Declarative intonation of Japanese-Spanish bilinguals in Spanish casual speech

Abstract

This study presents an analysis of Spanish intonation produced by native speakers of Japanese. The analysis focuses on the nuclear configurations of 828 declarative tokens in the semi-spontaneous Spanish speech of 12 Japanese-Spanish bilingual speakers living in Valencia, Spain. Results of the analysis show that the speakers can produce the prosodic differences between two declarative utterance types that are differentiated in peninsular Spanish by pitch peak timing and final boundary contours. Specifically, the speakers of this study favored rising final boundary tones when maintaining their turn and the falling final contours for the end of turn. Results show interlanguage with greater variation in final contours and pitch peak placement than predicted. The study contributes to acoustic research on learner intonation by late bilinguals, particularly in a language contact situation involving an Asian language and romance language pair.