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Abstract: In this paper we offer a panoramic overview of the development of Andean Spanish and Andean Linguistics, from a theoretical point of view of language contact and universal grammar. We discuss how the notion of Andean Spanish came into existence, the issues under debate, and the consequences of different theoretical positions. We also introduce the contents of the papers included in this special issue, and highlight their key points, framing them in the context of the research on universal grammar. The following five areas are covered: (1) the convergence of Quechua and Aymara, (2) the impact of bilingualism on intonation, (3) the sharing of suffixes in contact situations, (4) the modification of the present perfect tense in Spanish in contact with Quechua, and (5) the properties of the Quechua case system from the point of view of contact varieties. Finally, we provide some remarks on bilingual education, and some suggestions for further directions for future research. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract This paper introduces the melodic characterisation of spontaneous Spanish presented by speakers from two regions in the north of Spain: Asturias and Navarre, based on a conversational corpus composed of 100 utterances emitted by 62 participants. It focuses on the intonation of the dialects, an aspect which is poorly investigated but highly relevant for characterising and distinguishing one from the other. The study is based on the Melodic Analysis of Speech method, a meticulous acoustic analysis through which exact values are obtained from spontaneous speech, which can then be compared. In short, the most notable coincident and divergent melodic features between the two dialects are: (1) the tendency of the two to present a first peak, more frequently tonic in Asturian Spanish and atonic in Navarrese; (2) an almost flat or slightly falling body of the contour with abundant internal inflections, which are also distinguished by the syllable where the rise ends: tonic in Asturian Spanish, and tonic and atonic in the final position of the word in Navarrese; and (3) more pronounced final inflections, with five different endings, and tonal fields, in the region of Navarre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an analysis of Chocó Spanish (CS) neutral declarative intonation. Results show that this Afro-Colombian dialect, in line with other black vernaculars spoken in Latin America and other cases of Spanish in contact, presents a reduced inventory of pitch accents when compared to other varieties of Spanish. Specifically, L+H* (i.e., peak alignment within the stressed syllable) predominates in both prenuclear and nuclear phrase positions, which deviates quite significantly from common Spanish trends, where there is often a distinction between nuclear L+H*/L* and prenuclear L+>H* (i.e., peak displacement to a post-tonic syllable). Conversely, at the intermediate and intonational phrase levels (ip and IP, respectively), CS appears to reflect other native (non-contact) varieties of Spanish, showing H- ip boundaries to indicate the continuation of a thought and L% IP boundaries to signal the conclusion of an idea. Our findings are further compared with results from other contact varieties to show that certain aspects of CS intonation may be conceived as the byproduct of the transmission of second language (L2) intonational features to following generations of first language (L1) speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The paper presents one of the few known cases of intonational variation not due to language contact. • The origin of intonational variation is probably the overlap in pragmatic meanings of two contours. • A large number of speakers (158) were recorded. • The corpus contains 1380 yes-no questions collected by means of DCT. Sound variation and change at the suprasegmental level have been the object of a limited number of studies. Among them, the cases of intonational variation and change that cannot be attributed to language contact are very rare. This paper describes a case of intonational variation (which could possibly be the first stage of an ongoing intonational change) that is not due to language contact and that is observed on Minorca, a Catalan-speaking island in the Western Mediterranean. 158 speakers were recorded in 4 locations (two urban areas, a small town and a village). Speakers were male and female speakers belonging to two age groups (teenagers and adults). The corpus contains 1380 information-seeking yes-no questions collected by means of a Discourse Completion Task. Results show that while adult speakers seem to use only the traditional contour (as documented in several previous studies), teenagers in urban areas mostly use a yes-no question contour that differs from the tune used by adults. Teenage speakers in rural areas, on the other hand, still largely use the traditional yes-no question contour. The innovative contour has not been borrowed by other languages or dialects in contact with Minorcan Catalan, but was already in use in Minorcan Catalan with a different pragmatic function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates intonational variation and change in Scottish Gaelic (henceforth ‘Gaelic’), a minority endangered language undergoing revitalisation. In particular I focus on bilingual speakers aged 13–14 who are attending immersion education in the Isle of Lewis, a Gaelic-heartland area, and in the city of Glasgow where Gaelic has no community history. The young people are compared to older Gaelic-dominant speakers in Lewis. Results suggest a substantial difference in Gaelic prosodic structure between the older and younger speakers, with older speakers speaking Gaelic as a language with contrastive word accents (prosodically similar to Swedish), and young people speaking Gaelic as an intonation language (prosodically similar to English). Further analysis of the young people's intonation suggests cross-language influence from Glaswegian English on the realisation of pitch accents and boundary tones in Glasgow Gaelic. These results are discussed in terms of the impact of language contact and bilingualism on intonational structure, and language change in this context of minority language revitalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In the typology of prosodic phrasing in Japanese dialects that the author has proposed previously, the dialects are categorized into those in which an accentual phrase (AP) generally contains only one word, and those in which it can contain two or more words. This paper shows that this typology can be applied to languages that have the same sort of AP as in Japanese, such as Seoul Korean, French and Northern Bizkaian Basque. It is also shown that the cross-linguistic difference similar to that in AP-level prosodic phrasing can also be observed in languages in which AP is difficult to define, such as English and Spanish. In order to describe these languages in a unified framework, it is proposed that they be divided according to how densely pitch events (such as post-lexical pitch accents and AP boundaries) are distributed with respect to the number of words. This division may hold a clue to language-specific mapping between prosody and syntax/focus. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In this paper, declarative intonation contours from Peruvian Spanish speakers are compared between pragmatic conditions in order to observe potential differences in the prosodic realization of contrastive focus. To do so, an acoustic feature of intonation, the fundamental frequency (F0), is examined. Since focus in Quechua is realized through the use of evidential markers, it is hypothesized that Cuzco Spanish speakers may behave differently than Lima speakers in relatively less contact with Quechua. Two intonation features have been examined with relation to contrastive focus on the subject: peak alignment and peak height. While Lima speakers demonstrate earlier and higher peaks on the subject, similar to previous reports for Madrid and Peninsular Spanish, some Cuzco speakers use fewer prosodic cues, while others rely on post-focal deaccenting alone. Also, Cuzco speakers appear to behave similarly according to whether or not they are bilingual in Spanish and Quechua. This research demonstrates how focus in realized differently in two regional varieties of Peruvian Spanish and adds to our knowledge of how language contact may contribute to the development of alternate intonation patterns in Spanish. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: reported that a single (non-sentence-final) focus in Mandarin Chinese has the phonetic effect of F0 raising in the focus and F0 lowering and compression following the focus. In this paper, results of an experiment on multiple (non-sentence-final) focus in Mandarin Chinese are reported, with baseline conditions single focus and no focus. The single focus conditions showed the expected effects. In the multiple focus conditions, only the second of two foci shows phonetic F0 effects, while the first focus does not show such F0 effects. Duration measurements also provide no clear evidence for a phonetic focus effect on the first of the two foci. The analysis we suggest, combining suggestions of and , is that one focus in a focus-construction attracts intonation phrase stress, and that the phonetic effects are triggered by intonation phrase stress, rather than by the F-feature that marks focus. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Georgian is famous for its word order flexibility: all permutations of constituent order are possible and the choice among them is primarily determined by information structure. In this paper, we show that word order is not the only means to encode information structure in this language, but it is used in combination with sentence prosody. After a preliminary description of the use of prosodic phrasing and intonation for this purpose, we address the question of the interrelation between these two strategies. Based on experimental evidence, we investigate the interaction of focus with word order and prosody, and we conclude that some aspects of word order variation are pragmatically vacuous and can be accommodated in any context if they are realized with an appropriate prosodic structure, while other word order phenomena are quite restrictive and cannot be overridden through prosodic manipulations. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]