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Language-specific Intonation in Bilingual Palenquero/Spanish Speakers: A Prosodic Transition Between Two Generations
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Abstract
It has been suggested that Palenquero/Spanish bilinguals use penultimate lengthening in a language specific way (Correa 2017), and that these bilinguals may disambiguate language in identification tasks by using intonational cues from the Palenquero creole (Lipski 2016). Nevertheless, it has also been argued that speakers use the same intonation in both languages (Correa 2017). This research study aims to determine to what extent two generational groups of Palenquero/Spanish bilinguals (young adult and elderly speakers) maintain their languages as intonationally and temporally distinct in statements, yes/no questions and wh-questions. Palenquero/Spanish bilinguals speak both a local variety of Caribbean Spanish, and Palenquero, an Afro-Hispanic creole which still preserves some of the phonotactic restrictions of their African ancestors. Flat or plateau-shaped intonation seems to be typical in Palenquero prosody, due apparently to a stress-driven (residual) high tone from an African language. It has not been made clear, however, whether Palenquero/Spanish bilinguals keep their languages prosodically differentiated. To this end, ten Palenquero/Spanish bilinguals participated in two unilingual discourse completion tasks, from which statements, yes/no questions, and wh-questions were elicited. Phrase-final lengthening was tested with linear mixed-effects models predicting vowel length in the stressed syllable of final trochees and iambs, from both young adult (μage = 39.5, SD = 1.97) and elderly bilinguals (μage = 64.3, SD = 5.44). Language-specific intonation was explored in the most important F0 variances, using Functional Principal Component Analysis. Despite the strong similarities between the two languages, results indicate that both groups keep their two languages intonationally distinct using plateau-shaped contours in Palenquero, and initial rises followed by steeper declinations in Spanish. However, elderly speakers not only implement penultimate lengthening language-specifically in statements and wh-questions—being more pronounced in Palenquero—but furthermore tend to produce final intonation in a language specific way across yes/no questions. It seems that the elderly might have overgeneralized the truncation rule followed by young adults, and found in other Spanish varieties, so that most of the elderly’s questions end in a “truncated" way. It means that elderly bilinguals exhibit a wider degree of prosodic differentiation between their languages, while young adults show a more simplified prosodic system between their languages, behaving in a way similar to other Spanish speakers in the Caribbean.
Type
Dissertation (Open Access)
Date
2024-09
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License
Attribution 4.0 International
License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Journal Issue
Embargo Lift Date
2025-09-01