Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-r6qrq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T04:47:48.868Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

9 - The Syllable

from Part II - The Spanish Sound System

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2018

Kimberly L. Geeslin
Affiliation:
Indiana University
Get access

Summary

Despite the importance of prosody in the linguistic system of Spanish, its study has been relatively neglected in traditional grammars, which have typically concentrated on the description of syntactic and morphological patterns as well as the study of segmental phonetics and phonology. This chapter aims to provide an overview of the current knowledge of the prosodic features of Spanish in terms of stress, rhythm, and intonation. As far as stress is concerned, the chapter describes the system of lexical stress positions and gives an overview of the acoustic correlates of stress. With regard to rhythm, the chapter describes several Spanish varieties as ‘syllable-timed’ and explains how this is partially related to other linguistic properties of the language. From an intonational point of view, the chapter shows that Spanish uses melodic modulations for phrasing as well as for a wide set of pragmatic functions, including speech act marking, epistemic marking, and information structure marking. The chapter describes the main intonation contours in different dialects and, in addition, briefly presents the most recent version of Sp_ToBI, a consensus prosody transcription system based on the Autosegmental-Metrical model.
Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Beckman, M. and Pierrehumbert, J. (1986). Intonational Structure in Japanese and English. Phonology, 3, 255309.Google Scholar
Cabré, T. and Prieto, P. (2004). Prosodic and Analogical Effects in Lexical Glide Formation in Catalan. Probus, 16 (2), 113150.Google Scholar
Carreira, M. (1988). The Structure of Palatal Consonants in Spanish. Chicago Linguistic Society, 24 (1), 7387.Google Scholar
Cho, Y. Y. and King, T. H. (2003). Semi‐Syllables and Universal Syllabification. In Féry, C. and van de Vijver, R. (eds.), The Syllable in Optimality Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 183212.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clements, G. N. and Keyser, S. J. (1983). CV Phonology. A Generative Theory of the Syllable. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Colina, S. (2002). Interdialectal Variation in Spanish /s/ Aspiration: The Role of Prosodic Structure and Output-to-Output Constraints. In Lee, J. F., Geeslin, K. L., and Clements, J. C. (eds.), Structure, Meaning and Acquisition in Spanish: Papers from the 4th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla, pp. 230243.Google Scholar
Colina, S. (2009). Spanish Phonology: A Syllabic Perspective. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Davis, S. (1988). Topics in Syllable Geometry. New York: Garland Press.Google Scholar
Dell, F. and Elmedlaoui, M. (1985). Syllabic Consonants and Syllabification in Imdlawn Tashlhiyt Berber. Journal of African Languages and Linguistics, 7 (2), 105–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dryer, Matthew S. and Haspelmath, Martin (eds.) (2013). The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Munich: Max Planck Digital Library. Available from http://wals.info (last access December 29, 2017).Google Scholar
Duanmu, S. (2009). Syllable Structure: The Limits of Variation. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Frisch, S., Pierrehumbert, J., and Broe, M. (2004). Similarity Avoidance and the OCP. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 22, 179228.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldsmith, J. (1976). Autosegmental Phonology (dissertation). MIT.Google Scholar
Guerra, R. (1983). Estudio estadístico de la sílaba en español. In Esgueva, M. and Cantarero, M. (eds.), Estudios de fonética I. Madrid: CSIC, pp. 9112.Google Scholar
Guitart, J. M. (1997). Variability, Multilectalism, and the Organization of Phonology in Caribbean Spanish Dialects. In Martínez-Gil, F. and Morales-Front, A. (eds.), Issues in the Phonology and Morphology of the Major Iberian Languages. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, pp. 515536.Google Scholar
Harris, J. W. (1983). Syllable Structure and Stress in Spanish: A Nonlinear Analysis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hoard, J. (1978). Syllabication in Northwest Indian Languages, with Remarks on the Nature of Syllabic Stops and Affricates. In Bell, A. and Hooper, J. (eds.), Syllables and Segments. Amsterdam: North-Holland, pp. 5972.Google Scholar
Hockett, C. F. (1955). A Manual of Phonology. Baltimore, MD: Waverly Press.Google Scholar
Hualde, J. I. (1991). On Spanish Syllabification. In Campos, H. and Martinez-Gil, F. (eds.), Current Studies in Spanish Linguistics. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, pp. 475493.Google Scholar
Hualde, J. I. and Chitoran, I. (2003). Explaining the Distribution of Hiatus in Spanish and Romanian. In Solé, M. J., Recasens, D., and Romero, J. (eds.), Proceeding of the 15th International Congress on Phonetic Sciences. Barcelona: Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona, pp. 6770.Google Scholar
Ito, J. (1986). Syllable Theory in Prosodic Phonology (dissertation). University of Massachusetts.Google Scholar
Ito, J. and Mester, R. A. (1995). Japanese Phonology. In Goldsmith, J. (ed.), The Handbook of Phonological Theory. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Jiménez Sabater, M. A. (1975). Más datos sobre el español de la República Dominicana. Santo Domingo: Ediciones INTEC.Google Scholar
Kahn, D. (1976). Syllable-Based Generalizations in English Phonology (dissertation). MIT.Google Scholar
Kiparsky, P. (1982). From Cyclic Phonology to Lexical Phonology. In van der Hulst, H. and Smit, N. (eds.), The Structure of Phonological Representations (I). Dordrecht: Foris, pp. 131175.Google Scholar
Kubozono, H. (1989). The Mora and Syllable Structure in Japanese: Evidence from Speech Errors. Language and Speech, 32, 249278.Google Scholar
Ladefoged, P. (1967). Three Areas of Experimental Phonetics. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ladefoged, P. and Maddieson, I. (1996). The Sounds of the World’s Languages. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Leben, W. (1973). Suprasegmental Phonology (dissertation). MIT.Google Scholar
Lehmann, C. (2005). Latin Syllable Structure in Typological Perspective. Journal of Latin Linguistics, 9 (1), 127148.Google Scholar
Liberman, M. and Prince, A. S. (1977). On Stress and Linguistic Rhythm. Linguistic Inquiry, 8, 249336.Google Scholar
Lipski, J. (1985). /s/ in Central American Spanish. Hispania, 68, 143149.Google Scholar
Lipski, J. (2016). Spanish Vocalic Epenthesis: The Phonetics of Sonority and the Mora. In Núñez-Cedeño, N. A. (ed.), The Syllable and Stress. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, pp. 245270.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malmberg, B. (1965). Estudios de fonética hispánica. Madrid: CSIC.Google Scholar
Martínez-Gil, F. (2001). Sonority as a Primitive Phonological Feature: Evidence from Spanish Complex Onset Phonotactics. In Herschensohn, J., Mallen, E., and Zagona, K. (eds.), Features and Interfaces in Romance: Essays in Honor of Heles Contreras. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins, pp. 203–22.Google Scholar
McCarthy, J. (1979). On Stress and Syllabification. Linguistic Inquiry, 10, 443466.Google Scholar
Moreno Sandoval, A., Torre, D., Curto, N., and Torre, R. (2006). Inventario de frecuencias fonémicas y silábicas del castellano espontáneo y escrito. In Buera, L., Lleida, E., Miguel, A., and Ortegae, A. (eds.), IV Jornadas en Tecnología del Habla. Zaragoza: Universidad de Zaragoza, pp. 7781.Google Scholar
Navarro Tomás, T. (1948). El español en Puerto Rico. San Juan: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico.Google Scholar
Nespor, M. and Vogel, I. (1986). Prosodic Phonology. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Ohala, J. and Kawasaki-Fukumori, H. (1997). Alternatives to the Sonority Hierarchy for Explaining Segmental Sequential Constraints. In Eliasson, S. and Jahr, E. H. (eds.), Language and its Ecology. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, pp. 343366.Google Scholar
Padgett, Jaye (2008). Glides, Vowels, and Features. Lingua, 118 (12), 19371955. doi: 10.1016/j.lingua.2007.10.002.Google Scholar
Pike, K. L. (1947). Phonemics: A Technique for Reducing Languages to Writing. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Piñeros, C. E. (2016). The Phonological Weight of Spanish Syllables. In Núñez-Cedeño, N. A. (ed.), The Syllable and Stress. Berlin and Boston, MA: De Gruyter, pp. 271314.Google Scholar
Prince, A., and Smolensky, P. (2004). Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar. In McCarthy, J. J. (ed.), Optimality Theory in Phonology. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 171.Google Scholar
Quilis, A. (1993). Tratado de fonología y fonética españolas. Madrid: Gredos.Google Scholar
Selkirk, E. (1978). On Prosodic Structure and its Relation to Syntactic Structure. In Fretheim, T. (ed.), Nordic Prosody II. Trondheim: Tapir, pp. 111–40.Google Scholar
Selkirk, E. (1984). Phonology and syntax. The relation between Sound and Structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Selkirk, E. (1986). On Derived Domains in Sentence Phonology. Phonology Yearbook, 3, 371405.Google Scholar
Sievers, E. (1885). An Old English Grammar (translated by Cook, A.). Boston, MA: Ginn Heath.Google Scholar
Simonet, M., Rohena-Madrazo, M., and Paz, M. (2008). Preliminary Evidence for Incomplete Neutralization of Coda Liquids in Puerto Rican Spanish. In Colantoni, L. and Steele, J. (eds.), Selected Proceedings of the 3rd Conference on Laboratory Approaches to Spanish Phonology. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla, pp. 7286.Google Scholar
Trigo, R. L. (1988). The Phonological Derivation and Behavior of Nasal Glides (dissertation). MIT.Google Scholar
Whitney, W. D. (1873). Oriental and Linguistic Studies. New York: Scribner, Armstrong.Google Scholar
Widdison, K. (1995). An Acoustic and Perceptual Study of the Spanish Sound Changes s > h. Rivista di Linguistica, 7, 175–90.Google Scholar
Wiltshire, C. (2006). Prefix Boundaries in Spanish Varieties: A Non-Derivational OT Account. In Colina, S. and Martínez-Gil, F. (eds.), OT Advances in Phonology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 358377.Google Scholar
Yi, K. (1999). The Internal Structure of Korean Syllables: Rhyme or body? Korean Journal of Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, 10, 6783.Google Scholar
Zoll, C. (1996). Parsing below the Segment in a Constraint Based Framework (dissertation). University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×