Article published in:
Prosodic Issues in Language Contact Situations
Edited by Yolanda Congosto Martín and Laura Morgenthaler
[Spanish in Context 16:3] 2019
► pp. 353–389

Traces of language contact in intonation

The case of Yucatecan Spanish

| University of Cologne

This article deals with the intonational realization of contrastive focus in Yucatecan Spanish. Data from three recent elicitation studies with a total of ten bilingual speakers of Yucatecan Spanish (YS) and Yucatec Maya (YM) and five monolingual speakers of YS suggest that contrastive focus in the Yucatecan Spanish variant spoken by the Spanish-dominant and monolingual speakers is mostly signaled by means of a high pitch early in the intonation phrase (IP) followed by a fall to the final stressed syllable of a contrasted word. In this respect, the established YS variety crucially differs from standard Mexican Spanish (MS), where the stressed syllable of a contrastive constituent is generally associated with an L+H* pitch accent (cf. de-la-Mota, Martín Butragueño & Prieto. 2010). However, the systematicity described above only shows up in the data produced by the Spanish-dominant and monolingual YS speakers, whereas the balanced bilingual data is characterized by much higher idiosyncratic variation. This fact suggests that the development of intonational systems is also a matter of consolidation or strengthening of features.

Keywords: language contact, intonation, contrastive focus, Yucatecan Spanish
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Database and methodology
    • 2.1Database 1: ELIC01
      • i.Participants
      • ii.Materials and procedure
      • iii.Results
    • 2.2Database 2: TAP02
      • i.Participants
      • ii.Materials and procedure
    • 2.3Database 3: ELIC02
      • i.Participants
      • ii.Materials and procedure
      • iii.Results
  • 3.Intonational realization of contrastive focus in YS: the Spanish-dominant data
    • 3.1Intonational characteristics of YS broad focus utterances
    • 3.2Intonational realization of contrastive focus in Yucatecan Spanish
    • 3.3Marginal patterns
  • 4.Language contact
    • 4.1The left high tone, intonational focus marking, and language contact
    • 4.2Developmental phases
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 17 January 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/sic.00043.uth
References
Aissen, Judith
1992 Topic and Focus in Mayan. Language 681, 43–80. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baird, Brandon O.
2017 Prosodic Transfer among Spanish-K’ichee’ Bilinguals. In K. Bellamy, Michael W. Child, P. González, Antje Muntendam & M. Carmen Parafita Cuoto (eds.), Multidisciplinary Approaches to Bilingualism in the Hispanic and Lusophone World. Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistic 131, 149–74. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barnes, Hilary & Jim Michnowicz
2013 “A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Pre-nuclear Peak Alignment in Yucatan Spanish. Selected Proceedings of the 15th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, ed. Chad Howe et al., 221–235. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Barrera Vásquez, Alfredo
1977 El idioma español en Yucatán. Encicl. Yucatanense VI1, 341–375.Google Scholar
Birdsong, D., Gertken, L. M., & Amengual, M.
2012 Bilingual Language Profile: An Easy-to-Use Instrument to Assess Bilingualism. COERLL, University of Texas at Austin 20 Jan 121. https://​sites​.la​.utexas​.edu​/bilingual/.
de-la-Mota, Carme, Pedro Martín Butragueño & Pilar Prieto
2010 Mexican Spanish Intonation. In P. Prieto & P. Roseano (eds.), Transcription of Intonation of the Spanish language, 319–350. München: Lincom Europa.Google Scholar
Face, Thimothy
2003 Intonation in Spanish declaratives: Differences between lab speech and spontaneous speech. Catalan Journal of Linguistics 21, 115-131. Retrieved from http://​ddd​.uab​.cat​/pub​/linguistics​/16956885v2p115​.pdf
Gabriel, Christoph
2010 On Focus, Prosody, and Word Order in Argentinean Spanish: A Minimalist OT Account. Revista Virtual de Estudos da Linguagem, 183–222.Google Scholar
2007 Fokus im Spannungsfeld von Phonologie und Syntax. Eine Studie zum Spanischen. Frankfurt: Vervuert. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grice, Martine, Stefan Baumann & Nils Jagdfeld
2009 Tonal association and derived nuclear accents. The case of downstepping contours in German. Lingua 1191, 881–905. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grice, Martin & Melanie Uth
2015 Early high pitch an contrastive focus in Yucatecan Spanish. Poster presentation at Phonetics and Phonology in Europe 2015, Cambridge, UK.Google Scholar
Gussenhoven, Carlos & Renske Teeuw
2008 A moraic and a syllabic H tone in Yucatec Maya. In Fonología Instrumental: Patrones Fónicos y Variación Lingüística. Esther Herrera y Pedro Martín Butragueño (eds.). México: Colegio de México, 49–72.Google Scholar
Gutiérrez-Bravo, Rodrigo
2006 Structural markedness and syntactic structure: a study of word order and the left-periphery in Mexican Spanish. New York: Routledge/Taylor and Francis.Google Scholar
Gutiérrez-Bravo, Rodrigo & Jorge Monforte y Madera
2008 On the nature of unmarked word order in Yucatec Maya. Handout presented in the Symposium on Mayan Languages, Workshop at the 2008 meeting of the SSILA, Chicago, 3–4 January 2008.
Gutiérrez-Bravo, Rodrigo, Martín Sobrino, & Melanie Uth
2019 Contrastive focus in Yucatecan Spanish. In: Àngel J. Gallego (ed.), The syntactic variation of Spanish dialects. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 275–296. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kügler, Frank & Stavros Skopeteas
2006 Interaction of lexical tone and information structure in Yucatec Maya. Proc. 2nd International Symposium on Tonal Aspects of Languages, La Rochelle, 83–88.Google Scholar
Kim, Sahyang & Avelino, Heriberto
2003 An intonational study of focus and word order variation in Mexican Spanish. In Esther Herrera & Pedro M. Butragueño (eds.) La tonia: Dimensiones fonéticas y fonológicas, 357–374. México DF: El Colegio de México.Google Scholar
Kügler, Frank & Stavros Skopeteas
2007 On the Universality of Prosodic Reflexes of Contrast: The Case of Yucatec Maya, Proceedings of ICPhS XVI.Google Scholar
Lipski, John M.
2004 El español de América. 3. edition. Madrid: Cátedra.Google Scholar
Lope Blanch, Juan M.
1987 Estudios sobre el español de Yucatán, 1st edn. México: Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.Google Scholar
Martín Butragueño, Pedro
2004 Configuraciones circunflejas en la entonación del español mexicano. Revista de Filología Española 48(2). 347–373. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Martín Butragueño, Pedro, Érika Mendoza, and Leonor Orozco
2015 Aproximación a la prosodia del español de México: datos del COEM [Corpus Oral del Español de México]. Talk at AMLA, XIII, Congreso Nacional de Lingüística , October 7–10 2015.
Mediz Bolio, Antonio
1951 Interinfluencia del maya con el español de Yucatán. Mérida: Zamná.Google Scholar
Michnowicz, Jim
2009 Intercovalic voiced stops in Yucatan Spanish: A case of contact-induced language change? In Manel Lacorte & Jennifer Leeman (eds.) Spanish in the United States and other contact environments: sociolinguistics, ideology and pedagogy, 67–84. Madrid, Frankfurt am Main: Iberoamericana; Vervuert.Google Scholar
2011 The Standardization of Yucatan Spanish: Family Case Studies in Izamal and Mérida. In Kimberly Geeslin & Manuel Díaz-Campos (eds.), Selected Proceedings of the 14th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, 102–115. Somerville, MA, USA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
O’Rourke, Erin
2012 The realization of contrastive focus in Peruvian Spanish intonation. Lingua 122(5). 494–510. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pfeiler, Barbara
1992 Así som, los de Yucatam: El proceso fonológico en dos lenguas en contacto. In Memorias del Congreso Internacional de Mayista 11, 110–122. UNAM, México.Google Scholar
Selinker, Larry
1972 Interlanguage. International Review of Applied Linguistics, 101, 209–241. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2003 Rediscovering Interlanguage. New York [u.a.]: Routledge.Google Scholar
Skopeteas, Stavros & Elisabeth Verhoeven
2009 Distinctness effects on VOS order: evidence from Yucatec Maya. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics, Special Issue on Mayan Languages, eds. Heriberto Avelino, Jessica Coon, and Elisabeth Norcliffe, pp. 135–152.Google Scholar
2012 Left-peripheral arguments and discourse interface strategies in Yucatec Maya. In I. Kučerová & A. Neeleman (eds.), Contrasts and Positions in Information Structure, 296–321. Cambridge, Mass: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sobrino, C. Martín
2010 Contacto lingüístico maya-español: Transferencias en la morfosintaxis del español yucateco. Temas Antropológicos 32(1). 79–94.Google Scholar
Suárez, Victor M.
1996 El español que se habla en Yucatán. Mérida, Mx: Universidad de Yucatán.Google Scholar
Tonhäuser, Judith
2003 F-constructions in Yucatec Maya. The Proceedings of SULA 21, eds. Jan Andersen, Paula Menéndez-Benito, and Adam Werle, pp. 203–223. Vancouver, BC: GLSA, Amherst: University of Massachusetts.Google Scholar
Uth, Melanie
2014 Spanish preverbal subjects in contexts of narrow information focus: Non-contrastive focalization or epistemic-evidential marking? Grazer Linguistische Studien 811, 87–104.Google Scholar
Vanrell, Maria del Mar, Feldhausen, Ingo, Astruc, Luisa
In press. The Discourse Completion Task in Romance prosody research: status quo and outlook appear in: Feldhausen, Ingo, Uli Reich & Maria del Mar Vanrell Eds. Methods in prosody: A view from Romance languages Studies in Laboratory Phonology (SILP) Berlin Language Science Press
Verhoeven, Elisabeth & Skopeteas, Stavros
2015 Licensing focus constructions in Yucatec Maya. International Journal of American Linguistics 81(1), pp. 1–40. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zubizarreta, María L.
1998 Prosody, Focus, and Word Order. Massachusetts: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Zubizarreta, María L. & Jean-Roger Vergnaud
2005 Phrasal Stress, Focus, and Syntax. In Martin Everaert & Henk van Riemsdijk (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Syntax, Vol. 31, 522–568. London: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Baird, Brandon O.
2021. Bilingual language dominance and contrastive focus marking: Gradient effects of K’ichee’ syntax on Spanish prosody. International Journal of Bilingualism 25:3 ► pp. 500 ff. DOI logo
Elordieta, Gorka & Magdalena Romera
2021. The influence of social factors on the prosody of Spanish in contact with Basque. International Journal of Bilingualism 25:1 ► pp. 286 ff. DOI logo
Uth, Melanie & Nuria Martínez García
2020. Circumflex Nuclear Configurations in Yucatecan Spanish as a Supraregional Feature: The Roles of Bilingualism and Gender. Language and Speech ► pp. 002383092096813 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 18 april 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.