Rhythmic Properties of a Contact Variety: Comparing Read and Semi-spontaneous Speech in Argentinean Porteño Spanish

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Abstract

This chapter investigates the speech rhythm of Porteño, the variety of Spanish spoken in Buenos Aires, which is said to be influenced by Italian due to massive streams of immigration from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. Given that migration-induced language contact is necessarily linked to the learning of a foreign language by the immigrant population, it has been argued that the typical shape of Porteño prosody is the result of prosodic transfer from L1 Italian to L2 Spanish (McMahon 2004). On the basis of analysis of scripted data, it was shown in earlier work Porteño and L2 Castilian Spanish, produced by Italian natives, pattern with Italian in displaying higher proportion of vocalic material in the speech signal and greater variability of vocalic intervals, in contrast to L1 Castilian Spanish. The goal of the present chapter is to corroborate these findings analyzing semi-spontaneous speech. We hypothesize that both Porteño and L2 Castilian Spanish pattern with Italian with respect to their rhythmic shape in displaying a greater variability of vocalic intervals (VarcoV, VnPVI) and a higher proportion of vocalic material (% V) than native Castilian Spanish. The analyses performed on semi-spontaneous data from the four varieties confirm our expectations, thus speaking in favour of McMahon’s transfer hypothesis. Furthermore, we show that the rhythmic differences among Porteño, Italian and L2 Castilian Spanish on the one hand and L1 Castilian Spanish on the other are most adequately captured by the % V/VnPVI plane.

Keywords

Speech Signal Stressed Syllable Versus Interval Unstressed Syllable Vowel Reduction 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Notes

Acknowledgments

We would like to express our gratitude to Ariadna Benet (University of Osnabruck, Germany) who recorded the Castilian Spanish, L2 Spanish and Italian speakers. We also thank Andrea Pešková, Jeanette Thulke and Jonas Grünke (University of Hamburg, Germany) for their help.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Institute of Romance StudiesUniversity of HamburgHamburgGermany

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