Evidence
for the metrical foot in Spanish |
|
Maria-Bonita Flores and Merle Horne
(Lund) |
Spanish is commonly classified as a syllable-timed language in
investigations of rhythm typology (Dauer 1983). That is to say, it is assumed
that the rhythmic structure of the language is based on a regular repetition of
syllable units which have a similar structure and thus a similar duration.
However, it is also the case that Spanish has word stress, i.e. a given
syllable in a given word is characterized by more prominence than the other
syllables. Thus, one can hypothesize that stress, in addition to
syllable-number can influence the rhythmic patterning of Spanish. In other
words, it can be hypothesized that Spanish constitutes a language with a mixed
rhythmic character, mostly syllable-timing but partly stress-timing. In
metrical phonological terms, one could hypothesize, therefore, that the foot
could play a certain role in characterizing the rhythmic structure of Spanish
due to the fact that words are associated with word stress. Previous studies
have, however, questioned the role that the foot can be assumed to play in
accounting for Spanish rhythm (e.g. Cummins 2002). In this study using poetic
discourse, we will argue that there would appear to be some support for the
assumption of a fragmentary foot structure in Spanish. The main findings are
the following: The basic syllable-timing character of Spanish is supported in
poetic structure constraints, e.g. a poem is constructed using a fixed number
of syllables in each line. 'SYLLABLE COUNT' is thus the major determinant of
how a lyric poem is structured. However, in the phonetic realisation of the
syllables in speech, the phonology of Spanish, including metrical constraints,
interacts with this higher level syllable-timing constraint. Syllabic
'extrametricality' and empty syllabic insertion (catalexis) can be assumed as
well as segmental processes leading to syllable deletion (synalepha) in order
to attain the correct syllable count in a line of poetry. What is interesting
from a phonological view is that the level at which this syllable count takes
place cannot be described in a straightforward manner. It is not a level that
corresponds to an underlying (phonemic) representation nor to a phonetic
representation. It is some intermediate level or mixture of levels that can
only be assumed to characterize a language that has a mixed rhythmic structure,
in this case, a language which is 'mostly' syllable-timed but 'slightly'
stress-timed as well. Acoustic support for these assumptions will be presented.
Cummins, F. 2002. Speech rhythm and rhythmic taxonomy. Proceedings Speech Prosody 2002:
115-119.
Dauer, R.M. 1983. Stress-timing and syllable-timing reanalyzed. Journal of Phonetics, 11: 51-62.