The present study investigates how focus is prosodically realized by Spanish heritage speakers, and whether they show different patterns from Spanish monolinguals and English second language (L2) learners of Spanish.
Design:
Prompt questions were auditorily presented to elicit participants’ production of sentences with different scopes and locations of focus.
Data and analysis:
Relative prosodic prominence between focused and non-focused constituents, as well as tonal alignment, were acoustically analyzed and compared across the groups. Additional strategies that participants used are also presented.
Findings:
The results revealed that all three groups used multiple strategies, both prosodic and non-prosodic, to express focus in Spanish. However, the specific cues that were used differed in each group. Monolinguals and L2 learners clearly differed from each other in that the former preferred non-prosodic strategies (e.g., cleft constructions, complementizer que ‘that’), while the latter used various prosodic strategies (e.g., relative prosodic prominence, early peak alignment, post-focal deaccenting). Heritage speakers, on the other hand, used a mix of strategies that were observed in both monolinguals’ and L2 learners’ speech.
Originality:
Prosody is an understudied area in heritage language research. This is one of few studies that examined Spanish heritage speakers’ use of prosodic cues in the realization of focus in Spanish and the first to extensively analyze various acoustic correlates of focus produced by Spanish heritage speakers.
Implication:
The findings suggest that heritage speakers are flexible in their use of linguistic strategies as they are able to extract resources from their two language systems.
AmengualM. (2012). Interlingual influence in bilingual speech: Cognate status effect in a continuum of bilingualism. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 15(3), 517–530.
2.
AuT.KnightlyL.JunS.OhJ. (2002). Overhearing a language during childhood. Psychological Science, 13(3), 238–243.
3.
BatesD.MaechlerM.BolkerB.WalkerS. (2015). Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software, 67(1), 1–48.
4.
BeaudrieS.DucarC. (2005). Beginning level university heritage programs: Creating a space for all heritage language learners. Heritage Language Journal, 3(1), 1–26.
5.
BeckmanM.HirschbergJ.Shattuck-HufnagelS. (2005). The original ToBI system and the evolution of the ToBI framework. In JunS.-A. (Ed.), Prosodic typology: The phonology of intonation and phrasing (pp. 9–54). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
BirdsongD.GertkenL.AmengualM.Bilingual Language Profile: An Easy-to-Use Instrument to Assess Bilingualism. COERLL, University of Texas at Austin. Web. 20 Jan. 2012. Retrieved from https://sites.la.utexas.edu/bilingual/
8.
BoersmaP.WeeninkD. (2015). Praat: Doing phonetics by computer [Computer program]. Version 5.4.14. Retrieved from http://www.praat.org/
9.
BurdinR.Phillips-BourassS.TurnbullR.YasavulM.ClopperC.TonhauserJ. (2015). Variation in the prosody of focus in head- and head/edge-prominence languages. Lingua, 165, 254–276.
10.
CarreiraM. (2013). The vitality of Spanish in the United States. Heritage Language Journal, 10(3), 396–413.
11.
ColeJ. (2015). Prosody in context: A review. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 30, 1–31.
12.
ContrerasH. (1976). A theory of word order with special reference to Spanish. Amsterdam: North-Holland.
13.
de la Mota GorrizC. (1997). Prosody of sentences with contrastive new information in Spanish. In BotinisA.KouroupetroglouG.CarayiannisG. (Eds.), Intonation: Theory, models and applications: Proceedings of an ESCA workshop (pp. 75–78). Athens, Greece: ESCA.
14.
DomínguezL.ArcheM. (2014). Subject inversion in non-native Spanish. Lingua, 145, 243–265.
15.
DonatiC.NesporM. (2003). From focus to syntax. Lingua, 113, 1119–1142.
16.
Estebas-VilaplanaE. (2007). The phonological status of English and Spanish prenuclear f0 peaks. Atlantis, 29(2), 39–57.
17.
FaceT.D’ImperioM. (2005). Reconsidering a focal typology: Evidence from Spanish and Italian. Rivista Di Linguistica, 17(2), 271–289.
18.
FéryC. (2016). Intonation and prosodic structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
19.
FlegeJ. (1995). Second language speech learning: Theory, findings, and problems. In StrangeW. (Ed.), Speech perception and linguistic experience: Issues in cross-language research (pp. 233–277). Timodium, MD: York Press.
20.
GabrielC. (2010). On focus, prosody, and word order in Argentinean Spanish: A minimalist OT account. Revista Virtual De Estudos Da Linguagem, 4, 183–222.
21.
GoldmanJ. (2011). EasyAlign: An automatic phonetic alignment tool under Praat. Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association. Retrieved from http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:18188
GriesS.MiglioV. (2014). New information in naturalistic data is also signaled by pitch movement: An analysis from monolingual English/Spanish and bilingual Spanish speakers. Complutense Journal of English Studies, 22, 11–33.
24.
GrosjeanF. (1989). Neurolinguists, beware! The bilingual is not two monolinguals in one person. Brain and Language, 36, 3–15.
25.
GuptonT. (2017). Early minority language acquirers of Spanish exhibit focuus-related interface asymmetries: Word order alternation and optionality in Spanish-Catalan, Spanish-Galician, and Spanish-English bilinguals. In LauchlanF.Parafita CoutoM. C. (Eds.), Bilingualism and minority languages in Europe (pp. 212–239). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
26.
GuptonT.Leal MéndezT. (2013). Experimental methodologies: Two case studies investigating the syntax-discourse interface. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 6(1), 139–164.
27.
HenriksenN. (2015). Acoustic analysis of the rhotic contrast in Chicagoland Spanish: An intergenerational study. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 5(3), 285–321.
28.
HertelT. (2003). Lexical and discourse factors in the second language acquisition of Spanish word order. Second Language Research, 14, 273–304.
29.
HootB. (2017). Narrow presentational focus in heritage Spanish and the syntax–discourse interface. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 7(1), 63–95.
30.
HualdeJ. (1999). Basic intonational contours in Spanish. Paper Presented at the First Sp-ToBI Workshop, Columbus, OH.
31.
HualdeJ. I. (2005). The sounds of Spanish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
32.
ItoK.SpeerS. (2008). Anticipatory effects of intonation: Eye movements during instructed visual search. Journal of Memory and Language, 58(2), 541–573.
33.
JunS. (2005). Prosodic typology. In JunS. (Ed.), Prosodic typology: The phonology of intonation and phrasing (pp. 430–458). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
34.
KimS.AvelinoH. (2003). An intonational study of focus and word order variation in Mexican Spanish. In HerreraE.Martín ButragueñoP. (Eds.), La tonía: Dimensiones fonéticas y fonológicas (pp. 357–374). Mexico City: El Colegio de México.
35.
KuznetsovaA.BrockhoffP.ChristensenR. (2017). lmerTest package: Tests in linear mixed effects models. Journal of Statistical Software, 82(13), 1–26.
36.
LacorteM.CanabalE. (2003.) Interaction with heritage language learners in foreign language classrooms. In BlythC. (Ed.), The sociolinguistics of foreign-language classrooms: Contributions of the native, the near-native, and the non-native speaker (pp. 107–129). Boston: Heinle.
37.
LaddD. (2008). Intonational phonology. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
38.
LenthR. (2016). Least-squares means: The R package lsmeans. Journal of Statistical Software, 69(1), 1–33.
39.
LozanoC. (2006). Focus and split intransitivity: The acquisition of word order alternations in non-native Spanish. Second Language Research, 22, 145–187.
40.
LynchA. (2014). The first decade of the heritage language journal: A retrospective view of research on heritage languages. Heritage Language Journal, 11(3), 224–242.
41.
Martín ButragueñoP. (2005). La construcción prosódica de la estructura focal en español. In KnauerG.Bellosta von ColbeV. (Eds.), Variación sintáctica en español: Un reto para las teorías de la sintaxis (pp. 117–144). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.
42.
Martín ButragueñoP. (2006). El estudio de la entonación del español de México. In SedanoM.BolívarA.ShiroM. (Eds.), Haciendo lingüística: Homenaje a Paola Bentivoglio (pp. 105–125). Caracas: Universidad Central de Venezuela.
43.
Martín ButragueñoP.MendozaE. (forthcoming). Prosodic nuclear patterns in narrow and broad focus utterances: Pragmatic and social factors in Central Mexican Spanish. In UthM.GarcíaM. (Eds.), Focus realization and interpretation in romance and beyond. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.
44.
MartinezG.SchwartzA. (2012). Elevating “low” language for high stakes: A case for critical, community-based learning in a medical Spanish for heritage learners program. Heritage Language Journal, 9(2), 37–49.
45.
MontrulS. (2008). Incomplete acquisition in bilingualism: Re-examining the age factor. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.
46.
MontrulS. (2010). How similar are adult second language learners and Spanish heritage speakers? Spanish clitics and word order. Applied Psycholinguistics, 31(1), 167–207.
47.
MontrulS. (2012). Is the heritage language like a second language?Eurosla Yearbook, 12(1), 1–29.
48.
OhJ. S.NashB. A. (2014). Attitudes and motivations of adult Spanish language learners: A comparison of heritage language learners and second language learners. Heritage Language Journal, 11(1), 29–44.
49.
PeirceJ. (2007). PsychoPy—psychophysics software in Python. Journal of Neuroscience Methods, 162(1–2), 8–13.
50.
PolinskyM.KaganO. (2007). Heritage languages: In the ‘wild’ and in the classroom. Language and Linguistics Compass, 1(5), 368–395.
51.
PrietoP.van SantenJ.HirschbergJ. (1995). Tonal alignment patterns in Spanish. Journal of Phonetics, 23, 429–451.
52.
RaoR. (2014). On the status of the phoneme /b/ in heritage speakers of Spanish. Sintagma, 26, 37–54.
53.
R Core Team (2016). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. Retrieved from https://www.R-project.org/
54.
Robles-PuenteS. (2014). Prosody in contact: Spanish in Los Angeles. Doctoral dissertation, University of Southern California.
55.
RonquestR. (2013). An acoustic examination of unstressed vowel reduction in heritage Spanish. In HoweC.BlackwellS. E.QuesadaM. L. (Eds.), Selected proceedings of the 15th Hispanic linguistics symposium (pp. 157–171). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
56.
SoraceA. (2000). Syntactic optionality in non-native grammars. Second Language Research, 16, 193–202.
57.
SteedmanM. (2014). The surface-compositional semantics of English intonation. Language, 90, 2–57.
58.
StevensG. (1992). The social and demographic context of language use in the United States. American Sociological Review, 57(2), 171–185.
59.
ValdésG. (2001). Heritage language students: Profiles and possibilities. In PreytonJ. K.RanardD. A.McGinnisS. (Eds.), Heritage languages in America: Preserving a national resource (pp. 37–80). McHenry, IL: The Center for Applied Linguistics and Delta Systems.
60.
YipV.MatthewsS. (2006). Assessing language dominance in bilingual acquisition: A case for mean length of utterance differentials. Language Assessment Quarterly, 3(2), 97–116.
61.
Zárate-SándezG. (2015). Perception and production of intonation among English-Spanish bilingual speakers at different proficiency levels. Doctoral dissertation, Georgetown University.
62.
ZubizarretaM. (1998). Focus, prosody, and word order. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
