Tonal peaks in the spontaneous speech of vantage level Hungarian learners of Spanish

Kata Baditzné Pálvölgyi

doi:10.1556/2062.2021.00436

Abstract

Abstract This paper reports on a two-part research project, conducted in order to see how Hungarian learners with at least vantage level of Spanish realize melodic peaks in their Spanish utterances. First, we are focusing on the tonal and distributional characteristics of melodic peaks, taking into consideration the proportion of the rise in f0 with respect to the previous syllable and examining if the affected syllable is lexically stressed. Second, the range of the tonal rise until the first peak of the utterance is analyzed. The method applied in both cases is Cantero Serena’s Prosodic Analysis of Speech (2019), which represents intonation by objectively comparable standardized melodic curves. The differences found in the speech of Hungarian learners as compared to native Spanish speakers have not proved to be significant in the aspects analyzed here. The main finding of the research is that native Spanish speakers tend to realize the first peak of their declarative sentences as the highest f0 point of the utterance, whereas this is less typical in the oral production of Hungarian learners of Spanish.

Highlights

Unauthenticated | Downloaded 11/08/21 01:31 PM UTCActa Linguistica Academica produce uncommon stress and melodic patterns according to native Spanish speakers (Baditzne Palv€olgyi 2019).Word stress is the result of the prominence given to a syllable compared to the rest of the syllables in the word (Hualde et al 2010, 103) by means of changes in the fundamental frequency, intensity or duration with respect to its context (Quilis 1999, 385)
The research questions of this study are whether, to B1 students, (1) B2 level HLS still transfer their Hungarian stress patterns to Spanish words, by giving melodic prominence to word-initial syllables, even if they are unstressed in Spanish, and if (2) B2 level Hungarian learners of Spanish realize Spanish stressed syllables with perceivable melodic prominence if the syllable is not word-initial
It is remarkable that the average values of tonal movements immediately to the stressed syllables and the mean values of tonal movements from the stressed syllable to the immediately following one practically coincide in the two corpora; statistical testing revealed no significant difference in the means (f0 values in %, with an added constant, were log-transformed for the purposes of statistical testing; in both cases the Mann-Whitney test was applied in SPSS) (Figs 8 and 9)

Summary

Introduction

Word stress is the result of the prominence given to a syllable compared to the rest of the syllables in the word (Hualde et al 2010, 103) by means of changes in the fundamental frequency, intensity or duration with respect to its context (Quilis 1999, 385). The three prosodic characteristics that can play a prominent role in accent perception are tone, intensity and duration, but until today there is no complete unanimity in the literature on whether the stressed Spanish syllable is pronounced in a higher tone, with longer duration or with greater intensity compared to its adjacent context. According to Navarro Tomas (1964), the stressed syllable is marked by greater intensity, according to Llisterri et al (2003), by higher fundamental frequency (f0), and the latter is complemented by longer duration according to Ortega-Llebaria (2006). Though the most comprehensive literature on contemporary Spanish intonation includes works in the autosegmental ToBI framework (Prieto et al 2010–2014) or as part of the AMPER project (Atlas Multimedia de Prosodia del Espacio Romanico, cf. e.g. Dorta 2013), in the present paper Cantero Serena’s approach (2002) is followed (for the reasons of this choice, see Section 3), in which melodic analysis is based on the representation of tonal movements between syllables, expressed in terms of percentages

Methods

Results

Conclusion