Christy Marscheider

Don’t Stress the Stress

Do Native Spanish Speakers De-accent Given Information?

Spring “Break”

Non-Native English Speakers do not de-accent given information

Hypothesis:

W.H.G. Wells and J.K. Local prove this in their paper titled Deaccenting and The Structure of English Intonation.

How do we know native speakers de-

accent?

They state that numerous investigators of intonation and information structure have noted that a lexical item which the speaker is presenting to the hearer as given, old, shared knowledge, etc., will not be phonologically prominent, even though this item may be in the normal position for sentence accent,viz. the last lexical item in the sentence. Ladd (1980) call this phenomenon deaccenting (703).

How do Spanish speakers accent when

speaking Spanish?

Julia Tevis McGory, from Ohio University’s Linguistic Department, found that Spanish speakers continue to accent content words when speaking, however, they do exhibit a downstepping pattern.

Dr. Ann Wennerstrom

University of Washington

Techniques for Teachers, textbook for nonnative English speakers

Ann Wennerstrom

She found that in the oral reading category, native English speakers had a higher pitch and intensity on the words that contained new information in the sentence, while the other language groups did not show much distinction at all to the new information

She also found that, in reference to nouns and adjectives, English speakers would lower their pitch on the second mention in a sentence, because they were considered “redundant”

Wennerstrom’s findings indicated that L2 speakers did not seem to accent new information in discourse.

She also found that L2 speakers did not seem to de-accent given, or “redundant” information

Do native Spanish speakers de-accent given information in discourse?

Native and non-native speakers will be interviewed to determine if this hypothesis is correct. Participants will read a sample paragraph and their dialogue will be recorded and analyzed.

The Study

Playa Del Carmen, Mexico

Sandos Riviera Resort

Sample Paragraph

If you like the sun, then you would love Virginia Beach in the summer. In the summer Virginia Beach is usually sunny and warm. If you move here you should probably buy sunscreen- you will need some. You will see sunshine and blue skies almost every day, so it can really help protect your skin. The sun can give you a bad burn if you aren’t careful! On a cloudy day, you won’t get too much sun, but on a clear day, you need to watch out and be prepared!

Results

Targeted Words Accented or Not De-Accented

Non-Native Speakers Native Speakers

Summer 71% 47%

Virginia Beach 23% 0%

Sunny 64% 50%

Here 79% 47%

Sunshine 75% 75%

It 42% 8%

Sun 56% 13%

Word Evaluated in Sample Paragraph % Increase of Spanish Speakers Accenting or Not De-accenting Given Information

Summer 24%

Virginia Beach 23%

Sunny 14%

Here 32%

Sunshine 0%

It 34%

Sun 43%

Conclusions and Suggestions

Further Study

Free Discourse

Evaluating Procedure