Microvariation in accentual alignment in Basque Spanish

Area of Science:

• Phonetics and Phonology
• Sociolinguistics
• Prosody

Background:

• Spanish varieties in the Basque Country exhibit unique linguistic features due to language contact.
• Accentual alignment, a key prosodic feature, varies across Spanish dialects.
• Lekeitio Basque (LB) and Lekeitio Spanish (LS) present a unique case of bilingual influence on Spanish intonation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate and compare accentual alignment patterns in Lekeitio Spanish (LS) and Vitoria Spanish (VS).
• To contrast these patterns with Madrid Spanish (MS) and Lekeitio Basque (LB).
• To explore the influence of Basque on Spanish intonation in the Basque Country.

Main Methods:

• Acoustic analysis of pitch contours and accentual peak alignment.
• Comparison of intonational patterns across three Spanish varieties (LS, VS, MS) and one Basque variety (LB).
• Examination of tonal target alignment and syllable-timed prosody.

Main Results:

• Lekeitio Spanish (LS) displays mixed intonational properties: pitch rises like Spanish but with earlier peak alignment, similar to Basque.
• Vitoria Spanish (VS) shows typical Spanish accentual alignment with later peak alignment and earlier low tone target alignment.
• A continuum of tonal target alignment was observed across all studied varieties, questioning the "starred tone" notation.

Conclusions:

• Lekeitio Spanish (LS) demonstrates significant influence from Lekeitio Basque (LB) in its accentual alignment.
• Vitoria Spanish (VS) prosody aligns with general patterns observed in other Spanish dialects.
• The findings contribute to understanding language contact phenomena in prosody and the limitations of current intonational analysis models.