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Principal investigator: Christoph Gabriel 
Undergraduate assistants:
Fruth, Ricarda
Kireva, Elena
Nanula, Nina
Rodríguez Arguedas, Mariela
Schlegel, Natividad
Teichmann, Claudia
Research partners:
Arana, Valeria (Universidad Nacional del Comahue)
Blázques, Bettiana (Universidad Nacional del
Comahue)
Buthke,
Carolin 
(Universität Osnabrück)
Colantoni, Laura
(University of Toronto)
Dabrowski, Alejandra (Universidad Nacional
del Comahue)
Kubarth, Hugo (Universität Graz)
Kuchenbrandt, Imme (Universität Bremen)
Labastía, Leopoldo (Universidad Nacional del
Comahue)
Lee, Su-Ar (University of Florida)
Meisenburg,
Trudel (Universität Osnabrück)
Prieto,
Pilar (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
Sichel-Bazin,
Raphael (Universität Osnabrück, Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
Vázques, Mónica (Universidad Nacional del
Comahue)
Benet, Ariadna / Feldhausen, Ingo / Pešková, Andrea (in Vorbereitung): Prosodische Grenzen in der Spontansprache. Arbeiten zur Mehrsprachigkeit, Universität Hamburg.
Feldhausen,
Ingo / Gabriel, Christoph / Pešková, Andrea (2010): "Prosodic Phrasing
in Argentinean Spanish: Buenos Aires and Neuquén." In: Hasegawa-Johnson,
Mark et al. (eds.): Speech Prosody 2010. Chicago, IL. [PDF] 
Gabriel,
Christoph / Feldhausen, Ingo / Pešková, Andrea / Colantoni, Laura /
Lee, Su-Ar / Arana, Valeria / Labastía, Leopoldo (2010, i. E.):
"Argentinian Spanish Intonation." In: Prieto, Pilar / Roseano, Paolo
(eds.): Transcription of Intonation of the Spanish Language. München: Lincom, 285-317.
[Sound files published in Atlas interactivo de la entonación del español]
Gabriel,
Christoph / Feldhausen, Ingo / Pešková, Andrea (2011, i.E.): "Prosodic
Phrasing in porteño Spanish." In: Gabriel, Christoph / Lleó, Conxita
(eds.): Intonational Phrasing in Romance and Germanic: Cross-Linguistic and Bilingual Studies. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 153-182.
Gabriel,
Christoph / Pešková, Andrea / Labastía, Leopoldo / Vázquez, Betiana
(2011, i. E.): "La entonación en el español de Buenos Aires." In:
Colantoni, Laura / Rodríguez Louro, Celeste (eds.): Perspectivas teóricas y experimentales sobre el español de la Argentina.
Our project aims at taking stock of the intonation of the prestigious Argentinean dialect porteño. This Spanish variety shares a number of prosodic features with Italian, which can be traced back to a migration-induced language contact. Based on data from speakers of different age and geographical origin as well as by means of a comparison with older sound documents, it will be examined if presumably “Italian” characteristics become more salient or rather weakened after the change into Spanish monolingualism. The project aims at a better understanding of the role that intonation plays in multilingualism and language change.
Immigration and
Multilingualism in Buenos Aires
Due to large
streams of immigrants from Central and Southern Italy, about a third of the
population of Buenos Aires was made up of Italians at the beginning of the 20th
century (Fontanella de Weinberg 1987, Lipski 2004); in certain neighborhoods
Italian immigrants made up 45% of the population. The linguistic situation in
Buenos Aires was determined by multilingualism and especially by Spanish-Italian
bilingualism for a long time. Though Spanish monolingualism is nowadays
prevailing in Buenos Aires, the prestigious
Argentinean dialect porteño (< puerto ‘harbor’), that is usually
perceived as the typical Argentinean Spanish, is characterized by a strong
Italian influence. It is especially the intonation of porteño-Spanish, besides lexical and also morphological
particularities, that is characterized as “Italian” in numerous descriptions
(Kailuweit 2005, Di Tullio 2003, Wurl 2007, Vidal de Battini 1964).
Intonation:
Close-to-Standard Varieties vs. porteño-Spanish
The intonation of
Spanish close-to-standard varieties is characterized by the contrast of two
pitch accents: early peak (LH*, fast
rise within the metrically strong syllable) vs. late peak (L*H, slow rise causing the peak to appear after the
strong syllable). L*H reflects the default realization of prenuclear accents,
while LH* represents the nuclear accent and is consequently perceived as the
focal pitch accent at the same time (Sosa 1999, Face 2001, Hualde 2002a, b).
The most prominent “Italian” feature of porteño-intonation
is the realization of prenuclear pitch accents as a rising tone with an early peak, analyzed by
Colantoni/Gurlekian (2004) as H* (for Italian cf. Rabanus 2001, D’Imperio
2002). Thus, porteño-Spanish lacks
the alignment contrast L*H vs. LH*. This lack is compensated for by a syllable-internal
early alignment (F0-peak in the first third of the stressed syllable) and a
higher scaling (increased F0-value), cf. Gabriel (2006). The diagram below
schematically contrasts the alignment of pitch accents in close-to-standard
varieties and in porteño-Spanish. The
syllable-internal early alignment is symbolized by ‘←H’ and the increased
F0-value by ‘^H’.
Based on a larger corpus than in previous studies (e. g. Arana et al. 2007, Colantoni/Gurlekian 2004, Gabriel 2006), the project takes stock of the intonational properties of porteño-Spanish:
The different prosodic characteristics which porteño-Spanish shares with several Italian dialects constitute the point of departure (realization of prenuclear pitch accents as early peak, typical final contour usually called long fall, tonal distinction between contrastive and neutral focus; cf. Gabriel 2006, Kaisse 2001). Data will be collected from spontaneous and elicited speech as well as from perception experiments. The theoretical framework for modeling the results is the Autosegmental-Metrical model of intonational phonology (Beckman/Pierrehumbert 1986, Ladd 1996). This model has already been applied to several Romance languages and is thus suitable for comparative language studies and for an investigation of the effects multilingualism has on intonation.
Furthermore, we will investigate how the influence of the relevant Italian dialects (mainly central and Southern varieties) is manifested in the intonational system of the Spanish spoken in present-day Argentina. In this respect, it is of special interest to find out if and how the relevant prosodic features spread geographically as well as through different age groups. The following factors will be taken into account:
Regional dimension
Diachronic dimension
Site in Spanish