Segmental Anchoring Hypothesis (SAH) and Invariant Rise Hypothesis (IRH) are two models that account for the effects of segmental information on tonal alignment. While SAH suggests that tonal targets are anchored to specific segments, IRH suggests that segmental factors condition tonal alignment. In this paper, I explore Peruvian Amazonian Spanish and examine the effects of segmental duration and syllable structure on tonal alignment. Results show that F0 peaks consistently occur in the stressed syllable, regardless of segmental duration and syllable structure. Furthermore, F0 peaks tend to align with the stressed vowel, even in closed syllables, possibly suggesting that this vowel is the segmental anchor. These findings thus provide supporting evidence in favor of SAH, contrary to previous claims for Spanish.

The present study explores intonational patterns in spontaneous speech in Peruvian Amazonian Spanish (PAS). The data came from 12 monolingual Spanish speakers in the city of Pucallpa, where the Spanish language has historically been in contact with the Amazonian language Shipibo-Konibo. The speakers responded to an open-ended prompt that elicited broad focus declaratives. Acoustic information from 1524 pitch accents was extracted from 194 sentences and analyzed using Praat. The analysis focused on five features: F0 rises, F0 peak alignment, downstepping, final lowering, and cases of stress clash. The results not only supported previous research on this variety that came from read speech tasks (e.g., F0 peaks consistently aligned with the stressed syllable), but also highlighted the importance of using multiple methodologies to gain a more comprehensive understanding of PAS prosody. Specifically, the varied sentence lengths and structures common in spontaneous speech provided new insights into downstepping, final lowering, and stress clash in PAS intonation. Overall, these results contribute to the growing literature on Spanish prosody in shared linguistic spaces and lend support for trends (such as F0 peak alignment) that have been reported in other language contact varieties.

El presente estudio examina la construcción parar + gerundio en el castellano peruano. Sus objetivos son: (1) describir las características principales de esta construcción y (2) explorar las propiedades pragmáticas que favorecen su uso. Los datos analizados en este estudio provienen de textos escritos y videos recogidos durante cinco años (principalmente en páginas web aunque algunos datos fueron extraídos de conversaciones). Los resultados muestran que la construcción parar + gerundio expresa pluralidad del evento, cuya lectura de habitualidad de la acción se convierte en una característica que define al sujeto. Esto se evidencia en el uso consistente del aspecto imperfectivo en el verbo auxiliar (parar) y la naturaleza de los adjuntos adverbiales identificados. Adicionalmente, esta construcción permite al hablante expresar una evaluación negativa sobre la habitualidad de la acción. Esta evaluación negativa se manifiesta en la preferencia por sujetos de la tercera persona gramatical, el tipo de verbo en el gerundio (verbos con una connotación negativa en el castellano peruano), además del lenguaje peyorativo que suele acompañar a esta construcción. El presente estudio es uno de los primeros que indaga sobre la construcción parar + gerundio y fija un punto de partida para futuras investigaciones. En términos generales, este estudio contribuye a la existente literatura sobre construcciones de gerundio no estándares en el mundo hispanohablante.

The present study explores the prosodic manifestations of focus marking in Peruvian Amazonian Spanish (PAS), as spoken in the city of Pucallpa. Foundational work on PAS intonation has provided us with a general depiction of its declaratives and interrogatives (Elias-Ulloa, 2015; García, 2011). However, little is known about how focus is conveyed through PAS intonation. In this paper, I explore four prosodic cues in PAS declaratives: tonal alignment, syllable duration, tonal height, and the presence of pre- and post-focal pitch accents. Following the Autosegmental-Metrical (AM) framework of intonational phonology (Ladd 1996, 2008; Pierrehumbert, 1980), I acoustically analyze these prosodic cues from a reading task produced by 13 monolingual PAS speakers. Results show that PAS speakers employ tonal alignment to distinguish broad, narrow, and contrastive focus declaratives. Syllable duration is also used for focus distinction. Moreover, the patterns of tonal height vary across focus types. Finally, unlike other Spanish varieties, deaccentuation in PAS is not prevalent in narrow or contrastive focus declaratives; PAS speakers produce both pre- and post-focal pitch accents. Together, these new findings about PAS’s intonational system help us situate it into the larger research of focus marking in Spanish.