A Functional Account of the Contrast Enhancement in the Articulation of Prosody in Spanish

Abstract

Lee, Joo-Kyeong. 2004. A Functional Account of the Contrast Enhancement in the Articulation of Prosody in Spanish. Korean Journal of Linguistics, 29-4, 589-606. This paper attempts to provide a functional explanation of the manner of enhancing phonological contrasts in the supralaryngeal articulation of prosody in Spanish, comparing with the case of English and argues that place and manner contrasts are enhanced in prosodically prominent position, effectively reflecting phonological structure. In English, a high front vowel in accented syllables is acoustically realized as higher F1 and F2 frequencies, due to its more peripheral and sonorous articulation (Harrington et al. 2000). It is shown in this paper that syllables with relative prominence entail higher F1 values in Spanish, but that either front or back vowels do not show higher F2 or lower F2 frequency. This is interpreted as indicating that a prosodically prominent position involves both syntagmatic and paradigmatic enhancements of a vowel in English; the syntagmatic contrast is increased by sonority expansion of the vowel, enhancing the C/V distinction, and the paradigmatic contrast is increased by a more peripheral articulation of the vowel, enhancing contrasts among vowels. In Spanish, however, only the syntagmatic distinction is increased, implementing a higher F1. This suggests that the difference may be attributed to the different phonological structures of vowels between English and Spanish, and that the difference in the articulatory manner of maintaining prosodic contrasts may emerge based on a general condition of functional nature; that is, syntagmatic enhancement alone would be sufficient as long as the paradigmatic contrasts among vowel qualities are well retained. (The University of Seoul)