Acoustic correlates of lexical stress in Córdoba Spanish

In Spanish, the most consistent correlate of lexical stress appears to be duration. Even in phrasal contexts where the pitch contour is flat over all syllables in the word (as in parentheticals) and where pitch prominence is displaced to a different syllable (under rhetorical stress), lexically stressed syllables are usually durationally enhanced. Given this, the phenomenon known as “tonada cordobesa” is of particular interest, since it involves the lengthening of the pretonic syllable, which reportedly may become considerably longer than the tonic. The question that arises is what other acoustic cues are used to convey information on the lexical prosodic pattern of the word when increased duration is disassociated from the stressed syllable. To answer this question, we acoustically analyzed relative duration and pitch of 35 words produced by eight speakers native to different cities in the province of Córdoba, which were compared to those same words as produced by six natives of the province of Buenos Aires, where pretonic lengthening is not expected. Results revealed that tonic syllables were significantly longer than non-tonic ones in both varieties. However, the tonic-pretonic difference was smaller in Córdoba than in Buenos Aires, indicative of pretonic lengthening. Differences in pitch change between a pretonic and a tonic were not significantly different between provinces, but an overall larger pitch change between tonic and non-tonic syllables was obtained in Córdoba. Together, these results suggest that duration is a correlate of stress in Córdoba, as in other Spanish varieties, and small relative duration differences due to pretonic lengthening may be enhanced by a larger pitch change. Nevertheless, sporadically we also find cases where the pretonic is longer than the tonic. In these examples, pitch-accent alignment indicates the position of the lexically stressed syllable.