Loquens

Historiography of Phonetics and Phonology in the Hispanic Tradition

Carmen Quijada Van den Berghe — 2024-12-16

The phonetic description in the orthologic tradition: Mariano José Sicilia's 'Lecciones elementales' (1827/28, 1832)

Francisco Javier Perea Siller — 2024-11-21

This paper analyses the contribution of Mariano José Sicilia (1777-before 1862) to the phonetic description of the Spanish language, through the analysis of his work Lecciones elementales de Ortología y Prosodia (Paris, 1827-1828; Madrid, 1832). After a brief biographical sketch, we pay attention to the sources used, the phonetic terminology that is employed, as well as the classification and explanation of the different sounds that are recognized in the Spanish language, in relation to the works of the Real Academia Española, which serves as the starting point to the author.

Concerning the unity and similarity of letters and sounds to make consonance: Juan Díaz Rengifo’s Arte poética española in the Spanish prescriptive tradition

Francisco Pedro Pla Colomer — 2024-12-10

The current research focuses on the study of the Spanish phonetic features on the second half of the 16th century based on Juan Díaz Rengifo’s Arte poética española (1592) (more specifically in his Sylva), in the frame of the main poetic arts: from the Gramática of Antonio de Nebrija and the Arte poética castellana of Juan del Encina to the contemporary works of Rengifo; such as the Cisne de Apolo (1602) of Luis Alfonso de Carballo. The conjunction of the diachronic studies, on one side, and the poetic treatises, on the other, will lead to solid results regarding the description of one of the most complete poetic arts in the Spanish language history.

The phonetic component in the missionary grammars of the Philippines (17th-18th centuries)

Miguel Cuevas-Alonso — 2024-11-29

In this paper, we will address the phonetic-orthographic aspects in the missionary-colonial grammars of the Philippines. Based on a corpus of 16 grammars created by missionaries-linguists during the 17th and 18th centuries, we describe the treatment of the phonetic component of the Philippine languages that they subject to grammatical analysis. Also, we demonstrate its importance in the broad grammatical process that began in Europe with the vernacular languages and continued in the Hispanic tradition with Amerindian and Philippine languages. We establish the links between these three traditions, examine the methods used by the missionaries in analysing this level of language, and emphasise the most important aspects of this grammatization process. As we will observe, some concepts arise from the analysis of the phonetic particularities of the Philippine languages under study, others come from the Amerindian tradition, and many of them, albeit with significant adaptations, are inherited from the vernacular European and Graeco-Latin tradition.

The press as a source for the historiography of the phonetics and phonology of Spanish

M.ª Ángeles García Aranda — 2024-12-16

This paper aims to show the value of the press as a source for the historiography of phonetics and phonology of Spanish based on a series of works published by Ramón Robles in the magazines La Escuela Moderna, El lenguaje and Revista de archivos, bibliotecas y museos between 1903 and 1914. In them he addresses the foundations, sources and methods of phonetics and its applications, the work of European phoneticists, the principles of acoustic phonetics, the classification of sounds or problems posed by the existing nomenclature.

The International Phonetic Alphabet as a teaching resource: its first appearance in Spanish teaching methods for Italian speakers

Hugo E. Lombardini — 2024-12-16

Luigi Pavia is the author of three “grammars” of Spanish for Italians: Grammatica elementare della lingua spagnuola (G. Groos, 1894), Grammatica della lingua spagnuola (G. Groos, Hoepli, SGMI-GRL, 1895) and Grammatica spagnuola (Hoepli, 1895). The second of these methods is reprinted/edited in 1901 (two editions), 1907, 1913, 1921 and 1927. In the 1913 edition, the work underwent some important changes, including the use of phonetic transcription of the lexicon according to the indications of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). This paper tries to answer the following questions: Who collaborated in the work? What are the main characteristics of the transition from one type of transcription to another? What terminology related to pronunciation is used in the work? What is the historiographical interest of the first adoption of the IPA system of transcription in Italian-Spanish grammars?

The yeísmo and its ideological development in academic works

Francesca Dalle Pezze — 2024-11-29

In this article, we propose to trace the ideological development of yeísmo in academic works from the first description of the phenomenon in the 13th edition of the dictionary (1899). The position of the Academy concerning the traditional distinction (/ʎ/ ~ /ʝ/) and yeísmo is also evident in the commentaries included in the Grammars and Orthographies. After a long period of condemnation, the position has been changing since the 1970s, with the abandonment of the Eurocentric view in the direction of the recognition of normative pluricentrism, which has led to the full acceptance of yeísmo (as well as seseo). In this process of destigmatisation, the decades between the 19th (1970) and 21st (1992) editions of the dictionary represent a transitional phase in which Academia hesitates between accepting yeísmo and sticking to the traditional distinguishing pattern.

Tonal peaks and duration in the prenucleus in Cuban Spanish

Carolina Jorge Trujillo — 2024-11-13

The analysis of the initial high peak in Spanish has allowed us to observe how it can appear aligned with the first stressed syllable or displaced to the postonic one. We now intend to check if these variations in fundamental frequency (f0) are related to vowel duration. This research is focused on Cuban Spanish, with a laboratory speech corpus issued by women and men in the declarative and interrogative modalities. Starting from psychoacoustic thresholds of f0 and duration, we have carried out an acoustic study and the subsequent labelling of both parameters. The results show the influence of certain linguistic and extralinguistic variables without pointing to a defined trend able to relate frequency and duration in a specific way..

The prosody of absolute and reiterative questions in the Castilian of the Leonese Páramo: Falling patterns and phonological lengthening

Víctor Bargiela — 2024-11-21

The present study aims to describe and analyse the prosody of total interrogative sentence in the Leonese Páramo within the context of the Romance linguistic varieties of the northern Iberian Peninsula, which exhibit a descending intonational pattern for this type of sentence. A corpus consisting of 74 interrogative sentences from 11 native speakers from the Páramo Bajo has been compiled and analysed using the Sp_ToBI prosodic annotation system. The analyse paid special attention to the behaviour of F0 movement and the relation between the duration of final and medial syllables. The study concludes that ascending-descending patterns (¡H* L% and L+H* HL%) are predominant in the examined region, and prototypical ascending patterns of standard Spanish are not observed. Additionally, there is a tendency towards lenghtening the final syllable in interrogative sentences, particularly notable for the descending nuclear configuration H+L* L%.

An interactive linguistic atlas of Andalusian accents (ALIAA): methodology

Alfredo Herrero de Haro — 2024-11-21

El sexto volumen del ALEA (Atlas Lingüístico y Etnográfico de Andalucía) se publicó en 1973 pero los materiales se recogieron en los 1950; algunos estudios recientes contradicen las descripciones del ALEA, lo que sugiere que es necesario actualizarlo. Este artículo describe la metodología del ALIAA (Atlas Lingüístico Interactivo de los Acentos de Andalucía), un proyecto que pretende actualizar los datos del ALEA describiendo el acento de 500 municipios; los datos se están recogiendo principalmente en línea. El audio se analizará acústica y estadísticamente y los resultados se conectarán a un punto en un mapa interactivo; esto creará isoglosas que delimitarán fenómenos lingüísticos en un mapa interactivo. El ALIAA puede explicar la extensión de distintos fenómenos lingüísticos y cómo ha variado su extensión desde que se creara el ALEA. Este artículo presenta algunos resultados preliminares para demostrar que una metodología como la del ALIAA puede ayudarnos a desarrollar atlas lingüísticos de una manera más efectiva que métodos tradicionales.