prieto & P. Roseano (Eds.), Transcription of intonation of the Spanish language (pp. 319–350). Munich: Lincom.Google Scholar
D’Imperio, M., Elordieta, G., Frota, S., Prieto, P., & Vigário, M
(2005) Intonational phrasing in Romance: The role of syntactic and prosodic structure. In S. Frota, M. Vigário, & M.J. Freitas (Eds.), Prosodies (pp. 59–98). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Estebas-Vilaplana, E., & Prieto, P
(2008) La notación prosódica del español: Una revision del Sp_ToBI. Estudios de Fonética Experimental, 17, 263–283.Google Scholar
Face, T
(2003) Intonation in Spanish declaratives: Differences between lab speech and spontaneous speech. Catalan Journal of Linguistics, 2, 115–131.Google Scholar
Face, T., & Prieto, P
(2007) Rising accents in Castilian Spanish: A revision of Sp_ToBI. Journal of Portuguese Linguistics, 6(1), 117–146. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Fries, C
(1965) On the intonation of yes/no questions in English. In D. Abercrombie, D.B. Fry, P.A.D. MacCarthy, N.C. Scott, & J.L.M. Trim (Eds.), In honour of Daniel Jones: Papers contributed on the occasion of his eightieth birthday (pp. 242–254). London: Longman.Google Scholar
Frota, S., D’Imperio, M., Elordieta, G., Prieto, P., & Vigário, M
(2007) The phonetics and phonology of intonational phrasing in Romance. In P. Prieto, J. Mascaró, & M-J. Solé (Eds), Segmental and prosodic issues in Romance phonology (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 282) (pp. 131–153). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hedberg, N., Sosa, J.M., & Fadden, L
(2004) Meanings and configurations of questions in English. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Speech Prosody . Nara, Japan.
Henriksen, N
(2012) Chicagoland heritage and native Mexican Spanish intonation: Three contact phenomena. Paper presented at Current Approaches to Spanish and Portuguese Second Language Phonology . University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC.
(2015) Acoustic analysis of the rhotic contrast in Chicagoland Spanish. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 5(3), 285-321. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hoot, B
(2012) Presentational focus in heritage and monolingual Spanish. Unpublished PhD dissertation. University of Illinois at Chicago.Google Scholar
Hualde, J.I
(2003) El modelo métrico y autosegmental. In P. Prieto (Ed.), Teorías de la Entonación (pp. 155–184). Barcelona: Ariel.Google Scholar
(2006/2007) Stress removal and stress addition in Spanish. Journal of Portuguese Linguistics, 5(2)/6(1): 59–89. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hualde, J.I., & Prieto, P
(2015). Intonational variation in Spanish: European and American varieties. In S. Frota & P. Prieto (Eds), Intonation in Romance (pp. 350-391). Oxford: OUP. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kim, J.Y
(2011) Discrepancy between perception and production of stop consonants by Spanish heritage speakers in the United States. Unpublished MA thesis. Korea University.Google Scholar
2015). Perception and production of Spanish lexical stress by Spanish heritage speakers and English L2 learners of Spanish. In E. Willis, P.M. Butragueño & E.H. Zendejas (Ed.) Selected Proceedings of the 6th Conference on Laboratory Approaches to Romance Phonology pp. 106 128 Somerville, MA Cascadilla Proceedings Project
Kim, S., & Avelino, H
(2003) An intonational study of focus and word order variation in Mexican Spanish. In E. Herrera Zendejas & P.M. Butragueño (Eds.), La tonia: Dimensiones fonéticas y fonológicas (pp. 357–374). México: Colegio de México.Google Scholar
Knightly, L., Jun, S.A., Oh, J., & Au, T.K
(2003) Production benefits of childhood overhearing. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 114, 465–474. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ladd, D.R
(1996) Intonational phonology. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
(2008) Intonational phonology (second edition). Cambridge: CUP. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Levis, J
(1999) The intonation and meaning of normal yes/no questions. World Englishes, 18, 373–380. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Marian, V., Blumenfeld, H., & Kaushanskaya, M
(2007) The language experience and proficiency questionnaire (LEAP-Q): Assessing language profiles in bilinguals and multilinguals. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 50, 940–967. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Montrul, S
(2008) Incomplete acquisition in bilingualism: Re-examining the age factor (Studies in Bilingualism 39). Philadelphia: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Nagy, N., & Kochetov, A
(2013) VOT across the generations: A cross-linguistic study of contact-induced change. In P. Siemund, I. Gogolin, M. Schulz, & J. Davydova (Eds.), Multilingualism and language diversity in urban areas. Acquisition, identities, space, education (Hamburg Studies in Linguistic Diversity 1) (pp. 19–38). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Oh, J.S., & Au, T.K.F
(2005) Learning Spanish as a heritage language: The role of sociocultural background variables. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 18(3), 229–241. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
O’Rourke, E
(2006) The direction of inflection: Downtrends and uptrends in Peruvian Spanish broad focus declaratives. In M. Díaz-Campos (Ed.), Selected Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Laboratory Approaches to Spanish Phonetics and Phonology (pp. 62–74). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Orozco, L
(2008) Estudio Sociolingüístico de la Cortesía en Tratamientos y Peticiones. Datos de Guadalajara. Unpublished PhD dissertation, El Colegio de México.Google Scholar
(2010) Peticiones corteses y factores prosódicos. In E. Herrera Zendejas & P.M. Butragueño (Eds.), Fonología instrumental (pp. 335–355). México: El Colegio de México.Google Scholar
Pascual y Cabo, D., & Rothman, J
(2012) The (il)logical problem of heritage speaker bilingualism and incomplete acquisition. Applied Linguistics, 33(4), 1–7. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Pierrehumbert, J
(1980) The phonology and phonetics of English intonation. Unpublished PhD dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
Pierrehumbert, J., & Hirschberg, J
(1990) The meaning of intonational contours in the interpretation of discourse. In P. Cohen, J. Morgan, & M. Pollack (Eds.), Intentions in communication (pp. 271–311). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Polinsky, M., & Kagan, O
(2007) Heritage languages: In the ‘wild’ and in the classroom. Language and Linguistics Compass, 1(5), 368–395. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Prieto, P
(1998) The scaling of the L values in Spanish downstepping contours. Journal of Phonetics, 26, 261–282. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2006) Phonological phrasing in Spanish. In F. Martínez-Gil & S. Colina (Eds.), Optimality-theoretic studies in Spanish phonology (Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 99) (pp. 39–60). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Prieto, P., & Roseano, P
(Eds) (2010) Transcription of intonation of the Spanish language. Munich: Lincom.Google Scholar
Prieto, P., Shih, C., & Nibert, H
(1996) Pitch downtrend in Spanish. Journal of Phonetics, 24, 445–473. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Prieto, P., Van Santen, J., & Hirschberg, J
(1995) Tonal alignment patterns in Spanish. Journal of Phonetics, 23, 429–451. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Quilis, A
(1999) Tratado de fonología y fonética españolas, 2a edición. Madrid: Gredos.Google Scholar
Rao, R
(2009) Deaccenting in spontaneous speech on Barcelona Spanish. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 2(1), 31–75. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2010) Final lengthening and pause duration in three dialects of Spanish. In M. Ortega-Llebaria (Ed.), Selected proceedings of the 4th Conference on Laboratory Approaches to Spanish Phonology (pp. 69–82). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
(2014) On the status of the phoneme /b/ in heritage speakers of Spanish. Sintagma, 26, 37–54.Google Scholar
(2015) Manifestations of /bdg/ in heritage speakers of Spanish. Heritage Language Journal, 12(1), 48–74.Google Scholar
Rao, R., & Ronquest, R
(2015) Heritage Spanish phonetics and phonology: Looking back and moving forward. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 8(2), 403-414. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Robles-Puente, S
(2014) Prosody in contact: Spanish in Los Angeles. Unpublished PhD dissertation. University of Southern California.Google Scholar
Ronquest, R
(2012) An acoustic analysis of heritage Spanish vowels. Unpublished PhD dissertation. Indiana University, Bloomington.Google Scholar
(2013) An acoustic examination of unstressed vowel reduction in heritage Spanish. In Selected proceedings of the 15th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium (pp. 151–171). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Rothman, J
(2009) Understanding the nature and outcomes of early bilingualism: Romance languages as heritage languages. International Journal of Bilingualism, 13(2), 155–163. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Sosa, J.M
(1999) La entonación del español: Su estructura fónica, variabilidad y dialectología. Madrid: Cátedra.Google Scholar
Willis, E
(2005a) An initial examination of Southwest Spanish vowels. Southwest Journal of Linguistics, 24, 185–198.Google Scholar
(2005b) Tonal levels in Puebla Mexico Spanish declaratives and absolute interrogatives. In R. Gess & E. Rubin (Eds.), Theoretical and experimental approaches to Romance linguistics (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 272) (pp. 351–363). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 6 other publications

Amengual, Mark
2019. Type of early bilingualism and its effect on the acoustic realization of allophonic variants: Early sequential and simultaneous bilinguals. International Journal of Bilingualism 23:5 ► pp. 954 ff. Crossref logo
Gabriel, Christoph
2022.  In Linguistik im Sprachvergleich, ► pp. 27 ff. Crossref logo
Milner, Allison
2021. El diptongo/hiato como rasgo contrastivo: un estudio perceptual con hablantes de herencia de español. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 14:2 ► pp. 459 ff. Crossref logo
Rao, Rajiv & Emily Kuder
2016. Investigaciones sobre la fonética y la fonología del español como lengua de herencia: implicaciones pedagógicas y curriculares. Journal of New Approaches in Educational Research 5:2 ► pp. 99 ff. Crossref logo
Shelton, Michael & Hannah Grant
2018. Syllable weight in monolingual and heritage Spanish . Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 11:2 ► pp. 395 ff. Crossref logo
Torres, Kelly M., Meagan Caridad Arrastia-Chisholm & Samantha Tackett
2020. Perceptions of Writing Anxiety and Self-Efficacy Among Spanish Heritage Language Learners. Journal of Hispanic Higher Education 19:1 ► pp. 84 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 30 march 2022. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.